Stanley asked for help: PTA 2

Monday (day 15)

The PTA, Ash the gardner, and Stanley stood in the classroom, surrounding the puzzle box Ford had buried under a rose bush next to the school playground.

It was a small box with 12 gems surrounding the word "unlock." Stanley identified the gems as Beryl, Citrine, Jade, Kunzite, Lapis Lazuli, Moonstone, Nephrite, Opal, Pearl, Topaz, Unarovite, and Vanadium Beryl. Beryl was at the top, going alphabetically clockwise, with each gem at one of the 12 clock points. Further examination revealed that they could be pushed down like buttons.

"Ok, does anyone have any idea on how to open the thing? I dropped out of high school, so how about the smart people in the room figure this out."

Anna shot Stan a dirty look.

"Don't put yourself down, Stanley. You're smart, you identified the gems on your own. None of us could have done that."

"She's right."

"I didn't know half those gems existed."

"There are two kinds of beryl?"

Stan smiled at the group, before turning to the person that said the last one.

"Gemstones are crystals made entirely out of one mineral, which includes beryl. For example, emeralds are made out of beryl, as well as aquamarine. The biggest differentiator between types beyond composition is color. As such, emeralds are always green while aquamarines are always blue, despite both being part of the same gem species."

"Gems have species?"

Stan nodded. "If gems are made out of the same mineral and have the same structure, they are said to be part of the same species. For example, Rubys and Saphires are both Corundum, but one is red and the other is blue."

Anna looked at him with an impressed expression on her face.

"Where did you learn so much about gems?"

"From…" He frowned a little before answering. "From Pa."

The entire room's mood dropped like a stone. "He ran a pawn shop and dealt with jewelry a lot. I was really interested in them due to dreams of finding treasure. He encouraged me to study the jewelry we had and his books on the subject."

He then gave a small chuckle at it. "That and boxing are probably the only times he ever supported me."

A man with brown hair, wearing a black shirt with a lightbulb under an open red jacket stepped to Stan and placed a hand on his shoulder.

"Hi, I'm Mathew Patrick, the science teacher. How would you like to help me teach geology?"

Stan stared at him in shock for several seconds before shaking his head.

"I'm sorry, you want me to TEACH!? You did hear me mention that I dropped out of High School, right?"

Mat shrugged. "Town law just says that you need to be approved by the PTA and can carve a pen out of a pelican feather in five seconds to work in a school. And you wouldn't be doing it alone or even in charge. You would just be my assistant, and I can try to set it up so we do it during the off-season for tourists. What do you say?"

Stan still had a deer-in-the-headlighs expression, but he was able of nodding slightly.

"Great, we can work out the details later." Mat then turned to the box. "For now, any idea how the gems relate to opening the box?"

Stan just shook his head, while the rest of the group similarly admitted to not knowing.

Ash then looked up at Stan. "Hay, I know you haven't seen him in a while, but did your brother have any favorite puzzles he liked to do? Maybe we can use those to figure out the kind of puzzle this is."

Stan sighed and brought his hands to his face in annoyance. "Unfortunately, he loved any kind of challenge where he could show off being smart. If it was hard for people to figure out, he made it a mission to solve it. Video games, crosswords, joke books, trivia, ANYTHING! He even alienated other riddle-enthusiasts because he kept making the riddle too hard."

He then gained a small, fond smile. "The one time I decided to humor him with a DD game, it was one he adjusted to be half puzzles. The rest of the group mentioned-"

"Wait, your brother likes DD ?"

Stan nodded. "Yeah, though he had a lot of trouble finding anyone who would play with him in Glass Shard Beach. Too nerdy and it was during the 60s and 70s. the adults were all into thinking it was "a game about summoning the devil." I think they just hated kids having more fun than they did."

Mr. Patric's eyes widened as he looked at it.

"The gemstone door."

He then rushed over to it. "It's a riddle in the game. You have to touch the gems to spell the password. Each gemstone represents a letter determined by its name. For here, Beryl is for B, Citrine is for C, etc. With the word 'unlock' front and center, I think it opens if we do this."

He then pressed the Unarovite, Nephrite, Lapis Lazuli, Opal, Citrine, and Kunzite after double checking with Stan on which was which.

"Let's see if this works."

CLICK

The hatch of the box opened, leading Stan to quickly fling it open and reveal a leather-bound journal with a golden six-fingered hand on the front. In its middle was the #2.

"Ok, that is cool."

Stan then looked up at Mary. "How about a deal? After I examine it tonight for anything that can help find Ford, I give it to you to pre-read. If you are ok with it, I can give her the book in the locked chest for her birthday."

Anna looked at the beautiful book and its intricate puzzle box before giving a slight nod.

"Deal. However, you might want to consider making a copy for her to read instead of the original. The last thing we want is for her to spill juice on it and erase important information."

Miss. Biker raised her hand.

"Could you let me know what you think of it? I might be interested in buying a copy if Stan's making some."

Mr. Patric nodded along with her. "Yeah, and I'm interested in the box. Any chance you can find the plans for it? Getting a copy I could set up myself would be great!"

At that, the crowd of parents and teachers began clamoring over each other. All the while, multiple emotions wared inside Stan's head.

Relief at finding the second journal.

Greed at the idea of selling copies of it and the box.

Pride at being considered competent at something.

Fear at the fact that it might be too late already to save Ford.

Joy when he thought about Mary's face when she got the chest and book.

Anger at Ford for thinking hiding something dangerous near Mary was a good idea.

And finally…

Hunger, because he skipped lunch to do this.

He eventually calmed himself enough to speak up.

"Quiet down everyone. If anyone knows a publication company or bookmaker who would be willing to make a few copies of this, I'll make a few copies and put them up for sale. The same goes with whoever you talk to about making copies of the box."

