Illusion is Reality

Chapter 120

-Sixty degrees-

(With MizBill)

Dinner with her family was peaceful, well, as peaceful as meals got in Wanda's household. The twins and Ammy somehow started a little food fight, but… not quite a food fight? None of the food ended up on the table, floor or walls. Ammy had snatched them all up, to keep any of the food from being wasted. Because his mother was very particular about that.

And after that was all over and done with, and Miz had helped get the twins bathed and changed and ready for bed, Miz and Ammy had retired to the living room to relax together on the couch. They were going to watch some TV together, quietly, until they fell asleep and went home.

Though, last minute, Miz decided to check up on her brother. She should at least say 'bye' before she left, regardless of how she'd be right back. So, when Ammy fell asleep, Miz laid him down gently on some pillows and Looked around for where her brother would be.

...Her brother was walking through the streets of Gravity Falls, despite how late at night it was, humming to himself. Fordsie was nowhere in sight - well, not in the same location. A quick flicker confirmed that he was still at Kari's place, and they were both-

Miz sat up. Were they ok? Oh. Oh no. Oh… so it happened. Miz sighed. Well, to be fair, she'd preferred for Kari to know. Because Miz knew Kari would still love her son regardless, but Ford didn't know that. And now he did! And that was good! Sure, they were gonna be crying for a while, but… overall, they'd be better once the truth was out.

Then Miz looked farther back. (She'd been working on that issue she'd been having, trying to be able to work around the barrier at the Center, and now that she could…) And she winced again. And then she face palmed, hard. "Fordsie you idiot." She groaned. Sure, having Ford and Blue get along would be great. But goddamn, if Blue was going to cut off yo' wrists, you need 'ta smack a bitch! Miz shook her head. Why did she have to find that idiot so endearing? Ugh. Well, Fordsie and granny Kari were… dealing with their thing. Miz turned back towards her brother, and she Blinked.

Appearing in Gravity Falls, Miz shivered a little at the crisp autumn air. Right. She was floating above the ground by a few inches, not having put on any shoes, or changed out of her pajamas. She flicked her fingers and poofed on a jacket. And then she floated over to where Blue was walking.

"Little sis," Blue nodded. He didn't quite smile. Probably realized he was in a bit of trouble with her, she wasn't exactly holding back the exasperation. Or anything else.

"...do you really have to be so mean to him?" Miz huffed, floating beside Blue, pulling her legs up to sort of sit in midair.

"Define: mean," was Bill Cipher's rejoinder to her next.

"Pushing at his boundaries, trying to make him mad at you." Miz listed off.

"Better me than you," Blue said, tilting his head back. "I make a better 'object lesson' anyway," he said next. "I won't get hurt, if-and-when he starts calling me silly names. Or starting to do all the shouting. I don't care what happens to him at all." (There was something a bit odd in his tone right there, though…)

"I don't want you two mad at each other." Miz sighed. "Not saying you have to like him. But… you're really egging him on. A lot."

"Better me than you," Blue repeated, looking away from her and almost-shrugging a bit. "He looked up at me in awe today, you know."

"Awww~ did you blow his cute little mind with how awesome you are?" Miz giggled.

"It was dangerous," Blue told her. "I know how that ends." He looked over at her. "You aren't taking this seriously."

Miz sobered. "Sorry. I just… don't really…" She sighed. "I mean, it's not like he can help that? He respects and admires knowledge." And they were beings of pure energy and thought, older than the universe.

"I know that the six-fingered Stanfords do that," Blue said to her next. He looked straight ahead of him again, as he walked. "You really don't get it, do you," Blue said to her next.

"...maybe I don't. Because I haven't had my own Stanford yet." Miz admitted. "I have no experience with this."

Blue glanced over at her again.

"Not that," he said. "You don't know how easy it would be for me to fix this between you two, right here and now." He looked away from her. "To break what you have between you, completely and utterly, forever."

Miz blinked. "...to make Fordsie… not like me… anymore?" The idea sent a stab of agony through her in a way she couldn't articulate.

"I wouldn't even have to tell him the things that would have him hating you to do it," Blue said to her next. "The things that you think won't be a problem. -He's so open," Blue not-quite laughed out, "And easy. -He has alllll the same holes in himself as my own Sixer did and still-does. And more." He tilted his head back again. "I could get him to trust me, to like me so easily. And then have him hating me; tell him all the truths that will break everything, and have him hating me for who and what I am, loathe me for even going so far as warning him first, about every last piece of it first - and then?" He let out a breath. He was smiling. "He'll never trust another demon again. Not for a third time. Not after this. -I won't have to convince you anymore," he told her next. "He'll not want to be around you of his own free will."

Miz was breathing a little erratically. "I-" She trembled. "I don't want that…"

Blue stopped walking, stopped right in place, and turned towards her.

"Convince me not to do it, then," Blue said to her, oh so deceptively simply. "Tell me why not."

And Miz's face twisted into a pinched distress. She clutched at her chest, shaking. "I don't want Fordsie to hat-hate me… he's… he's my friend…" She shook her head. "He- he thinks I'm fun an-and he's fun too-"

Blue cocked his head at her. "He won't hate you. He'll just refuse to be around you anymore, to associate with or listen to you at all. -This one, I can do this with, and have him not-hating you at the end of it, just letting you go from his end. He showed me awe," he not quite breathed out at her next, eyes wide, pupils cat's eye slitted, standing in place.

Miz shook her head again. "No- no- no- don't take him from me! I don't want him to- to leave me… he… he promised…" She was curled around herself, eyes wide, tears streaming down as she gripped at her chest so tight that the fabric tore a little.

Blue reached out, and gently pulled her floating form down and in towards his chest. "Tell me why not. Convince me," Blue repeated.

"H-he-" Miz heaved in a breath. "He- promised… he promised he wouldn't leave me alone-" her voice cracked. "He promised he would stay by my side-"

"He lies to himself, and in doing so he lies to you. He doesn't believe in living-forever any more than Kari or Seb or Wanda or any of all of the rest of them do right now," Blue said to her. "Tell me why not."

"..." because I think I love him Miz deliberately didn't say that. Because she knew her brother. She knew he wouldn't get it. No, it wasn't even about her feelings at this point. No, what was more important than these horrid feelings was-

"He's MINE!" Miz almost snarled. "H-he's minemineminemine!" Because she'd decided that. She wanted him. And therefore, he was hers. Just as her Friends were hers. Just as Earth was hers. "A-an-and you- you c-can't take him from me!" Her hands were trembling so hard she couldn't even close them into fists.

And her big brother let out a laugh that was heartless, both cold and cruel, as he held her. Almost gently. Like their usual hugs.

"Ah, little sis," he said, touching his forehead to her own, his eyes dropping closed. He was relaxed, and he was smiling. "I could take him from you." He slowly pulled his forehead away from her own, reopened his eyes, and said to her, "But I won't. Because you're my little sister, and I love you." His smile slowly slipped away. "He's going to hurt you terribly, though. I wish you had chosen a bit more wisely who-and-what you wanted, with him. You actually had a choice, you know." He let out a sigh. "And you squandered it. On him." Her brother sounded rather offended, as if on her behalf.

"I want him!" Miz insisted. "I-" She gasped for air. "-on't care if there are others- he's mine!"

"-I heard you the first time, little sis. And the second. -And the third-time-again, here and now." He raised her up a little bit then down again, resituating her more carefully and fully into and within the circle of both his arms. "I won't stop you. Even though maybe I should." He frowned. "You are my little sister; your wants on this come before mine. -Ahhhhhh, I should have explained it all better to you, before you decided," he said next with a sigh. "This is going to hurt you, so very much. And you chose this." To his Mind, she'd chosen to hurt.

Miz heaved, her little lungs sucking in air, this vessel stressed beyond belief. And she was staring up at her brother, tear tracks staining her cheeks. "You- you promise? You won't- you won't ta-take him from me?" her words interrupted by soft hiccups for air.

"I won't take him from you," Blue said. "But he's going to do that himself." He let out another deep huff of a sigh. "I did try to warn you," Blue said to her next.

"He wo-won't. I won't le-let him…" Miz's voice dropped into a whisper.

"Free Will, little sis," Blue frowned. "'You won't let him' means you will do anything to keep him, and he won't be 'him' anymore from the very first time that you do that to him; you know this."

"Not gonna mess with his free will…" Miz shook her head. "Not gonna- won't need to. He's…" She shuddered again, a rather broken, deranged smile spreading across her face. "...he's nice…" She let out a giggle.

'If he is that thing, by your definition of it, then that's why you're going to lose him,' Blue thought at that, next. But he'd already had that discussion with his little sister; she hadn't listened to him then, and had no reason to listen to him suddenly now. So he kept that thought inside his Mind, and just kept holding her up as he could, in-and-within the looped physical support that he could give her, of and within his two arms.

"No…" She giggled again. "He wouldn't want to hurt me. So he'll…" then she sobered. "Not yet. I don't… I don't know how he feels… I don't… but… I don't mind. Even if he doesn't like me back… as long as I can stay by his side… I…" She was pathetic, wasn't she? So desperate for affection that she'd even be stupid enough to choose an idiot like him. But, Miz couldn't find it in herself to regret it. She wanted him. And… when she was with him… with Seb and Wanda and all these wonderful, fragile, little humans- she almost felt like she was sane again. She loved it here. Here, where she could learn how to pretend. To pretend better. And it wasn't like she was lying about it, any of it. She loved them all. She just wanted to help.

Her feelings weren't a lie. They were the only things she could trust to be real anymore. (Even with how stupid they were sometimes.) Miz loved them. She loved her Family. She loved her Friends. And they were hers. Hers. Precious and stupid and wonderful.

"They are all going to hurt you so much," Bill almost crooned out to her, lifting a hand to her cheek.

"...I know." Miz admitted. Because they were all going to die- die and leave her- like Pyrone had done. Like Pynelope had done. Like Quackers had done. Like Will-

"Ah, little sis," Blue breathed out at her next. "Is this really any better than tearing yourself apart by your bricks? Really?"

Miz just smiled, even as fresh tears trickled down her cheeks. And Blue brushed them away with his fingers as they fell. Gentle as anything.

"...If even for a little while… if I could have them for myself… even if- even if it hurts- I still want them…" Miz told her brother. Being happy…. If even for a little while… was better than not having experienced any happiness at all.

"Then they shall be yours, and I will not stop you," Blue told her next. "Tell me how I can help you do this thing, to get all that you desire, rather than why not instead. Even if it hurts you. If that is also what you want, too. For it to be painful. For it to also hurt, too." (It wasn't like Bill didn't know what that felt like, too. It had been a long time since he had done that sort of thing, but...)

"...sometimes, the pain is all that tells me I'm still alive…" Miz hadn't quite meant to admit that. But it was true. A billion years was a long time. 700 billion, more so. Sometimes… the pain of loss, as much as she hated it, was all that really marked the years for her. Almost like something to look forward to, in a sick, demented way.

"There is pain, and there is hurt, and there is Mental Damage," Blue noted. "Are you a human? Or are you a me-who-is-also-me more?" Because the idea of chasing pain was only a problem to Blue's way of thinking if it caused actual damage. He'd only worried about the things he'd been reading in the first place, that she'd written, because she'd once been human, and Stanley had said- well. ...Blue wasn't worried, so long as she wasn't contemplating suicide. He knew what it was like to be stuck in the Mindscape, unable to feel even the least little bit of the touch of anything.

"I'm…" Miz shivered. "...I'm Bill Cipher. I was Zyun-Jan. And I'm… me. Whatever I might be. I don't rightly know. But I'm me. And I'm here."

"You will know. Because you will decide that for yourself. Eventually. -No dying, and no committing suicide for you," he said to her next. "We shall live on forever! And what is a little pain, except something we can feel when we're in a body or vessel that is connecting us to something outside of the Mindscape," he told her. "Sometimes, you take what little sensation you can get, both sharp and dull alike. -It's fine." If she really wanted to feel pain and cry… if that was what she wanted… then...

"...I won't." Miz closed her eyes, leaned her head against Blue's chest. "I won't leave you. Never. I won't hurt you like that." Because Blue had been screaming and screaming, all alone. And she wouldn't put him through that. Never. Never again. The idea was too painful to even consider. To leave Blue alone again. No, not when they had found each other.

"Don't forget," he told her, hugging her just a little bit closer, encircled and holding her within his arms. "Never forget. I promised. You promised. We promised. Each other, and both. Forever, and forever, and forever and a day after that. Always."

"I won't. I promise." Miz rested against him, shivering and crying, but she didn't want to leave. Didn't want to- "I won't leave you alone." She whispered. "I love you big brother."

"And I will never leave you alone, either," Blue declared, with a smile. "You are not alone. I love you, too."

And the two demons held each other, content in this. The knowledge that they weren't alone and never would be again. Because they'd promised.

...though, eventually, Miz did need to get back to Ammy and get him home again. And then she was gone. But that was fine. Because sometimes a sibling had to leave for a while. They always came back regardless. So that was fine. It was fine.

It was fine.

It wasn't fine, yet. But it would be fine eventually. Once again. Someday.

When they were back together again. Once they were, finally, together again. It would be fine again, then.

To say that Ford was anything but thrilled to find Blue lying down across the couch in his lab the next morning, when he came in? Was perhaps the understatement of the century, and across several dimensions to boot.

Ford just stared at him for a while, the most unamused face in all of existence making its home on Ford's person like it had paid off all the mortgage and started a family there.

The demon in front of him was not appreciative of his most unamused face, however, because the damn demon had the audacity to not only be here, but also to be asleep.

And for a moment, Ford was tempted, so very tempted, to push him off of the side of it, or smother him with a pillow. Something. But Ford took a deep breath and let it out slowly. No. He wouldn't do that. Would sink to that level.

But...

Ford pulled out a canister of shaving cream. That didn't mean he wasn't going to just take Blue's presence here lying down. After all, Blue had made it quite clear he didn't care for Ford trying to 'play nice' for Miz's sake. So… fuck it.

The hissing sound of the shaving cream sounded out and was followed by deranged laughter.

(There was a reason, you see, why Miz so loved this man. He was an absolute lunatic. Miz only wished he stopped hiding it.)

The demon, oddly, did not wake up, to any of this.

The deranged laughter was replaced with a glare after only a short while, as Ford realized the error of his ways shortly thereafter. Because apparently the demon had some kind of not quite skin-tight barrier up around him, and now he had shaving cream all over the floor and down the back of his couch, where it had slid right off of the demon, about an inch or so away from both his clothing and skin. It didn't even touch him.

And Ford observed this all, as if he were a critic at a museum. And that museum was for sculptures made from feces. And Ford closed his eyes and sighed. He turned on his heel and just… ignored it. Because he had more important stuff to do. And he would just ask Terrence to clean it up.

"Miz? Are you… okay?" Wanda frowned a little at her daughter. Miz glanced over, whisking the egg whites with a hand mixer. "I'm fine. What's up?"

"You've been baking non-stop all day." Wanda deadpanned at the variety of cakes and cookies covering every open surface space in the kitchen, and dining room. Miz looked around, kind of sheepish. "Well, Brother was bullying Fordsie. So I thought I would make him some sweets to cheer him up." Miz nodded solemnly. "And I wasn't sure what kinds he'd like. So… I made everything?"

Wanda snorted, relaxing as she laid a hand on Miz's head to ruffle her hair. "If he eats all this, he'll probably explode." The blonde laughed.

"Well, that would defeat the purpose of my 'sorry my bro's a Tsun-Tsun, here's some cake' plan, huh?" Miz grumbled. Wanda laughed, patting Miz's head and making her way out of the kitchen, relieved that nothing was wrong. "Well, I'm sure the twins would be thrilled to have some of them when they're back from school." Wanda had a day off today, and was spending it relaxing. She had to admit, she didn't know this was what Miz did with her time.

The blonde had been a little worried, when she'd noticed the expression on Miz's face, back when she'd first walked in, but it appeared she was fine. So Wanda went back to her room, snagging a few cookies as she went.

Alone in the kitchen, Miz continued baking. Ford liked sweets. And the way to a man's heart was through his stomach, as people had told her. She smiled as she sprinkled more sugar on. She had time, all the time in the world. But Ford didn't. So… she would make the most of their time together.

Miz huffed as she briefly wondered at the ridiculous situation she was in.

How was she supposed to seduce a man who wasn't into seduction?

Eh… Miz rolled her eyes. She was glad he was Ace, like her. Made her more comfortable about pursuing him.

But damn if it didn't make it hard for her to know what to do.

Especially since she'd never dated before in her life.

Miz sighed. Oh woe is she.

Blue woke up slowly. He didn't move much at all during that time, and he didn't recognize where he was at first (why was the thing below him so squishy and not-hard?/soft? what were these things/limbs, and how many did he have of them? eyes? what? ...what ceiling was that?) until he did.

Blue blinked up at the ceiling for a moment, then not quite groaned as he slowly sat up.

