-------
The next morning, while they were cooking breakfast up on the deck together, Miz suddenly sat up straight with a frown. "Can we call them something different so I don't get confused when we mention you all by name?"
The four Stans looked at each other.
But before any of them could say anything, Bill raised a hand, index finger pointing straight out, and pointed it at young Ford, saying "'Ford," and then moved his hand around to point at young Stan, "Lee."
(The young Stanley grimaced a little at this, not looking forward to being called 'Lee' again, but didn't complain out loud at this.)
Then Bill pointed at "Stanley" (his Stanley) and "Sixer" (that Stanford that was his)...
--but Ford looked angry at being called that and immediately snapped out, "--Don't call me that!!"
(The young Ford, for his part, blinked and looked between them.)
"I… I'm okay with being called Sixer," the young Ford offered.
"That Stanford is Sixer; you are 'Ford," said Bill. Because that Stanford was his Six-Fingered Hand. Sixer. (...even if he didn't ACT like a Sixer most days.)
Before Ford could explode at Bill again, Stan cut in with, "--Kid, we'll call you Sixer; Bill will probably call you Ford. Yeah?"
The younger teenaged Ford ("Sixer") looked between Bill (who was relaxed as anything and looked completely unconcerned) and Ford (who looked ready to have an aneurysm over it), and said, sounding slightly amused, "...Sure?"
Miz clapped her hands. "Yes. Thank you. This will make it much easier for me and everyone else to understand." She looked over at the pancakes (and remaining pancake batter mix) and realized there was no way she'd be satisfied with just that much. So she turned to Stan and asked, "Can I go catch some more fish?" They still had the other fish steaks that Stan had made from what she'd caught, placed under a Preservation effect, but as far as Miz was concerned, that was for them to eat, too. Miz needed more than that; she could polish the rest of that off herself in one single meal.
"Sure, same rules as before," Stan grunted out. Miz nodded and floated down the side of the boat, not bothering to go into her dragon form this time, She was just going to swim after them. Her clothes changed into a cute one piece swimsuit as she stepped into the water. Having a Perception Filter 'on' to cover her was pretty much a constant by this point.
As Miz went to get herself some food, Stan motioned for the kids to come with him back down into the hold, so they could get more stuff to get the fish Miz was going to bring back squared away. (It was gonna leave Ford and the kid on deck with each other for a couple of minutes, but if they couldn't manage that at this point, then Stan figured things were a lot worse between them than he thought. ...And it'd be better to figure that one out now, too, when the niblings weren't around to see anything go horribly wrong, or the aftermath of that.)
Stan sent Ford a look before descending down the ladder after the kids. Ford caught it, and all but rolled his eyes at him. (...Well, fine. Maybe the sleep had helped him, or just the niblings being outta the line of fire now.)
Stan let out an old man sigh as he stepped off of the ladder in the bottom of the hold. The two teenagers had been pretty quiet that morning overall, still in a stunned state from the upheaval of their lives yesterday. They seemed a little nervous now; it was probably really only starting to sink in for them exactly what it happened, and what their lives were going to be like from now on moving forward.
Sixer was going to live here on the boat while he finished school; Lee would be staying as well. Stan would be providing for them both -- a stance he refused to back off on, no matter how much Sixer protested (this morning as well) that he didn't want to bother or burden Stan.
"Kid, you're gonna need money and food and supplies to get through school. I'm an adult and I can make money," Stan grunted out.
And when Lee suggested just dropping out, so he could work to help save up enough money for him and Sixer to live off of until Sixer graduated, and pay for him to go to college...
"Yeah, no," Stan told his younger self, as he finished shooing the two of 'em back up the ladder, took the stuff they'd helped him carry up from them, and then continued walking the two of them across the deck. "You two are going to school," he leveled a hard look at Lee, who hunched his shoulders a bit and looked kind of annoyed -- yeah, that was gonna be a problem, keeping him in school when he wanted to work to fix things instead. With money. So he wouldn't feel useless. Shit. Stan could relate, but-- "We're gonna swing by the pawnshop first, though," Stan grimaced, "Backdoor. Get your junk.
"Could just sneak in the window again," Lee muttered, and that had Stan looking over at him, blinking, then thinking.
He turned away from Lee, and looked to Bill, who was waving his hands around all magic-y and junk -- helping Miz haul (read: float) a bunch of fish up onto the deck for her, and receiving a "Thanks big brother," and nuzzle for his efforts as he finished. Stan smiled.
"Kid, add this stuff to the hat too, yeah?" Stan added, as Bill scooped up the fish into his hat (read: floated them in, in a long continuous head-to-tail stream). Bill looked over to him, then down at his arms, and made a quick gesture, floating what Stan was carrying out of his arms and into his hat, too. Stan got a thoughtful look as Bill put his hat back onto his head.
"Kid, if you went up to their bedroom, you think you could grab everything they might want you to grab for them, up in your hat, if you go up there?" Stan asked the kid. The kid looked interested, but reminded Stan, "Need permission from both of them."
Stan nodded (good, the kid was still following that one), then looked over to Sixer and Lee, who looked confused, up until Stan explained the 'solution' and the 'problem' with: "Kid can grab anything you want for you, easy. But bedrooms are personal spaces. Ya need permission from everybody whose bedroom it is to go up into it, door or window or anything, and the kid's not stealing anything or breaking into places," Stan told them. (Those were the rules for bedrooms at the Shack, and Stan noticed that the kid was not just paying attention to and following those, at home, with him and his family, but also applying them elsewhere -- like pretty much everything else that the kid had learned from him so far. --Which was exactly what Stan wanted, and had been going for.) "You gotta tell him what's okay, and for how long you're okay with him bein' up there."
Sixer blinked at him and adjusted his glasses, then turned to the human-looking demon. "You have my permission to enter my room… the once, today," he added carefully, looking at Stan, before looking back to Bill. "And… retrieve my bookbag, and books, and clothing for me," Sixer told him. "Nothing else." Stan and Lee both frowned at him, and his shoulders slumped. "I don't want Pa sayin' I stole anything from him," Sixer muttered angrily, looking away. "He won't care about books and clothing. He doesn't care about the books, and he can't sell any of our clothes for anything, really."
Bill nodded and shrugged, then looked to Lee. "Need your permission to enter too, before I can!" Bill told Lee brightly, with a fixed smile. Miz was Flickering, checking to see where their parents were, wondering if there was a way she could arrange 'accidents' for Filbrick without Stan noticing? Nothing lethal, just tripping over stuff and if he happened to twist an ankle or bruise an arm… or break his nose...
She frowned. No. Bad Miz. THIS Filbrick was an ass for tossing his son out, but he didn't really deserve her brand of karma. He wasn't quite bad enough for her to justify that to herself. She sighed. Fine. She'd leave him alone. Besides, Stan had already given her another stern lecture this morning about it already, before the rest of them had woken up. Figures she and Stan would be the early risers? It was odd that Ford had slept in for so long, considering how little he trusted her and Bill, though...
Lee frowned. "Yeah, okay," Lee said. "I can carry most of it myself, though."
Stan shrugged and said, "Just tell the kid what you're okay with him grabbin' for now, in case Filbrick comes up the stairs after ya."
Lee winced, as did Sixer, and Lee said, finally, "Clothes and shoes and jackets and belts and junk. Bookbag, and anything inside it, and all my school books and papers and school junk, too," Lee added, rolling his eyes at the look Stan gave him, "Any of my duffel bags -- eh, all of 'em, I guess -- and I already got my wallet," he said as he patted his front jeans pocket, then hesitated.
"Oh, yeah," Lee said, then shoved a hand in his back pocket and pulled out a familiar-looking wallet, which he handed over to Sixer. "Here." Sixer blinked, as he took his wallet from his twin brother. "Checkbook for the boat accounts," Lee added, talking to Bill again, as they all took turns climbing their way down the side of the boat and down onto the sand. "--But I'll grab that myself," Lee added. "And maybe… all of my comic books?" Lee added after a moment's thought, glancing over at Bill, wondering if that was even a thing? "I have a lot of them."
Bill nodded. "Not a problem!" the demon told him. "My hat is bigger than it looks," he said next, as he pulled it off his head and demonstrated by shoving his hand in to pull out… a pitchfork? full-sized?... and then shove it right back in.
As Lee and Sixer stared, both for very different reasons, Miz spoke up, saying, "I can distract your dad." Stan's narrow-eyed glance let her know that she hadn't been able to hide her feelings about Filbrick.
Like hell Stan was gonna let her do that. Stan had already barely been able to talk her out of outright 'destroying' the man during their discussion last night and again this morning. (The only upshot about that had been that she'd had that verbal fight with him inside one of those no-sound bubbles, out of earshot of the younger twins. And that she DID end up backing down, both times ...for the moment. Stan was uneasy and very irritated about the fact that Miz apparently knew it was wrong to want to hurt Filbrick, and had still wanted to, though, just because she'd been angry and projecting.)
