Ford switched from the drill to marking the next spot with a ruler and pencil, hearing steps close by stopping directly on the other side of the door. He tried to ignore it. Then they knocked.
The first instance he'd been worried. The second or third, he'd sighed before answering. Now, though, this was just getting tiresome. "If this is a noise complaint you are only impeding your own cause by interrupting my progress. Now..."
An exasperated, but familiar voice, came from the other side. "Ford, ya mind?"
He paused, setting down the rule and pencil briefly. The doorknob jiggled and Ford checked through the peephole to actually see Stanley pulling out his key. He pulled aside one of the locks he'd already installed and stepped back from the door to let his brother inside.
"What the hell are you even doing?" Stan asked, shutting the door behind him and glancing about. He quickly spotted the newly installed lock and incomplete set of holes drilled beside the door frame. "Huh."
"Installing security measures."
Stan looked back to him raising an eyebrow. "Did you install a booby trap too?"
Ford let out a breath. "Locks," he said plainly, "for when someone tries to break in."
"You're sounding really sure about that." He said, moving away from the door.
As soon as he did, Ford went back towards it, rechecking his marking. "We're in a city with a population of ten million." He paused for a moment. Nearly four hundred times more than Gravity Falls. Ford let out a breath, and took the moment to drill into the door with a loud whir, pulling the drill back out again after a few seconds.
"So you're uh... you're actually staying?"
The question seemed to come out of the blue, but he continued installing the chained lock to the door. "Well, of course I am." He answered.
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Ford continued, simple and factual. "I'm not leaving anytime soon, Stan."
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There was almost an odd silence, Stan knew that, but his mind was struggling to actually think of something in response. The longer the words hung in the air the harder it seemed to be to think of anything to say to them.
Eventually, Ford paused to look back at him. "What?"
Stan shook his head. "Uhh, nothing. I just thought you would be rushing to get back."
Ford gave a short bitter laugh before focusing again on his work. "No, why would I? It's just... a town."
Stan shrugged, his eyes wandering and spotting all the papers and books Ford had already scattered on the kitchen counter. Ford was paranoid, sure, but you don't install locks at a place you're only staying at for a week or two. A quick glance to the couch was an unfortunate reminder.
"So uh hey," he started, "I don't really have a guest bedroom or anything here." This wasn't exactly a two story shack with a basement. Before the regret up bringing this up with no real solution could creep up over him, Ford started to talk.
"Well, of course not. You're living in an apartment in the middle of the city." He said as though it were obvious. "I can take a spot on the floor or the couch."
No huff of air with Ford saying he would have to find somewhere else. No indignant glare at the idea of being set up on the couch. Stan hadn't even gotten to the point of trying to offer it in the best words possible. Stan cleared his throat. "I mean, yeah, take the couch. It's gonna be a lot better than sleeping on the floor. There's a couple spare blankets in the closet you should use too."
Ford screwed a lock securely into place. "I'll be sure to grab some when I go to sleep then."
"Are you? Going to sleep, I mean."
He paused what he was doing, and it took him a few seconds to say anything. "If I get tired."
Stan took a breath to say something, but held it. He already felt like his night had already dodged a bullet with the whole bed situation, and you know what? Ford had slept during the car ride. He still had to be tired, but the whole dream demon sleep possession deal could be dealt with tomorrow, right?
What was the harm in Stan letting himself get some sleep then talking to Ford about everything else when he woke up?
He let the breath out again, mind made up. Definitely was gonna take a shower first though. Wiping yourself off with wet paper towels at gas stations only did so much - something he was pretty sure Ford hadn't even tried, if his BO after burying that journal was anything to go by.
"Doesn't bother me if you stay up, but, seriously, take a shower, Sixer. Full offense, you stink."
Ford looked back over at him. "Well - You know, I'm not the only one that hasn't showered in the past four days."
"You're right, but I don't stink as bad as you, and I don't know when the last time you showered was, but I bet you it's been a lot longer than when I did."
Ford opened his mouth and shut it again, visibly thinking something over, taking longer than just a few seconds.
"Oh god, you're actually trying to remember when you last showered, aren't you? You know what," Stan put out both his hands, shaking them, "if you gotta think about it then I really don't wanna know."
