This chapter was hard. The episode is mostly backstory, and I didn't just want to write "A Tale of Two Stans" in dialogue formation, so I tried to focus on the Mystery Crew's reaction to the story instead, as well as how their relationship with Ford will diverge from canon, since they're not related to him, which is something that will certainly be coming into play. I hope you enjoy!

"Finally, after all these years." Stan smiled, walking towards the man who was apparently his brother. "I finally got you back!"

He went in for a hug. He got a punch in the face instead. "What the hell was that for?!"

"This was an insanely risky move, restarting the portal," his brother snapped. "Didn't you read my warnings?"

Stan waved him off. "Yeah, whatever. How about a thank you for saving you from what looks like some sort of sci-fi sideburns dimension?"

"Thank you!? Why would I thank you, after what you did thirty years ago!?"

"What I did!?"

Mina watched, still somewhat in shock, as the two men argued. "Okay, so, gonna admit, I didn't expect this."

"Who would?" Izuku agreed faintly, watching the bizarre scene play out in front of them. "So, all this time, Stan was trying to save his brother from another world? His brother, who is apparently the author?"

Shouto looked even more shaken than the rest of them, to the point that it had Mina worried. "Well, it would explain why the mention of being stuck in another world caused him to decide he was fine with taking us in," Shouto mused. "His brother doesn't seem too happy about it, though."

"Should we… stop them?" Ochako wondered. The Author currently was holding Stan's arms behind his back.

Wendy and Soos, both looking just as befuddled, shrugged.

Awkwardly, Mina stepped forwards. "Um, hi! Hello! Stan, Mr. Author. Mind telling us what's going on here?"

The Author blinked, letting go of Stan and adjusting his glasses. "Stan, you didn't tell me there were children down here."

"We've been here the whole time, you just didn't notice us," Shouto pointed out.

Stan sighed, pinching the bridge of his nose and glancing back up at his brother. "It's complicated." He gestured at Soos and Wendy. "Those two are my employees. The kids are from some other world. They accidentally portaled into my kitchen a couple months ago, and have been staying here since."

The Author blinked again, looking down at them curiously. "You're… from another world?" He frowned, suddenly far more suspicious. "And you portaled into my brother's kitchen?"

As if sensing the building tension, Izuku jumped forward to placate the man. "It was totally different from this portal! There's this villain in our world named Kurogiri who can make portals, and he attacked our entire class, and sort of sent the four of us here, probably by accident. There's no world-ending stuff to worry about with how we got here. Although maybe you might know about that since you're the author of the journal we found and it seems like you know a lot about portals…"

"Well, he did build this one," Ochako said, nudging Izuku slightly. He coughed looking embarrassed, and she turned back to the Author. "Speaking of which, maybe we could compare portal notes later? Figure out how to get home without worrying about…" She trailed off, then gestured to the mess around them. "All this."

The Author seemed to process all of this. "You've read my journals?" Izuku nodded, handing over Journal 3. He flipped through him. "And added a lot, it seems. It's practically a scrapbook."

Izuku winced. "Um, sorry?"

"Don't be! It's very detailed." The Author tapped his chin, looking interested despite himself. "A world with a "portal villain", you say? The way you said it implies that villains and people who can create portals are common in your world. That's fascinating…"

Mina smirked at Izuku. "Wow, he's just like you!" Izuku laughed a little.

"A-Anyways." He cleared his throat. "I'm Izuku, and this is Mina, Ochako, and Shouto." He gestured to each of them in turn. "And we can totally get to talking about our world later. But first, maybe we could talk about what just happened?"

"Which would especially be nice for Soos and I," Wendy chimed in. "Since we just work here."

Soos nodded solemnly. "I have fanfics riding on this, Stan. I'll be very disappointed if they don't align."

The Author gave him a weird look at that, but turned back to his brother. "Yes, I have some questions about all this myself, Stanley."

As one, the rest of them turned to Stan. Ochako was the first to speak up. "Stanley? I thought your name was Stanford."

The Author froze, then turned to Stan. "Wait, you took my name!? What have you been doing all these years, you knucklehead?"

Shouto frowned. "So Stan is actually Stanley, and the author is Stanford? What do we do about names? We can't call them both Stan."

Stan jerked a thumb towards his brother. "Call him Ford, everyone does. Or Poindexter, that works too."