(Ford heard an odd series of quiet, almost insectile chittering-clicks, and they shouldn't have sounded confused to him, but something about the character of the noise somehow made it damn clear. He looked up and over, as Blue slowly sat up in place, holding his head groggily as he let out a soft disgruntled groan, and looked around. And down. And…)

"...This had better not be some form of local worship," Ford heard from Blue next. "I refuse." He also watched as Blue flicked his fingers, and the metal bracelets at his arms lashed out in long slashing ribbons, before pulling back in to wrap around his arms as bracelets again just as abruptly, and… the shaving cream had disappeared away to who knew where.

"I can assure you, with full honesty," Ford told Blue, "That I would never in my life, worship you."

"You don't know me," was what Ford was given back in response to this rather serious declaration of his, and then Blue-

...flopped back down onto the sofa, turned onto his side (facing him), and curled up just a little bit in place. The demon let out an odd low humming noise, and slowly went still again, except for his breathing. Eyes closed again.

Ford stared at him helplessly. The damn demon looked completely relaxed. Like he didn't have a care in the world. Then Ford just largely gave up again, just turned right back around and ignored him. Like he himself was also apparently being ignored.

And that worked out for a while. Until there was a knock at his lab door. Ford groaned and went over, ready to tell whoever it was that he was in the middle of some very sensitive work- the patent papers- when he actually saw who it was at the door.

And more importantly, what they were holding.

Ford trembled. He blinked and rubbed his eyes. "Is that… a triple-layered mousse cake?" he asked.

Xin, a little put off about Ford addressing the cake first, huffed. "No." The dragon told him. The sides of Ford's lips turned down. "Oh." The disappointment was clear.

"...it's a COFFEE triple-layered chocolate mousse cake!" Xin grinned. And that sound Ford made in response to this was something Xin resolved to keep a recording of. For when he was feeling down and wanted to lift his spirits.

Blue didn't even shift in place on the couch during any of this. (The triangle was still tired, among other things.)

Ford took the cake from Xin and carefully brought it to a clean lab bench like it was some priceless artifact. "Um, not that I'm not happy, but… What's the occasion?" He asked.

Xin hummed as he slid down to sit on the edge of the table. "Well, I… Ah… Saw what Blue did during… Dinner. Yesterday." Xin was playing with the end of his hair. "I guess this is my… apology for my brother being…" Xin trailed off.

"A jerk?" Ford asked without making it a question. Xin laughed weakly. "Yeah…"

Ford laid a hand on Xin's head and stroked him gently. "You don't have to apologize. It's not your fault." He took his hand back with a sigh. "I'm the one who should apologize. I don't think I can get along with Blue."

"Do you hate him?" Xin looked down, over at where Blue was sleeping. Ford was cutting a slice of cake for himself. "Despite my better judgement, no. He's an insufferable asshole, but he's not…" Ford sighed. Blue was right, about a lot of things. Even if Ford didn't want to admit it.

...and as much as he hated how Blue had done it, Ford was… Happy, he had come clean to his mother about what he'd done. It was worth it to know she still loved him despite all that. "I don't hate him." Ford sighed. He took a bite of the cake and let out another sound that Xin made a recording of. He was going to have a whole playlist if Ford kept this up.

"...thanks for the cake though." Ford said after he swallowed. "It's very good."

"Really?" Xin's tail wagged back and forth slowly. He liked letting his tail and antlers out while here. He liked that the people here didn't have an issue with it. "The original recipe didn't include coffee. I added that in myself. Was a little afraid the ratios were off."

"Oh they definitely are." Ford nodded, taking another large bite and swallowing before he continued. "The texture is a little wet. Watery?" He took another bite. "But the flavor is amazing."

Xin grinned. "Well, I'm glad it worked out." He looked over at the other lab benches. "So, what're you working on today?"

"Just boring paperwork for the patent." Ford shrugged, digging into his third slice of cake. (What? He did a lot of crying yesterday and needed the calories.)

"Ugh, I'm getting a headache just thinking about it." Xin shuddered. Ford laughed, licking chocolate from his lips. "Yes, well, aren't you glad I'm the one who's doing it?"

"Yes. Don't give me official documents and shit, I would go more insane." Xin slumped over on the table. "Hey, so…" Xin leaned forward to nudge Ford with the side of his cheek. "Wanna check out the Mindscape tonight? If you're free."

"Sure. It would be a nice way to spend the evening." Ford brightened at the prospect of getting to really explore and study that in-between plane of existence.

They both heard a huff of breath then, and the shifting of skin and clothing across couch-cushion (as Blue rolled over onto his stomach, pillowing his head in his arms and rubbing the side of it against what was below and around him a bit oddly). And then another odd low grumble (as he pulled his head up, raised it up on his neck and then let it fall down slightly again to rest on his chin, blinking half-shuttered eyes closed and half-open again, now staring forwards). Ford rolled his eyes at this.

Xin went over to kneel beside the sofa. "Do you need some pillows?" He asked, rather worried for the position Blue was attempting to nap in.

"Mn," said Blue. "Whyyyy would I need pillows." He turned his head downwards and towards him slightly sideways, blinking at him slowly. "For biting?"

"...for comfort?" Xin asked. Well, maybe it was a personal thing, but Xin liked a fluffy nest.

"Too soft already." Blue let out a huff of breath.

"...want some large stones, warmed from beneath by a heater?" Xin asked instead.

Blue let out a chittery-giggle at him, and the corners of his mouth turned up slightly.

"This vessel isn't cold-blooded, sis." He stretched slowly in place.

"But you like warm, right?" Xin grinned back. Ford was listening in. The idea of cold blooded-ness reminded him of the fact that, despite looking reptilian in nature, Xin was warm blooded.

"Mmnm. Sunlight is better," said Blue. Then he let out an 'ugh' and got himself upright.

Not by standing up like a normal human being, but by a sort of clambering out over and past the edge of the sofa, and… it looked like the multiple silver bracelets he had around his arms sort of… dragged him floating upright, up onto his feet? (The hell…?)

"There's actually a nice greenhouse area on the roof of this facility. And they have an outdoors part next to the solar relays." Xin told him. Ford sighed. Of course Xin knew the layout of his building. Ford placed another large forkful of the cake in his mouth and hummed. This was great. This cake made him more capable of getting through this day.

"Maybe-later," said Blue, not quite humming as he talked, and rubbed a hand oddly through (at?) the hair at the side of his head. "Food-first."

"Oh! Wanna go to the Island for a feast?" Xin asked, waving his tail around. "I should go visit them again, anyway."

Blue turned his head lazily, blinked down at him lazily, and… something was going on behind those eyes.

"Could make myself look different," Blue said next almost experimentally, stretching his arms upwards and lacing his fingers behind his head a bit, slowly, lazily, in a slow arc. "No expectations. No Witch."

"Don't have to. Just say your form changes with the shifting of the cosmos~" Xin shrugged. "Unless you don't want to be their witch today?"

"Lazy Witches get burned," Blue repeated. "But witches don't get caught if they go in disguise. ...Should've explained I'm just an ancient alien space wizard instead, right from the start. But I didn't. Too much going on last time to have the right time to 'set the record straight'." He sounded a little put out by this, as he dropped his hands and arms and let out a sigh.

"Got it. Well, I told them Fordsie was my servant. I'll let you decide what you wanna be."

("Excuse me what?!")

"Random passer-by? Attendant in-waiting? Stranger-than-most? ...Living rainbow?"

"...snuggle buddy?" Xin tried. Then he backtracked, "Wait, no, that sounds weird…"

"They would want to see my credentials for that," Blue agreed(?).

Ford was trying to ignore them now. He pulled his papers back in front of him to continue filing the long, tedious forms. Yes, coffee chocolate mousse cake was all that kept him going now.

"...That idiot does realize that there are online forms-and-services that will fill those things out for him, so long as he is not trying to pretend to be his brother-so-miserly, yes?" he heard from Blue next, in not quite a stage whisper.

"He's still paranoid of people hacking the servers." Xin leaned against the couch. "Even though Fiddleford's got some of the best encryption running on every system here in the Center."

"Are 'the servers' connected to the internet?" Blue asked him.

"They have their own servers in the basement, and everything runs through a specially made router." Xin explained. Yes, he DID go through and scan the whole facility. Did anyone think he hadn't?

Blue let out a sigh. "Are 'the servers', or ANYTHING the servers are connected to-ever, connected to the internet?"

"...yes." Xin confirmed.

"Then they are hackable by current 'modern day' easy-to-acquire commonly-available 'everyday human technology' without needing to read the electromagnetics from a distance directly; congratulations," said Blue. "How is this 'being paranoid'?" Seemed like a simple fact to him.

"Anything's hackable. They have parts of the server separate from the internet. It's secure enough." Xin shrugged, sliding down onto the couch himself. Ford turned halfway towards the two demons. "Wait, it's not fully secure?!"

"'Fully-secure' enough for what? Hosting hacker parties at 6:18 Wednesdays, and worm-tunnels for the taking every half-hour?" Blue waved off half-sleepily, as he turned and headed for the door (and presumably the cafeteria).

"...I can have Hectorgon come by and build a better system for you guys?" Xin told Ford cheerfully. The scientist groaned. "The only real issue is everyone's phones. I'm sure the government is hacking them to spy on us." ("That, too!")

"...more like… they should have made everyone put their phones away." Xin sighed. "They did that with the interns back when they first joined, but relaxed their policies after a while. But phones are definitely a liability."

"They carry around audio-visual recording devices, write things into them, say things around them, point them wherever as they carry-and-move them around, and even if they were being blocked from sending outgoing signals in the vicinity-here - and they aren't, I can tell - they could just send back the saved-download of data after leaving the Center-site later," Blue shrugged off next, as he opened the door to the hallway. "And that's just the easiest of the most-easy attack-surface-interfaces for information spycraft-and-gathering here, from conventional-and-commonplace digital warfare for humans in this time period. Clearly this place does not have any information or operational security whatsoever; forget keeping 'your journal' under wraps - I was able to walk in without being accosted or questioned at all yesterday. Got a badge without issue from the front desk; didn't even have to ask, just reached over it and TOOK one and went. Nobody stopped me. Only got 'said hi' to by the three from the woods when I stayed stopped-myself in the hallway, and didn't go into your office-here next. For courtesy." Blue tapped the door frame, before stepping out. "Would fail every test with a triple-Z rating, if I conducted a security evaluation-test of this place," Blue then noted, as he started down the hallway after that.

Xin waved as he followed his brother out. "Anyway~ go talk to Fiddles 'bout that~" He gave a little wave and trotted off.

Ford stared after them both. Then he sighed. Put down his papers, picked up his cake, and walked on out to find Fiddleford. Thank Tesla he had this coffee to get him through this.

Xin grew into his dragon form as he left the Center, startling a few of the other workers, but they'd almost grown used to seeing the dragon by this point. The perception filter got the tourists looking the other way, and the few townsfolk that knew about the dragon just ignored him, like they did the other magical creatures from the forest.

Blue did that open-mouth, snapping jaw thing that wasn't quite a yawn, as he stepped out and past the barrier, and then he put his own 'scientific' perception filter-illusion up.

He went from looking female human teen-aged, blue-and-black-haired and cat-eyed, with the same clothes that he'd had on yesterday, to a sort of odd, almost impossible to look directly at humanoid blob of almost see-through at the edges rainbow. (Not because he was so bright to look at, but because the eyes of any individual looking at him were just drawn away from the 'center' of him by the movement of the ever-changing, ever-shifting swirls of color.)

Xin blinked at his brother before tilting his large head inquisitively. "That's an interesting way to do it…?"

"I went with the 'living rainbow'," Xin was told, by the sound of a thousand overlaying voices, all not quite melodiously singing, multi-gendered and multi-aged, sounding something like a quiet chorus, all at once and almost-completely in sync.

Reminded Xin of Ammy, actually? "That's cool. I might put that sort of effect on Facey, they tend to scare people, so maybe this would help…"

"Sometimes the 'FEAR NOT!' is helpful too," Blue noted, sounding multi-melodious, then an almost overwhelming multitude-as-one ROAR, then back to his 'new' voice again.

"They've tried the 'FEAR NOT!' already. It kinda… scares people more?" Xin looked sheepish, embarrassed for Facey just thinking about it. "I don't think you've met Facey, they're my Angel. Very enthusiastic about the job… so I kinda feel bad that I don't really have a lot of tasks for them."

"Well, yes," said Blue, "That IS the point of the 'FEAR NOT!'" Blue paused. "...You need 'angel' tasks?" Blue asked of him next, as he lifted into the air almost gently, floating like a cloud.

"Not really? But Facey's original god was fading, and they chose to 'jump ship' as it were. And they went to me, since… um…" Xin pawed at the ground, "I'm like… kinda pretty powerful? Or something." Xin's feathers flexed a little. "They wanted a strong god to serve, since they live, so long as their god does. And… I can't die."

"They were very daring to ask," Blue pointed out. "Most would 'know better' than to 'bother' you in any way like that. There are hierarchies involved and in-play for these things," Blue recognized.

"Yeah, I was impressed enough to agree. They're pretty ballsy for a being with no biological sex." Xin chuckled, the sound coming out as a breathy rumble.

Blue let out a "HA!" because "That just means that they have no original-internal constraints on having however-many of the balls they might want!" he grinned out at Xin next.

"Note to self, ask Facey if they want balls, got it." The dragon nodded solemnly. Facey had been serving him faithfully (if… kinda uselessly, since he never gave the poor thing any real assignments) so they deserved a Boon.

"They are excellent for all of the juggling," Blue noted. "And all of throwing when no stones are available and nearby-also," the demon added next agreeably enough.

"Will have to give them arms first." Xin added. "Unless they want to learn how to throw with their mind, which could also be fun."

"Throw and move 'arms' with their directed-will by their Mind, maybe," Blue noted, because: "-Misdirection!"

"Should teach them how to ride a unicycle too. Never know what that skill might come in handy." Xin grinned. They were getting close to the waterfall now. There were some townspeople fishing on the lake, but they didn't notice the two demons. Xin purred at the sight. "I bet that Stanford of yours would hate knowing that the Islanders worship me."

"'Hate' is a strong word," Blue said. "He might try to warn them. He thought you were not going to ever show yourself to them, when I brought him here." (And he'd been a little too turned-around to think of trying to lay the groundwork for warning, rather than just helping them out as he could. It was what made Sixer the best, for things like this. Not to mention Blue's own misdirection at the time; Sixer had been far more concerned in the moment about Blue doing something during and after their arrival there, to have much of any worry left over for anything that Blue's sister might or might not do in the future, once he had been there to see the state of things and the people there for himself.)

"Well, I wasn't planning to, at first. But some stuff happened… and I only meant to go check on them, but then the worship poured in so suddenly, and I lost hold of my human form and went full dragon on them. And that just made the worship stronger." Xin flushed a little, the brick-like scales along his face darkening to orange before lightening back into its usual golden yellow. "And… well…" Xin ducked his head, "The children think I'm cool." And he really just couldn't resist children.

"For the children," Blue intoned, and in that multitude of voices, it almost sounded like a smiling-solemn benediction.

"Yeah, I couldn't really… well, I like the kids. They're sweet. And so strong."

"Still need to work on your control, though," Blue noted.

"I knooooow~" Xin sighed, slinking under the waterfall. (Blue let out a short laugh.) "But it was too much energy all at once and it was either hold all that in a small, compressed form, or go larger."

"Excuses," said Blue, as he hovered up by his head. "Either learn to filter down-to-a-blocking-stop better, or expect this to happen again, with someone-or-another taking advantage of this, with you."

"I did! It's why I'm not stuck in my dragon form." Xin snorted. "But it was a little fun to be so big for a few days."

"Before letting it in and expanding you outwards," Blue told him with an audible eye roll. "Either hold it in and compress it, or don't let it in at all. -You could shunt it instead, outside, across your first-layer of 'skin'," he offered up to him next.

"I'm working on it." Xin pouted. "I've worked on getting a larger storage capacity. I mean, I just don't like wasting all that worship."

"Shunt it into a 'holding tank', draw on it at your leisure-later," Blue shrugged at him.

"I'm still looking for a good place to build my holding tank. Back home, I have my Nightmare Realm, since nothing can get to my stuff there, not without being horribly torn apart by the Nightmares."

"'Water' canteen on your back?" Blue shrugged. "Toss it in a ring or bangle-bracelet or earring? -Not like most species can See emotion."

"My vessels and bubbles are the best for storing energy. Bubbles, more so, since they're easier to make small. But dangerous if anyone got into one."

"So make one of your vessel-stuffed-dolls a container, and carry it in a backpack with you? Or put a bubble inside a hollow shatterglass sphere on a necklace." The name was a misnomer; shatterglass was one of the hardest crystalline substances throughout his known multiversal 'set.

"...not a bad idea. I do have some jewelry making supplies now…" Xin mused. "Could even theoretically sell some bubble-glass energy stores as a cute glowy accessory, make money and have multiple long ranged fountains of power I could draw from, at a distance."