Ford scoffed at him, gesturing with the power tool in hand. "I know I took a shower sometime in the past month, Stan, I just can't quite remember when."
"There is no way you could possibly have phrased that any worse than you just did."
Ford took a long moment, and eventually gave a large shrug. "Well, I'll take a shower tonight."
Stan snorted. "Good." He started to turn and walk away. "I'm gonna take one, then hit the sack."
Ford rolled his eyes, as he went back to installing the final lock. "Good night, Stanley," he called, without turning back around.
A grunt, then: "Night, Ford," made him smile slightly as he heard Stan close himself into the bathroom. He'd probably take his own shower shortly after Stan got out so he wouldn't forget. Possibly he'd wait until he started to have a hard time staying awake.
Then again, he wasn't by the portal anymore, so it wouldn't be the literal end of the world if he took a nap. Suddenly, a chilling thought struck him clean through.
What if this made Bill mad?
Now that he was miles away from the portal, Bill wouldn't be able to activate it by possessing him any more. Which, of course, was a good thing. It meant that the worst possibility was out of the way. However, Ford still had to deal with Bill, and there was no way he was lucky enough that Bill would just leave him alone now. Before now, Bill had been making his life hell just for the fun of it . Sure, his goal was to activate the portal, but he believed he could do it no matter what Ford did so he never got frustrated. Now that there was no way Bill could get back to Oregon without Ford waking up and stopping him...
He stopped wringing the handle of the power tool as soon as he realized he was doing so.
...Who cared if Bill was mad? Let him be mad, it didn't matter! He could do whatever he liked, but Ford would never willingly go back to activate the portal.
All Ford had to worry about now was getting Bill out of his mind. Who knows, maybe the answer was in the very books Ford had already brought back from the library! He'd just spend the night reading, then take his application back to the university in the morning.
He could always take a nap later on when he didn't have something to do... Just whenever the opportune time arose for it.
Eventually, Ford did get tired, so he took a shower. It didn't help his body feel any less sore, but it helped wake him up a bit. Then he went back to reading.
He started to drift off sitting on the couch, though. So, he opted to read the books off of the kitchen counter. Then when he started catching himself tilting off balance even while standing, he decided there was no better time than the present to submit his application.
Ford made sure to quietly close the door after himself as he left the apartment. It was still dark as he left the building itself.
Well, just because it was the tiniest bit too early for anybody to be at the university didn't make a difference. All the better, if anything. The application would be there when the faculty arrived and after a walk out in the cold he'd be able to continue reading through the books.
The bitter cold of the city helped to wake him up within the first minute. The minute after that, he wished he'd brought gloves. Soon enough though, he'd made it to the campus and slipped the application through a mail slot for the appropriate personnel.
Now he could finally stuff his hands into the pocket of his coat without worrying about losing the papers to the wind.
He took his time walking back through the peaceful campus, coasting on the breeze. With nobody else out, it reminded him of back when he used to go to school. It was rare to be able to walk through a campus with nobody else around, and t made sense for it to be this empty before the semester had started.
During his Summer courses at Backupsmore, there were only a handful of other students so the campus felt as empty as the times in between semesters. Ford would leave libraries and labs at all kinds of hours, but there had only been three instances when he saw someone else out that late.
He let out a slow breath. It was peaceful.
This campus itself was rather pretty too. Certainly better than his own had been.
Ford continued on enjoying the calm, but soon stopped as he saw movement aside from the familiar swaying of tree branches - three figures near the doors of a building ahead of him. He slowly walked to stand by the edge of a short brick wall, watching them curiously.
There were no farms near Gotham... so why was someone in the middle of the university dressed like a scarecrow?
The pair with the costumed man didn't match him, being dressed instead in suits. Then Ford saw the distinct handles of a bolt cutter in the hands of the one, and heard a clank as something fell to the ground. The man placed the bolt cutters back into a large dufflebag before the three went inside.
What was going on?
After waiting for a moment, Ford lightly jogged towards the building, reading the black sign beside the door indicating it to be the Chemistry and Physics building. Laying beside the door itself was a padlock, as he'd expected. Large, simple - and with its metal ring messily cut, of course.