"No, it - whatever." Ford shook his head. "You know what? There'll be time for more introductions later. First, Stan, are there any security breaches? Does anyone else know about this portal?"

"No, just us," Stan insisted. There was a pause, as everyone but Ford gave him an extremely flat expression. He shifted under their gazes, crossing his arms and looking away. "Also, maybe, the entire US government."

"The what!?" Ford rushed back into the other room and turned on the periscope screen - it seemed there really was a camera hidden in the totem pole. On it, they could see that the agents had returned, and had surrounded the shack.

Agent Powers was standing on the porch, yelling out orders. "Fan out! We're not going anywhere until we find Pines and those kids!"

Ford returned from the other room, six fingers massaging his forehead. "It's alright. This is fine. It'll take them a while to find this room - long enough for us to come up with a plan."

"And hear about that previously mentioned mysterious backstory?" Mina suggested. "Like Stan said, we've been living here all summer. Soos and Wendy have been working here for longer. Like it or not, we're definitely involved in all of this."

"I trusted you," Izuku said quietly, and Stan flinched. "So, maybe you could repay that by telling us?"

Stan sighed, holding his hands out in front of him. "Okay, okay. I know I have a lot of explaining to do. It all started a lifetime ago. Nineteen sixty-something, Glass-Shard Beach New Jersey. We lived with our Ma and Pa in the Led Paint district above the family pawn shop. Dad was a strict man - tough as a cinderblock, and not easily impressed. Mom was a pathological liar, which served her well as a phone psychic."

"Did she ever actually get tested for that?" Ford wondered.

Stan shrugged. "Dunno, but it was obvious to anyone who met her, wasn't it?" His brother made a small noise of agreement and motioned for him to continue.

"Then there was my nerdy twin brother Stanford." Stan motioned to the Stanford in question. "As if his abnormally high IQ wasn't enough, he also had a rare birth defect - six fingers on each hand. Which might've explained his obsession with sci-fi/mystery weirdness." Ford didn't confirm or deny that statement. "As for me, I had what Mom liked to call… personality." At this however, a small fond smile appeared on both of the older men's faces. "But as different as we were, we were the perfect team. And every day, we'd wander the beach, looking for adventure…"

"So that's why you called it the Stan-O-War!" Everyone turned to look at Izuku, Stan pausing in his narration, and he blushed. "Um. I mean, your fishing boat, you called it the Stan-O-War. I guess we know where that comes from, now."

"Oh, that's right!" Soos agreed, his eyes widening. "I'd totally forgotten about that."

"I didn't even notice," Mina admitted.

Ford looked at his brother curiously. "You called your fishing boat the Stan-O-War?" Despite the hostile tone he'd taken with Stan the entire time, there was something almost longing, peeking out underneath all the frustration and anger.

Stan side-eyed him. "Yeah, I did. So what?"

"...Nothing. Continue."

There was something almost achingly familiar, Izuku mused, as he listened to Stan describing the bullies they'd encountered, how they had mocked Ford for being different. Being bullied for being different was something he knew all about, and it had immediately struck a chord with him.

Would things have been different, if he'd had a sibling who was there for him like Stan was for Ford? But then again, clearly they didn't get along now. Something had obviously gone wrong down the line. And considering the glances they kept shooting each other when the other wasn't looking, it was something that had cut deep both ways.

"Those were the good times," Stan admitted. "Those bullies may have been right about us not making any friends, but when push comes to shove, you only really need one. Ford's brain seemed to get more impressive every year, and so did our pet project. Sure, I got into my fair share of trouble…" He shrugged. "But when you brother's the smartest kid in school, you've got a leg up on the competition."

"You cheated off me a lot," Ford agreed dryly.

"Did you actually need to, though?" Izuku wondered. The two men turned to look at him, and he smiled nervously. "I mean, you fixed this portal all on your own, and you didn't have two of the three journals until a couple weeks ago. That's got to take some smarts, right?"

"It's a very complex piece of machinery." Now Ford was looking at his brother, curiosity and surprise flitting across his face.

Stan huffed. "Well, it took a hell of a long time, I can tell you that. Had to teach myself engineering and quantum physics from those books you left. Thought my brain would turn to mush at the beginning."

"But you did it!" Mina pointed out. "Not many people can just teach themselves quantum physics. I know I couldn't."