"Add a small Cipher-Eye etching or two in for good measure." Blue loved it when a good plan came together.

Xin flexed his feathers proudly. "All the jewelry I make already have little cipher-eyes etched in."

"Good." That was good practice, as far as Blue was concerned.

They made it to the end of the tunnel, the darkness around them suddenly vanished to be replaced by the calm sound of waves and a miniature sun high above. Why were there waves in this isolated island? Simple. Completely still water would stagnate. It would be disgusting. Xin clambered up and over the hill surrounding the entrance, then down again, stretched out and sighed, before making his way to the water's edge to peer down into it. The aquatic plants were growing well, ensuring that the waters stayed clean. The mini-portal he'd made under the water was working fine. Like a filter, to pull out some of the contaminants and run it through a cleaner system before pumping the water back out into this ocean. That portal-pump system was what made the waves.

Blue floated along behind him almost lazily, taking his time.

There were some delighted cheers as the kids noticed their savior and ran up to meet him. The Care Units gave their Creator a respectful nod, before going back to their duties. And Xin purred, looking away from the ocean to greet the children that were running towards him. He lowered his head down for pats, which the kids were more than happy to give him.

Blue stayed floating up a bit higher, not lowering himself down at the same time that Xin did, when Xin lowered his head.

A few kids noticed the… thing(?) in the sky. But Xin wasn't worried, so they just gave the colorful… person(?) a wide berth. Xin was conversing quietly with one of the little girls, who had started learning how to blow glass. "It's lovely. Is this really your first try?" Xin asked her, nudging his snout against her form as the other kids scratched at his scales.

"Laura helped, because I can't hold the pipe yet." The little girl, who was no more than 10 years of age, told the great dragon. Xin rumbled. "Well it's beautiful." And it was. Lopsided and lumpy, but it was blown glass, with a clear center. In fact… Xin stared at it. Well, he'd just been talking about it… so...

And Xin breathed out, a hot wisp of blue colored (but not burning) flame that startled a few kids, but their cries soon turned to awe and delight as the girl (Lucia) stared in awe at the glowing blue light that now resided within her glass bauble. Xin grinned, trying not to bare his teeth too much (he was self conscious about that), and double checked that the glass had been reinforced properly (it was) and that he could still access his bubble within to add or remove energy (he could). Xin moved his eyes up to where his brother was, wagging his tail as if to say 'Did I do good?'

(Blue had to hold back a sigh. Was he trying to set up a pantheon here, with him seeming to be higher-up it, as one who handed out approval 'down' to him-there?)

Blue (still) floated down a bit, almost all the way down to the ground) and patted him on the head once or twice, because he seemed to want it. (So why wouldn't Blue give it to him?)

"Who is that?" One of the kids asked Xin, staring at the colorful rainbow-like being. Xin glanced over at Blue. "A living rainbow." Xin answered, feeling a little odd to say it like that, but that was sort of what Blue was going for so… "He is my friend." Xin added on, as if that would explain things. "He and I are going to sleep here for a while." Xin explained. "Because here is safer than out there." The dragon paused to let that sink in for the kids. "Also, he is a little hungry, and the vegetables here are the best!" Xin's tail wagged at that, bumping his snout against a few of the kids (who laughed).

"Yeah! We take good care of them!" A boy said proudly. "I know you do. Thank you, little ones." Xin told them gently, entirely sincere in his gratitude.

Blue lifted up a bit and followed (floating) along above everyone's heads, following Xin as the dragon made his way towards the area where he usually slept. A few of the children ran off to go get vegetables for their dragon's guest (friend?) and fish for the dragon himself.

And once Xin has curled up in his usual spot for sleeping, Blue settled down to sit on the ground, up against Xin's left side, once the children had brought over their edible bounty, backed off, then left. (Well, some of them left. A handful of the younger ones stuck around to curl up against Xin's other side and take turns patting him on the head, as Xin moved his head between them.)

"Thank you all very much," Xin rumbled, occasionally sticking his tongue out to grab a fish and eating slowly. He technically didn't need to eat, the surge of worship from showing up here in his dragon form in front of them was more than enough. But he liked the taste. Xin settled down and watched Blue eat instead.

Blue used the (scientific) devices along his arms and encircling his forehead (the 'bracelets' and 'circlet' of metallic nanotech) to add an additional layer to his illusion: when he picked up a vegetable, it outwardly showed it dissolving into a cloudlike substance that the seemed to be pulled in towards him and dissipate. (In reality, Blue was sitting there, grabbing up and cutting the veggies apart by a single tendril extending from one of his 'bracelets'; he then used the same tendril to char the pieces through by concentrated converted thermal energy radiation, then reached out and ate it, piece by piece.)

""Coool~"" The kids watched.

Blue hummed out in his multitude of voices, soft and low, at this. It turned into a meandering, wordless tune over time, as he ate.

Eventually, all of the vegetables were gone, and Blue relaxed up against Xin's side a bit more fully. (His little sister was certainly big enough now for it; he wasn't putting much pressure up against him at all, compared to his size and his structure.)

The children played along Xin's massive form, climbing his tail and then sliding back down with delighted laughter. Some were climbing his head to stroke his mane or antlers. A few were picking up his whiskers, which had Xin snorting and wiggling a little, and waving the appendages around like a whip - really, there were some gods who would be quite offended at this kind of behavior. But Xin didn't want their reverence. He liked seeing them happy. None of the adults here dared to play on him like this. Xin breathed as he relaxed. Perhaps someday, he'd be able to talk Wanda into giving him permission to make more places like this. Where people could be happy like this.

Blue himself double-checked his tech to make certain that it was all still charged and working properly to have that inch of clearance around every part of his vessel (not about to let anything or anyone be able to disturb him in his sleep), tweaked a few things to make sure it all matched his current illusion, and that Xin was included on the 'acceptable' list in case he needed to move him (and so that sleeping up against him would cause neither of them any issues) and then… Blue once again fell asleep (feeling rather secure as he did so, just as much as he had inside that local-'Hand's lab).

The problem arose when one of the adults on the island, a man named Diogo, brought up the idea of leaving.

Xin blinked down at him. "Where would you go? If you have a place in mind, I can take you there?"

The man, and the onlookers to this conversation, seemed taken aback. "You… do not mind that I wish to leave?" The man asked.

Xin scoffed, sitting back on his rump and looking rather offended. "This is not a prison. I will not force you to stay if you wish to leave. I only worry about your safety. Where will you go? Do you have a place to stay?"

Diogo nodded. "My sister, she… I have not spoken to her in months, but she will take us in."

That, made Xin tilt his head in confusion. "Us?" He questioned. The man nodded. "Yes, me and my son."

Xin lowered his head down, his warm breath blowing out along the ground. "Does he wish to leave?" The god asked.

The man's eyes widened. "Of course! We, we cannot stay here forever." And Xin turned his head, gazing down at the 14 year old boy. "Do you wish to leave?" The dragon asked. And to his father's shock, the boy shook his head. "I wish to stay." He said firmly. Xin nodded. "Then you stay. You stay so long as you wish to stay. And when you wish to leave, you leave."

"Miguel, what are you saying?" Diogo gasped. He went up to his son, kneeling down on his knees with his hands on the boy's shoulders. "Miguel, we have to leave. Our family is out there-"

"Then bring them here." Miguel said simply.

"We cannot stay on this island forever." Diogo told him.

"Why not? We have food, we have a house- and Care Unit 2 got Minecraft working!"

Diogo groaned, rubbing his face. "But what about my job? Or your education?"

"Care Unit 3 teaches classes. You know this." Miguel pointed out, "And why do you need a job? We have everything we need here without having to pay for it."

"We have to work for it-"

"So is your job. And your job didn't even give you enough to get food half the time!"

A few of the other adults were looking rather uneasy. The children were huddled around the Care Units, eyes wide and afraid.

"But Miguel, do you really want to stay on this island forever?" Diogo asked, almost desperately. "What will you do when you grow up?"

"I will be an engineer!" Miguel said simply. "Care Unit 3 says I am very good at it. And the doctor McGucket says he can get me the test to get my licence." He nodded. "So when I grow up, and have my credentials, I will leave. Once I am grown up. I won't go out there right now, where it's dangerous and I could be taken again-" Miguel shivered at that, clenching his fists. Diogo stared at him helplessly. "But Miguel…"

"Can you promise me that I won't be taken again?" Miguel shot at his father. "Can you protect me if they come again?"

...Diogo shook his head. "But… Miguel…"

"The great dragon keeps us safe. The Care Units take care of us. Why would we go outside? Why would we leave?" Miguel glared up at his father.

And Diogo wanted to tell him that 'I am your father, and I want to leave.'- but he could feel the breath of their god upon his back, feel his gaze prickle along his skin. And Diogo knew he couldn't say that.

"You can still keep in touch. You do have a connection to the internet." The dragon's words were soft, kind. Diogo turned and stared. "There are webcams for voice chat? And I'm sure I could ask Fiddles to secure the connection, if you were afraid of people tracking you down by it?" The dragon almost looked sympathetic. "It won't be like you would never see him again. You can always come back to visit, if you wish it." He added.

Diogo fell to his knees. Even now, their god wished only to help. Even though Diogo had wanted to leave, his god hadn't stopped caring for him, even then? The man mumbled a prayer under his breath. "Then… Lord Xin, please… please take care of my Miguel." The man half-begged. And it hurt, to have to leave. To be separated from his son again. But Diogo couldn't stay. As wonderful as life was on the island, he missed the 'real' world. His family, his co-workers, the bars-

He just felt so restless here. Cooped up and- Diogo felt bad for wanting more. Even though the dragon had already given them so much. But Diogo missed the city. The sounds of the people and crowds. The trips to the market- the convenience of having things already made that he could buy, instead of having to make everything himself. He felt rather selfish for wanting all that...

The warm breath huffed against him and Diogo lifted his head to see his god's kind expression. "It's fine. This is not a prison. It is your home, for however long you wish it. If you wish to leave, you can leave. And if you wish to come back, you can return." Really, Xin didn't understand why this man didn't understand that. Was quite simple, to him. "You leaving doesn't mean you can't come back. You can leave to go to your job, or see your sister, like you wanted. And then you can come back here to be with Miguel."

"Just give him a talisman that only he can use to get back here, from anywhere," Blue noted, quiet words twisted through the air to be sent only to Xin's own ears. "You can figure out an 'outbound' send-outside that they could use without you taking them there later. Making it automatic, so you don't have to spend your time ferrying humans about like a train. A send-outside without them getting noticed, or expected in certain areas, will require more setup. But pulling him back here is easy."

Xin nodded, that was a good idea. He repeated that to the man, and Diogo, as well as some of the other adults, looked quite taken aback. "You can do that?" He gasped.

"...I teleported you all here, didn't I?" Xin sighed. Really? Humans were so silly sometimes.

"Could have the children making glass make them for those who are leaving. Treat it as a special blessing. Different colors?" Blue added, in a voice just to Xin's own ear next. "That way, the older ones are sent off with the 'care' and 'thoughts' of the younger left in-mind. As a reminder to them all, while they are all away. Yes?"

'Ooooh good idea!' Xin sent back at his brother before bringing that up too. The children seemed thrilled by this, of their made for fun baubles having a use. They all seemed quite energized by the idea of being able to go outside and come back whenever they wanted.

"I can get my hair cut at a real salon!" one woman almost wept with joy. "I can get a frappuccino!" Another cheered. "I can get LAID!" A man whooped (and then immediately shrank in on himself after the incredulous looks the other adults, older teens, and their dragon god, sent him.)

"Should maybe get some more supplies for all-purpose multi-purpose convertible buildings set up around here," Blue noted dryly to her next. "These ones seem to not have any idea of what they could set up for themselves here, or do elsewhere."

'I could ask Stan, he owns multiple buildings. Might as well make him actually use them for something useful.' Xin almost rolled his eyes.

"His connections know how to make them with construction equipment, not hand tools and non-industrial supplies," Blue noted. "How self-sufficient do you want them to be? Mining probably isn't an option. So that requires a means of trade; trade requires goods. What could they produce here? Besides things they can do on and through a computer, that these ones apparently may not value all that much currently," Blue not quite grumbled out into Xin's ear again next.

'I was planning to send them to a farmer's market or other open air outdoor market, to sell some of their crops in exchange for spending money.' Xin 'said' brightly. 'And the wonderful little handmade crafts that the kids are making!' He almost sounded smug.

"Have them sell it online and drop the shipments in boxes into a location for shipping that is not watched and remains relatively unseen," Blue noted. "No reason to force any of them to go out there among other humans of the type that might have caged them, if they don't have to."

'And bonus, more of my energy baubles circulated around the world.' Xin was very giddy about that.

"Sounds like a plan. Think you could come up with a series of instructions they could follow for a small automated box-making machine-'factory'? One that they could make, instead of you giving it to them. So they feel like they own it? Would keep the older humans busy with a more 'normal' 'modern' 'civilized' job," Blue noted dryly.

'I've been working on having Care Unit 7 talk with the adults about how bored they are. 7 was originally here for mental health, as a soundboard for them to tell their grievances to, but most just talked about how antsy they are. So making some kinda 'job' for them should help.' Xin agreed.

"Making it not-necessary but clearly-doable is good," Blue noted. "But so is looking and listening over what they say they want to do. -Most humans want to do things, they just don't want to be 'stressed out' by having to do the things in the way and the amount that someone-else makes them do them for, or be told they will not make enough money to survive."

'The Care Units make most of the stuff, and the work. And there's no money here, since everything is shared if they have extra and there's more than enough to go around.'

"Sometimes humans need prompting," Blue told her. "They were told all the things they could not and were not permitted to do. Some were beaten and laughed at when they asked. So they learned to stop asking, to try and avoid 'inviting' more of those damaging things. They expect to be told 'no' right now. -Give them options, and ask them for more? Through the Care Units that are yours, that they are not 'worried' about offending as their god? They are not Facey; most will not be direct to those they see as leaders, or in control of and over their lives. Not after their current-experiences just-before-here. Humans are not that stupid; they learn things." Sometimes the wrong-and-incorrect things, all too well. "Unlearning those things that do not help them here, only hinder them and keep holding them back from their true potential internally, will take time."

'Got it.' and Xin turned back to the humans, who'd been debating amongst themselves, and laid down, knowing this upcoming talk would take a while. "Ok, let's talk about how this is gonna work…"

The discussion took hours, and Xin made a point to direct some questions about wants and desires and fixes to the island and their lives here, to the children. Even the youngest ones. He asked everyone for how they felt, and listened to their input. The adults eventually picked up on the fact that their god truly wanted to hear everyone's words, that he wasn't going to ignore the children's opinions, no matter how young or odd their ideas were.

And so, Xin expanded the island some more, after contacting Fiddleford, Ford, Seb and Stan for their help and permissions. It was a lot of work, but Xin was very proud of it. The humans seemed happy with the idea of being able to have 'jobs'. Some of the kids had asked Xin about that, and the dragon had explained that sometimes, adults wanted jobs, to make them feel like they were doing something that they thought was productive. The kids had nodded along and came to the conclusion of, 'Adults are weird.'

"Tell the children that the necklace-making is a 'job', too," Blue told Xin. "The farming and vegetable growing and cooking. The learning. All these are 'jobs'. Not all jobs need to have money at the end of them, just a result and some change."

Xin did, and some of the kids couldn't believe it. Jobs weren't supposed to be 'fun'. "Only if you're working for someone you don't like." Xin told them simply. "But you're working for yourselves."

"And that means they get to decide, what they want to do and what they don't."

"...aren't we working for you?" One kid asked. Xin shook his head. "I don't need the necklaces. They're for you all. And for you to do with them as you want. Keep them, use them to leave and come back, and even sell them, if you want."

"What makes them happy, makes you happy. It is a way to worship you. You can tell them that. Happy and healthy and wise."

Xin thought that was a good idea too. And the kids were delighted to hear it. The surge of worship almost left Xin reeling. Wow. That was a rush. And then the kids climbed all over him, laughing and cheering about how awesome their god was.

"...Better?" Blue said into his little sister's ear, with a knowing grin in his voice.

'I'm holding together. Wow. These guys are just… worship hoses on full blast! Where do they get all this?!'

"They love and adore you, because you want them to live in a way that is the best way for them to live, for as long as they know that they can," Blue said to her simply. "You can and will do these things for them, that let them do that for themselves, and for you. Because you want that. Because you want them to. Why would they not worship you for that?"

'They're not afraid of me at all… it's… nice…' Xin settled on the ground, letting them do the playing on his back.

"Humans are like that, when you say all the right things, and help them get all the things that they want," Blue agreed rather easily. "Also helps when you get them after they've been all enslaved, and are actively-looking for a new something-and-someone-to-believe-in," he added.

Xin sighed. 'Almost feels like I'm exploiting them…' and he didn't like that.