"What about your scrolls? You made those yourself."

Stan rolled his eyes. "Those were made with a photocopier my brother made with a 'scroll' setting. I don't know how to make a book that would last on my own. I doubt a scroll of this would work."

At that, everyone began to murmur, leading Stan to sigh.

"I'll research both tonight and get back to you. If anyone finds anything else about it, let me know."

Stan then looked up and noticed the time. "Wow! Is it that late already? I need to go home. Anna, I can give you the book tomorrow, but I want to look through it and make sure there isn't anything in it that might point to where he is."

With that, everyone said their goodbyes and went their separate ways.

Shack

Stan opened the journal to the portal page and placed it face down on the photocopier before hitting the button. Caryn walked in with a confused look on his face.

"Hay Stan. Whats-"

She froze when he looked at the journal.

"You found it! Where was it?"

Stan groaned and lowered his head into his hands.

"Ford thought hiding it in a puzzle box buried next to an elementary school was a good idea. From a quick look, it has blood rain, a demon summoning ritual, and summoning the undead. The school was probably the worst place to put it."

Caryn looked at him in shock. "Ford put a dark magic spell book next to an elementary school? And he just buried it?"

"No, he also put it in an intricate puzzle box that required you to push gemstones on top in a specific order."

Ma groaned in annoyance at that. "Why would he do that? He could have just burned the book, or torn out the specific pages and burned them, or hid it deep in the mines, or-"

"Ma!"

She broke out of her spiral and gave Stan a sheepish expression.

"Sorry about that Stanley. I love your brother, but he always takes the complicated approach to things."

Stan nodded. "I'll tell you the same thing I told the PTA when they brought up many of the same points you made. He loved being the smartest person in the room and took every opportunity to prove it. He probably already had the puzzle box lying around and decided to use it to hide the journal for convenience. As for the school…" he shrugged. "My money's on him thinking elementary school kids would be the least likely to be able to solve it."

He then smiled at her. "The good news is that I have the puzzle box and the journal. I'm going to see if these can help me get the portal running. Could you give the journal itself a more thorough read-through and see if there is anything else we could use?"

Caryn nodded. "Sure, tell Alex I said hello and missed him at dinner."

Stan nodded and walked out of the room.

Caryn sat down with the Journal and opened to the first page.

Possession

"Stanford, what did you get up to out here?"

Portal Room

Stan walked out of the elevator in the lab and walked towards the door to the portal room. When he poked his head in, he saw Alex was reading a book about large predators.

"Hay Alex! I found journal 2."

Alex sprang to his feet and dropped his book to the floor as he raced over to him.

"You did? Where is it? Can I see it?"

Stan nodded. "Ma's reading it now, but you can borrow it after her. She's double-checking if it's Mary-appropriate. The bits I saw made it seem less like a book about monsters and more like a catalog of dark magic."

Alex shrugged. "I'm ok if that's the case. It's more for the thrill of being able to read something that was forbidden to me than for new forms. I've got enough of those from Journal 1 and my interactions with the support group. Just tonight I met a Cerberus, a massive three-headed Dalmatian."

Stan blinked at the description. "He's a dalmatian? I've heard of the guard of the Greek underworld before, but I never thought of him as that."

Alex shrugged. "Apparently the name translates to "spotted" in ancient Greek, so they weren't hiding it. Ford hurt his feelings with a massive rant about how 'Dalmatians weren't bread into existence until the 1300s' and how his 'fear of ghosts made him a disgrace to his namesake.'"

Stan groaned in annoyance. "Of course, he would do that. Did he mention if the mythical Cerberus had any basis in reality or if the Greeks just saw a few three-headed dogs and thought they would make cool guardians of the underworld when they were writing stuff down?"

"He didn't know about that, but he did admit that his species's bite could hurt ghosts. No idea if it was their teeth, saliva, or something else that was responsible for it though."

Stan humbed. "Ok, that's something we can think about after we test out the new portal pages."

He then held out the two pages in his hands. "You might want to move your stuff out of this room and into the lab. I wanna see if this works as soon as possible."

Alex nodded and dragged his cot and other stuff into the lab as Stan pulled out Journal 1 and opened it to the page on the portal. He then proceeded to fiddle with the dials and buttons according to the two sets of documents before hitting a final power button.

The monitors blared, but nothing else happened.

Stan sighed, leading Alex to put a hand on his shoulder in support.

"Don't feel bad, Stan; you have two of the three journals now. If you give me some time, I might be able to extrapolate what the third one might be like from them."

Stan gave Alex a small smile in response.

"Thanks, Alex, that means a lot."

He then yawned and did a full-body stretch.

"Well, it's late. Goodnight Alex."

"Goodnight, Stanley."

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I have decided to cap this series at 29 chapters, that way it will end with the year. I am not 100% happy with the in universe pasing and how I have been jumping from one idea to the next with no break, so when I do this again, I plan on setting up a timeline and outline from the start before writing my first chapter.

I have them all written up, and the final chapter is over 6k words.

I have a if you want to support me and my New Year's resolution of posting one fanfic of 2k words or more weekly. This is also being posted on , AO3, and Tumbler.

Remove all the spaces from the URLs to get them to work.

: : / / w w w . user?u=10132890

. c o m : : / / w w w . s/14051718/1/luz–appreciation–week–2022–from–1228248

AO3: : / / works/52823413/chapters/133608991

Tumbler: : / / w w w . blog/brianedner

I am also doing fanfic info dumps, like wiki articles that go one episode at a time, with some compilations at the end on specific topics sorted by episode.

Fanfic info dumps here: : / / w w w . 1228248/gallery