Stan thought back to their talk that morning.
"You know that it's wrong to hurt others, yeah?" Stan stared down at her. Miz looked a little uncomfortable, wiggling in her seat.
"...yeah…"
Stan breathed in deeply to calm himself down. "So why do you still want to do it?" he asked. Because that was the main thing he needed to know, to know just how dangerous Miz was. If she chose to do something that she knew was wrong… hell. That was a major problem, no two ways about it.
Miz hunched up where she was sitting. She opened and closed her mouth a few times, but seemed to have trouble figuring out how to say what she wanted to say. Finally, she sighed. "Would you get mad if I explained?" she asked finally.
...As opposed to, what, her not explaining at all? Like hell. Stan's stare didn't waver. "I'm plenty mad right now," he said, leaving it at that -- because did the demon-kid really think that not telling him was gonna make him any less mad?
Miz rubbed her face. Finally, she spoke. "Sometimes, I think that some people deserve to be hurt, at least a little bit. Like, a punishment."
Before Stan could let Miz know just how he felt about that, Miz continued with, "I punished the poachers who took Xanthar's family from him. I punished the king who kidnapped and raped his citizens. I punished the god who demanded infant sacrifices. I punished that man who DRUGGED me with an aphrodisiac… and many, many more." She had her hands balled in her lap. "I know that, maybe I could have tried to get them arrested so 'the law' could punish them. But, they wouldn't have been. They would have gotten away scot-free for their crimes. And I couldn't stand that. I couldn't stand the thought that they were free to continue hurting people and no one was going to stop them." She trembled a little before relaxing. "So I did it myself. And, I know it's wrong to hurt people, but they were bad people. And aren't bad guys supposed to be punished?"
Stan closed his eyes and breathed. Okay. Okay. So this was a thing. After he opened his eyes again he still kept on glaring at her, though. "And Filbrick?" Stan pushed.
Miz wilted. "Okay, yeah, that was… a bit extreme on my part. I was just angry. He doesn't actually deserve to lose his eyes, even if he's blind to how important his children are. I'm not gonna mess with him." Miz rubbed her face. "I'm just, really unhappy at how distressed little Ford and Stan are. I can't Feel it, but I can See it just fine. And I don't like it."
Stan stared at her. "...and you want to hurt the man who made them unhappy?"
Miz nodded, relaxing a little in relief now that she'd finally gotten that off her chest. "I was angry. But I held myself back from actually doing it." Miz sighed. "Is that… good?"
Stan eyed her. He had a hell of a lot of things he wanted to say to her about this whole thing, but for now... "No. That's what you should do. Holding yourself back from hurting other people who don't have a damn thing to do with you, who -- hell -- don't even know who you are? That's the minimum. 'Good' is a whole 'nother thing else. --Nobody is askin', or needs you, to run off punishing Filbrick over anything -- and if anybody else says different, you come talk to me, first," Stan told her. "Making Filbrick blind over this, or anything else to do with those kids, is definitely bad. --You hear me?" Stan told her next, as firmly as he could, trying to get the point across, and she nodded. Stan saw this, then let out a tired sigh and ran a hand over his face.
"Look, maybe hold yourself back from other stuff you wanna do when you're angry, at least while you're here in this 'set' of ours. And if you do get in a situation where there's a 'bad' person that you want to punish, maybe…" Hell, the examples she listed did sound pretty bad, and Miz believed that 'the law' wouldn't have done anything about them. Yeah, Stan could relate. There were plenty of mobsters he'd wished could have just dropped dead on the spot, so he wouldn't have to deal with 'em anymore. (Rico? Had been one of them.) "...get a second opinion before you actually go after 'em. Or third. Talk to someone and see if maybe there's some other way to stop those 'bad guys' without having to tear their eyes out or somethin'. --There's a reason you keep judge, jury, and executioner separate, you know?" he told her, wincing. "There's justice, yeah, and maybe there ain't a hell of a lot of mercy," not like he'd ever had much of any of that ever thrown his way… "But decidin' who deserves to get hurt, and how much for how much they hurt other people? You need that second and third opinion, kid, and maybe even a fourth," Stan told her. Because she really, really did. Because the way she equated 'her emotions being hurt' to this kinda stuff? --What was gonna happen if she decided 'hurt feelings' were 'bad' enough to require a punishment like stabbing out somebody's eyes, or chopping off their head at some point, or who knew what else?!
And Miz looked up at him as he told her all this, with that odd expression that just made Stan feel uncomfortable. An expression that was so… trusting, like Miz thought Stan would know the answers to everything. "Then, what should I do about Filbrick?" she asked him, and Stan had to look away.
"Absolutely nothin'," Stan told her. "You leave him alone. I'm fixing it. --You want punishment? I do penalties and lessons. --He tossed away one son like garbage? Well, guess what, he's losin' 'em both, all on his own. --I'm just helpin' to make it go along a little quicker, by helpin' that younger me stay with his twin like he should, leaving the house earlier on his own, too, without either of 'em havin' to worry about how to survive or anything. --That's 'punishment' enough for Filbrick, and then some. He don't deserve them, and they don't deserve havin' to put up with him anymore, either," Stan told her gruffly -- to which Miz then nodded, and that was that.
Shaking himself back into the present, Stan stared Miz down.
"I can distract Pa," Stan said heavily. "I'll go in the front of the pawn shop. --You two," he looked over at Lee and Bill, "Go up the back, take the window inside. --Sixer, Ford, you two keep watch. Miz," Stan gave her a long look. "You're either behaving yourself and sticking with Ford, or you're taking a trip inside Bill's hat." Because Stan was pretty sure that she wouldn't be able to do anything from in there, if that one guy from the kid's magic show had been any indication, what with the whole frozen dead time thing the kid had going on, on the other side of that thing.
Miz pouted. "I'll be good." She folded her arms and huffed, but didn't protest otherwise.
Stan gave her a long look. ...Yeah, she didn't look like she was lying.
"Okay, good. You be good," Stan told her, reaching out to pat her on the head a few times. Even agreeing without lying about it was a step in the right direction, far as he was concerned; he'd worry about penalizing her later if she ended up losing her temper or something. "You do that," he told her, then added, to hammer the point home a bit, "Means less work for your brother, not havin' to go off fixing more things while he's helping me out. Yeah?" That, at least, got him a more positive reaction. Miz whined a little but nodded again.
Stan patted her on the head again -- positive reinforcement still being a thing -- then moved off to the front of the pack. (He didn't miss how the kid dropped back to where she was, to pick up patting her on the head himself... and kept it up as they walked along. Huh. ...Probably a good thing? Stan looked over his shoulder as the kid worked on her, and realized that maybe the kid thought -- as he was starting to realize himself -- that Miz was having a hell of a lot harder time keeping her temper than he'd thought. ...Well, whatever. As long as it worked and kept her settled. And at least the kid had noticed and was trying to help him out, in a way that might actually be helpful?)
(...He was gonna have to pat the kid on the head later for this one, too, wasn't he. Or, y'know, now. Once they stopped walking.)
They were all mostly quiet as they turned onto the street and approached the house; even Ford looked pretty subdued. As they got closer, not more than two blocks away, Stan asked, "You two sure that's all of it? Everything that you want?" He turned to Sixer and asked, "What about your schoolwork?"
"What?" Sixer frowned. "--Do I really need to be that specific with what Bill can take?" Sixer asked them, thinking back on what-all Lee had said, and what he himself had said about wanting his bookbag. "Schoolwork and papers is obvious, isn't it?"
"You want more than just the backpack?" Bill added easily enough, and that had Sixer's eyes going wide, and Lee letting out a half-snort half-laugh. (Stan let out a quiet sigh, and patted the kid on the head a few times himself. Wasn't like the kid didn't deserve one or two after saying that, heh.)
"--Sixer, he's a demon," Lee reminded his brother good-naturedly, elbowing him in the side. "Gotta be careful with the wording!" he told him, as Sixer scowled and readjusted his glasses, sending his twin a 'that elbowing was not appreciated' look.
"Fine," Sixer said, straightening up in place. "Bill, please add any and all schoolwork of mine--"
"--That is in our bedroom," Lee cut in, sounding amused -- because he knew his twin had shoved all of his old stuff into boxes and put them all up into the attic, every last school assignment and old textbook and binder -- and Sixer made a sound of annoyance and hunched his shoulders a bit.
"...That is in our bedroom," Sixer muttered, glaring at Lee and looking like he felt vaguely harassed. "And shoes and clothing -- which I already said -- and socks and belts and jackets and hats," he added, trying to one-up his brother on his listing (except said brother just let out a laugh and said, "But you look stupid in hats!") ...Sixer gritted his teeth, then straightened in place and added after that, firmly, "And gloves and scarves and my knitting."