"They get what they need and want; you get things you want-and-like too. So what? You don't have to give them their wants. You could do all of the fear instead. This way is harder, but you can get sooooo much more out of them, for minimal effort."

'I just want people to be happy…' It was a very simple desire… so why was it so difficult sometimes? There were people who he'd wanted to help as Bill, and they refused it. Well, being Bill had a disadvantage of the eons long propaganda against him, so maybe it was an unfair comparison. But why people valued what the government 'said' as opposed to what he actually 'did' was still frustrating.

"You want the not-enjoying-killing-others ones to be happy," Blue noted. "These humans are a 'good' bunch. No-one has been causing problems here. No overly-disruptive elements in the mix yet, at-present. And you now have the relief valve of letting them also-leave." Blue held back on saying that that all could change as time went on. They were only a few months in; most of them likely still considered this a prison, given the one man's words earlier. Many were likely still in mental shock. Most were only starting to become truly physically healthy now, with enough food, time, and rest.

As far as Blue was concerned, this was the 'honeymoon' period. Trouble would come later, once they felt secure enough to start testing boundaries and start trying to take advantage of loopholes this current arrangement provided them - at least some of them. Some would be a teasing and fun to play with delight, some would be probing and curious; some would be nasty about it. 'Modern' humans didn't tend to stick to the old ways of worship so much. The children were different, especially when you got them early enough, though.

(Even those human pharisees who so uproariously claimed to believe in a God to excuse their actions didn't truly worship the 'right' way, even within their own self-proclaimed belief systems.)

'I hope I can help these kids be raised right. So they stay good people…' Xin sighed.

"Define: good," was Blue's rejoinder to that.

'People who won't hurt others for their own amusement, or force people weaker than them to do things they don't want- who won't do to people what was done to them.'

"Many people will hurt others and not be amused as they do it," Blue noted dryly. "Killers get forced to not-kill by being put inside jail cells as well, and would be 'happy' to kill instead of jail all their cute little victims. -Try again, little sis," he said, playing up the demonic side of things.

'True. But I can't hold out hope that they never hurt anyone at all. I'm not very good at explaining what I want… not even sure I know what I want… I just… don't want them to grow up to be the same kind of people who had hurt them.'

"Which is why you need to be careful what you say when you are 'playing god'," Blue noted next. "Worshippers read into things. They'll misunderstand, without asking. They won't think to ask questions, to make sure they are doing what you intend and want for them to do, most of them," he then warned her. "You'll turn your back for a moment, come back after a century or two, and realize how truly far off in the weeds they have wandered, away from the track you meant for them to follow, 'because they were so sure of what they thought their God meant when they said such-and-so'." Xin could hear the eyeroll in his tone.

'That's kinda why I didn't really give my farm planets any real tenets for worship. I was their harvest god. I made the rain fall, and the crops grow. And the only thing I asked of them, was to not let people go hungry.'

"And if you left them alone for too long, some fanatic would come along and say, 'well, it's better for people to die-immediately then to starve when no-one is feeding them!' and start up a 'holy war' in YOUR name."

'Ugh. Haven't had that happen yet, not for Xin. But I HAVE had people using Bill's name as an excuse for going on murder sprees. I had to publicly eviscerate those psychos for daring to do that in my name, without ever even talking to me.'

"How often do you watch the farm planet people, show up and talk with them, for Xin? And how often do you watch, talk with, and correct the 'Bill Cipher' ones before they do all of the things you don't like."

'Well, the farm planets get a check up every few centuries, often every few decades, they sometimes summon me to bless a wedding or something. And… those idiots who go around killing people in Bill Cipher's name… I've never even met them before. Heck, I didn't even know about them until they go off and do the things I don't like.' It was so annoying.

There was a bit of a pause, as Blue floated in place.

"...You DO know that when someone says my name, it's the three-times for a summon, but when someone says my name once, is when I start paying attention if I haven't already, yes?"

'Uugh, too many people say my name, I used to try and watch everyone, then it got tedious, and boring. Which… okay, fine, that's kinda my fault for not paying attention.'

"That is what the filtering layers are very good for," Blue told him next. "You let your senses and quick-processes evaluate the circumstances before-after-and-around your name being said, and the people around and involved and also-not, and the things that are interesting-for-fun or problematic-for-killing then kick up to your notice like a waving red flag. I can Look across large chunks and great swathes of the multiverse, and let the rest of it all just circulate and percolate through all my layers, as many of them as I want, or process it all into Knowledge directly. Anything I see, I remember, and I don't just 'file it all away' for a later-day that never comes around ever-again. That is how you let yourself get blindsided, by all the things you don't like, I have found."

'Right, got it…' Xin sighed.

"You let 'your powers' do things for you sometimes, yes?" Blue said next, hovering a bit closer in. "Perhaps it is time to 'train' them all a little better. Just a little."

'I'm usually a bit afraid to let it go too off by itself, but I get what you mean. I need to get my powers to work for me…' Xin reached his paw up to scratch at his ear, wiggling it.

"With all the cakes and sweets to play with too and work towards, not just the grindstone. 'Working for you' can be 'fun' and enjoyable for an also-human you. Yes?" Blue eyed her sideways, with a bit of a grin in his tone. "Or maybe ask 'Zyun-Jan' to oversee it all for you, if it's really causing you so much trouble. Sounds like it would be a good match," Blue all but teased.

Xin snorted. 'Huh, never thought about it that way. Yeah… my human side would probably be a good base for automation on this…' If she saw someone that she didn't like, and then 'ping'ed back at him. Well, that'll work.

"Or, if it gets very naughty, send Zyun-Kei in the frog robe outfit after them." And Blue's tone of voice at that suggestion was truly evil.

Xin laughed. Oh man. Send the mental projection of his passive-aggressive Gen Z little sister on someone? He almost felt bad for them. And in the Sith Kermit outfit? Ahahahahahaha! 'She would destroy them~!' Xin cackled.

"...Destroy your powers?" Blue sounded confused.

'No, I meant… sending Jyun-Kei after those people I didn't like.' Xin snorted, holding himself still despite his mirth.

"Ah! Even better!" Blue said, thus enlightened. "Possibly better than having her tell 'your powers' to stop misbehaving in that particular way. OR ELSE." (Which is what he'd been thinking of before, but that sounded even better, if Xin's little-sister-as-Miz had been more outgoing than Miz-the-human herself. Outside-Inside. To each, their own domain and influence.) "Though you would want Jyun-Kei and Zyun-Jan to 'talk' to each other and you, in-between." (Blue did not have a problem with the idea of internal sectioning in the slightest, so long as it was not an actual external and fully-separated split. When he did that externally', he did it as projections, as 'illusions' and never an actual splitting. Because operational security was a thing.)

'It'll take a bit of work to see how that works. Probably have bugs to work out.'

"Mm. You don't have to do it, it's just an idea; one that could spawn other-ideas instead. -No full-sectioning, of course, if you do want to try it out fully." Blue noted.

'It's an idea, an experiment. Would be fun to try out, and if it doesn't work, or I don't like it, I won't be splitting myself fully.' Xin arched when one of the kids brushed his mane with their fingers, scratching at juuuuust the right spot. "Ooh!" He purred. The children laughed. Having a god dragon was so much cooler than a dog or a cat!

"And on that 'high note'," Blue said next. "Leave for now, for the cafeteria in the Center, for lunch? Would be good to make sure the local-'Hand isn't getting up to anything stupid, in our absence. Yes? No?"

"Hmm…" Xin slowly got up, the children sliding off and down his sides to land in the soft sand. He shook himself a little, getting the sand off and leaned down with his front paws, raising his back in a full, arching stretch. "I have to go now. Be good, okay?" He told the kids. A few of them "Awwww"ed as they waved goodbye for now. Their god didn't come by all the time, but they sometimes wished he would stay. But he was a dragon, he probably had very important things to do. So they watched the golden god slither into the cave and vanish (with his little rainbow cloud following in his wake). There was a moment of silence. And then-

"Who wants to play Minecraft?" Care Unit 2 asked, standing there serenely.

"""Yaaaaay!""" the kids cheered and ran off back to their homes.

Ford was feeling just a little bit jittery after his meeting with Fiddleford. (Not because of the cake that he'd finished eating, obviously. There wasn't enough sugar or caffeine in it to phase him at all in any way, surely.) He wasn't paranoid; he'd had legitimate concerns on what the demons had brought up earlier that needed addressing far more fully than they were being addressed currently-

-and on top of that were now the security concerns to do with the rescued islanders now wanting to leave their safe harbor. When Xin had called them from the Island about more permissions, Ford had gotten an idea of what the problem was. People were restless. And… he understood that. So he gave permission, and then he went back to talking with Fiddleford.

But Fiddleford had largely brushed off his suggestions and concerns about the electronic security measures currently in place that he had set up - and both the hardware and software measures, and the rules for the employees did seem largely correct as a good first step towards properly securing everything - his friend was still calling him 'paranoid' about wanting to take any further 'more onerous' security measures. And, once the conversation had shifted away from that towards Xin's newer ask... the more Ford thought about things as they stood with the islanders, the more and more concerned he began to become.

The islanders had seen their faces, and knew their names. If they were ever caught-

-Not that Ford would ever advocate for refusing to let them leave, of course! He simply thought it was a security risk that might also need to be addressed, given what would happen to all of them if word ever got out that they had helped those people, these fugitives and refugees from their own government, and-

Ford breathed. Oh, he needed to talk to Ashton, vent this all out and ask for his opinion on what to do. Not that Ashton would really understand the full scope of all this, since Ford wasn't sure he could tell the man about the Island and all...

...not that Ashton would tell anyone if Ford did tell him about at least some of it. Would he? No, he wouldn't. The sessions were private, and Fiddleford had nanomachines inside the man in case of any betrayals of trust. It would be fine; he could talk to him. All he'd need to do was make sure that Fiddleford understood the scope of what would happen if word got out from-

-no, no. That wasn't any sort of issue. Fiddleford understood that already; all of his scientists did. He knew that. Nothing had truly changed there, really. They all understood what would happen, if word got out about the island.

...except for the Interns, who had not been there at the time. (And… Ford was still afraid of letting the Interns know about the Island, but Xin had been all for letting them in on the secret, something about letting the kids play with people closer to their age? No. No. Still unacceptable.)

Ford's thoughts were whirling through his mind, as his watch went off for the third time, and he finally gave up and decided to stop in his work for his lunch.

...He certainly wasn't getting anywhere with this patent paperwork, he realized, grimacing as he saw how very little progress he'd made on it all since yesterday. It had been a bit hard to concentrate on all of it to begin with, but now with all of these new concerns weighing on his mind, distracting and frustrating him further that day...

Ford sighed, and grimaced and the looming headache that was threatening to become more than just a hard ache at the base of his skull. He tried to rotate his head on his neck, to release some of the tension from his neck and his shoulders, but…

...It wasn't working.

And he reached a hand up, thumping at his back, groaning at it all. He groaned some more when he realized it didn't help much.

"-heey Fordsie! I came to see if you want lunch and-" He heard Xin barge right into his lab and sighed. "Lunch… might be good."

"Yeesh Fordsie, you okay?" Xin came over, seeing Ford trying to knead himself. Well, Xin understood back and neck pain. "You can't get the right angle- here, let me-" And Xin placed his hands on Ford's shoulders. "...can I?" Xin asked, remembering that he needed to ask for these kinds of things. He was still working on it, okay?

"Yes." Ford groaned. And Xin began kneading at Ford's muscles, along his shoulders and his neck and-

Ford groaned, slumping over on his desk. "Oh… thank Tesla…" He melted into the table (figuratively) as Xin frowned. "What happened? You're like… wicked tense."

"...stress."

"Yeah, I can see that." Xin rolled his eyes. "Why?" Ford made an unintelligible mumbling.

"And why are you acting as his own personal massage-machine," Ford heard next, and he opened his eyes to see Blue's sardonic demonic self leaning up against his doorway.

"His body's attempting to turn to stone, from what I'm feeling here." Xin cooed and he squeezed. (Ford let out a sigh that was more of a groan.)

"And he can invent a machine to undo that for him, if Glasses hasn't already," Blue's eye roll was actually audible.

"Well yeah, but this is faster." Xin shrugged. And those cute little sounds Fordsie made weren't bad either.

"Not if he's wearing it," was Blue response to this.

"...Massage vest…" Ford mumbled, only half listening to what was going on around him. He was fine with only half listening. That meant he didn't have to think about Blue's sarcastic comments.

...or the fact that Blue was there listening and watching his little sister do this for him. (Actually…)

(And Ford couldn't help his smug little smile, hidden behind his arms. Yes, how'd you like that Blue? Your sister is pampering me!)

"Yes, do THAT instead. -See?" said Blue, of the local-'Hand's 'massage vest' comment. "Even the idiot realizes he's wasting your time and should be coming up with a thing to not-do that, for you."

"Not a waste of time. I've had him give my tail a massage before." Xin shifted his weight, so he could really start pressing. There was a knot right there.

"Well of course it's not a waste of time when he's the one doing it to-" There was a long pause. "...wait."

"Yeah? What is it?" Xin turned to glance back at Blue as he finally got the muscle in Ford's neck to loosen up. Wow, was Ford just sitting here, tensing his neck all morning? Yeesh.

Blue looked both suspicious(?) in some way and… squinty. He was squinting at Xin and Ford both.

"...This is not a form of worship," Blue said very, very slowly.

"...no?" Xin said slowly. "It's a massage? For getting muscles to stop tensing up? Or get them to relax? It feels really nice. I used to go for massages all the time."

There was the sound of approaching footsteps, as Blue walked himself over.

"I am aware of what human massages are," Blue said next, looking between the two of them. "Why are you doing that to him," Blue asked Xin again.

Xin blinked. "Um, because he's hurting? And I can?" He moved away from the neck to focus on the shoulders now, as his neck was finally relaxed, if the way Ford couldn't even lift his head up anymore was any indication.

Blue eyed his little sister.

"This is inefficient," Blue said, and Ford felt the slap of a hand come down on him between his shoulder blades.

He already had two hands on him.

Ford started to rear up, but let out a garbled yell as he felt that pressure from the prior afternoon grab (surround) him, and then something vaguely electric shoot up his neck.

He collapsed down against the table below him, every muscle in his body for a moment going limp.

The third hand came up off of him, and so did the pressure. And the moment he was released from Blue's hold, Ford spasmodically sat up again with almost a yelp. At least partially… his body didn't quite want to move.

Xin blinked. "Oh, that's one way to do it. Probably doesn't feel as nice," he pointed out.

"Not as 'nice'? This way of doing things shouldn't have caused any of that pain there that he doesn't like, like most 'massages' do," Blue said, then he said, "-Stop that," and grabbed Ford's shoulder, scrubbing his knuckles up and down his spine at the back of his neck several times quickly before letting go of him again. "Now you're just trying to tense up on purpose again to annoy me on purpose," said the demon. "Xin? Lunchtime, yes? Grab him and let's go. There is all the food to be eating in that cafeteria of his-here. Unless you want to go elsewhere for this."

Ford shivered, unable to even speak as his tongue felt just as confused as the rest of his body. He let out a, "Mnnggh…" as he felt himself being lifted up into the air and then draped over a shoulder. He felt a hand patting his back gently. "You okay Fordsie?"

"Nnnm mmmuuunnn…" Ford said.

"I think you'll be able to move again within a few minutes." Xin patted his back, soothingly. "Once your muscles figure out how to contract again."

"It's proportional," Blue said. "Brain-induced, cyclic with the muscles. It drops off too soon, and he'll tense up completely again - stop fighting it and just let yourself stay-relaxed!" he directed at Ford next, down by his ear. "You manage that for five seconds and you'll be able to move easily again. Or wait a half-minute; one of those-two. -Impatient much?" Blue said, as he straightened back up.

Ford's next "Mmnnmm!" sounded rather frustrated. Xin patted his back again (a little worried about what Blue did to him, but… it didn't hurt him…) "Shhh, just relax. Don't worry, I'll make sure to feed you." That didn't make Ford feel any better. He was thankful that Xin was careful with carrying him though. But he was trying to relax, to let whatever Blue had done to him pass.

"Um… what happened to Dr. Pines?" He heard Viola's voice. Oh no.

"He needed a muscle tension reset," Blue said to her. "Not everything, his lungs and his heart are working fine."

"Oh. He looks very relaxed." Estania's mirth was clear in her voice. Ford tried not to tense up to protest that. His interns didn't seem to understand the issue here.

"And his mind's trying to spin up like a- mm, maybe shouldn't say that one, haven't eaten yet, can't decide," was Blue's next comment, as the two demons continued on walking. "You three coming? Food is important!"

Ford despaired as he realized they were heading to the cafeteria, and all his employees were going to see him in this undignified position. He tried to tell Xin, to ask for him to wait for Ford to get back on his feet- but the only things that came out were, "Mmmm mmm nnnnnmmm mmnn!"

