"STANLEY!" Ford's shout echoed through the Shack; it was strong enough to metaphorically shake its foundations. He stomped about the place, trying to find his brother, first in the living room, then in the small study they shared for the summer. Finally, he saw the man poking his head out of the bathroom, toothbrush in mouth. "Stanley, I told you to get rid of the damned thing!"

Stan raised a pair of bushy eyebrows. "Get rid of what?" he said through a mouthful of toothpaste foam.

"You know what!" Ford said. "The poster! It's back on the fridge! Soos's grandma keeps giving me the stinky eye because of it."

"Wha? Didn't you shred it?"

"I did." Ford frowned. "Wait. You didn't put it up, did you?"

"Nope. I wouldn't put it twice in the same place, y'know. S'more fun to make you search for it, isn't it?"

Ford narrowed his eyes at him; Stan had not put Ford's thrice-cursed wanted poster on the fridge, but he seemed guilty of a far graver crime. "…how many copies did you make, Stan?"

Stan shrugged, making a dismissive sound.

"How many copies, Stanley?!" Ford passed a hand through his hair, groaning loudly. "If this continues, by the end of the summer Mrs. Ramirez won't even want to talk to me!" Already she tended to glare at Ford as if he murdered puppies on a daily basis. It was irritating, to say the least.

"I 'unno," Stan said with another exaggerated shrug. "The kid might have started to make more copies as well. Who knows?"

"The kid? Now you're roping some poor innocent youth in your inane shenanigans?!"

Stan snorted. "As if this one ever needed my help for that. You shoulda seen some of the stuff she did all on her own."

She. That greatly narrowed the list of culprits. It had to be Wendy. Stan's ex-employee—and the past target of Dipper's preadolescent, precocious crush—had become a bit of a thorn in Ford's side as of late.

"Why would Wendy even do this?" Ford said with a frown. "What did I ever do to her…?"

Rather than answer, Stan burst into laughter, slamming the bathroom door in Ford's face.

Ford stuck out his tongue at the closed door. He was almost disappointed that Stan was not responsible for this idiotic prank. It was no trouble to deal with Stan's stupid antics; he had years' worth of practice, after all.

Wendy Corduroy, however…

Well, she was a whole nother story.

To tell the truth, Ford still didn't know why she had joined their weekly campaign.

At best, the girl showed him the utmost indifference. At worst, she was flippant and disdainful. Ford suspected that she still harboured some resentment for how he'd treated Stan last year. Wendy enjoyed having a laugh at the expense of her grumpy ex-boss, but every time Ford poked fun at his brother, she jumped to his defense with a quip directed at Ford. He expected he would never see eye to eye with the girl. They simply just had nothing in common.

But Dipper and Mabel loved her, worshipped the ground under her feet, and so Ford felt he had to include her in their game. Still, Wendy remained somewhat of a mystery, spending most of her time with her eyes glued to her phone screen. In battle, her answer to every problem was, "I bash their head in." Outside of battle, her strategy was very much the same. Her response to being betrayed by a long-time ally was, "Wow. Who didn't see that coming?" Wendy lounged in her chair, gangly limbs dangling over the armrests, and yawned loudly when the gods had beseeched the party to join them in their fight against evil. And when she and the rest of the group finally faced the diabolical lich who had kidnapped the king, causing all of their current troubles, she was faking being asleep, letting out not-so-gentle snores as the villain was making his epic speech (and that had stung, since it had taken Ford all night to write the damned thing).

Ford endured her insolence with gritted teeth. Not even a year ago, he would have chewed her out for her childish behaviour, but now…

Well, in only a few weeks summer would be over, and the girl would go back to school, while Ford would return to his home on the sea. If Stan could put up with her insubordination, then so could Ford. He'd always been the more patient of the two of them, after all.

So why, by the Dice Gods (he knew that they existed; he'd met two of them in the Gambling Dimension), why did the sight of her smirk make him want to scream like a madman frothing at the mouth?

Tonight the party was lost deep inside an evil forest, in search of the members of an evil cult that had been kidnapping villagers for nefarious purposes. After getting lost in the thick of the woods (prompting Dipper to exclaim, "I knew I should have rolled a ranger! We never know where we're going!'), they stumbled upon an ancient oak tree planted in the middle of the courtyard of a moss-covered ruin. Inside the tree was the figure of an old man—a grumpy druid who was slowly losing himself to this arboreal transformation.

Ford cleared his throat, making his voice more gravelly as he asked, in the druid's not-so-dulcet tones, "'Who dares to come into my hallowed forest abode? Who fouls this sacred land with the taint of their own steps? Who, I say, who?'"

"Chill, dude," said Wendy. "Are you an owl or something?"

"An owl—" said Ford, momentarily taken aback as his brain puzzled out her words. Next to him, Mabel giggled, while Soos let out, "Nice one, dood!" With an irritated noise, Ford continued, "'Leave, trespassers, leave! This forest does not take lightly to strangers trampling about…'"

"We should be cautious," said Dipper, "try to avoid a fight—"

"He's a tree," said Wendy, "and I have an axe. Problem solved."