Ford blinked and gave the younger him an odd look at that last one, knitting, and then looked away. He didn't remember ever having knitted... (Was this something that he had forgotten? Like what a proper breathable air mix for humans had actually felt like, to take in? Because when he'd first gotten back, after so long…)
(...or was it yet another change from something far more recent gone wrong, having to do with their arrival? Mabel had been wearing one of her own hand-knitted sweaters while they'd been here...)
...but there was also no Bill Cipher in this Dimension's past. That had been why Bill was so upset before they'd come here (something about draining the weirdness from his Nightmare Realm?), so perhaps something about Bill's absence had triggered other changes, as well? ...Except Bill himself had said that the Stan o' War was 'all but identical', and he hadn't been lying. So what could have possibly impacted his younger self, yet somehow had had no impact on that younger Stan? Stan had been the one out of the two of them more interested in sewing-like things, not...
Ford frowned and let out his breath in a quiet huff, then grimaced. (Because this was yet another odd thing that didn't add up, that just felt out-and-out wrong…)
"Spare glasses and the supplies for cleaning them, if there are any?" Miz spoke up, glancing over at Sixer. "Tooth brushes? Hygiene supplies?"
"Spare glasses and your regular checkbook, nerd," Lee prompted his brother, who repeated it in a mutter. Stan piped up at the other items, "The toothbrushes and all that stuff are in the bathroom, not the bedroom, and these two probably need new junk for that, anyway. --We'll buy replacements for that stuff. Combs and hairbrushes and deodorant and everything else," Stan added, knowing a little more by this point how the demon felt about cleanliness, at least a little. ...Enough to know that he should tell her this junk outright, instead of just assuming that she knew that he wasn't just gonna let that stuff slide. Stan was a cheapskate, sure, but not that kind of cheapskate. He'd lost his teeth from a couple of straight-up fights, not a lack of brushing.
"We'll grab the stuff from the house, then stop by a quickmart on the way to the school," Stan continued, "--and grab some things there." He had enough of his own earnings on him right then to cover that, easy, and he knew that he could get more without issue. "Bill can fix up a duffle bag for each of ya then," Stan said to the younger twins next. "--This is gonna be a grab-and-go," he said of the twins' bedroom, "A quick in-and-out." He didn't want to risk what might happen if Filbrick (or their ma) realized what they were doing, upstairs. "Kid'll get your bookbags in order while you two change clothes in the gas station bathroom, and we'll be getting you all to school there in time for you all to use the locker room showers for the rest of it," Stan told them all, kids both demon and human.
The younger twins looked at each other in slight confusion, at the long sigh from Bill and the excited look Miz got upon hearing all this. ...Wasn't really a surprise. Stan had talked it over with the demons earlier that morning, and Ford, before the younger twins had finally woken up. (Ford hadn't liked it, obviously, but then he hadn't liked it the first time Stan had brought it up at home, either. Probably still thought Stan was out of his mind.) --Bill Cipher in high school. It was gonna be a thing.
Stan had thought that one over, hard. Food, clothing, shelter, and schooling. And schooling didn't just happen at home. The kid needed more exposure to people, not less. Kid was working off of a limited dataset, or whatever. Not enough experience at actually being human, in the USA, in 'modern times' and all that junk. Stan wanted the kid thinking 'how things are now, b>here' first when stuff came up these days, from here on out. Not some stupid junk about cavemen and ancient Egyptians and native tribes did things instead, and whatnot. Stan was getting tired of trying to explain the differences to the kid, and the easiest way to fix that was to get the kid interacting more with more people, daily.
The Mystery Shack (had been and) was mostly out. The kid didn't like interacting with adults, and the ones stupid enough to visit the Shack museum would send the kid the entirely wrong message, for what Stan wanted the kid to learn. Having the kid go to school with Wendy, the Valentino kid, and the other teenagers in town, though? That should work out just fine. The school was 'the school', not 'the town', and the school had its own 'zero tolerance' rules about not fighting. ...Well, at least these days, in 2013, it did. And Stan hadn't really liked or appreciated those rules himself, thinking them pretty dumb himself… at least until he'd realized how he could make that work for the kid.
Because those rules were set up kind of like the same structure as the agreement he had going with the kid. And, technically, some of those rules were even more rigid. One strike, and you're out; as in, straight-up expelled. It was kind of halfway between most of the 'you only get one chance to do it right or you die' junk the kid kept trying to convince him of, and Stan's own, 'you can make mistakes and have accidents, but there are damn well consequences that get pretty damn bad really damn quick if you start trying to step on or step over anybody's lines'. Really, it was more like the kid's competitive junk, except the 'or you die' was an 'or you get expelled and/or laughed at like the stupid fool you are'... which was also kind of the same, come to think of it.
So, yeah. Stan wanted Bill going to high school, all right. To learn how to interact with other people. And the best trick Stan had managed to pull off, to have the kid even considering it at all back home, was that Wendy was going to school, and Stan couldn't follow her around all day keeping an eye on her for trouble… but the kid could. And the kid was supposed to be helping Stan watch out for her as part of the agreement.
...which, yeah, the kid was suspicious of for a good reason, 'cause Stan had never tried to take things that far for her or Soos before, even though he did have a reputation in town. But. Stan knew the kid was takin' it all seriously, because the kid had taken it all one step further; Stan knew the kid had been thinking about '...what happens when the kids go home for the summer?' with Dipper and Mabel. Because the two of them? Wouldn't even be in town with them anymore, and it was a full day's car ride down to their parents' place in California.
(Stan was almost positive that the kid had already started something sneaky, trying to get the two of 'em transferred to Gravity Falls High. And, y'know, he wasn't exactly stopping him. As long as nobody got hurt…)
Stan shook it off, as he pointed towards the alleyway to the back of the house, and Ford gave him a long look as the lot of them made their way around to the back.
And that left Stan alone at the front of the building, right outside the doors of the pawnshop.
Stan pulled in a sharp breath, then grimaced at himself and forced himself to let it out again slowly.
And then Stan braced himself, took those two steps forward, and opened the door.
-----
...Well, that had, uh. Been a thing. Stan wasn't sure how he felt right then. --But hey, at least the kids had pulled off their own stealin'-their-own-stuff 'scam' just fine, right?
Stan tried not to think too hard about the folded piece of paper sitting down in his front pants pocket, and he straight out ignored the almost-concerned looks Ford kept sending him, as they all walked the way-too-short distance from there to the best (read: one and only!) gas station on the walk between the house and the school. It took a lot more than Stan had expected to not say anything to Ford on any of it. (Yet.)
Stan roamed the aisles of the gas station mart, and so did the kids, while Ford took up a position by the door like some kind of stupid bodyguard or something. (Hell, Ford…) They all gathered at the front register in less than five minutes, got all their junk up onto the counter (with Stan having to send a glare Lee's -- and then Sixer's -- way, to get them both to empty out their pockets of 'accidental' items, were they tryin' to get themselves arrested for shoplifting? they were seventeen, not seven -- their heads came up above the counter, and those bulges weren't anything like inconspicuous, not even a little), and Stan slapped down the cash and got everything bought up and bagged in even less time than that.
They went outside and around the side, over to where they'd left the two demons to their own devices for a bit. (...Hell, maybe Ford had been watching them; Stan had been able to see 'em from the door, once they left.)
Stan sat down on the curb with the kid, Miz, and the younger twins to help out with the repacking of junk out of the hat, and also out of the one duffel bag of Lee's stuff that Lee had insisted on carrying himself, slung over his back with the strap across his chest. (Stan had to cover a snort. He'd forgotten that he'd made that 'bug out bag' such a long time ago. He'd read about them in some survivalist spy thriller thing, and made one for himself for 'date nights', thinking of a call and a quick bug out for an overnight stay someplace. Wasn't really meant for a long trip, or getting kicked outta the house, and it had been under his bed, not in the truck of his car, but...)
Stan could kind of understand the urge. (Wasn't like he hadn't taken that urge and practically turned it into a damn near subconscious survival instinct, those ten years that he'd been living out on the streets, neither.)
Stan didn't forget to give the kid, and Miz, a couple of headpats for their trouble (and patted the two kids on the head too, for good measure, though the looks he'd gotten out of them for it had darn near made him chuckle). The two of them (he and the kid) had the teens' bookbags and duffle bags together in short order, and Stan shooed the two human kids off to the station bathroom, to go brush their teeth and change clothing.
That left him sitting with the two demons, and Ford standing over them all.
Stan turned to the demons and opened his mouth to say, "You two are gonna enroll in school with the twins."
The utterly befuddled expressions on their (and Ford's) faces nearly made Stan laugh.