Ford held his breath as he carefully opened the front door, grateful that it made no noise. As he padded inside and shut the door behind him, he could hear the group's footsteps echoing down the hallway.
He crept after the noises in the dark, keeping near the wall as he went. When he heard a door opening, he hurried to the corner in time to see them going through a set of doors and up a flight of stairs on the other side. He went to the doors and slipped through quietly, gently pressing the door close after himself. Still hearing them going up the staircase, he went to the railing and looked up through the thin space separating the multi-level stairwell.
Someone was using the railing as they walked up the steps, gloved hand coming in and out of view every time it moved back to hold onto the thinly painted metal. He stayed down on the bottom step, keeping track of the hand.
Passing the second floor... Third floor...
Another set of doors was loudly pushed open, and Ford climbed the stairs as the noise from the doors echoed in the stairwell. Once he reached the third floor, he could hear the warble of a voice from down the hall.
Peeking out the doors, he saw no one, so he carefully closed the heavy door after himself before continuing after the voice, trying to catch up enough to properly hear him. He could hear talk of leaving or something possibly about directions, then a definite mention of 'Gothamite police.'
Some paper on the ground made his foot slip, and he stopped, holding his breath.
The man continued talking though, not pausing for even a moment.
Ford picked his foot up off the paper and continued in careful, albeit slower, steps. He checked around the corner and stopped, waiting for the group to move around another corner before turning down the hallway himself.
Just as Ford was considering himself lucky enough to have remained undetected, the footsteps he'd been following stopped. He quickly glanced at his surroundings in the middle of the hallway. It was dark, but that alone wouldn't hide him forever. There were rooms, sure, but he wouldn't know if the doors were unlocked until he tried them.
He was starting to take a couple half steps back the way he came, just to be safe, when a loud banging of a door echoed over and over in the nearly-empty hallways.
Ford quickly continued to the corner. He looked just in time to see a double set of doors closing after them down the hallway. A light from inside the room flickered on, shedding light through the doors' windows and shining out onto the smooth waxed floor.
He continued down the hall towards the room, pausing a few feet away to read the placard. Thankfully with the light he had just enough to see this was... 'Lab 318.'
... Huh. Alright, well just because it wasn't specifically labeled as the 'Highly Contagious and Deadly Diseases Lab' that didn't necessarily mean Lab 318 wasn't used for examining such diseases.
He let out a careful breath before silently moving closer towards the doors of the lab. Through one of the small square windows, he could see the lab inside.
It was quite an advanced lab for a seemingly generic university building. There were several high top benches, each of them with the same set of no-doubt expensive technology. All of that, however, was being perfectly ignored in favor of the large chemical refrigerator in the back of the room.
There were two relatively larger men in suits holding onto duffle bags and a third man who from this distance was now undoubtedly wearing a scarecrow outfit. He had hay coming from out of his sleeves and a large-brimmed hat atop his head. An almost-unnerving detail was that instead of make-up he wore a sack over his face. Besides some possible stitching at the corners of the mouth, Ford couldn't see any details with the frustrating angle the man had taken as he directed the muscle with him.
At the very least, the man in the scarecrow costume wasn't bothered with any pretense of keeping quiet. He freely listed off various chemical compounds, occasionally pointing them out when he saw them so that one of the men would grab it.
"No, no, no! The Bufotenin is to your right , Anthony."
"Uh, sorry, Boss."
As he continued to list out what seemed to be a mentally prepared list, which he even proceeded to repeat, Ford focused on keeping track of them himself and committing them to memory.
Some of them were rather basic components for most chemical experimentation, but most were oddly specific. Judging by his list, he was creating something pharmaceutical, but what exactly, Ford didn't know.
There was no telling if he was putting all of this into one product or multiple ones.
He was leaning towards the later option, but he realized most of that could easily go into one. It would create a truly terrifying cocktail of a drug, though, considering the ingredients.
A pale yellow blur in the corner of his eye caught Ford off-guard and he quickly turned to look. At the nearby intersection of hallways there was a beam of light carefully sweeping straight down the perpendicular hallway with a slight bounce. He could see it getting brighter as the source was approaching the corner.