"Oh," Ford said, trying not to smile too wide, "do try, I beg you…"

"Wendy, we shouldn't—" Soos began, while at the same time, Mabel cried, "C'mon, we shouldn't be fighting!" But Wendy's voice came first, and she said, "I swing my axe at the jerk."

Of course she managed to hit her target; the druid was unmoving, and Wendy's tiefling barbarian was a deft hand with that axe. Soos, Mabel and Fidds protested weakly, while Stan shrugged and said, "Eh, guy had been asking for it, really."

Again, Ford had to hide his smile behind steepled hands. Good, he thought. Perhaps the kid could learn a thing or two about actions and consequences.

"Sap burst out of the wound," he narrated, "as thick and dark as blood. Yet the druid does not cry out. His eyes, pale as a lake in winter, stare at you, and you realize that he is, in fact, quite blind."

"I continue to chop him down," said Wendy, with an irritating amount of nonchalance.

"C'mon, Wendy," said Dipper with a sigh. "Don't be a murderhobo…"

"Hey, he started it. We just wanted to pass through his forest, we weren't looking for trouble or anything."

"Wendy," said Ford, "you feel something twisting around your ankle. Around both of your ankles, in fact. Roots are coming from the ground, growing quite rapidly. You feel yourself being dragged into the ground…"

Her party members reacted with suitable dismay, save for Stan, who only shrugged and said, "Eh, she was kind of asking for it, really."

"Wendy, what do you do?" asked Ford.

"What else can I do?" she said, snorting. "I continue to chop."

Ford fought the urge to scowl at her. She was as stubborn as Stan! No wonder they got on like a house on fire…

"Wendy, the ground is swallowing you up," he said. "Literally. The forest is about to make a lunch out of you."

Dipper's wizard and Mabel's bard teamed up to drag Wendy's character away—to no avail. They simply weren't strong enough. Stan's fighter/rogue embarked on a sudden journey of self-discovery; he had apparently discovered the healing properties of impromptu meditation. Soos's paladin cried, "I'll save you!" but, alas, as always the dice gods were not smiling upon him, and he fumbled his roll, getting tangled up as well in the roots springing from the ground. Fidds tried to soothe the druid with a 'cheerful song to put a spring in yer step'—but he was an artificer, not a bard, and his charisma stat was utterly abysmal. His performance was so bad that the druid screamed in anguish, trying to smash Fidds' banjo to smithereens with his roots.

Among this chaos, Wendy's barbarian remained oddly calm, swinging her axe again and again. Technically, she was in a berserker rage—not that you would know from Wendy's role-playing. Using axes in both hands—and making attacks twice per turn—meant that she was whittling down the druid's hit points—quite rapidly. Ford hadn't expected her to do so much damage; this had not been an encounter they had been supposed to win. He had expected them to run away from the druid, and then find out he was the head of the evil cult they were trying to stop. But his rolls were abysmal, while Wendy was obviously favoured by the dice gods. It was infuriating.

"The druid had had enough!" he finally declared. "You feel the wind fluttering around you as he transforms into a giant eagle and takes to the sky! Roll me a dexterity check to see if you miss the swipe of his talons."

To Ford's delight, Wendy missed her save, and the eagle snatched her, bringing her into the air. Dipper and Mabel cried out in dismay. Stan was yawning and scratching at his nose. Wendy, however, did not even look up from the screen of her phone.

Ford could barely contain his glee. "The eagle flies higher and higher above the forest. From this height, the trees are tiny, barely bigger than broccoli stems. The druid means to drop you to the ground —a fitting end, he thinks, for such an insignificant nuisance."

"I try to get out of his talons," Wendy said, blasé as ever. To Ford's irritation, she managed to save on her Athletics check. It did not matter; that pain in the ass character of hers would soon be dead anyway. "I climb over the eagle's back."

"And?" Ford prompted. "What do you plan to do?"

She met his gaze with piercing green eyes. "How big is it? That dumb bird-man, I mean?"

Ford frowned as he checked his notes. "It's a large creature. Quite bigger than your average eagle."

"'Kay," she said. "I grapple 'im. Make a Strength check, old man."

Ford had to hide a scowl. Wendy's character was insanely strong. As expected, the poor eagle stood no chance, and the tiefling barbarian soon had her muscled arms wrapped around his feathered neck.

"So," Ford continued, "you grapple the eagle and—"

"Its speed goes down to zero," Wendy cut him off, "and it falls from the sky."

"I'm," Ford sputtered, "I'm sorry?"

"He's only a large creature, so I'm big enough to grapple him. And grappled creatures have a speed of zero. So, yeah, big boy should be taking a nosedive right about now."

Ford opened and closed his mouth in quick succession. "That… that can't be right."

"Yeah?" Cool green eyes narrowed. "Why's that?"

You could hear a pin drop right now. Soos slid out of his chair, muttering that he needed to take care of the laundry he had hung out to dry before it started to rain (which was odd, as they had been promised good weather for the remainder of the week). Fidds removed his glasses, pinching the bridge of his nose and muttering something like, 'unstoppable force meeting an immovable object'.

Ford huffed, not about to be intimidated by a mere teenager. "I'm sorry, young lady, but who is making the rules here?"