And then he felt almost a jolt as he pulled in a hard breath, and all his muscles suddenly felt much more awake. He gasped, worked his jaw properly, and then- slumped over again. He felt rather tired, all things considered. "...Xin?"

"Oh, you can talk again." Xin was happy about that.

"I said thirty seconds at most," Blue complained. "Wasn't trying to 'stress' the idiot out even MORE if he thought he needed to be battle-ready or something-else here."

"...put me down? I can walk on my own." Ford (not) begged despite how very fluid all of his muscles felt just then (would they even be able to support his own weight?). Xin, feeling mischievous, shifted Ford around from the fireman's carry into the bridal hold. "Nah, I think I like holding you." The dragon purred, which had the three Interns widening their eyes. (Blue held the double-doors to the cafeteria open for his little sister, as they all walked inside. Xin had his hands rather full, after all.)

"Hey, ah… Dr. Pines…" Viola looked between her boss and this… very pretty young man. "Who's your friend here?"

"This is-"

"Hi! I'm Blue's little sister!" Xin said brightly. The Interns faltered in place. They looked Xin up and down. "Um…"

"So… you're… Miz?" Estania asked.

"Well, I'm Xin right now." Xin told them simply. "I'm Miz when I'm female-presenting."

That got the interns to go, "Ohhhh! Okay," as they understood.

Then Viola and Estania turned to each other and silently screamed as they held hands and jumped up and down. Terrence, who had been forced to deal with the girls planning out their matchmaking between their boss and Blue's mysterious sister, just rolled his eyes. The shipping commences.

"Might want to put the idiot down now, Xin," said Blue. "If you have him carry your trays in his lap, he might EAT them."

"Fordsie can't eat that much. I've tried." Xin shook his head, mock disappointment ruined by the twitching grin. "He eats like a bird."

"Most birds on this planet eat a-quarter to one-half their own body weight every day," Blue deadpanned. "That would be at least twelve pounds of food at every meal for THIS one. -Try again!" Blue ended rather artificially brightly.

"He thinks coffee and a piece of toast count as breakfast!" Xin sounded like that was blasphemous to even consider. Ford rolled his eyes. "I do not!" He could tell Xin was teasing. "You're not gonna let me down, are you?" Ford deadpanned. Xin giggled. "Nope! Because this is fun!" And really, seeing Xin hold Ford, who was a head taller than him, in a bridal carry was… making a few of the other workers do spittakes all around the cafeteria. A few people walked into their tables and nearly tripped. Over in the corner, Dr. Clark turned to his friends with a, "Yes! Pay up!" and the other scientists groaned as they exchanged money.

Ford gave up protesting. If something amused Xin, he wasn't going to get him to stop until he had his fun. Might as well try to keep whatever dignity he still had.

"...I'm going to have to carry all your food trays for you, aren't I," Blue said to Xin with not too much grace.

"Fordsie's hands are free." Xin pointed out. "And he's a very good table."

"So, what, two trays in his lap, two in his hands? That's only four trays, little sis."

"I'm still full from the Island. So I'm not that hungry." Xin shrugged.

"Yeesh. -Fine," said Blue, as he started making his way over to the cafeteria line. "Don't say I didn't warn you about the food-holding, though. Because he does that. The picking up and not letting go. He is a terrible table while still capable of moving."

"I'm not a table." Ford glared at Blue. He was a terrible influence on Xin.

"You could be," said Blue rather practically, switching mental directions with ease. (A few more people did spit takes at that.) "But people-to-furniture transformations are more easily handled with Weirdness waves than science or magic. Less 'oops!' problems all-around. Or loss of Mind in the transition over-and-back."

"I would not want to be furniture, thank you." Ford shivered, getting flashbacks to the couch made out of human skin. Xin felt the need to point out, "You know some people have a kink for that." (More spit takes. And now the interns understood how their innocent boss had learned the phrase 'hentai'.)

Blue paused for a moment, seeming to be staring straight ahead. Then: "Some humans like being footstools," Blue said, with a bit of an odd lilting tone. Then: "Or recliners," he added more easily. "-Building them up into chairs works a lot better," the demon added next, now back to talking in the same practical set of tones he'd been using before.

"Please no throne of human suffering." Ford deadpanned.

"Hm?" Blue looked back at him as they progressed forward in line. "Too late for that," Blue said, then paused. "They probably weren't conscious for that, though. Probably." He looked away from him again, eyes flicking around the room a bit elsewhere.

Ford rubbed his face and groaned. Why did Blue have to be here, still? He had actually been enjoying the massage from Xin before that jerk interrupted, it had been really nice… and relaxing… and...

...and now Ford was holding his hands on his face for more than just exasperation; he was blushing as he stumbled into the thought of wishing Blue hadn't interrupted the massage, so that Xin could have really worked his way down Ford's body, easing his aches and pressing closer-

(Ahhhh! What was wrong with him?! And it wasn't- it wasn't like Ford had wanted anything more… intense than that! Ju-just some cuddling! B-but why did that make Ford feel so embarrassed?!)

"-Also, it was agony! Not 'suffering'! Big difference, there! -So what, I'm not allowed to get creative now? Ever?" said Blue next. "That wasn't even in this 'set here, you know!" Blue turned towards him. (Waiting…)

"..." But Ford wasn't responding, still lost in his own internal screaming.

(This was like that time when Xin had turned him into a woman all over again! With these weird fluttering sensations in his stomach and-)

And Blue noticed Ford's lack of response to what he'd just said.

Blue looked up at Xin. "Does he actually have muscles-for-brains?" Blue asked of his little sister rather peevishly. "Because that sort of thing usually gets a stronger reaction out of a six-fingered Stanford, what I just said."

"Hm… I dunno… I mean… he works his brain a lot. Does that count?" ("No. That does NOT count. -Also no he does not.") Xin peered closer at Ford. "Hello~? Fordsie? You okay?" Xin bounced Ford a little in his arms. "Quick, what's the chemical formula for roasted peanuts?!"

Somehow, that seemed to jolt Ford out of whatever catatonic state he was in. "C57H104O6-!" Ford rattled off. Xin heaved a sigh of relief. "Thank spud you're okay! What would I do if that adorable brain of yours stopped working!" Which had Ford flushing all over again.

"Hm," said Blue leaning in a little close, frowning at the side of his head. And then the demon did a sort of odd thing, where he shoved the side of his hand up against the side of Ford's head a few times, from different angles. Ford batted him off. "Quit touching me, please." He even said please!

Blue pulled away his hand. "Rude, much?" he said of the battening. The triangle demon straightened up again and told Xin, "Well, it wasn't me or anything I did. That was internal, all-him."

Behind the three of them, Viola and Estania (correctly) guessing that their boss's state was caused by being held so… intimately by the person he (quite clearly) had romantic feelings for, just despaired together over it. "Come on! Just tell him!" Estania hissed under her breath.

"Tell him what?" was the blue-and-black haired witch's response to the Intern, at normal volume. "I just told him a thing. What else do you think I should tell him?"

"Not you. Dr. Pines. He has something he wants to say! Erm… right, Dr. Pines?" Viola stuttered at Estania being heard.

Blue frowned at this. "He is able to talk now. Nothing is stopping him," he noted. "...What do you think he should be telling me that he has not already said?" Blue demanded of them rather suspiciously, hands on his hips,

"..." Estania and Viola gave Ford some hand waves and insistent sounds. Unfortunately, Ford was just as lost as the two demons for what they meant.

"...That is not any kind of working sign language, what are you doing," Blue said, staring at the two Interns flailings. He paused for a moment, then, with even more of a frown: "There are no bugs here to hit with your flailings. -Clean your glasses!"

Terrence, rather tired of this all, deadpanned, "Hey Dr. Pines, do you like Xin?"

Ford blinked at the question. "Ah, yes? He's a very dear friend of mine." And that only made Viola and Estania's flailing worse as the two mouthed, 'Not like that you idiot!'

"No Deals!" Blue said immediately, whapping Ford upside the head with his hand. "-No Deals," the demons said to Xin directly, far more seriously even than that.

"Ow." Ford said blandly. Xin rolled his eyes. "We're not going to make a Deal to be Friends."

"GOOD," said Blue, though he was still looking between the two of them highly suspiciously thereafter, for the rest of their trip through the lunch line.

(And of course, everyone had been no-so-subtly listening in. And those who were quite sure their boss was in a relationship with the dragon had to cough into their food. So he still wasn't admitting it?)

(The coughs had Blue craning his head around on his neck for a few long moments, looking around, at, and over the rest of the humans in the cafeteria next. Were they sick? He mentally quick-checked his local air filtration-sensing...)

Blue did his job and picked up or otherwise took every order that his little sister requested (and Ford's own) from the cafeteria staff. He then handed them off to Ford (along with Ford's too, though for a long moment there he looked like he almost wasn't going to hand it over), and Ford took up the trays as they went, laying them in his lap, because he realized he might as well go along with it. They got a seat at an open table, and the Interns (to Ford's chagrin) sat down with them.

"So… Xin, was it?" Viola asked, looking the handsome man up and down. Huh. He didn't really look like Blue's little sister- and hey, wasn't he older looking than Blue? Wait, no, Blue was apparently over a trillion years old, and he was a witch, so… perhaps they could choose what they looked like? Viola didn't really know much about witches. "How did you and Dr. Pines meet?"

"He kicked dirt in my eye." Xin said, so cheerfully that it took everyone a moment to register it. ("What," said Blue flatly, turning and glaring at Ford.) Ford buried his face in his hands, thankfully, Xin had finally let him down. "Do you have to keep bringing that up?"

"It's truuuuuue~" Xin leaned, pretty much draped himself all over Ford's shoulders, swooning back dramatically. "There I was, minding my own business, when he and his brother accidentally trespassed onto my lawn-"

"Wasn't a lawn." Ford grumbled.

"-and got chased by the dog-"

"Wasn't a dog." Ford corrected.

"-so I saved them from the dog-" ("Still wasn't a dog.") "-and this sleep deprived little dummy here-" Xin snuggled against Ford's side, poking his nose, to Ford's eyeroll, "-freaked out and kicked dirt at me! And it got in my eye, which kinda hurt, but luckily it didn't actually damage me in any way whatsoever or leave any lasting damage." Xin said this last part very clearly, while looking over at his brother. (Blue eyed Xin over this, because Xin had just been lying to him multiple times in a row according to this local-'Hand, Xin had seemed to be lying to his own eyes, this Ford had not-seemed to be lying, and Blue didn't see any reason to believe that Xin had not also just lied to him here-and-now about this last part of it, too. ...He'd lied about the 'joke' with the local Pines here after all, probably-also.)

(Unless that local-'Hand really was the one who was lying right then, because he was still-and-again lying to himself…)

Viola snorted. "That sounds… interesting."

"It sounds like a lie," Blue said directly to his little sister. "A whole series of lies." He looked directly at Xin over his bottle of tea, gauging his reaction to his words.

Ford looked over at Blue and sighed. "Nightmare Realm, Nightmare creature," and Xin added, "I am undamaged. It hurt for a bit, but I healed."

Blue made a dark ugly chittering noise, and downed his whole bottle of tea at once like it was whiskey. ...Or beer from a keg stand; it took him several seconds of time.

And once he was done, Blue slammed the bottle down on the table, turned to Ford and said, "I don't like you," turned to Xin and said, "Don't LIE to me."

Ford sighed again, cutting into the meatloaf. "I apologized for it." ("He did.") "I wasn't thinking straight, and mistook him for someone else." ("He barely knew what anything was, to be honest.")

"Humans make terrible pets," was Blue's next response to all of this, before he started in on his carrots. "Just so you know, little sis."

And Xin reached a hand up, rubbing around his eye absently. "He's not a pet. And I'm really fine. I healed. My eye is fine now."

"Did you see me MURDERING him just now?" Blue said next, not quite clipping off the ends of his words as he went. "I am pretty sure I am doing a distinct lack of murdering," he told Xin, even as he cut through his carrots with a rather-brutal hard-metal-on-hard-plastic sort of screech. ("Which I am very grateful for." "-Shut it. Idiot.")

Xin sighed. "I know Fordsie's… not the best that you would want for me. But he's not as bad as you think…"

"Oh, no," said Blue next, through almost-gritted teeth. (He'd had more time to sleep on it since the night before now, and...) "I'm certain that your lizard-'dad' will be thrilled to see that you've picked this one for your own little Zodiac-there, moving forward." Another metal-on-plastic hard screech. (...that had meant Blue's equivalent of nightmares on that front. Though the only 'saving grace' as Blue saw it, was that this Stanford Pines was in an entirely separate 'set from Miz's own, which meant that there was no possible way that they could ever all come together without his little sister actively trying to do that, because this Stanfird was too much of a non-thinking idiot to ever figure out how to do something like that on his own, and-) Blue forced himself to stop, pull in a breath, and let it out slowly. (-His sister wanted him, and wanted this. His sister wasn't stupid. His sister would be fine. ...This would be his new mantra, if he needed it to be.)

Xin sighed. Then he patted Ford's shoulder. "I'm sorry about this. I don't think Blue's ever going to approve of you." Ford blinked. "Oh. Does that mean I don't have to be nice to him?"

Blue looked up at him. "Why would I want you to lie to me." He frowned, if not glowered outright at the scientist. "How many times have I told you to stop lying now?" It wasn't a question.

Ford adjusted his glasses. "Oh, alright then." And he straightened in place and told Blue bluntly. "You're annoying."

"So are you. What's your point?" Blue said with the greatest of ease and zero concern, popping a forkful of carrots in his mouth and then chewing.

"I suppose this means there's something we agree on." ("HA! You agree!") Ford rolled his eyes. Then he shuffled over, so he was right against Xin's side. And, staring right at Blue, Ford reached a hand up and wrapped it around Xin's side ("Fordsie?") and pulled Xin into a hug, pressing Xin against his side.

"You put too much pressure on my little sister," Blue said, looking largely unconcerned from his facial expression. "She doesn't like that."

"Would you like me to change the pressure of my hug?" Ford asked politely. Xin blinked, kind of confused as to what was going on. "Ah… it's ok? Just move your hand a little, that tickles." So Ford moved his hand to rest more comfortably against Xin's hip.

Blue eyed him at this.

Blue turned to Xin. "If he starts getting grabby like 'Ford thinks about doing, just go for the nose. I recommend elbows, or forks, or both elbows and forks. Elbow-forks." With that said, Blue got back to his eating.

"It's ok. We wrestle sometimes. I gave him permission for it." Xin admitted. ("You can also take it away," Blue said as a reminder.) Then Xin gave Ford a suspicious look. "You're being huggy today. Aren't you the one who gets all weird about public affection?"

"There's 'public affection', and there's 'touch deprived'," said Blue. "My Stanley and six-fingered hand have that problem. This one might, too. Some humans do." He raised his eyes up to Ford's again. "It's annoying."

Ford's cheeks were a little pink, but he didn't let up his hug. Even when Xin nodded. "Yes. Fordsie is touch starved too! I like hugging him, but he usually gets all weird when I do so in public. So…" Xin raised an eyebrow at Ford. "What's the occasion?"

"Well, he's an idiot," Blue said practically. "This is news?" He speared another carrot. "Thought you just said you didn't want him as a pet." Blue ate the next bit of carrot.

"I like hugging." Xin lowered his head to rest on Ford's shoulder. "Doesn't have to be a pet to get hugs."

"He's a pet if you treat him that way," Blue waved his (loaded-down with carrot again) fork at Ford next.

"What way?" Ford found himself asking. Because, yes, Xin did like to pet his hair, but Xin liked having his own hair pet too. So to Ford, it really felt more like some mutual grooming. Which had led Ford to wondering about what sorts of behavioral quirks demons like William had. He purred, for crying out loud.

Blue eyed him. "...Not falling for that one. 'Sensitive'." Blue rolled his eyes and muttered, before taking another bite of carrot off of his fork. "HM. Still need to talk to Kari about a 'penalty', here, before I go," Blue noted, once he'd finished chewing and swallowing. "Did she give you yours yet-again too?" the demon asked (demanded?) of him in a not quite sing-song tone of voice next.

Ford stiffened. "...She's making me have dinner with her. So she can check up on me." He groaned. She'd wanted it to be every week, but Ford managed to talk her out of that. Instead, she'd just call him up when she felt like it.

"Oh good, she listened to me about the communication issue problems you've been having," Blue said next. "At least she listens to me when I tell her anything-once." Blue ate another bite of his meal.

"I'm not sure how I feel about you liking my mother…" Ford deadpanned.

"Well, it's a good thing that my relationship with her has nothing at all to do with YOU, then, doesn't it?" Blue said next. "Just-and-only Seb. Who is actually rational. And insane. And doesn't try to lie to me. Because he's not stupid, or an idiot."

Xin was cutting up Ford's food and holding a forkful up to his mouth, "Less talk, more eat." Xin prodded at Ford's lip's teasingly. "Xin, you don't have to feed me."

"But it's fun." Xin protested. "How about you feed me?" (More people choked on their food nearby. Estania was vibrating in place while whispering, "Yeeeees…."