"What," Stan said. "You didn't think I was serious about it, this morning?" Then he sort of got it. "You didn't think I was talkin' about actually goin' to school here, right now," Stan said next, sitting back and looking at them all kind of incredulously. (Because, seriously, had they all just thought he was talkin' about stuff two months from now and back home for his health? ...What, had they all just thought he'd meant sneaking them into the school only to use the showers, earlier, too?)
The kid and Ford looked about to object -- okay, well at least maybe they had been taking him seriously, but had thought he'd just 'magically' changed his mind or something in-between falling asleep and waking up that morning? Meanwhile, Miz looked like she was actually considering it. (Yep. Dragon-lady probably thought he'd just been talking about havin' the demon-kids usin' the showers earlier; otherwise, she'd be looking that same kinda excited all over again as she had earlier, Stan figured.)
"Well, it would let us keep an eye on the twins," she pointed out. (Heh, she was jumpin' ahead on him, there.) Ford stared at her, suspicious as all hell, while the kid let out another, even longer sigh, and looked resigned when he realized his sister was open to the idea… because the kid knew, and Stan knew, that he wasn't going to let her run off to human school all alone. (Hell, the kid hadn't even liked having to send her through the portal on her own without him, even with the thought of being away from her for only five minutes at most. And that couldn't have just been worry about her getting through the portal okay. Kid hadn't even been able to think of leaving her behind and having her go through the Door to him -- which would've been less than a minute, Stan was pretty sure.)
That didn't stop the kid from trying to take a different tack at it, though, with a: "We can do that from the outside, just as easily."
"Heh," said Stan. Wasn't like he hadn't had a good night's sleep and about an hour under his belt to figure this one out. "Sure, try and cop out of it. If you don't think you can handle it," Stan said next, which had the kid eyeing him. Good. "What?" Stan said, affecting surprise. "You're the one who thinks 'normal' high school in Gravity Falls would be too easy for you," Stan told him, "And that you'd get nothing out of it because it's all kindergarten playtime, what with all that zero-tolerance policy crap? Well guess what they don't have here, kid," Stan told him. "You really think you can handle an 'advanced class' without any prep, just walk right on in and you're golden?" Stan challenged him, with a laugh, and he saw Bill's eyes narrow. (Yeah. There we go.)
Miz actually teased Bill with a smug "Ooooh~" which pulled a very interesting expression from the older demon.
"Stan…" Ford said quellingly, and Stan just flat-out ignored it (except for the 'shut up' hand gesture he made at his side to Ford, the side that Bill couldn't see outright).
Stan pulled in a breath instead, and went for broke. "Kid doesn't want to go to the school at the 'Falls because he thinks it's easy to not get into fights and not get suspended or expelled or all the rest of it, as long as they've got that 'no fights' rule in place that everybody's following," Stan told Ford, using him as a wall to bounce things off of here... and an excuse to rehash a few things to death that he hadn't told Ford yet, that the kid had been arguing about to exhaustion. Literally. "Here, there's no problem if things go wrong, because we ain't living here. Ain't the Falls, nobody knows him, no bias starting out to begin with for most of 'em maybe," Stan said, "And anybody tries to say he's a demon here is gonna get themselves sent to the loony bin, so long as the kid keeps the magic under his hat," Stan noted dryly. "Only 'problem' is that I don't think the kid could pass as a high school student at home for a week as-is -- not without getting his idiotic triangular ass suspended or expelled, and every last one of the teachers hating his guts -- let alone here," Stan said, crossing his arms and looking down his nose at the kid. "Where fights can happen and sometimes the 'wrong' people get expelled… and sometimes nobody gets in any trouble for it at all," Stan noted.
Bill's eyes were narrowed to slits. He looked both challenged and pissed.
"Terms," Bill practically spat out at him, hands pushed down against the curb beneath him so tightly that every last joint of his fingers was white. (Ford's harsh intake of breath was nearly inaudible.)
Stan smiled.
"It's simple, kid," Stan said smugly, knowing it was gonna be anything but -- for the kid, at least. "You attend school for a week. Five days straight, not counting the weekend. Actually attend. Every class. You don't get yourself suspended. You don't get yourself expelled." Stan pulled in a breath, before continuing. "You don't go castin' magic on school grounds, unless you ask me first and I say it's fine, or unless somebody's gonna die if you don't intervene and go magicin' up somethin' to stop it. Agreement rules apply." (Stan saw Ford twitch at that one. --Wasn't like that was any real out, Ford. Hell.) "If you get in a fight?" Stan challenged him. "You don't kill them, you don't leave any of them needing hospitalization, and you don't end up in trouble over it," Stan told him, "Not even so much as a detention slip over it. --And you don't have any of your teachers hating you for any of the junk you pull," Stan told him, "Inside or outside of school."
Bill was staring at him expressionlessly, except for his eyes, which were staring at him hard, almost searchingly.
"Define 'my teachers'," Bill said next.
"Any teachers you interact with," Stan said, and he noted the grimace from the kid. "Teachers you're taking classes with," Stan elaborated, "And any teachers you see at the school who aren't walking up to you biased, because of only something that somebody else told them," Stan told the kid, then pulled in a slow breath. "You can't manage any one of those things? You lose," he drawled out at Bill, and saw the kid's eyes go all cat-slit thin on him. (There we go… C'mon, now. Hook, line and sinker...)
Bill cocked his head slightly. Kid was considering it. (Good.) And, after awhile, Bill said…
"...If I do this for a week," Bill started out slowly. "After I show you I can do this and win." (Heh, bold of the kid to assume thatone.) "I will have done the 'advanced course'," Bill continued, sitting back a bit. "You think this is harder than the school at the Falls. You will stop trying to tell me that I need to enroll there. I won't go to school there."
--Gotcha.
"I'll stop telling you that you need to take 12th grade at the high school, to get better at being able to be around other kids your age," Stan amended. "You won't have go to school there." Stan saw Bill's eyes narrow again, going over the differences in the statements. He hadn't given any other reasoning for going to school beyond that, other than the 'watching over Wendy and the Valentino kid' thing. And yeah, if the kid could show that he could watch them and do something from outside the school if something went really wrong, like he'd just suggested to Miz just now? And if Stan didn't think he needed to up his 'how not to mentally attack everybody around you whether you're trying to or not' game anymore? Then sure. Stan would let it slide. ...But Stan was--
"What are you betting on?" the kid asked him next, flatly, and Stan couldn't help but grin. (He ignored Ford's hissed-out "Stanley!!!" 'cause it wasn't anything like helping him out right now.)
"I'm betting that you don't got all your mental attack stuff figured out yet," Stan told the kid, which had the kid giving him an immediate and annoyed clickety-whistle-chirp refusal in reply. (Not like Stan hadn't expected that one, either.) "And I'm also betting…" Stan drew it out, and he couldn't help but grin a little wider, toss a Mr. Mystery grin at the kid for this one, "That even if you manage five days of this, here, starting today and doing everything right, for all of it?" Stan leaned in a little closer, grin full-on in place for this one. (And really, he had to fight back a laugh as he said...) "You're gonna want to go to school at the Falls."
...Kid was actually leaning away from him slightly now, looking taken aback. (Ford was looking at him like he was out of his frigging mind; what else was new?)
(Which was kinda stupid from both of them, really, far as Stan was concerned. Kid liked talking to people he thought were smart, and second-best was people who were at least trying to learn. People who cared about learning weren't on the kid's list, but Stan figured that was just one of the kid's 'oversights'. And Stan wasn't stupid. You went to a school, or a college? And that was all that was. That was where all those people were, the easiest and largest place to find 'em. Kid was a nerd; he liked nerdy stuff. Kid did other stuff, too, but Stan figured that, if he could just get the kid coloring within the lines well enough not to be mentally demolishing people, just because he was talking at them too long and was practically colorblind -- line-blind? -- to the lines of everybody else and their dog, then...)
It was kind of almost funny. Kid was gonna like going to school. And Stan was sure the kid would never see it coming. And he was pretty sure that the kid would actually be happier, having some fun with it too.
"But hey," Stan said, shrugging like nothing at all really mattered, and dropping the grin. (...mostly. Heh.) "Maybe I'm wrong," he told the kid breezily, tossing his hands up in a showman's theatrical 'oh well!', and the kid knew that one real well by now. (Heh.)
Dead silence on the curb they were sitting on.
...At least until the younger twins cracked open the gas station bathroom and slowly made their way out. (Stan wasn't sure what was up, there. Sixer in particular was walking out looking a lot more tentative about something than he'd walked in. ...Huh. Maybe the reality of this shit was finally settling in. Guess the shock had to wear off, sooner or later.)