"Yeah, Mr. Pines, that's pretty impressive," Wendy agreed.

Stan seemed to flounder at the praise, clearly unused to the idea of being called smart. Izuku felt a pang of sympathy. "Yeah, well. Uh. The future was looking bright for us. Until one day…"

"So, it was an accident?" Ochako clarified. "You breaking Ford's machine. You didn't mean to do it."

"I didn't, but the damage was already done." Stan looked over at Ford, who was grimacing at the memory they'd just related, how the college had turned their backs on him. "You can imagine things didn't go so well when we got home."

Shouto frowned. "Hold on. Are you sure this "West Coast Tech" was actually a very good college? If they really were scouts for such a prestigious institute, shouldn't they have realized that the reason the machine wasn't working was because it had been tampered with, and waited more than half a second before writing you off?"

There was a pause. "I… hadn't thought about that before," Ford admitted, looking like someone had just shifted his entire worldview. "Looking back on it, it did seem strange, but at the time, I was mostly just devastated. I haven't been in this dimension for a long time… I wonder what West Coast Tech is like now."

Soos brightened. "We should look it up when we get out of here!"

All of them took a moment to look at the periscope. The agents were still running around looking for them, but clearly hadn't made any progress.

Mina coughed. "So, back to the story?"

Stan winced. "Right…"

"He threw you on the street?" Ochako sounded furious, and Mina couldn't blame her.

Soos was equally outraged. "How could he? Just for that, and when you didn't even mean it? I mean, other Mr. Pines, it wasn't cool how you just left him like that, but at least you had an actual reason to be mad."

Ford scoffed. "What Stan said about how dad would only let him back if he made millions was his reason." His lip curled. "I was a meal ticket to him, nothing more. He wasn't upset that I was hurt, he was upset that he lost the potential fortune he could've pawned off of me."

Stan looked completely unsurprised. "Yeah, that sounds like him."

"It was still pretty awful of you not to help him," Mina told Ford. Sure, she never really had any expectations for who the mysterious author was, but learning he did that to the guy who had taken them in… it was kind of disappointing. "I mean, I get that you were mad, but that's pretty far, isn't it?"

There was a long pause, as emotions seemed to waver in Ford's face. Finally, he sighed. "No, you're right. I was angry, and scared that if I spoke up, Dad would kick me out too." He turned to Stan. "I am… sorry about that, Stanley."

Stan blinked, obviously surprised. "Wow, huh. Didn't expect you to apologize, that's for sure. Would've been nice if you'd done it before punching me in the face earlier."

Ford scowled. "That punch was completely deserved. "Don't get me wrong, I'm still furious at you for opening the portal. The warnings are there for a reason - it was pure luck that you didn't destroy everything and everyone with that stunt. Getting me home wasn't worth that."

"It was to me," Stan countered, unrepentant. "And it all worked out just fine, didn't it? Less than a one in a million chance than you thought it was."

Ford opened his mouth to snap back, but his eyes drifted to the periscope, and he sighed. "We will discuss this later. We only have a limited amount of time right now. Let's just… keep going."

And… Ford wasn't wrong about that either, Mina could admit to herself as Stan told them how he got into the business of sales, fake IDs, and skirting the law. It had been extremely risky. Stan had been confident it would work, and it had, but what if something had gone wrong?

This whole thing is a mess. How do we even fix something like this?

Could they fix things? Should they? Mina wanted to help, of course! But was it even really their place? Then again, they had so many questions to ask Ford, and after everything Stan had done for them, and knowing he'd done all this for his brother, even though they were estranged, she couldn't feel too angry at him.

"What about you?" Ochako asked Ford. "How'd you get to all…" she waved an arm around the portal room, "...this?"

Ford frowned. "Well, West Coast Tech essentially blacklisted me from all of the other colleges I applied to, so Backupsmore University it was. In a place like that, I had to work twice as hard. Luckily that's what I do best - I went from undergrad to PhD three years early, wrote a thesis that was nationally ranked, and was awarded a grant for my own scientific research. But what to study… my whole life I'd been teased for my six fingers, but it got me thinking about anomalies, things that were odd, statistically improbable. And there was one place with a higher concentration of these things than anywhere else."

"Gravity Falls," Shouto surmised. Ford nodded.