Ford stepped away from the light and urgently made to take quick stock of his surroundings for some place to stay out of sight. Unfortunately, after looking inside the well-lit room for so long, his eyes had to adjust back to the dark again. All he could see was a small radius of the hallway that the light from the room illuminated, then, past that, the vague shapes and lines of the hallway.
The moving light grew gradually brighter.
In less than a dozen seconds it would come around the corner.
Focus . The lines of the walls were straight, with no sections cut away even for a water fountain. One hallway had someone coming down it. The other- Ford quickly checked behind him and immediately realized it was too far. He wouldn't make it without getting spotted even if he ran flat-out.
The doors, check the doors. He moved towards the closest one, which was another set of double doors on the other side of the wall. He was already trying to open the doors even as he saw the expansive space of a lab through the small windows - a locked lab.
He quickly moved to the next set of doors, only ten feet away from him. The door jammed with a set of dull clacks. Locked .
His hands slipped off of the cold handles as he fearfully checked both directions, a slight pounding in his ears.
He was only ten feet from the occupied lab, and significantly farther than that from the hallway intersection behind him.
A supply closet-! Nearly twenty or thirty feet further away.
Ford didn't even try to calculate if he could make it inside before the unknown person would turn the corner.
He sprung towards the small door as the light continued to bounce in his peripheral. He grabbed for the handle before he'd even stopped in front of it. As he turned and pulled the handle, his shoes scuffed on the ground in front of the door. There was a familiar, unsympathetic dull clack as the door remained shut.
The light in the corner of his eye brightened, then disappeared almost entirely. With his hand still on the handle, Ford looked back down the hall. There, at junction of the hallways, was someone with their flashlight currently pointed down the opposite way.
As soon as he saw them, the light swung 180 degrees in his direction.
Ford slowly let the spring of the door handle put it back into its previous position, stuck as the circular light slid up the hall towards him... then stopped as it reached the light pouring out from the lab. After a short pause, it continued back down along the other wall.
As they started to approach, the light stayed close to their feet, swaying with their steps.
Why... The light- of course. In a completely dark hallway, he would have been spotted immediately. However, compared to the bright light from the lab, he was harder to notice in the dark and even further away from them.
Ford stayed still regardless, only very slightly changing his stance as he let go of the door handle. He may have gotten lucky in not being noticed so far, but if he moved, that could be it. He persuaded himself that his best bet was to be as still as a statue. Even still though, he couldn't help edging backwards slightly as he heard every footstep as the person got increasingly closer.
Their flashlight clicked off once they started to get close to the lab, and without the glare he could finally see more than just a figure. It was a woman wearing what he could only assume was the Campus Security uniform.
"Hey, who's in there?!"
He couldn't move. She'd see him.
She moved with a purpose and a a focused frown towards the lab's doors. Just as she was about to reach them, though, her eyes seemed to pick up on Ford and she stopped a foot or two short. Oh no... Ford took a couple of half steps back, his heels lifting off of the ground.
Before he could run, one of the doors to the lab swung inwards, grabbing his attention. It also grabbed the attention of the security guard who looked over in time to be met with a large cloud of red gas shot into her face. She coughed and closed her eyes, stepping away as she tried to wave away the gas.
As she was coughing, the door fully opened, light pouring out across the floor with a long shadow in the middle of it. Stepping out of the frame of the door was the scarecrow man, evidently holding no weapon.
The guard blearily blinked, her eyes open again, faced towards the man. As she opened them, though, they widened suddenly and she dropped her flashlight to the ground. "No, n-no, there's too much smoke, I can't-" She coughed again, weaker than before, "can't breathe!"
She looked around the hall, backing up on suddenly shaky legs. She choked on her words, but her voice was still as clear as it was before. "It's burning.. Everything's burning...!"
With a hand, she reached up to her own throat, the other hand splayed out ineffective at her side. And- And for as much as she looked around, she didn't look back at Ford even once despite spotting him earlier. Not to mention her odd focus on the cold walls around her.
Pulling her shirt up over her mouth, the guard turned to run back down the hallway she'd come down, almost falling once on the smooth floor as she ran.
The disguised man laughed to himself, watching her flee with glee.
Ford was hyper aware of the chill in the air now, and without thinking about it he started to take creeping steps backwards.