Stan wasn't worried, as he stood up and brushed himself off from the curb. (Kid was gonna end up attending anyway, because of his kid sister -- though that one kinda sent Stan for a loop -- hasn't she been 27 way back when she was human? Hadn't she 'survived' high school already? He'd think that she'd really be the last one who had any reason to go to school, of the lot of them. Maybe he should ask?)
"You two ready to go?" Stan asked them. He got nods from the younger twins. "Okay. Gonna have to hit the office first," he told them both. "Get you both re-registered." Stan was gonna be acting as their caretaker from now on until… well, when they were eighteen at the latest, but Stan didn't think that was gonna have to be a thing. Really, they just needed enough cash to hold 'em over for awhile, until they got their high school diplomas, and Stan had more than a few ideas on that one.
Stan took this time to actually ask Miz. "So, you already survived high school, why're you willing to go back to that hellhole?" (Bill didn't even bother tossing a look Stan's way for his choice of language descriptors; it was part of how the kid had described it himself, taken from others.)
Miz blinked. "Well, most of the other kids sucked, but high school was where I met my friends. My human friends. And they stayed my friends even after we graduated, and past college and everything." She smiled fondly, a little sad and nostalgic but practically radiating how much she had… cared about them.
Stan blinked at her. "Huh," he said. He scratched at his cheek. "Yeah, okay," he said to her. "Gotta mission for you," Stan said, "Since I don't want the kid getting on my case for making things 'too difficult' for him and 'sabotaging' him," he didn't quite outright snicker, as the kid let out an insectile click-hisssss. "Since, y'know, you've survived the whole thing once already," he told her. "If you're up for it?"
"Sure? Gonna need to know the terms first." Miz blinked at him.
Stan nodded. "Wanted to know if you're interested at all, first," he told her. "Not askin' for a blank check, here." He took a moment to think how he wanted to put this… "Your mission, should you choose to accept it…" (and Miz grinned, squealing out a short Spy Theme melody) then Stan just decided 'to hell with it', and told her straight-out that what he wanted her to do: "...is to make sure that neither of these two knuckleheads manage to sneak out of school or skip any classes," Stan told her, pointing to the two younger twin Pines. "Especially that one," Stan said, thrusting a finger in Lee's direction, and tossing him his very worst crotchety old-man glare.
Lee gasped, placing his hands on his chest. "Who? Me?" He gave them all such a wide-eyed innocent look that even Sixer was staring at him in deadpan disbelief.
Miz cackled. "Sure, I can do that." She tilted her head at the boys, smug grin in place.
Good," said Stan. "--Yeah, you," Stan followed up with to his younger self, looking annoyed. "You think I don't know that you're thinkin' about sneakin' off to go try to find another job and make more money, instead of trying to go to class?"
Lee frowned, not real happy that he was caught out, and unable to play any of it off. "But--"
Stan cut him off. "Nope. Nah ah. None of that. You, are going to go to class. You are going to get your diploma. You are not gonna be able to get a decent job from anyone anywhere without one; trust me on this," Stan said heavily, with the weight of forty two years without a high school diploma behind him. "I told you, you let me worry about the finances," he told them. "I don't gotta go to school. I've got nothing but time to kill while you're doing that, and I've been makin' bank for years," he told them both, not thinking he needed to get into the details.
But Lee and Sixer exchanged a glance. And then Sixer said, suspiciously, "...You don't look like you've been making that much money, for any amount of time."
Stan damn near lost it laughing his ass off at that one. It was a very near thing.
"Kid," Stan said, real cheerfully, and meaning every word, "What somebody looks like don't got anything to do with what they're making. --You think somebody's all expensive wine and caviar? They've just got something to prove." Stan shook his head. "I've been paying for the maintenance on this guy's gadgets for years." Stan tossed a thumb back Ford's way, and he ignored the way Ford startled slightly at that. "Expensive as hell to fix 'em up for parts, lemme tell ya. And the new stuff?" Like that bioscanner? Let alone the electric bill monthly. Stan let out a whistle, then continued with, "--We're living off of my retirement money at home now, and I bought myself a damn nice boat last year without even having to blink." ...mostly because he knew what was in his accounts, and had everything calculated down to a T long-since, but... Stan shrugged. It might not be 'millions', but Stan sure wasn't hurting for cash. The Mystery Shack had treated him well, but he'd been happy to let go of it and actually relax for a change, now that he had his twin brother back.
...And hey, some of the treasure they'd come across treasure-hunting during their boat adventures hadn't exactly hurt anything, either.
"Caviar is overrated." Miz muttered. "And screw those people who think putting GOLD LEAF on food is a good idea!" She devolved into an angry rant about over-priced food and needless extravagance that wastes money for no good reason and ruins food that would have been better off without putting goddamn expensive stuff on it just to be fancy-- "You don't NEED gold leaf AND caviar on ICE CREAM--"
They all let her rant for a bit, until Bill put a hand on her head and she slowly started to calm down. (...Hell, was the kid actually stroking her head with his fingers? Gently? Stan blinked.)
Once they were all sure Miz was done with her ranting (and not about to start it up again), Lee said, kind of uncertaintly, to Stan, "...You don't dress like you've got a lot of money?"
Stan let out a huff of laughter. He was still wearing the 'Mr. Mystery' suit Miz had fixed up for him… or at least the suit jacket on top of what he'd already been wearing.
"Jumped through a transdimensional portal in my relaxing clothes," Stan told them both, shrugging. "Suit jacket's a quick thing." He shrugged it off and tucked it over an arm, showing them. "Say you've got bank, yeah? What're you gonna wear every day. A suit and tie? Or whatever the hell you want, and to hell with what anybody else thinks about it," Stan asked them both. "You tell me."
The younger twins exchanged another look. Stan mentally shrugged it off. Although… "Don't see you complainin' about what this nerd-owl's wearin' over here," Stan said, tossing a thumb Ford's way again, to a huff of not-quite outrage out of his brother.
That got a snicker of "Nerd-owl!" out of Lee, and Sixer coloring a bit in embarrassment. "--But his jacket coat looks cool!" was what Sixer blurted out next, with zero further embarrassment until both Lee and Stan looked to him in utter astonishment, and he realized how he must have sounded. Then Sixer turned bright red and ducked his head, shoving his hands into his pockets and muttering something to himself that Stan didn't quite catch... even if Lee did and it set him grinning up a storm and clapping Sixer on the back for whatever the heck it was.
Ford coughed into a fist and looked away, turning slightly pink in sympathetic embarrassment himself. Miz pointed out, "It does make him look pretty hot, really unfair." She turned to Sixer. "Want a cool space-worthy trench coat?" she purred, looking him up and down before pausing. "I'm sorry, you're too young for my tastes."
That had Sixer looking over at her and blinking. (And Bill eyeing her oddly.)
"...thank you?" Sixer said, looking slightly confused and grateful, to Lee's rolling eyes, up until he added, "I'm glad you don't think of me as edible," and that had Lee freezing for a minute and glancing between them, trying to figure out if his brother was serious? (Okay, yes.) And flirting? (Okay, no.) And…
"Demons don't actually eat people when they get too old, right?" Lee asked, glancing around at them all. "Right?" Because, uh, maybe that explained why the two super-old thems were hanging out with two of 'em? They were like, circling buzzards or something? Only weirder, because Sixer was all about the weird?
Miz rolled her eyes. "Not without permission." She shrugged. "And I don't like eating people if I can avoid it." ...and that time that she found a planet of creatures that looked like burgers and she had eaten a few without realizing they were people… but she brought them back! She DID.
"Uhhhhhhh," Lee raised a finger, because he had a question there, and it wasn't getting answered? And that came out sounding… really really wrong if... "Are we talking, like… 'eating' eating?" Lee asked. "Or… uh…" the other one, which was the really wrong-one sounding. Because she had looked Sixer up and down in a definitely-checking-him-out kind of way only about two seconds ago. (Ford let out a groan and pinched the bridge of his nose. He wasn't quite as oblivious at 60-something as he had been at only 17-ish years of age, anymore. He knew full well what Lee was asking. ...And so did Stan, who was having to stifle both a wince and a chuckle.)
"I'm not into the whole, 'having sex' deal. And my eating habits have nothing to do with my appreciation for looking at things I find attractive," Miz told him. "So don't worry your fluffy little head about it. I'm not gonna touch your brother. Heck--" she thumbed her hand back to point at Ford "--I haven't touched mister tall, sleep-deprived, and sexy over there. Just looked at him." (Ford looked vaguely horrified at the descriptors Miz had just used for him, especially so as he realized she wasn't wearing those glasses Bill had made for her anymore!)
("'Fluffy little head'?" Sixer echoed, looking over at his brother incredulously. "Fluffy-head?" Sixer tried out, starting to smile, as Lee gave him a confused, consternated look. "What? My hair ain't fluffy," Lee said, sounding almost offended. Birds and chicks and cats and cute things were fluffy. Not him!)