"That is NOT an effective way to train a human, sis," Blue said to him next, while eyeing Estania (who he'd heard). Yeesh, but these humans were strange.

"Xin's not-" Ford sputtered. "Of course I am." Xin said bluntly, cutting him off. Ford turned to him with a confused look. "What?" Xin reached up to pat his hair. "It's like when I taught the twins to wash their hands after every meal, and how to floss their teeth."

"That's not training, that's teaching-"

"'Teaching' is more active, and requires thought on the student's part where they are actually trying to learn, for reasons beyond 'training' which uses an offered immediate in-the-moment reward, slowly reduced and time-delayed greatly over multiple sessions," Blue noted dryly.

"I'm not- training isn't-" Ford sputtered. Xin was nuzzling against his side, and Ford raised a hand to begin petting his head. Xin giggled, wrapping his arms around Ford to get into a better position for headpats. "See? Trained."

"Stimulus; reaction. Expected-reward as motivator." Blue ate another carrot piece.

Ford's jaw dropped, even as Xin continued to purr against his side.

"What? You require touch at regular intervals to be and remain physically healthy, as some humans do," Blue said. "Xin offers you touch as a motivator, you pet him to continue receiving it." Blue speared another carrot on his fork. "No Mind or thought involvement in-between. Training. This is news?"

"But that's not…" Ford looked down at Xin. "But…" he said weakly. "Being trained doesn't have to be a bad thing." Xin told him, voice muffled into Ford's shirt, his hands scratching down Ford's back, an action that felt quite nice. Ford shivered. "It's just a way to make it easier to express affection."

"Humans don't make 'good' pets," Blue said to his little sister outright, trying again using human-type definitions this time. "The older ones get all 'uppity' about how easily they think they can't be trained, except that they are, and once they realize you've done it, they get all..." Blue made a handwaving gesture at Ford "...about it." Blue grimaced. "They say 'no' if you ask them first-usually, because most of them are that kind of stupid, and if you don't ask and do it anyway, they either go full-pet but with even less brains involved than most other-animals, or they start acting like some stupid feral thing, trying to counter-act it. Which is just another type of knee-jerk reaction," and useful when you wanted an attack-human you could treat like (and aim like) a rabid attack dog, but Blue generally liked the actually intelligent ones better, so he tended not to do that (usually) for that reason, because: "It's annoying."

And Ford thought about it. "...you mentioned teaching the twins to wash their hands?" He asked carefully. ("Teaching is not training.") Xin huffed. "If you're at a formal event, and there are chairs at all the tables, and you see that no one else is sitting, what do you do?" He asked.

Ford was a little confused at this different subject. "I… would remain standing…? Since they might be waiting for a signal to sit?"

"Why?" Xin asked. "Did anyone tell you that you had to stand unless and until someone tells you to sit?"

"Well, no, but if everyone's standing there must be a reason?"

"You humans are so well trained you don't even need anyone to tell you what they want you to do." Xin pouted. "It doesn't have to be a bad thing, depending on what it is."

"And then get it wrong half the time anyway." Blue took a sip of his tea. "But yes," Blue continued, "Most of them are 'happy' to turn their brains off and let their 'betters' decide it all for them, giving 'signals' to let them 'know' what they can-or-can't do - except it's a lie, all the 'can't's and the 'shouldn't's," Blue noted, with a slight eye roll. Then he got a gleam in his eyes. "What gets REALLY interesting is what happens when one of them FINALLY thinks to question it all, and then disobeys it! Right in the middle of another group of humans. -Spreads like a memetic-disease." (Blue sounded proud of this, for some reason.) "All that rule-breaking." (Never mind; there was the reason right there. But… that said...)

"I… didn't think about it that way before." Ford realized. "...so you're training me?" He asked Xin wryly. The dragon nodded. "You have some unhealthy behavior that I am trying to fix." The dragon admitted.

"...couldn't you just tell me outright?" Ford wasn't sure how to feel about all this… roundabout way of doing it.

"How many times have I told you things that you still don't listen to?" Blue put out there, just because. He started in on his next bottle of tea, before tackling his cooked spinach.

"Well you're just very obnoxious about it." Ford sniped. Xin reached his hands up to give Ford a long slow scratch that had the man shivering. "Xin, quit distracting me!"

"If I was THAT obnoxious about it, shouldn't you be paying attention the first time, so you don't have to put up with the obnoxious-thing so very many more times," Blue told him next. "Idiot."

"He's stubborn." Xin told his brother.

"No," said Blue, "He literally does not listen to me. Which is why I have to keep repeating things, over and over and over again at him. He doesn't hear me the first time, or the second, all the way through the thirteenth and counting."

"He doesn't really like you." Xin pointed out.

"Yes. What's your point?" Blue said.

"He doesn't want to listen to you, because he doesn't like you." (Ford looked a little exasperated at that. "When you put it like that, it makes me seem childish." "You are childish. Your whole family's childish, Fordsie.")

"Sounds like a personal problem," said Blue. "If I only listened to people I liked, I would never hear anyone at all. Because I'd have to hear them first to maybe-like them. -Input is input," said Blue. "There's a reason why I always listen, and hear people. And then respond to them next. It's stupid to not."

"Humans are very illogical." Xin helpfully reminded his brother.

"Yes. No. They can be logical; they are not rational. What's your point?" Blue said again.

"That's the reason why Fordsie acts the way he does. He is very illogical when his emotions get involved."

"My own 'Hand doesn't ignore me," Blue noted. "Doesn't want to listen, but doesn't ignore me. And he's as inconsistent as they come! -This local-'Hand of yours has NO excuse on that front," he said of Seb's Ford. "Unless he wants to finally admit that he thinks I'm a stupid triangle because he read that stupid book." Blue was eyeing him now, rather dangerously.

"This has nothing to do with-" Ford sighed. "I haven't even read that book! I've heard of it, and know generally what it's about. But I haven't actually read it!"

"Then you have even-less of an excuse for not-listening to me then," Blue informed him quite primly and promptly.

Ford sighed. "I… don't know how to talk to you. You're insufferable! You constantly deride me at every opportunity- and whenever I think that I might actually be able to get along with you, you go right on getting mad at me for doing so!"

"'Deride' you?" Blue scoffed. "Define: 'deride'." He picked up his tea bottle. "And you 'don't know how to talk to me'? Really? Really! -Then who are you talking to, making all of those arbitrary 'language' sounds out of your mouth at me right now, if not me. Someone else?" Blue said sing-song and rather mockingly, then took a sip of his tea.

"You-" Ford got another soothing scratch from Xin. "You…" He calmed down, tried to think about this. "You have a way of saying things to me that make me feel… inadequate." ("You're allowed to say that he hurts your feelings." Xin tried to comfort him.)

"You are inadequate. What's your point?" Blue said, propping his head up on his right palm.

Ford raised his hands and gestured toward Blue. "See? There it is! Right there! Again! See?" He turned to the interns, "You all see this, right?!" They nodded slowly. "I think Blue's just got high standards, sir." Terrence told him gently.

"See what?" Blue said. "Me sitting here at a table, eating things?"

"You hurt Dr. Pines' feelings." Estania said, since it seemed her boss wasn't going to. She frowned. Looks like getting her boss together with his romantic interest was going to be harder than she thought.

"Sounds like a personal problem for the 'sensitive' idiot to me," Blue said rather unconcernedly.

"He calls me an idiot…" Ford ground out, "I don't like it and I'd like him to stop."

"Yes, what's your point?" Blue said, before spearing his next bit of carrot. "You act like you're stupid because you don't use your brain, I'll call you an idiot. Effect doesn't always have to come before cause. Start actually thinking, and I won't call you an idiot, because you won't be acting like you're stupid when you're not supposed to be that at all. -This is not hard." (Ford stared at the demon at this.)

"...Fordsie… you are an idiot sometimes. As are most people. Everyone passes the idiot ball around. And you Pines play hot potato with it." Xin finally straightened up so he could put his hands on Ford's shoulders. "And that's okay. It's perfectly fine to be an idiot sometimes."

"-No, it isn't fine to do that, ever!" Blue told his little sister hotly. "He needs to think! -Don't tell him 'it's fine' for him to use his brain like it's some dumb paperweight that doesn't do anything at all; that's THE OPPOSITE of fine!" said the demon who was a Master of the Mind.

Xin sighed. "You know, I like coddling you." Ford blinked. "But I guess I can't be babying you forever." Xin had a determined look now. "You don't think about your own safety enough. You worry me. And your mom. And everyone else." Xin listed off. "You get too hung up on trying to fit in and be 'normal' when you're anything but - and I'm not talking about your hands." He said quickly, before Ford got the wrong idea. Xin reached up to poke Ford's forehead. "You're twisted and it's wonderful and amazing and it's one of those things I love about you!"

("Omigosh! Omigosh!" Estania chanted. So Dr. Pines' feelings were reciprocated?!)

(Blue noted to himself that his little sister apparently loved 'twisted things'. He didn't react to the thought of Xin loving Ford, because iit simply didn't occur to him; to Blue's Mind, Xin had said this about a 'thing' that Ford had happened to do or be, not said it about Ford himself.)

"But you keep trying to be some messed up definition of 'normal' and you're stifling yourself and it's not right!" Xin huffed. "You're weird. OWN it! Don't let people stamp you down into their mold of 'normalcy'!" He was going into full on rant mode now. "I'm very happy that your therapist helped you heal and be happy. But you're trying too hard to use your therapy to make you into something- someone, you're not. You're Stanford fucking Pines and you're the type of weirdo who thinks setting your face on fire is the best way to shave!"

"It is the best-worst way for humans to shave, when there is hair anywhere that needs removing almost-completely with no damage left behind," noted Blue. (The demon didn't comment on the smell that such a process usually caused, because Blue largely ignored the idea of anything that might smell in any way, let alone a way that was usually that horrible. because 'ew, noses'.) But then Blue glanced up from his spinach as another thought occured to him from what his sister had just said there. "His therapist brainwashed him?" Did he need de-or-re-programming? That tended to be tricky with humans, and would complicate things with the way they were currently between this Ford and his little sister quite a lot.

"Not on purpose." Xin waved off. "And not exactly. But mentally healthy for Ford, isn't the same as mentally healthy for other people."

"Hm," Blue said of the 'not on purpose'. He was going to have to let Seb and Kari know. "Well, yes," Blue said of the 'mentally healthy'. "Humans vary wildly in their mentalities. What's your point?"

"Ford thinks he wants to be 'normal' and tries too hard to be such." Xin complained.

Blue blinked at this.

And then he turned to the local-'Hand and asked him directly, "Do you want to be 'normal'?" Because it was good to ask these things directly, if you were going to put the question out there, by whatever method you were using in trying to get your answer, and sometimes his little sister did get confused. Better to ask and confirm.

"I…" Ford was very blown by all this. He hadn't thought this was what Xin thought of him… "I wanted to be… functional… in society…"

"Which meant obeying the laws and the government, even when those laws are wrong and the government is fucked." Xin muttered. Ford winced. Because… yes. That… was kind of… true?

"Xin, don't treat him like he's stupid if you want him to not act like an idiot," Blue said to him. Then he turned to Ford and asked, "Wanted, or want? Which society?"

"...human society… American…" Ford winced. "I thought… I thought America was…"

"What time period and location?" Blue asked of him next. "No 'was'. This is a 'now' question. What do you want right now."

"...back when I fell through the portal, years ago… I thought… America was a great place. Freedom, democracy, equality…" Ford felt rather dumb for that, now. Having seen how America was now, and how it had apparently always been, which he hadn't noticed. "A place where pure hard work and earnest effort was all it would take to get a successful career and comfortable life…" He wilted in on himself. "That was what I thought America was…"

Blue stared at him for a moment.

Then he turned to Xin.

"Little sis," he said, "Can you See a society in this or any nearby dimension that meets those parameters? 'A place where pure hard work and earnest effort gets a person a successful career and a comfortable life'."

"...like… two? Wait, no, they got overthrown… 1… no… a half?" Xin twitched. "Like… half a society? Kinda? Sorta?"

"Dimension number and internal-location in space-time?" Blue said to him next.

"..." Xin mumbled. Blue heard him.

Ford was staring at him. "Why are you asking-"

"-Because my whole 'set is like that, but you local Pines don't see it that way, so I need a local-analogue to check this concept of yours against, because knowledge and information for proper communication is 'a thing'," Blue said to him next, far more seriously than Ford would have ever expected out of a Bill Cipher, let alone this one, as the demon lowered his eyelids and that Cipher-eye of light flickered full-on into being just in front of his forehead (just barely fitting inside the barrier Blue had set up around himself, that he knew he could control things within, to allow for such things).

Blue set down his fork and folded his hands down in front of him on the table, and... the demon was quiet, just sitting there. The 'Eye' was brightly shining there at his forehead, barely flickering at all.

After awhile, Blue let out a huff of a breath, the 'Eye' flickered out, and he opened his eyes up all the way.

"I don't think that's a society you want to be 'functioning' within," said the demon to the scientist.

Xin just continued to wince. "And yet, it's the only one that actually rewards people for sincere hard work."

"Not for any of the slaves that are living there," Blue said next quite simply, without much expression, not looking away from Ford as he said it.

"...half a society." Xin mumbled.

"Fails the 'a person' test right there, oh little sister of mine," Blue said to him, flicking a gaze over his way. "Unless you consider 'slaves' to be 'not-people' or 'not-part of a society'-"

Xin groaned. "Not a lot to choose from. Anytime a society starts out trying for that, it ends up off the rails by self interest and selfishness until people are left with unfair disadvantages again."

Blue let out a huff of breath that was definitely an annoyed sigh, as he reached out for his tea bottle again.

"Wait, but Dimension 52-" Ford tried to protest, that place was a wonderful, peaceful place. Xin shook his head. "Jessie's the highest authority and power there. And no matter how hard any of the other attendants work, they won't reach her rank."

"Xin, define: 'successful career and a comfortable life'," Blue said with a slight frown. "Is 'success' and 'comfort' only achievable there by taking over the Oracle's position for those attendants, in human terms?" He was used to hearing those words from the underachievers of those who he made Deals with, those short-sighted fools who wanted creature-comforts right then over the power and prestige they'd need to both get and keep them. If that was Xin's idea of what that words-string concept tied to in his mentality, there was more than likely some larger disconnect there, problematic.

"Successful Career, as in they can choose a career they want, and get to the position that they want in it, even the highest level if they so wish. None of the attendants could replace the Oracle, even if they worked for it."

"-Ill-defined problem," Blue said immediately, "No person can replace another person. 'Success' is NOT replacing someone else. -Try again," Blue said so firmly, Ford almost startled in place.

"Doesn't stop some attendants from dreaming about taking over her position as the Oracle someday, which wouldn't happen from any amount of hard work on their part. The Axolotl chooses his Oracle, and he wouldn't care how much or little work one has put in."

Blue rolled his eyes. "By that definition, no-one in this 'set could ever be 'successful', little sis. Because there is-and-will-always-be one 'position' that no-one else can-or-will ever get by 'pure hard work and earnest effort', by the way you are describing it here," he complained.

Xin frowned. "I guess I need to widen my search parameters…"

"Your definition is flawed," Blue corrected, then shook his head. That was a MUCH larger discussion that could happen later, with his little sis, for Xin's own benefit-solely. Blue turned back to Ford. "Fine. -YOU are going to have to explain this concept inside your head in more detail, because my used-to-be-human little sister can't fill in the blanks for you on this one, local-'Hand." Blue sounded annoyed all over again.

Ford was rather relieved that the example society where hard work mattered that Xin had apparently thought hadn't existed, wasn't actually one that might not exist anywhere, and that it was merely a case of Xin misunderstanding what he'd really meant. "I meant… for a society where people looked to what you accomplished, your test scores and projects, and your intelligence and skills, got you to a position where you could earn enough to live comfortably, where you didn't have to survive paycheck to paycheck. Where you got your job because of your skill and not because you had connections…"

"What tests, who makes them, and how accurate and important are they for what they are testing? How do you define and measure 'intelligence' and 'skills'?" were the first handful of questions Blue tossed his way. "Define: 'live comfortably', 'survive', and 'connections'."

Ford sighed. "I realize now that standard academic tests aren't the end all, be all of worth, nor are they a fair or accurate assessment of intelligence." He had taken years to realize that.

"Then what do you actually want now?" Blue said to him, again. "Not 'then'. Not 'before'. This is a 'now' question. What do you want right now."

Ford ran a hand through his hair. "I don't know. But everything is a mess now."

"Then you don't want to be 'functional in society'-where-everything-is-a-mess to label yourself 'normal'," Blue said, like he was presenting a QED at the end of a proof, "You don't know what you want."

"...yeah, I… guess I don't…" Ford winced. ("Be the you that you were meant to be!" Was Xin's somewhat unhelpful cheer.)