What was that? What was that ? An aerosol, obviously, but he already knew that. Something hallucinogenic. Possibly something to do with the chemicals the men were stealing? It would certainly fit considering the list had quite a few chemicals with hallucinogenic properties. How highly concentrated was it though to have such an instantaneous effect...?!
His mind wound back to the present again when the man called into the lab, gesturing at the pair inside with a hand.
"Hurry up, you dolts, we've spent long enough here already."
He set a clawed hand on the door that had remained closed, and checked down the hallway the guard had ran.
Then he looked back in Ford's direction, and paused.
Ford didn't register the moment he'd apparently turned around and sprung from the spot he'd been standing on, because suddenly he was running. In one instant he was paralyzed, and the next he was already moving. Feet pounding, head pounding, heart pounding. His sight was one of the few senses that wasn't being disrupted by the pounding. It was hard to separate the noise from the feeling itself and thus the entire thing was suddenly blending into a jumbled mess.
He ran around the corner, and although he couldn't see it yet he knew the set of doors near the end of this hallway were for the stairways. Even still, there was a short pang of relief once he saw them.
As Ford pulled open the door this time, he let it slam shut behind him and ran down the steps.
Between his own slamming footsteps and the clanging door the stairwell became a swirling cacophony of noises all around him, making his head spin. He used the railing to swing himself around at every platform he reached, unwilling to lose his momentum even if it made him dizzy and he couldn't tell which direction was which. He didn't need to as long as he kept his hands on the railing.
He swung off of the final platform and could see the bottom of the staircase, but his legs gave out from underneath him before he reached the floor. With a hand already on the rail, he caught himself from falling though his mind certainly didn't seem to think so.
He weakly clung to the railing with his arms as a wave of nausea hit him and was rolling him over despite the grip he knew he had on the metal bar that couldn't be moving. He panted heavily against the railing, feeling the moisture his own breath was already creating on the cold metal. He leaned his head forward enough to press against something solid and tried to anchor his world back to that again so it'd stop moving as he worked to bring his stumbling feet back under himself again.
All the while the pounding kept going, and Ford felt certain that may very well have been his headache acting up.
Going down steps could be dizzying if done wrongly, he admitted, but even still he shouldn't be having this much trouble. Along with that he shouldn't be feeling this drained of energy already. Then again, maybe he should. He'd been sore since he dug the hole for the journal, but he'd underestimated just how exhausted his body actually was.
He hadn't rested very much since then either. His naps near the end of the car ride had been restless and inconsistent. He had also spent most of the night standing as he worked. He let out a particularly shaky breath.
That's why his legs had started to buckle. Or it could have just specifically been the lack of sleep.
Ford ran a hand through his hair which was soaked with sweat. Wait- when had he last had water again? Or food?
Somewhere above him, he could hear slight noises and his body kicked back into action with his mind lagging only a couple seconds behind. It didn't matter the specifics of why he was having trouble, he'd just deal with it later.
He stumbled back down the few final steps and immediately pushed himself out through the stairwell exit and into the freezing air. The cold air was a shock to his system which, though it caused him to falter and lose a grasp of his surroundings for a few seconds, was well worth it. The winter air was a relief against his overheating skin and it cleared his head of some of the dizziness.
Only now did he spared a glance back to check for pursuers, before continuing to jog away from the building. He had a fair distance away from anyone now, so he just had to keep quiet enough to stay off of the radar without getting caught again.
He didn't know what the nearby building was, but he cut through the grass around it, and once he was on the other side, he slowed down to a walk. Ford caught his breath, continually looking over his shoulder and every which way. The pounding in his ears had to be his headache acting up.
Before even ten seconds could pass, Ford saw red and blue lights moving off to his right. His heart sank with dread as he realized they were definitely heading into the campus.
Oh no. No, no way. He couldn't get involved with the police. Especially not something like this where they may very well try to hold him. He wasn't going to be trapped for something that he wasn't even a part of.
Ford started jogging again, keeping an eye on the lights and what he could now belatedly tell were sirens in the air. He broke out into a run rather quickly once he realized that, dodging around buildings so there was no possible line of direct sight.
He spotted figures somewhere off to his right at some point, and only continued running until he was a block away from campus. Even despite having gotten rather far away, Ford continued to keep watching around himself. Outside of the campus there were no patches of grass to cushion his feet, and the steps on the hard ground were starting to hurt.