"We are going to have a TALK about getting you a set of BETTER STANDARDS VERY SOON NOW, little sis!" Bill said both firmly and loudly, as they all approached the school 'gates' -- or, more like, the opening on the wall surrounding the school grounds.
...Welp, time to enroll the demons and re-enroll the kids. Stan took a breath and looked over at the kid. Last chance.
"--Challenge accepted, kid?" Stan asked Bill. Bill stared -- no, damn, all but glared at the building, then turned to look at him.
"YES," said Bill, looking for the world like he thought he was gonna win this one, from the straight-backed set up his shoulders, the raised chin, and the look in his eyes.
...Yeah, the kid really hadn't figured out the whole win-win / lose-lose situation thing yet, had he? Stan had to stifle a snort. He just nodded his head at the kid once instead, and said, "I hear ya. Let's get to it."
But Miz suddenly stopped in place, looking torn, and Stan had to stop to look back at her. (So did Bill, and Ford.)
"Problem, dragon-lady?" Stan asked her.
"Well…" Miz gestured to herself, and... Stan understood the problem, kinda. Her current physical form looked too young to be in high school (she'd be a freshmen at MOST) but she wanted to stay with her brother.
"...Yeahhhh, just make yourself look older?" Stan said, not really getting why the problem was a problem. The demon-kids could both do the whole ageing-deaging thing to people's bodies, right? So why did Miz look so embarrassed right now?
"My vessel is already technically SUPPOSED to be 27 years old in human years…" She rubbed her arm. "And I don't know how to make myself 'age' since this is already as old as I can remember looking."
Stan was about to suggest one of those illusions, when Bill looked over. "I can modify your vessel for you?" the kid offered, walking back over, and sending a glance Stan's way. ...Because that was probably gonna take some serious magic stuff to do.
Stan glanced around. "Yeah, okay," Stan said, "But filter it," Stan told him, as the younger twins realized something was up, and turned around to walk themselves back over. "Toss one up." They were there early, but not that early. There were other people around.
Miz flicked her fingers, looking around to make sure it worked. It did. She leaned against the wall to prepare herself, before Bill asked her, "Any requests?" and her eyes lit up.
"Oooh! Gimme huge boobs!" Miz requested, making both Ford and Sixer choke with embarrassed horror, while Lee practically bent over laughing. (Not like Lee wasn't expecting to hear something like that.) Stan, being older and a little more conscious of what stereotypes could do to younger girls, just sighed a curmudgeonly sigh and looked away. The kid, on the other hand, seemed confused.
"Why? They'll just get in the way!" Bill told her, from a knowledge born of experience, and Miz responded to that by placing her hands on her chest and patting her small, barely there breasts with a pout.
"I just wanna know what it's like to actually have big boobs…" she said, then muttered something about how her human friends had all been utterly stacked and teased her about being so small. It all left Stan feel bad enough about what she was saying to want to turn his hearing aid off. The whole thing was making him uncomfortable, because he was used to hearing the opposite from Shermie; it was still a familiar sort of griping, though. (He didn't want to feel sorry for the demon-kid, not in any way, shape, or form. He was still pissed off at her for hurting Ford before. And pitying her? That would really get him in trouble. Stan knew better than that, to let things go that far.)
Bill waved a lazy hand at her, telling her to get on out of her body so he could handle things properly for her. So Miz jumped out of her vessel and into the Mindscape to let Bill modify it. Because what Bill was doing wasn't as simple as just using weirdness to stretch her out and make her taller; this was a biological vessel, not a taffy pull, and human faces and other proportions had proportions to them and those things were supposed to stay within certain acceptable ranges and change with age. So Bill wasn't just doing a slap-and-dash external mod to her vessel; he was literally tweaking the DNA and 'resetting' the whole thing, walking the changes through each and every cell in waves, and then setting off the 'proper' cellular regrowth patterns, to rebalance everything both biologically and chemically.
It went on for awhile, a few minutes. And it seemed that Miz was still making some more requests from the Mindscape, since Bill would nod or ask questions to no-one that Stan (or the rest of them) could see as he worked. Miz's vessel stayed the same sex and general ethnicity, but it slowly shifted and grew from looking like a 13-14-year-old to something more accepted in this time and era to be closer to 17, filling out with curves. The Stanfords both looked away at first, too embarrassed to watch the process. But Lee watched the whole thing from the start with rapt attention -- not in a sexual way, but he was very much curious and interested. (And after awhile, Sixer started snatching glances over at what was going on, too.) Stan just sighed and waited the demon out. Because really, these kids.
Miz slipped back into her vessel and gasped as she examined herself. "Holy shit! I'm sexy!" she grinned maniacally. She grabbed large handfuls of her chest and purred. "So this is what they feel like? Ooh~" and Stan wasn't sure if he wanted to laugh or cry. This was his life now. Still, he had to speak up before things got any worse.
"Hey Miz," he called, for her attention. She turned to him, still groping her own chest. "Maybe see about fixin' your clothes so they fit again?" he told her, with a tired sigh, waving a hand up and down at her. Her dress had been cute and modest on her previous form, but now the end of her dress was up around her upper thighs, and probably just barely covering her butt in the back. Her new chest was also straining the fabric in front.
Miz looked down, blinked and then her clothes lengthened and shifted to fit her new form. "Better?" she asked, finally letting go of her breasts and twisting around to look herself over. Stan nodded, noting with relief from the straps peeking out at the sides of the wide-cut neck that she had even given herself a bra. "Yeah. That's a lot better. Good job." He didn't pat her on the head as he turned away from all of them to head for the double doors in and the office, but he sent a glance the kid's way, and saw the kid start to do it for him out of the corner of his eye.
Getting the two demons into the school ended up not being too hard. After they all sat down in the 'waiting area' chairs at the side of the principal's office, and Miz threw up another filter for them (Bill being barred from using magic during the school day, except for emergencies, as the start of what Stan hoped would become a good habit for more than just school...), Miz forged a few documents the way Stan directed, for both herself and her brother.
Stan already had everything he needed for re-enrolling the kids in his pocket; the rest was all on him. He was essentially going to be Lee and Sixer's 'guardian'-slash-caretaker both, with Sixer having been thrown out by Filbrick. (And according to an angry Miz, Filbrick had ALWAYS intended to throw Stanford out. Stan wasn't holding his breath on that one -- not without getting a bit more context outta the kid for what had happened to the two of them specifically -- but from a few things that he'd seen and put together so far...)
Stan was taking the twins as a matched set (despite Sixer saying at first that Lee should keep living at home, not wanting to risk him getting thrown out, too, and Lee thinking of maybe sneaking him food and stuff, and keeping the money costs for keeping Sixer in food and stuff more easily that way by keeping his own that low). It hadn't been that hard to convince those kids that he had the right of it, either. Stan had just made it clear to the two of them that he'd be damned if he was going to be the one to split up the two of them, and they'd both stared at him wide-eyed, looked at each other…
...and they'd mostly just gone along with it after that. (Well, except for Lee wanting to drop out of school and get a job. Not that Stan was gonna let him screw things up for himself that way; not if he had any say about it, and he did. Have a say in it.)
For now, they were all gonna be living together on the boat. Bill and his sister were gonna be staying in the magical sandcastle up on the deck from now on -- one which had a larger opening now, and was a hell of a lot more stable, up to Bill's own standards. (They'd worked on that first-thing, after Stan had finished his little pow-wow with the demons and Ford, just before he'd started working on cooking up breakfast.) Ford was going to help Lee (and Stan) make the final repairs and upgrades to the boat that Lee had been intending to make for awhile now, but hadn't really had the time or the ability to do all by himself. (Sixer would concentrate more on his homework, and applying to colleges.) Miz would go fishing to get enough food to feed herself as a start, for now, while Stan would continue to run his cons along the boardwalk to earn enough money for food for the rest of them and other necessities and then some. Once Stan had enough money to bootstrap himself up to something more lucrative and more easily self-sustaining, he figured he'd do just that -- at which point he'd take over paying for the food for all of them, including Miz.
They would make this work. He would make this work. --Heck, part of the reason Stanley was even enrolling the demons in school was to keep them occupied for most of the day so that he could have some time to himself, to think and to plan -- not just more time to himself to make money. Socializing Bill was the main point of the whole schooling thing, but really, Stan was doin' it for the same reason that he had originally talked Melody into helping out with him back home at the Shack for most of the day -- and it wasn't just so that he could spend some more time with the niblings that summer himself.
After he took the paperwork from her, Stan only watched the demons out of the corner of his eye as Miz materialized different clothes for herself and Bill, and then stuffed them into (this time, pulled out of Bill's hat) two duffel bags 'borrowed' with a 'please' from Lee's own things from his room.