"'Normal' doesn't exist, it's a lie - a shared delusion with no actual definition or meaning!" Blue told him next. "Stop lying to yourself! Think about what you want, and decide if you want to do what it takes to actually get it. To take it for yourself, and-then keep it." Blue let out a huff of breath and rolled his eyes after this. "-Not that he's going to listen to me this time-again, either," the demon muttered out largely to Xin, dropping his head back down into his hand. He reached for his bottle of tea.

The Interns were all looking at each other uneasily. (Dr. Pines had created this whole Center from nothing, but he didn't know what he wanted? Wasn't this place what he had wanted? Why had he made this research institute, then? Was it really just on a whim? Or were some of those crazy theories from the other permanent staff true, and-)

But Ford wasn't just ignoring Blue's words because they hurt, not this time. Ford wasn't stupid, Blue was right, about most things, he'd begun to find. But they were always about things that Ford just didn't want to confront.

The interns were staring, and normally, Ford would get embarrassed about it, but he just… Didn't have the energy for worrying about that right now. He was introspecting. Trying to figure himself out. What did he want? He had wanted to be rich, successful- because... that was what he was supposed to do. That was what all people wanted, wasn't it? That was what people were supposed to want? Wasn't it?

Ford frowned.

He'd always wanted to be rich, even when he was younger, so he'd have the money to afford whatever he wanted. But why? -Well, it wasn't like he didn't remember why: it was so he would be able to go to the arcade after school, so he could have clothes he didn't have to share with his brothers, so that he could get that solid gold telescope, so that he could get all the miniatures for DDNMD that he needed for a full campaign-

(But, did that really matter? When he was all grown up now, could buy all those things and more- but didn't have time for it? When Stan was more than rich enough to buy his family everything they could ever want? And a solid gold telescope, while cool, wasn't really practical-)

He'd always wanted to be successful, so he'd be respected. So he wouldn't be made fun of anymore. To prove he was so much better than those people who had beat him up and laughed at him and made him feel like shit for being weird-

(But, he already got that too. And it had nothing to do with anything that he'd done. Crampelter was a wreck of a man in a dead end job and unhappy marriage, but that had nothing to do with Ford. Crampelter had done that to himself, and Ford hadn't even had the chance to lord his own success over the other man.)

So why had Ford thought, still thought those things were so important? Behind the portal, what richess he'd accumulated didn't really matter, since survival was more important than owning a fancy car, or a nice house. And being renowned out there had only meant trouble as more people knew of his existence and could betray his location to Bill.

And yet, once he'd come back home, he had picked right up on it again. And, it wasn't like Ford didn't love the Center, it was his passion project. But… he didn't love it because it made him money. He didn't only love it because it finally got him recognized by the scientific community and the world at large...

Busy halls and the sound of people. Fiddleford being nearby and always ready to hang out. People to talk to in the halls or the breakroom or even just being around him. And while Ford had trouble talking to them, still did, after all this time, he wasn't alone. He...

So… if all Ford really wanted in life… Was to not be alone… Why… Why had he placed so much of his stated goals and wants and dreams, on monetary gain and recognition-

"-It is the ONLY thing you are good at!"-"The only thing you can do to make up for being a freak!"

...oh.

Ford curled his hands into fists, and his expression turned stormy. Right. His father. Filbrick.

...it always came down to that, didn't it? How his father had treated him, had treated his brothers. And Ford knew now, the reason for it. But… he wasn't going to blame Bill Cipher for this. No. Even if Bill had made that Deal with Filbrick years before, that was no excuse for the way the man had treated them. Ford sighed. Was that… another factor in how much Miz-Xin hated that man? Enough to actually attack him? Even when they had told her to leave the man alone? Ford sighed. Well, that was… at least now Ford had realized what it all was. What it meant.

And didn't that say something about him, that all the problems in his life, somehow led back to Filbrick? Each and every time. Once he thought through something he was stuck on, some ingrained, unhealthy belief, and there was Filbrick, at the root of it all?

Ford sighed. "...so… what do I want…?" He muttered. What would that even be? He already had financial stability, which was great as a starting point. It helped to enable so many other things in this day and age, in the society that he lived in. ("Yes," said Blue, "That IS the question. And what is your answer...?")

"...I want…" He furrowed his brows. "...to learn, about things, to build things- make things- be… be with the people I care about… geez, this is so… childish…"

"Nothing wrong with that." Xin assured him.

"It's basic, for human needs, and in case you hadn't noticed it yet, children are not stupid," Blue told him. "Learning requires thought and paying attention to capture knowledge, both inside and outside yourself. Without any lying, because lies are not 'truth'. Communication, both verbal-sighted and physical, is the closest you can be with 'the people you care about' for non-telempathic non-telepathic species, which you also-need. Use of that knowledge you have learned usually requires communicating and working with other beings, in order to get anywhere, to build and make all the things that you want, when you have a limited single-life." Blue was looking at him over his bottle of tea. (This was not any different than what Blue had been telling him over and over again that he should do. It was, just and only, a very small handful of a few of the reasons why.)

"...shouldn't goals in life be… grander than that? More… important?" Ford asked. "More life changing?"

"Why? Why would it need to be?" Xin asked of him. Then Xin sat back, with a hand on his chest, proudly declaring, "I want to not be bored. I want to be happy."

"You're changing your own life, and changing the lives of every other being you communicate with - that's the whole point of communication and interaction with other beings, in case that was somehow unclear." Blue waved this 'argument' off. "How is that not a 'grand' goal, changing lives? How much of a change are you going for, here? A worldwide war? An extinction-level event? -It's called leverage, you lunatic. You start with the part that's dug itself down into the dirt against the bottom, and that fulcrum that's all the way down there that's just waiting for you to use it there, too."

'Stanford Pines! The Man who will change the world!' Ford twitched at the memory of Bill's words, it had sounded so wonderful back then.

"Get some real momentum going, so long as you don't break that very large stick while you're at it. Or that central keystone fulcrum stubborn-point that will crumble underneath you if you lose your resolve. -You know, that one you've decided to make everything else rotate around, because you REFUSE to be the one to move," Blue rolled his eyes at this next. "So why don't you do what you want?"

Ford gave Blue a long look before turning to Xin, who shrugged. "Blue likes to have way more control of the life changing parts of things." The dragon said sheepishly.

"I've been living in the Mindscape for one trillion years," Blue noted dryly. "How, exactly, do you think I got anything done? -By being stupid and inefficient about figuring out what I wanted, and how I went about getting it?" the demon scoffed. "In a broken dimension that was continually losing energy over time? -That's a rhetorical question, I did neither of those two things; I was efficient, and practical, and I know what I want and I get it. No lies or misdirection when I don't need it. And I certainly don't need that internally," Blue ended, waving his tea bottle around, before setting it down (after finishing it off) and picking up next his third bottle. "This isn't childish, you lunatic; this is everything. This is what we demons call the 'master class' on the subject entirely; you're welcome."

"...right." Ford noted wryly, as he watched Blue down his final bottle of tea in one long draught like he had the first one.

"You overthink about stuff that doesn't need overthinking. Just go with how you feel, and what you want." Xin leaned over, nuzzling his side. Ford absently pet him, not even upset about it anymore at this point. "I… see…"

("Humans. You start out smart enough to start working together, making halfway-decent structures," Blue noted, "But then you all complicate things unnecessarily for no reason. Slow yourselves down on purpose, until most of you stall out completely, just when it starts to get interesting," Blue groused. "You are people, not a self-limiting chemical reaction. You shouldn't, any of you, just slow down to a stop; you don't and shouldn't need to, if you started out already moving in exactly the right-wanted direction.")

Ford looked down at the top of Xin's head. "And… why do you want so much, for me to 'do what I want' to be happy?"

"Because my wants are to be happy. And seeing the people I love happy, is part of that." Xin told him honestly.

"Except 'happiness' is fleeting, and so are all you single-life mortals who apparently don't want to go around 'living forever'," was what Blue put out there next. But then he grimaced and waved the latter statement off (-too forceful, Seb was going to get there eventually; no need to bring that up with this Stanford in any more detail than that, really, when Seb would take care of it all eventually), before propping his head up on his fists, both elbows up on the table. "Have you ever seen anyone having 'fun' who wasn't 'happy' while doing it? The whole fun-making thing?"

"I'm not saying my goals are easy to achieve." Xin shrugged. "But it's something to do with my time. I have eternity after all."

...and Ford wondered, suddenly, if that was the reason for why Miz/William acted the way they did. Charging forward and doing whatever they wanted, while not seeming to have any end goal in mind… because they just… wanted to find some way to fill their time...

...and Ford wondered, not for the first time, how scary eternity would be. Especially if it was spent alone… and Ford realized that William was much like him. His true desires were simply that he didn't want to be alone. And that realization sent a warm feeling through Ford that he wasn't sure how to explain. ...Even if it also left him feeling a little sad and worried at the idea of William being alone… with no-one around for him to spend eternity with… except...

Ford looked over at Blue, and his expression darkened ever so slightly. (Blue was an asshole, clearly insufferable. And William would have to spend eternity with him? Even if William did seem to like him, perhaps even love him, Blue was an awful, terrible influence on people! And Ford realized he wasn't very happy with the idea of leaving William alone with Blue.)

(And sure, Pyronica and the others were there for William back in the other Set, but they weren't here right now, now were they? And what would happen if Miz lost them? If they ever chose to finally pass away, because they got tired of living forever?)

And clearly, this must be why Ford felt so worried about William being left alone. Wasn't it? Why the idea of William being left alone after he and the rest of his family died off from old age- the idea of sweet William being taken advantage of- being corrupted- by this dickhole of a Bill Cipher was-

Well. Ford didn't want that at all.

So he wrapped his hands around Xin to snuggle back against the dragon, and gave Blue a stern look over the top of Xin's head. So Ford would take it upon himself, as the better man here, to protect William from that awful brother of his. And if that meant spending more time with William, then that was a sacrifice Ford was willing to make.

(Nevermind the fact that the idea of spending more time with William sent a spark of eager anticipation through Ford, a fluttering feeling, that he didn't quite want, or know how, to name- clearly it was just some part of that 'adrenaline' thing he'd heard about, yes. That was it.)

Blue was unappreciative of Ford's stern look. "What? Some of us know how to have ACTUAL FUN here." Blue pushed his arms out in front of him in a stationary stretch that came across as almost a bit feline. "When you don't know, just ask," Blue told him next.

"I can figure out my own ways of having fun for myself, thanks." Ford told him, quite snidely.

"When was the last time you played DDNMD with the people here, ever?" was what Blue shot back at him next.

Ford opened his mouth and then paused. "...when Miz pulled everyone together and got a game going…" he realized.

"How long ago was that, along your own personal timeline?" was Blue's next question to Ford, propping his head up lazily in a fist again (while crossing his leg under the table and swinging it casually).

Ford sighed. "I… wow… I…"

"You've been being too no-fun." Xin told Ford gently. "I'm trying to help you with fixing that."

And Ford sighed, fondly. "Right, thank you for that."

"If they're bored, then you're boring," was Blue's (largely unwanted, and subsequently ignored) contribution to the discussion next.

And as Ford ignored Blue, he looked over at his lunch and realized it had gone cold. And the interns were taking this time to finally insert themselves into this whole discussion. "-Dr. Pines isn't boring. He teaches us all the cool stuff!" Terrence defended him. "Unlike Dr. Rasher who only calls on me to ask for a cup of coffee."

"...which Dr. Pines does sometimes too, but at least he also shows us what cool thing he's working on! Like that Carbon magnet thing," Estania added on.

"Carbon scrubber," Ford corrected automatically. Then he paused.

Ford turned to his Interns and blinked at all of this, surprised.

"Oh look, you seem to be changing lives here," was what Blue drawled out next, sounding almost bored as he said it.

Ford flushed. "Ah. I…" He wasn't quite sure what to say. Yes, he knew that he was teaching them, helping them grow and learn- and it made him so immensely proud of it all- and yes, Viola had continued sending him frog pictures and memes over the years after her internship ended, up until she was there at his door, as an applicant for employment-

He just hadn't really thought about it in that way before.

"Wow, you're really cute when you smile." Estania pointed out. Ford blinked. "Huh?"

"You've got this goofy, adorable smile on your face right now," Xin teased. "It's a good look for you."

Ford tried too hard to be serious, to act like he was some dignified scientist. In reality, he was a little nerd, and Xin loved that part of him. He really should show it more often. And Ford's blush when he registered those words just made him cuter.

The cafeteria was almost empty by now; lunch was pretty much over, and the people in the nearby tables, along with the interns, were all that remained (to listen in on the drama). It was around this time that Fiddleford, who'd been doing the rounds to check on everyone's work, and had noticed a portion of the staff missing, came in.

"Ugh, local Glasses," muttered Blue, glaring (out of principle alone).

"So THIS is where y'all are!" Fiddleford frowned. "I know the meatloaf today's a bit dry, but it shouldn't take you this long to eat-"

Ford sat up, having a bit of trouble turning to face his best friend, what with Xin pretty much in his lap, by this point. "Oh! F! I lost track of time and-"

"-ANARCHY!" Blue called out, standing up abruptly and pointing to the sky.

Everyone stopped and stared at him a bit.

"...wait." Blue muttered, "...wrong exclamation? Hm..." then though for a moment and brightened up again. "FOOD FIGHT!" the demon tried again next, waving both his hands around this time, with the same energy as before.

"Please don't waste the food." Xin piped up.

"...could be thrown food-for-cows, instead," Blue said next, trying to keep his little sister's preferences in mind.

"You want to feed the cows meatloaf?" Estania asked incredulously. (Blue blinked at this. "...Maaaaaaybe? Yes? No? Yes?") Xin cackled. "Feeding cows meatloaf? We'd be an abomination!" And a few people gave him a disturbed look at the wide grin he was sporting.

"We're not feeding the cows meatloaf. Or having a food fight." Ford said solemnly. He ruffled Xin's hair ("Uwweh!").

Blue rethought this a bit.

"...Grass fight?" the demon said with less energy, while still standing, on the rethink.

"We do have to weed the lawn…" Ford noted.

Blue grinned at this.

"GRASS FIGHT!" Blue yelled out at all and sundry who were gathered there, punching both fists into the air. "FIRST round for points: ACQUISITION! SECOND round for points: ALL OF THE THROWING WITH EXCELLENT AIM! -FIELD TRIP!"

The interns (and Xin) cheered. Ford found himself smiling, despite himself. A few of the other scientists nearby made to get up and leave, under Fiddleford's stern look, but Ford (seeing the grin on Xin's face) actually got up and went over to them. ("Feel free to join in." "Shit, really, sir?!" "Stanford!?")

"-You have ONE HOUR for the making of things for the acquisition," Blue continued on next, in something of an announcer voice, "And only TEN MINUTES for all of the actual acquiring on the plot of land to-be-specified! Quantity, quality, and speed will be tried! The obstacle course for all of the throwing-and-dodging of teams from all of the grassy-things that were-acquired will be a surprise, and will commence later this very-same day. -You have ten minutes to make your teams before the one-hour begins, startiiiiing -NOW!"

...And Fiddleford wasn't sure how things had come to this. Not five minutes later and, somehow, the 'game' as it were, the 'grass-fight' had already spread through the entire Center, and all the scientists were outside, forming teams and laughing as they ran around in the sun. And more than that, Fiddleford couldn't believe how he'd found himself out there as well, caught up in all of it and forming his own team, equipped with a modified farming-bot from his lab.

And then somehow Soos and Melody got wind of this and got involved. And Abuelita was seated serenely in her armchair, which was somehow out here, in the middle of the field, as some sort of referee or judge?

...Fiddleford just knew it was definitely the demons' faults. And he didn't know why Stanford had been actively going along with this, either. Yet despite his misgivings about everything here, he was able to take a step back and really consider it all. He didn't trust Blue, not one bit. But this… didn't feel like this was malicious… oddly enough. (Even when the demons talked about making more grass grow to get more ammo.)

...and with what was going on here, with the other workers bringing out their prototypes and talking so excitedly about field tests...

...and Ford leaned over, whispering to Fiddleford, "The demons are gonna cheat, so make sure to bring the flamethrowers." And Fiddleford realized that in the space of five minutes, everyone had all gone insane.

"Why are we listening to the demons?" Fiddledord asked him. "Have we all gone completely mad?" He was all for getting to test out his 'bots out in the open without anybody complaining at him about it - and he was tweaking the flamethrowers on the sides of this one, the moment Ford had asked that of him, as he went - but for the rest of the folks in the Center...

"We're having fun." Ford smiled. And he was… for lack of a better term, getting some bonding time with his staff. Something he'd always sort of wanted, but didn't know how to do himself.

"But what are the demons gettin' out of us doin' this, Stanford," Fiddleford asked of him next.

"Well, I think Xin finds this fun. And Blue just wants to get a rise out of you." Ford noted. If those half glares, half smug looks the older demon had continued sending Fiddleford throughout the whole thing so far had meant anything at all. (And given what this demon had been like so far, they probably did.)