"I headed out there pretty shortly after…"

Shouto listened as Ford described the anomalies he found, the flying eyebats, floating cliffs, and gnomes they had seen before in the journals. He listened… and wondered.

"I had finally felt at home," Ford admitted. "But one question nagged at me: where did all the anomalies come from? It seemed to me that the answer must lie outside of our world - a dimension of weirdness leaking into ours."

"Oh, just your friendly interdimensional being, hoping to finally chat with another lost soul."

Was… he talking about Cipher's dimension? Did Ford know about the triangular being? Should Shouto ask? What would happen if Ford knew? What would happen if he didn't? Shouto almost missed Ford start to explain his plans to build a portal, lost in his thoughts as he was.

"So you and McGucket were college buddies then?" Ochako said at Ford's latest statement. "Huh, I guess that makes sense. He did imply that he knew you pretty well."

Ford perked up. "Oh, you've seen Fiddleford recently? How is he? Last time I saw him…" He trailed off, and everyone else minus Stan exchanged glances. Shouto could guess exactly what was happening when Ford had last seen him.

"Yeah… that got worse," Wendy said. "But, I think he's getting better now, at least."

"What happened with the portal that terrified him so much?" Izuku asked.

"Well, when the time had come to test it…"

They listened to the disastrous test run, and Shouto frowned. "You kept going with it anyways?"

"I know, I should've listened to him." Ford ran a tired hand across his face. At the time I was… well, let's just say I wasn't exactly in the right state of mind either. And it certainly didn't get better the further I went. I was in over my head, and needed help."

"No kidding," Stan snorted. "That's when you sent me the postcard telling me to come. So I came, and found a decaying cabin surrounded by barbed wire and radioactive waste, and when I knocked on the door, this knucklehead slammed it open, pointed a crossbow at my face, and demanded to know if I had come to steal his eyes."

"Ouch," Soos sympathized. Ford winced.

"Ouch is right," Stan agreed. "And things didn't get much better from there…"

"And so the Murder Hut was born, and later renamed the Mystery Shack. Finally I found something I was good at. For once, being a liar and a cheat paid off. The old me was dead, and I faked a car crash to prove it. By day, I was Stanford Pines, Mr. Mystery. But by night, I was down in the basement, trying to bring the real Stanford back." Stan shrugged. "Then you four appeared in my kitchen, and we all know how things have gone from there."

"That's…"

What could Izuku say to that? What could any of them say to that?

"I'm… sorry we didn't believe you," Ochako said quietly.

Stan didn't seem too bothered. "That's okay kid. I probably wouldn't have believed me either."

"So what now?" Wendy asked. "We're all caught up, but we're also still stuck down here while the feds are looking for us. It won't be too much longer before they find the vending machine door."

"And even if we chase them off, they'll just come back," Soos agreed.

An idea struck Izuku. "Not if they don't remember that they're supposed to be looking for something in the first place. What about the memory gun? We know it can be used on multiple targets at once."

"There's a lot of agents out there, though," Shouto pointed out. "Did we even bring it down with us?"

Ford blinked. "You have a memory gun? I brought one down here to study before I fell through the portal - it must still be down here somewhere." He moved into the other room, looking through the cabinets, before pulling the gun out. "I never thought I'd actually use it. My goal has always been to acquire knowledge, not erase it."

"If we don't use it, the only knowledge we'll acquire is that of what the inside of a top security prison looks like," Stan pointed out flatly. "I'm perfectly fine with avoiding that. How to we erase all the agent's memories?"

"We just need to amplify the signal to a radio headset frequency." Ford plugged the gun into the periscope, put something in the gun, and turned back to them. "Everyone, plug your ears and get down, now!"

Izuku covered his ears and ducked as some sort of nose seemed to come from the periscope. In a moment it was all over, and the agents on the screen were all looking confused.

"Ford, can you bluff to make them leave? You look all science-y and badass with that outfit." Mina gestured at them. "Just tell them to hand over any files and USBs they have on the case, or something."

Ford blinked. "USBs? Never mind, must be some new technology here. Uh, sure, I can do that." They watched as he strode out of the room. A Minute later, he was on the screen, commanding the agents with ease.

Stan whistled. "Wow. Never knew he had it in him."