"This is what people think looks nice right back then now," Miz proclaimed, as she kept pulling at her current bra, adjusting it, unused to the weight of her chest.
"You sure you want them that big?" Bill drawled out, as he stood up and shouldered his own duffel bag, knowing exactly what Miz's problem was.
Miz pouted. "It's fine! I can do this!" She made a determined expression that just made Bill hum at her in exasperated amusement.
"What is it with humans and wanting oversized parts?" Bill muttered. "It's like all of you have completely forgotten about minimalism!"
Stan finished looking over the forged paperwork, then shoved himself up onto his feet himself. "Gonna take this over to the office," he told the kids, waving the pile of paperwork at them. "You four, go to the locker rooms, shower, freshen up, and change." He didn't wait to see if they did what he'd told them to do; Stan just turned and walked away, ticking his head at Ford, to have him follow him. (And as he did so, he slipped a folded piece of paper out of his front right pants pocket, to add to the bottom of the forged paperwork pile without any of them noticing, as he went…)
The twins and the demon kids looked at each other. And then they all seemed to shrug and get up to do just that.
------
Miz, fresh from the shower, decided she wanted to go with something different again still, and shifted her new clothes into a loose sweater-shirt and jeans, instead. She brushed her hair back (drying it instantly, making it fluff up) and hummed to herself before walking out of the locker room, to see Lee and Sixer already out there and done, and Bill (sans hat) leaning back against the wall nearby them.
"Does this look good?" she asked the human twins, as she materialized a pair of glasses and slid them on. (Sixer was blushing slightly; he was both taking glances over and over again at her, while also trying to keep looking away.)
Lee just gave her a grin and a two thumbs up. "Lookin' great! Super hot." Hell yeah. Curves in all the right places and legs for days! She was gonna make all the other girls jealous, Lee knew. (And sure, Lee also knew what the older thems had told them: that Miz was actually a demon dragon-lady who spent most of her time pretending to be a child. But hey, she'd wanted to look like a busty bombshell, and now her older form was a hot babe! Lee could respect that.)
Miz grinned at Lee's input, blushing a little. Bill glanced over at her and then turned to Lee, looking like he was halfway between deciding to scowl and maybe set him on fire with a glare, or something? Lee just shrugged and raised his hands up, palms-out, saying "Hey, she asked!" backing off. Because wow, overprotective much?
Bill ruffled Miz's hair. "Don't let the squirmy feelings get the better of you," he told her. He hadn't been able to do much to help with that, since Miz had told him it was a vision thing that wasn't just a body-thing, unfortunately.
Miz pouted. "I'll be fine. I've gone through high school once, I can do it again." Her chest bounced when she attempted to skip down the hall and she stumbled a little, not quite used to counterbalancing yet. ...And she glared at Bill when he slipped right up to her and 'caught' her by ducking his arm under one of her flailing hands, and then capturing said hand by clasping his other hand over it and pressing down.
As she put her weight on his arm to stabilize herself again, Bill simply returned her glare with a superior smug smile -- after all, HE had no balance problems in commanding his body to go walking him around to other places! He was even good enough at it to help rebalance other people, HAHA!
Miz straightened, letting out a soft, "Thanks," despite her embarrassment and walked around carefully, adjusting to the weight on her front. Her chest bounced with each step. "I can do this. Not like I'm gonna be wearing heels," she muttered.
"Just don't try jumping again," Bill recommended, as the twins caught back up to them.
"...This isn't the way back to the principal's office," Sixer pointed out, adjusting his glasses. He hesitated a bit in place, feeling a little taken aback and overwhelmed, as Bill turned towards him and gave him a HUGE GRIN.
"YES!" Bill said enthusiastically. "What's your point?"
Lee and Sixer exchanged a glance. "Ah, well." Sixer cleared his throat. "How, exactly, will you know your schedule, if you don't--" He stopped, as Bill let out a loud "AHAHAHAHAHAHA!" at him, grinning, and then Miz's eyes began to Flicker. It was very odd to watch.
"Schedule, get!" she said cheerfully, blinking the static from her eyes.
"Schedule, ALREADY KNOWN," Bill said, even more smugly to his little sister, tilting his head at her. "Planning!"
Lee and Sixer exchanged another glance. "Uhhh, so…" Lee began, then stopped when Bill got right up in his face, and then tapped a finger to his chest.
"OUR schedule is YOUR schedule!" Bill told him, looking all kinds of excited. "YOU are not going ANYWHERE ELSE," Bill told him, abruptly leaning back to a normal upright position again, the usual amount of personal space away from him again. It left Lee blinking, and feeling a little off-balance.
"Um." Sixer glanced over at his brother, who usually was not at a loss for words, at anything. "That's… nice?" Sixer tried, not quite clutching his book bag to his chest. (He had his duffel bag across his back.) And this… got him no change in expression from the two excited-looking demons. "...We need to go to our lockers?" Sixer tried next, glancing over at his twin again, who let out his breath in a rush, and looked over at him again, finally.
"Lead the way!" Bill grinned at them both, then turned sideways and gestured forwards and past him with a flourish. Sixer adjusted his glasses and offered Bill a smile as they walked forward and past him… in the same direction he'd been going, to their lockers.
"...Are we allowed to bring demons to school?" it finally occurred to Lee to ask his brother under his breath, glancing over at him as he readjusted his backpack (still on his back) and his duffel bag (strap on one shoulder, under his bookbag strap).
"What, you're going to try and tell them no?" Sixer asked him quite realistically right back, just as quietly.
Miz was glancing around at the hallways and doors as they went. She had of course, gotten the full layout of the school, where all her classes would be, when they would happen (but knowing her, she was gonna forget unless she checked again before each class) and the fastest, most efficient route to them. Here's hoping this rendition of high school life would be easier! At least she wouldn't be struggling to understand the school work this time around. And… she grinned at Bill and the twins. She had friends who would actually be in the same classes as her now! Her human high school experience had only allowed her to see her friends during lunch and after school, since they were in all different grades and classes.
Bill was leisurely walking along behind them all, lifting his hands and arms above his head to s-t-r-e-t-c-h his body out a bit, then rotated and moved his arms back and forth across his chest from side-to-side, stretching them this way and that. And as he did so, he craned his head around, looking around for someone in particular. Because 'high school' was a cesspit of biological hormones, with the law of the jungle in play, and Bill knew EXACTLY how to end up on the top of the pinnacle of the heap in a place like this! EASY PEASY!
Miz was on the lookout for a particular person, herself. She wasn't going to harm or attack them, but… passive-aggressiveness was fine, right? Messing with them by simply being better than them in everything they cared about was fine, right? Miz walked a little closer to Sixer, swaying her hips as she settled into the proper mindset. (Sixer glanced over at her oddly, not really understanding why she was suddenly walking differently, then decided that it must be some sort of camouflage thing, since some of the girls in school did that, too.)
The two demons escorted the twins to their lockers without issue (though the Pines hardly realized that that was what the two demons were doing for them). They both managed to get into their lockers and get everything they needed to squared away (duffel bags shoved in, books and papers managed, bookbags back on). It was only after they both finished what they were doing and slammed their locker doors shut, to turn around and look down the hallway, that Sixer groaned slightly and clutched at the bookbag straps at his shoulders, not doing a very good job at stifling a groan. Neither did Lee, who outright said, "Crampelter," the way most people said, "Oh, look. A dead rat."
Miz glanced over, blinking at the large teenager coming down the hall. She saw his eyes roam up and down her body, lingering along her chest. Miz twitched. Right. This was gonna be a thing. She tightened her hold on the strap of her backpack. She was going to have to learn to deal with this.
Bill, on the other hand, lit up like every holiday and birthday that he'd never had? Had all come calling at once! He was grinning up a storm.
And, after Crampelter looked their way and seemed to get a 'what the hell' frown, the twins followed his gaze back and did their own double-takes at Bill's grinning reaction.
"Uh…" Lee said, looking back and forth between them, as Crampelter stomped his way over, still frowning. It was pretty clear that the big bully had no idea what the hell was going on, what with the Pines twins just standing there right next to two girls that he'd never seen around town before.
"Here!" Bill said, still grinning right at Crampelter as he grabbed the strap of his duffel bag and lifted it up and over his head, before shoving it straight into Sixer's chest. "HOLD MY BAG for me, will ya!"
-----
'Huh,' thought Crampelter, as he made his way across the hallway and over. New girls? Around the losers? --Better fix that one real quick before they got the wrong impression about the city. And hey, that oriental chick was pretty fuckin' hot too. Time to roll out the welcome wagon! (He didn't get why the taller one was grinning at him like that, though.)
