I am so, so sorry it has taken so long for me to post this next chapter, but I have a viable excuse: for some reason my doc manager wouldn't let me post. I still don't know what the issue is, but I finally tried it again today and thankfully, here the chapter is.

Enjoy.

The first day of the competition dawned with the brothers Pines standing in the clearing, in front of two large golf carts which had been decorated with a number of protective spells and wards, and had large red question marks painted on the roofs (an extra decorative touch on Stan's part).

Both of them had dressed up to the nines for the occasion: Stan had used some of his unicorn gold to actually buy himself a tailor-made black suit, complete with scarlet bow tie, and slicked his hair back off his forehead. He was also still wearing the fez, which had been brushed and cleaned to perfection, making him look like a rich carnival barker.

Ford, on the other hand, went with a nice dress shirt and slacks and (despite-or perhaps because of-Stan's opinions) a wine red sweater vest, all under a long brown trench coat-fortunately the weather had cooled down enough that he wasn't in danger of having a heat stroke. His own mess of curls had actually been combed as neatly as he was capable of, and he'd remembered to shave and trim his sideburns today. Tucked in his pocket were notecards to help him remember the lines he'd carefully rehearsed, and under his arm was a spare journal filled with useful notes about the doings and history of mankind.

The two men were decidedly not looking at each other as they waited for the group of tourists to come.

"Guys, come on!" Dan, who was standing next to the golf carts, said for the umpteenth time. "This is stupid! If you really wanna settle your differences, do it with something MANLY-like arm wrestling, or a caber tossing competition! There's no need for any of this!"

Neither of them even acknowledged him.

Dan sighed, and rolled his eyes.

"I'm gonna go split a few trees into firewood with my bare hands," he muttered, stalking off towards his truck.

No sooner had he driven off than a crowd of unique creatures came out of the woods, many of them species that neither of them had ever seen in Gravity Falls Forest before. Stan looked gleeful, probably pleased that the word about these tours appeared to have spread. Ford just adjusted his collar and went over his lines in his head again as his brother stepped up to greet them.

"Welcome, ladies and gentle-tourists, to the Tours of Mystery, where you can unlock the secrets of humanity by observing real live humans in their natural habitat! Who's ready ta have their minds blown?!"

A blonde woman standing at the front of the crowd, wearing a pair of sunglasses perched on top of her head and a whole lot of aqua eyeshadow, burst out laughing.

"Oh man, you're a riot !"

Stan's mouth widened in his "oh man after all this time I still got it" grin. "Anything for you, gorgeous!" he told her with a wink; she simpered and giggled. Just for an instant, however, Ford thought he could make out a flash of mandibles in her mouth, and stifled a smirk.

Stanley has no idea what he's getting himself into flirting with her kind.

"And over on my left you'll see Dr. Mystery, the dumbest smart person that ever lived!"

"Hey!" Ford protested, glaring.

"I'm just callin' it like it is, doc." Stan's smile was unrepentant. He looked back at the crowd. "He's gonna be givin' the other tour today, so if you'd just form inta two groups, please-one's gonna go with the boring tour, the other's gonna go with me !"

Ford whirled on Stan. "Or, to put it another way, if you come with my tour group you'll be on the one that will give you genuine, factual information!"

The group, probably thinking this was all part of the show, laughed. But they did start splitting up and getting into the two separate carts.

Ford stood by his cart, waiting as the various monsters entered his cart, accepting their payments as they climbed in.

And then his blood ran cold as his final passenger approached: an ancient birdlike woman (literally, her arms were wings with clawed hands at the ends, and her feet were webbed like a duck's), still handsome and straight-backed in her old age, and peering down her hawklike nose at him.

"I look forward to your little presentation, Stanford," she said, her accent faintly Greek and clipped, and still enchanting despite the disdain behind it.

Ford groaned inwardly as the grandmother of the siren he'd briefly dated climbed into the cart, sitting in the seat right behind his.

Great. Just great.

Ford really did not understand Parthenope. The whole time he had dated her granddaughter, she had made her disapproval of him quite clear. But she seemed to view his breaking up with her as even more of a personal insult, regardless of it being a mutual thing for them.

"Eleni is doing well," she said icily as he drove towards the town hall.

"That's good, Ms. Parthenope," said Ford with an inward sigh (the sirens did not have surnames to speak of).

"She says she's thinking of going to the Gulf of Mexico for school this fall, instead of the Mediterranean as we were expecting."

"Mmm."

"I suspect outside influences have affected her judgment; she never acted out like this before she dated-"

"THE TOWN OF GRAVITY FALLS was founded in 1842, supposedly by a man named Nathaniel Northwest. My research, however, has led me to the conclusion that he was not the true founder, but I have yet to discover who he replaced or why the truth has been covered up." Ford parked, and removed some of his notes from his pocket, ignoring the old siren's outraged stare. He cleared his throat, and began reading from them.

"Part of my suspicions come from some of Gravity Falls's more absurd laws and precedents, such as the 'Finders Keepers' law, in which anyone who possesses a legal document corresponding to a property can claim legal ownership of the property. As unstable and greedy as Mr. Northwest was, as exemplified by his death by attempting to eat a tree, I don't think-"

"What's that mean in English?" called a voice from the back; several others laughed.

"...If you can get ahold of the deed for a property, even by theft, then the property is yours."

"Sounds good to me!" the same voice boomed; by turning around Ford saw that it was a large manotaur with a bone through his nose and muscles the size of cantaloupes. "My bro Mascular told me about this place where they have tons of magic Idiot Boxes-can we go there so I can take the deed for it?"

"No!" Ford snapped. "Those are not Idiot Boxes, they're called televisions! And I'm not going to assist you in stealing the deed for the store!"

"But you said it was legal!"

"That doesn't make it right !" He stuffed the note cards back into his pocket, seeing that the opportunity to teach them some of Gravity Falls's history had been lost. "Next we're going to visit the library!"

The rest of the tour was more or less the same. The manotaur kept arguing with him that he should show him where the electronics store was because he wanted easy access to Idiot Boxes, until Ford finally drove to a barbecue restaurant and let him get some ribs to shut him up. And then of course everyone else wanted some ribs too, and he had to keep track of what everyone took so he could secretly pay the owners back later.

There were members of the group who asked honest questions about the human world, and seemed genuinely interested in things like how electricity worked, or how humans got along without magic, but most of them seemed to be bored out of their minds at his explanations (he actually saw several of them falling asleep while he was describing the invention of the lightbulb).

And Parthenope's scornful commentary in his ear the whole time didn't help at all.

By the time Ford drove back to the forest and the tour group departed, he was mentally and physically exhausted from being around so many people.

He leaned his head against the steering wheel with a sigh, feeling a headache beginning to blossom.

I need to up my game if I ever want to beat Stanley.