"Guess we're all full of surprises," Izuku offered, watching the agents leave and trying very hard not to think about how many laws they'd broken in the past twelve hours.

Today started off with illegal fireworks on the roof. How did it end up like this?

At least they weren't in a government facility getting experimented on.

"You know, I feel like way too many days this summer I've just gone home and faceplanted in my pillow to think about my life choices," Wendy mused, as they all left the basement. "This is definitely one of those days. Catch you guys later."

"I'll head home too," Soos agreed. "I still can't believe there are two Mr. Pines now. My brain's gonna need some time to process all this."

They waved the two off, and Mina turned to the rest of them. "Hey, you think any clothing stores are still open at this time? Ford's outfit is badass and all, but I bet he's gonna need more than just the one set of clothing."

"That would be nice," Ford agreed with a small smile. "Thank you kids. I'm sure my brother and I have a lot to talk about." He glanced at Stan, who rolled his eyes.

"Yeah yeah, sure, here you go. Get anything that would fit me, it'll fit him too." He handed them one of his debit cards, one Izuku knew was a throwaway. "Now get going. Ford and I definitely need to talk."

"You think we'll be able to ask him some things when we get back?" Izuku wondered, as they made their way towards the town. "I have about a billion questions, and most are about the portal. The rest are about all the things we've seen so far. And there's two more journals filled with things we probably don't even know about yet."

"It is kinda late, so it might have to wait until tomorrow." Ochako shielded her eyes from the sun, which was starting to set. "Plus, he just reunited with his brother. I think the two of them should get some time by themselves."

"They don't seem to get along well, do they?" Mina pointed out. Then she winced. "Not that I don't get it. After that story…"

The four of them fell into silence, pondering what they'd heard. Abruptly, Ochako started laughing. "Sorry, it's just… our life is so crazy now, isn't it? We just set off illegal fireworks, got arrested and almost taken to a government facility to be experimented on, broke out, found a doomsday device, let the doomsday device open, and then reunited the guy who took us in with the author of the journals who might help us get back to our home in another world. That's… it's crazy."

Izuku pondered this, and found himself chuckling along. "You know, it really is." Then all four of them were laughing, even Shouto, who was snickering under his breath.

Their life was crazy. Somehow, that was okay.

"You know we're supposed to be buying Ford clothes, right?" Shouto said, raising an eyebrow.

Mina pouted. "Aw, come on! It's just one little thing. And it's really pretty, don't you think?"

She held the necklace up for him to see. It was a rainbow shooting star charm, hanging on a thin golden chain.

"It does look nice," he admitted. "But you really should use your own money for this."

Her eyes sparkled. "I kicked a federal agent's car door off the car itself, and you apparently turned half of a federal agent's car into metal butterflies. Using some extra money is nothing compared to that.

Shouto considered this. "Point." Stan wouldn't be too mad, all things considered. In another isle, he could hear Izuku and Ochako debating how many colored sweaters to get, considering Ford had come through the portal in a black one.

In the end, they paid for the clothes, Shouto helped Mina put her new necklace on, and they headed home.

Inside, they could clearly hear the two men still talking. "Guess we should skip the questions for tonight," Izuku murmured. The other three gave their muted agreements, and they moved past the door the two men were behind, Izuku setting the clothes down next to it.

On instinct, however, Shouto paused for a moment to listen.

"...When this summer is over, you give me my house back, you give me my life back, and this Mystery Shack business is done, alright? I now have thirty years of a criminal record to my name because of you, this is the least you can do."

"Fine. But you'd better help those kids get home in any way you can, understand? As far as I'm concerned, they're more like family to me than you are."

A lump in his throat, Shouto moved quickly to catch up with his friends.

More like family, huh?

Stan wasn't the only one who felt that way. Somehow, during the past few months, home had become the Mystery Shack rather than his childhood house, and while Family still meant Fuyumi and Natsuo, it also included his friends and Stan.

What would happen to that, when they finally went home?

And now Ford has officially joined the Shack! What adventures await our intrepid Mystery Crew, now that the author himself has returned? We'll find out soon!

To those who did leave comments last time, thank you so much, I loved them! I hope you all enjoyed, and seriously, if you liked it, please leave a review, let me know what you think. I wish I could be the kind of author who can just churn out chapters regardless of reader input, but it's so much harder to write when so few people are leaving comments.