When Ford had his head turned to look across the street, he ended up falling onto the sidewalk and scrapped his palms with a stinging pain that made it harder to think. Admittedly, he hadn't been thinking very thoroughly the past ten minutes now.
He pushed himself off of the cement and now kept to a jog. Running outright was suspicious. At one point he had to pause for a few seconds to let some godforsaken car go by before crossing the street.
He had to keep going. He could already tell if he actually stopped even for a breath that he may not be able to get back up to this speed. He had to get back to the apartment as soon as he could. Now, though, it wasn't because of the possibility of the police.
The bigger issue that Ford was realizing now was that his body was exponentially weaker than usual. He had easily ran much farther than this back in Gravity Falls on multiple occasions. The fact that his body had been having issues before even reaching the bottom floor back at the Chemistry building was very telling. Frankly, he didn't want to think about just how extremely vulnerable he was right now.
He went back to a run again, but very quickly found that he couldn't keep it up for longer than ten seconds at a time before his lungs started to burn and he got tunnel vision.
Ford felt like he'd gotten a breath of fresh air when he saw the apartment building. He fumbled with the key to open the building's door, feeling an immense sense of relief as he shut it behind himself.
He stumbled back a couple steps looking outside before turning and continuing to the staircase... which he now had to climb up.
Ford made it to the first landing, shaky, but fine. By the time he was almost to the second landing, though, it was as if his legs knew they were close, and thus decided to practically give out altogether. He had to liberally use the wall to push himself up the steps, the second half of the journey taking nearly unbearably long.
By the time Ford reached the fourth floor, his knees were buckling at nearly every step and every few inches took concentrated effort. It took him several attempts to get the key in the door, his hands shaking beyond his control. Shutting the locks on the other side of the door was actually easier than unlocking from the outside had been. He stumbled to the couch, gripping the arm and allowing himself to slowly fall to the cushioned seat.
Staring up at the ceiling, Ford realized a couple things. One, the world was still tilting even now, though it was very slight. Two, his breath was incredibly hoarse as he took shallow breaths. Then finally, it appeared he had spots in his vision which, he supposed he must have missed in the dark of night.
Ugh, his entire body felt like it was made of lead molecules right now.
That's okay... he would get up in a little while. The adrenaline had already ran out of his system though, and now that he was certifiably somewhere safer the exhaustion nearly put him into a deep sleep.
That thought alone made him start with a realization. If he fell asleep then there was a possibility he'd see Bill.
He was in no way prepared for that. Not whatsoever. He wasn't. He needed a few minutes at least. Just another few minutes, please. Even just one minute, he'd take one minute.
In a renewed desperation to stay awake, Ford shifted in an attempt to sit up, but his arms barely budged with all his effort. There was a spike of fear with the lack of control over his body, and he was immediately ashamed of the knee jerk reaction.
For a dozen seconds or so, he strained to keep his eyes open using his last conscious seconds to mentally prepare himself. It'd... be fine. There was no portal. It'd be fine... it had to be fine.
.
.
.
.
The distant sounds of the guard's feverish get away left him with a lingering smile as he looked down the now empty hallway. He turned to check the other way as well, and there near the wall was a man wearing a trenchcoat.
He'd expected the possibility of a guard, but Jonathan was admittedly surprised to see someone else, and couldn't help pausing. Nearly as soon as he had looked over, though, the man had quickly raced off, disappearing around the corner.
For the briefest of moments before the man had turned, Jonathan could have nearly sworn that he had looked like Oswald's recent right hand, Stanley.
AUTHOR NOTES:
Thanks again to Rain the Revenant for proofreading because I get too excited when I finish a chapter and end up missing stuff.
Speaking of which- This is kind of the case regardless because I got excited, posted on a03, THEN realized a much more interesting direction I could have gone in the second half of this chapter. Can't pull back a chapter once it's posted though- still p frustrated with myself bc this would have been a GREAT spot for the first scarecrow/ford interactions.
Anyways! :D Scarecroooooow - I can't tell you all how happy I am that we're actually getting to where I can introduce the villains and start up the interactions with them.