Wendy cocked her head toward the pile of books standing precariously by Ford's coffee mug. "Whoever wrote these, I guess. You're always harping about following the rules and stuff. Why would it be different now?"

"That…" Ford said, "that can't be a rule, not really."

"Dude, I know I'm right, I read your stupid rulebook front to back." Wendy held her phone up, no doubt hoping to show him something.

"What's that?" Ford said, squinting at the screen.

"I downloaded a PDF version of the damned thing."

Ford knew a dozen languages, most of which were not even spoken in this dimension, yet her words were nothing but gibberish to his ears.

"She found a scanned version of the rulebook on the Internet," Dipper explained hastily.

"I didn't know you could buy digital copies," Soos mused out loud.

Wendy snorted. "Buy? What kind of sorry schmuck d'you think I am?"

Ford looked at her in horror; she'd sounded entirely too much like Stan. His brother only grinned wildly at her.

"Why did you look for a copy of the rulebook?" Ford said, still baffled.

"You know how to be a good troublemaker?" Wendy drawled. "Learning about how the world is run. It's easier to fight the enemy on their own turf, using their own stupid rules against them."

"Atta girl!" Stan said, raising his fist. Wendy gave it a lazy bump.

And thus the secret leader of a cult of crazy cannibals was killed by going splat on the ground, while Dipper cast the Feather Fall spell on Wendy's character, saving her from suffering the same ignominious end. The storyline that Ford had been oh-so-carefully preparing for over a week ended with a whimper before it could even truly begin. The group cheered at that conclusion—but Ford could only gnash his teeth. To make things worse, both Wendy and Stan turned to him, shooting him the same smarmy grin.

Meanwhile, Ford could only hold his head and think, despairing, Oh great. Now there are two of them.

Later that night, as Soos enthusiastically waved Fidds goodbye while the twins hounded Stan about the party they wanted to throw at the end of summer, Ford sought out his new teenage nemesis, feeling they needed to clear up a few things. The girl had been about to depart for her own home—reluctantly, it seemed, from her grim expression. Ford vaguely remembered Dan Corduroy as having been intense and difficult to bear even as an adolescent; he expected the past thirty years had done little to tame the man's wild instincts. Ford wondered what kind of relationship the girl had with her family—and if that factored into the fierce loyalty she displayed toward Stan and the twins.

Wendy was sitting on the porch, putting on a pair of rather dirty steel-toed boots, when Ford finally approached her. She looked up at him with bored green eyes—touched with a hint of wariness. Ah, there it was, the natural animosity directed toward one she perceived as an authority figure. Ford had felt it at times, though at her age he had been too meek to outwardly show his scorn, instead relying on Stan's naturally rebellious spirit to get by. It was strange to be on the opposite end of this dynamic—strange, and a bit unpleasant.

"Good evening," he announced himself, standing beside her with his hands clasped behind his back. "Did you enjoy the game tonight?"

She shrugged; of course she shrugged. "Eh. It was alright, I guess."

One of Ford's eyes twitched. A wiser man would have ignored the hidden barb, but he was a Pines, goddammit, never one to back down from what could be perceived as an insult to one's pride. "If you hate it so much," he said, taking care to keep his tone neutral despite the challenge in his words, "then why come back every week? Why play with us in the first place?"

That was met with a raised brow. "Who said I hated your nerd game? I grew up in a place where you can find gnomes and fairies in the forest. Can you blame me for not being impressed when you make wiggly hand motions and pretend to be a wizard?"

Ford gaped at her, before awkwardly clearing his throat. "Well. That wasn't something I had considered, truly."

"I mean, no offense. I don't even know you that much, man. I'm here for Dipper and Mabel. I just wanna spend time with them before they hafta go home to California."

Ford blinked. And here he was, thinking that he'd never have anything in common with the girl. "Funny. We play for the same reason, then."

"Yeah?" she said, quirking a brow. Her eyes were a little livelier. It was obvious she genuinely held Dipper and Mabel in high regards. It almost drew a smile out of him. Almost.

Ford nodded. "In the end, people play for all sorts of reasons. It's my job as Dungeon Master to make sure everyone is enjoying the ride."

"You're doing a great job." When Ford looked at her in surprise, her freckled cheeks coloured a little, and she turned her gaze away. "N-Not that I would know, anyway. First time playing 'n all… you could be a really crappy DM, and I would have no clue, really."

That did prompt him to smile, and he was amused to see her scowl deepening. "Thank you for being honest with me."

For a moment she was silent, then she more or less muttered, "Sorry for being such a pain. I'm trying to get better at that, I am. And I'm having fun, just so you know. For real. It's like having the perks of being a troublemaker without the looming threat of detention. Or juvie." Wendy smirk returned full force as she added, "Talking of criminal pasts… nice wanted poster, by the way."

"What?!" said Ford. "Where… I just took it down!"

"Nah, Stan made another copy. The old fart put it in the bathroom. Dude's proud of his big bro, I tell ya."

"Goddammit!" Ford exclaimed, stomping back into the house. "Stanley, I told you a thousand times—!"

From behind, Wendy only laughed out loud.