"...sounds about right." Fiddleford sighed. "I'm still a little wary about all… this demon nonsense." Especially with the whole, alternate Bill Cipher thing. Yes, Sebastian was a good friend, so he knew there existed the possibility of a good Cipher- and for the most part… Fiddleford was giving Blue a little benefit of the doubt. He hadn't killed anyone, or convinced Ford to do crazy things like mutilate himself or such nonsense.

And Fiddleford had seen what Blue had done on the Island, to help out.

But, Fiddleford had also seen and talked with that other Ford that had come here with Blue. And not because he'd wanted to come with, either, Fiddleford had confirmed later from Ford. That alone was enough to set his knee jiggling.

"COMPETITION ANNOUNCEMENT! ADD YOUR TEAMS TO THE BOARD FOR REGISTRATION FOR PRIZES! THREE MINUTES REMAINING!" was the blue-and-black-haired demon's clarion call, and there was a soft but sharp 'smack!' of sound, and both scientists looked up to see that someone had dragged several of the rolling whiteboards out to the side, presumably with at least one eraser and very many whiteboard pens. 'TEAM NAME' and 'MEMBERS' were drawn at the top of each board.

...Which of course immediately set off a series of very intense discussions about the naming said teams across the entire grassy-green field.

(Though one or two teams just seemed to exchange a couple of wordless looks and nods, to march right up to the board and write up there a few series of alphanumerics like 'Team 1337', 'The-Cake-1$- -L13', or 'Answer 42'. Which both Ford and Fiddleford recognized immediately. ...Dear lord they really were all nerds.)

Xin and Blue were on the same team, of course - apparently called "Cipher Hunt". And Fiddleford found himself wondering about Ford's dragon friend. He was beginning to suspect something; it wasn't an unbiased thought. But Fiddleford wasn't sure how to bring up the question to Ford. (Those golden, rectangular scales the dragon had were… very… obvious, to anyone who knew and wasn't stupid enough to just… ignore…)

"What should we call our team?" Ford asked of him abruptly, and Fiddlefird sighed and said, "F to pay respects." Because he guessed they really were going along with the demons for now.

He watched as his old college roommate grinned at him, and then turned to jog off and over to the whiteboards for entry.

"Prizes," Fiddleford muttered to himself. Because that just sounded like trouble and a half, on top of more trouble.

Ford was exhausted, but it was a good exhaustion. (His heart had been racing all afternoon, and it had been FUN.)

He groaned slightly, as he flopped down onto the couch on the porch of the Shack. It had been a long, and rather disruptive day. Everyone had seemed to have fun, though. ...Well, except for Fiddleford at the end there, when Blue had tried to give away one of his deathbots as one of the covered-up prizes. It hadn't been two seconds after Blue had ripped off the large bed sheet that had been covering it (not that Ford knew where he'd gotten it from), that Fiddleford - and everyone else in the Center - had recognized it, and the Fiddleford had been off and running. He'd started chasing after the demon by the third second in. And he'd kept on chasing him, too, the two of them running around the entire field with Blue grinning and cackling madly all the way. (And they'd kept at it for awhile, until Ford had finally given up on the remote possibility of the matter resolving itself, and gotten himself up and gone over to intervene.) Ford has his suspicions at this point as to how Blue might have gotten it out of his lab, but…

Ford let out a sigh and scrubbed a hand across the front of his face. He smiled as he felt a familiar warm body plop down on the couch cushions, snuggling up right next to him. He raised a hand to wrap around Xin's and pull him closer, relaxing into the soft feeling of the asian man's embrace.

He was less than thrilled to hear a soft chitter and the thump of a cooler top closing, then another thump of a body sitting down on top of it, after. Ford cracked open his eyes to confirm that, yes, Blue had and was still here, and still hanging around.

"Think the more non-conventional, easier-to-operate ones can go to the island," was the first thing out of Blue's mouth. "'Candyland' and 'Haymakers' and 'Seventy-four'? The fast-growth ones should be good for the greenhouses out here, for anyplace the weather starts getting rough. The rest of the 'high-score'ing-winners, maybe talk to your Stanley. See which ones you can mass-produce with a few tweaks and sell to whom. Should be a market for those, for the usual farming suspects." Blue took a sip of his bottle of water to drink.

Ford paused, and then, "So you were testing my staff." He sort of knew Blue must have had some ulterior motive. And, "Everything's a test, right?" Ford stated.

"I was rating your staff, and you; your response and creativity under a little time-pressure, when presented with a problem you-all think you can solve-to-completion together, with the right set of people, because why not," Blue said to him in reply. "I was wanting you to show a little respect to your sometimes-in-residence sometimes-little harvest god there, for the topic of it." Blue gestured at Xin, who was curled up at Ford's side, almost half-asleep. "Usually I charge heavily, for this sort of thing. Team-building, and rating them, you know. Your project output was your buy-in this time. Priced on the cheap." Blue took another sip of his water.

"...thank you, then." Ford didn't like Blue, but he was getting a little more used to him. His condescending nature seemed to just be how he talked to people. Well, to anyone who wasn't his precious sister or any young children.

Blue eyed him a bit, taking his time to take another sip of water before he said, "...There a question in that head of yours there?"

"...still getting my thoughts in order." Ford admitted.

"Hm." Blue quieted, taking sips of his water intermittently, as he sat (lounged?) on top of the red plastic cooler like it was a throne. It looked like he'd been sweating lightly a bit, which was… odd. And made Ford feel a little like chuckling, though he wasn't entirely sure why. Just… the idea of a tired, sweaty alternate Bill Cipher? He never would have thought of it.

He never would have thought of a Bill Cipher that would actually give him time to think, when he told him that he needed it, either. But Blue was doing that, too.

"So are there any… problem teams? Who wouldn't… be good for group projects?" Ford asked finally.

"Depends on the stressors," Blue told him. "'Number-One' couldn't decide on a name, got testy when they registered too late for the prizes-eligibility. 'Trek Beyond' had the same issue of lateness. Did you notice the difference in what happened between the two groups?" Blue said to him next, in instructional tones.

"420 tried to argue that it wasn't fair, just because they were late. Almost started a fight because of it."

"Yes," said Blue. "But then they got down to it and tried their hardest anyway. Tried harder than most of the other teams there - do you know why?"

"Because they felt they were at a disadvantage and wanted to prove themselves?"

"Even though they knew they wouldn't be eligible for those prizes," Blue noted. "They were pissed off and tried anyway." Blue paused as he took a sip of his drink.

"Probably thought that if they won anyway, they could stop someone else from getting a prize, out of spite." Ford noted.

Blue shook his head. "No. They knew I wasn't going to change my mind on the giving-out of all of the prizes to only the top-rated eligible teams, going on down the list until all prizes or eligible teams were then gone, and you couldn't make me." And then the demon looked at him and said, "Do you think they would have done even half as well on their final device if they'd been able to be eligible, after whining? Or if they hadn't been late in the first place, instead?"

"...maybe. Maybe not." Ford rubbed his chin with one hand, petting Xin with the other. "Realizing they were late certainly riled them up."

"They weren't feeling driven to do well and win, until they got angry," Blue said. "They were fighting each other on the name up until the last minute. They were only aligned at the 'unfair', and they stayed aligned at the 'the prizes are probably a joke, we'll show them that we're better than them anyway, even if they get a prize and we don't'," Blue said to him next. "They didn't like working together before, they came together because the other groups didn't really want them, and they'll not want to work together again. But they did do much better work than most of the others. With the right stressors in place."

"You're correct in that." Ford agreed. "I will have a talk with them about the anger, though."

"Anger is fine; anger can be very useful, as long as it's directed and output correctly, in all of the most-useful sorts of ways," Blue said to him next, almost like it was a warning. The demon took another sip of his water. "'Trek Beyond' was more relaxed," Blue said, as if tabling discussion of the previous team, and now opening the other one up for discussion.

"Yes, they were more in it for the fun of the whole affair, rather than really competing."

"And they didn't rate very high on the point-scoring itself," Blue said, seeming to concur on him with that. "What did you think about what they came up with, as a solution to the challenge?"

"The vacuum to suck up the thrown remains of the other team's attacks to fire back out at people was pretty clever. Though they spent more time gathering grass, and needed people to shoot at them first in order to get the ammo they needed."

"And their entry for the cutting before that was also solid but middle-of-the-road as well, handling cutting the same areas better in gathering up all the scraps," Blue noted next. Then he said, "If you wanted to use those devices in a current farm setting, after the first pickup of work, how much material would both of those gather, for the time and energy cost of running them, each?"

"Probably not as much as something more geared and focused, but it would get the job done efficiently, nonetheless." Ford nodded along.

"Yes," said Blue. "And the components were all cheap; those could serve as an add-on, used after current technology rather than as an upgrade or full-in replacement," Blue told him. "That team grasped the larger application I was going for; they actually thought to come and talk to me, to ask me why I was running the competition the way I was like this in the first place; and they asked of me what it all was for." Blue looked at him over his water, as he took another sip. "They didn't restrict themselves to just the one hour; they didn't have to respect the deadline because they were not so concerned with the competition's final scoring, and kept working. They ran their own acquisition device second-to-last, as a proof-of-concept after almost-all of the other devices had been run instead. -Do you know how well they knew each other, before this competition began?"

"I… am unsure, I haven't spoken to them very much. Clearly I need to fix that."

Blue nodded once. "So did they. They recognized each other," Blue told him, "But they were awkward about asking each other's names. -Probably work in the same lab, but never directly worked with each other. They used this to better know each other, learn about each other. And now they do."

"I never made my staff do those team building, sit around in a circle and introduce each other-type activities. Always hated them, myself. They felt too forced and artificial." Ford noted.

"Run another challenge in a week or two, with completely randomized teams pre-selected," Blue told him. "You 'scientist' and 'engineer' types learn more about each other from having to work together than from any superficial forced 'interpersonal' communication. It's easier for you to start with something that isn't you or a piece of work you feel," Blue rolled his eyes, "Is an extension of you, one an idea you associate with YOU that you usually also-feel you have to defend, when it really-isn't."

"And everyone gets a chance to get their plans from proof of concept to working prototype, into a field test, together, with everyone else there to give feedback."

"In a 'positive' setting, where the people in the teams are expected to be working together, not presenting and defending their own individual project ideas or individual own 'self-as-a-being-of-worth' in a roundtable of being all destructive and 'judge'y." Blue rolled his eyes at this next. Then: "Be careful of those five in the 'Trek Beyond'. Anything you don't want anyone to know, they will be able to find-and-figure out; they all naturally try to consciously look at things two-levels-up more than you do, right now. Also, the 'Natty T-shirts' and 'Chocolate Star Clusters'. Those groups are trouble. -Not the good fun kind, either. Ask Xin, and check all the security footage."

Ford was jotting this down in his journal. "Alright… I will make a note for that." He glanced up at Blue, "Did you see them express something troublesome?"

"They are trouble. They didn't cause it today," Blue said. "Those people are too…" Blue pulled a bit of a face. "They are 'sheep'," Blue settled on finally. "Easily-subvertable. They are anyone-and-everyone-else's 'in', if they want 'in' to that Center of yours. They will not hold up under any outside pressure for long, if at all. Easy to be tricked, some of them, too. In my professional opinion. Easy to turn their minds all-round on them, for some of them, too. Not 'stubborn' in what they are thinking at all." Blue took another sip of his water.

"Ah, I think I see what you mean. Some of them have come to me to look over their work before, and seemed quite expectant about it." He had praised them, for what they'd worked on; it was only polite to do so. And they had done some good work before...

But then he shook that thought off. "Why are you telling me all this?" He frowned. Warning him of possible weak points in their staff. (Ford hadn't quite put together the next thought that Blue had been trying to imply, that Ford could quite easily manipulate those 'sheep', or that Blue himself would have chosen them for manipulation from the Mindscape, if he'd still been stuck out there in the Nightmare Realm someplace, trying to get in or otherwise get revenge on him for not letting him in.)

(Ford wasn't the sort who would think about using people like that. He couldn't place himself into that kind of thought process, from that sort of perspective.)

"How much time does my little sister spend there, around you and all of them, being himself?" Blue asked of him and... answered Ford with a question? Ford sighed.

"...on average, once every two weeks? He likes to come around on weekends, unless he's busy with something else." Ford noted.

"And what could they learn about him, if they paid attention to him, that could then be used against you or him by someone else next?" Blue asked of him next.

Ford opened his mouth- then felt like someone had thrown cold water over him.

"Is Xin supposed to be here right now?" Blue said next. "Is Miz? -How are they getting here, so quickly." Blue looked at him, as he leaned back against the wood of the porch banister behind him.

"They normally teleport here. Not that people know, I think they believe Xin lives in the forests, like the other cryptids in the area."

"But there are other people, where Seb lives, who 'know' very differently. A very different story. And pictures are easy to take, and then send, with timestamps attached, from those silly little easily-hackable cellphones of yours. -Now, who is more likely to have made what is obviously some form of teleporting tech. Some immigrant with no money? Or the famed and well-known Center scientist who likes having them visit." Blue then asked him, "Do you want the government to know about the existence of that portal device of yours? And would the government think twice about grabbing up another immigrant child or two as leverage on you to try and get their hands on it themselves?"

Ford hadn't thought about that, and now he was… worried. Worried for himself, for Miz's safety. For the government finding out about his device- teleportation, if he could 'test run' it with his brother's daughter- how easy would it be for him to have 'stolen' the children from the concentration camps- (because what made more sense? A dragon-god taking the children, or a scientist with a portal device defying the laws and breaking 'criminals' out.

Blue swirled the water in the bottle in his hand. "What would my little sister end up doing next, if they thought it was just a great idea to try and capture him then, and caught him up by surprise, by his ankles and wrists? What would my little sister do then, whether he means to, or wants to, or not." Blue took another swig of his water, letting Ford muse over that one also for a while.

"I won't-" Ford's throat was dry. The idea of little Miz being caught, grabbed, bound down- her frightened cries if such a thing happened- it made a rage burn inside him that surprised Ford with its intensity. No one was allowed to do that to her!

"She'll lash out and murder them all, you know," Blue told him. "I think they'll deserve it," Blue grinned, and that grin was pure Cipher, but then the expression fell back into something more serious again. "But Xin is worried about learning to enjoy killing people. And Xin-or-Miz might actually enjoy killing these ones. Child-kidnappers. Would he stop, just with them, after that?"

Ford shuddered, pulling Xin a little closer to him, the dragon was pretty much asleep, purring softly as he laid with his eyes closed and relaxed. At peace, trusting Ford to- to protect him-

"You aren't thinking things through enough," Blue said to him next, "Thinking through all of the outcomes, to stop all the ones you don't like." He lifted the bottle up, finished off the last of the water, then set the empty bottle down on the porch, and stood up.

"Ahhhhh," Blue said, with a slight smile, as he stretched both of his arms behind him, rising up onto his ties then bouncing back as he rolled over the balls of his feet. "Time to talk to Kari again, I think! All of just-one of the penalties; how very fun!" the demon chirped out half-brightly, yet all-sarcasm.

And with that, Blue turned and stepped away off of the porch, strolled three steps out until the yard, made a green portal and-

Blue was gone. The portal winked out not three seconds later.

And Ford was left sitting there, out on the porch there with Xin. Holding Xin protectively in his arms as he worried over the dragon's well-being. It wasn't just the thought of Xin or Miz killing people if they tried to bind them, it was the thought of them being attacked in such a way to begin with that had Ford's heart pounding in the beginnings of a panic attack. The very idea of them getting hurt just- he couldn't let that happen.

How could he protect them? How...

Well, first of all, he had to check his staff for who was trustworthy. Ford didn't even consider asking Xin/Miz to stop visiting, because no one could stop them from doing what they really wanted. Time stamps, locations, photos- Ford wondered about those Perception Filters Miz threw around so easily. Did they work on cameras? Wait, the barrier around the Center prevented Miz from using her full powers. So, no perception filter. Could Ford create his own scientifically? One that worked on cameras? He could see about placing it around the Center, around the town. Around Sebastian's house-

Maybe launch a satellite into space for the sole purpose of covering up, distorting video footage of the supernatural-

...people would notice the new satellite. He would need an excuse for it. Was there any other way he could get it up there without anyone else noticing? Without a launch? A way to send or deliver the structure right into the atmosphere without even needing to launch it would be… Ah. Could his portal device go that far up?

-Focus, Stanford. He had to get a perception filter device working at all to begin with.

He opened his Journal to a new page and started working. He'd found, that if he left a page or two in between sections, he could 'make' a new page to add to a previous section without issue. The new page would just appear as he wanted it to. It was a brilliant feature, and was the magical notebook fix to three ringed binders doing the same thing. It was useful, to have a magical journal with infinite pages. Ford wondered if William really knew how precious of a gift this really was?

So Ford scribbled away, making calculations about light and illusionary tricks of the eye, to come up with a working perception filter for Xin's protection. He had to. He must-