"Hey," Crampelter said, as he strutted up to the four of them, upping the machismo to cow the two losers while focusing a flashing grin on the girls. "What're two hot ladies like you doing with these two losers right here?" the bully asked them both. Wasn't like he didn't know how to charm the socks off the girls, and it was pretty clear after watching them for the half-minute it had taken him to walk over that the two girls were a pair themselves, probably sisters.
"Oh, I'm SO glad that YOU ASKED!!" the grinning one enthused brightly, her grin getting even wider. She straightened up just a bit more, and put her hands on her hips as she loudly proclaimed, "I'm CHALLENGING YOU to a FIGHT!!"
There was a second there where there was dead silence in the hallway, and Crampelter was still smiling down at her. And then the black-haired girl's words actually registered.
"...What?" Crampelter said slowly, confused. "A fight? With me?" He started to smile again, ready to laugh at what he thought must be a joke, but then slowly lost his smile as the girl let out a laugh and then nodded at him enthusiastically. The busty one was hiding a cute giggle behind her hand.
"Uhhhhh…" the sweaty twin said next to them, as Crampelter looked around at them.
"--Is she serious?" he demanded out of the Pines twins, pointing down at her. He watched as they both turned to each other, and did that stupid looks-and-glances thing between them that they always did. Like it ever meant anything at all, except that they didn't have more than one barely-working nerd brain that they had to split between them.
"Ahh, welllll?" the freak twin said next, looking a little embarrassed and twitchy, and adjusting his glasses, not meeting Crampelter's eyes for some reason. "I… I don't think--" And Crampelter stared as the freak twin started talking to the girl and said, "Perhaps you, ah, shouldn't challenge him to a fight? Stan-- uh. Your, uh..." The freak twin stopped and coughed. "He said--"
"--Don't get into trouble!" the crazy girl grinned. "I'm not getting into trouble, I'm planning on getting TROUBLE into trouble! --And then PUNCHING it like a dead horse and KICKING it into the river!" the girl enthused. "And then TOSSING IT into the lake!!! AHAHAHAHAHAHA!"
Crampelter stared down at her, then looked over at the twins again.
"...Did you tell her I don't hit girls, or somethin'?" Crampelter asked them, confused. Because, what the hell? The twins just gave him identical helpless expressions.
"Oh, is that a PROBLEM?" the girl said to him brightly. "WELL THEN," she said next, rocking back on her heels, "LET ME FIX THAT FOR YOU!"
And the the girl moved her hands in front of her, to spread a hand across her chest, and closed her eyes for a moment, almost kind of like she was kind of concentrating?
And then...
Crampelter stared.
So did the twins.
"...I don't think you're supposed to do that in school," the freak twin said, sounding strangled and kind of staring.
"WHAT," the gir--guy said, lowering his hand, and what the hell was with his hair? "This is what I STARTED OUT looking like," he said (the HELL?!?!?) "And it wouldn't really be all that FAIR if he didn't FEEL like he couldn't TRY to HIT ME while I DESTROY him in a fight, now, WOULD IT??" the guy grinned out absolutely maniacally. (And then the sweaty twin turned to the busty girl and asked quietly, "Can you do that too?" to which she laughed, "Of course! Though, I was female to begin with," which made the sweaty twin look somewhat relieved.)
Yeah, no. Fuck this noise. Buncha freaks!! --And who the hell had hair that turned blue for no freaking reason? Crampelter pulled back a fist and sent it flying the Freak's way, straight for his skull.
The Freak moved a hand upwards and caught it. And stopped it dead.
(((((((((((((((((((((((Warning for VIOLENCE against a teenager))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))
Crampelter stared.
He felt his expression drop, and then a chill go down his spine, as the Freak flicked his gaze straight over to him, and paused. And then slowly turned his head towards him, slitted cat-eyes staring straight-out at him and into his skull the whole time, grinning.
Crampelter tried to pull his hand away. And then he realized… he couldn't.
-----
The twins watched the blood drain straight out of Crampelter's face as he tried to tug his hand out of Bill's grasp, and Bill didn't move an inch. Crampleter's arm and his chest did a lot, as he tried again, but his hand, and... Bill's hand? Not even a little.
"Oh, shit," Lee whispered out quietly. He knew this feeling. Hell, he'd been on the wrong side of this feeling. But he'd also seen enough fights, standing on the sidelines, to know… Crampelter was about to get wrecked.
Miz hummed as she leaned back against Sixer's side. "Well, this shouldn't take long."
Sixer was staring. This was… this was...
Bill, still grinning like everything about this was the funniest thing in the world, pulled back his other hand in a fist... and planted it straight into Crampelter's gut, faster than Lee had seen just about anybody move before ever... except maybe that older Sixer guy when he'd been messing around with those cops, out in front of their house two days ago.
Crampelter… didn't go anywhere. His head drooped slightly, and he just...
There was a hushed silence around the hallway as the other students just stared. Miz was glad she'd thrown up that mild Perception Filter... (right before Bill had used the tech embedded in his bodysuit to bend the light being directed into a few select Pines-eyes, and one Crampelter in particular, in a very different way -- in a fully 'scientific', technologically-enacted and selectively-applied 'illusion', since Bill wasn't supposed to be using magic in school...)
(Miz knew, as she'd heard Bill issue his challenge, that some of their conversation was really going to need some censoring. And she breathed a sigh of relief that, because of her own spell, all the other students had heard was the original challenge -- not the rest -- and nothing about the rest of that part of their conversation that would have conflicted with what little the rest of the hallway had been able to see.)
...as Bill pulled his fist back again to his side, Crampelter just sort of... folded up, his knees dropping out from under him, his one arm upraised… because his hand was still caught in Bill's iron and unmoving grip.
And then Bill laughed, let go, and Crampelter... fell the rest of the way to the floor, to let out a groan.
"Wow!" Bill enthused out at them all. "Color ME surprised! Who would have EVER Seen THAT coming?" Bill said to all and sundry, strutting forward a bit and out to the side, into the middle of the hallway, then turning towards Crampelter again and--
Lee barely saw the motion, almost heard Crampelter's body slam up against the lockers first just in front of them, from the kick Bill had just as quickly delivered to his side, one that had Crampelter letting out a wheezing breath and slumping down further with almost a whine.
Lee turned to Miz. "Shouldn't you… stop him?" he asked her. Miz scoffed. "That filth hurt you and your brother for years. This is just… karma," she grinned.
"OH," Bill said, kicking his foot against the ground, as the entire hallway stared at... her, because the only thing he'd really done there was modify how he'd LOOKED to those very few individuals standing near him (with a directed tech-based illusion, back to what he'd used to look like before, sexed-male and cat-eyes and blue-hair and all). The rest of them were still seeing the general magic-based Stanley-Pines-approved illusion he'd walked into school wearing, of a normal-looking, tall, short-haired, black-haired, fair-skinned girl… kicking Crampelter's dumb STUPID (carc)ass all across the hallway. "I think I'm done here!"
There was a pause for a moment, like the entire hallway was letting out a slow breath of relief.
And then Bill shot forward, grabbed Crampelter by the neck, and made an overhand throwing motion -- lifting Crampelter up and over his shoulder as he twisting in place 180 degrees -- to toss the boy DIRECTLY and bodily straight into the row of lockers lining the other side of the hallway. (Lee and Sixer, staring at this, could only blankly think that it was probably a good thing that nobody had been standing over there…)
Silence fell, except for the metal ringing sound of the lockers that was slowly fading out.
And then Bill straightened up again, and clapped his hands together once, with a grinning smile. "WELL!" he said, then rotated his body exactly 60 degrees in place to face the rest of the hallway. "I TAKE IT BACK!" Bill said loudly. "NOW I'M DONE!"
And while everybody was still staring at him, and at Crampelter, and trying to recover from what the hell they had just seen him do, Bill continued on quite happily with…
"I THINK we ALL KNOW NOW what happens if you cross A GIRL when you're A GUY who is an IDIOT who does not RECOGNIZE ME as someone who YOU ALL will NEVER, EVER want to mess with!" Bill proclaimed brightly… then suddenly lost the smile. "EVER." he intoned out at them all at the last, staring out at the lot of them like he was the spectre of death and destruction himself. (Because hey, that sure had been a fun Qxwel'Ken-or afternoon, taking over that minor deity's job for a 'sick' day, a couple billions years ago! HAHAHAHAHA!)
(((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((Ok, the one sided beatdown is complete x_x;;;;; )))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))
The hallway was dead silent, except for the sound of the soft pained (and painful-sounding) groans coming from Crampelter.
And then the bell rang.
Bill went right back to smiling again.
"CLASS TIME, EVERYONE!" he called out, clapping his hands together three-times-fast, as the bell finished dying down so that he could be heard again.
And then Bill dropped his hands to his sides and strode off with a purpose, as if he owned and had an absolute right to every last inch of that hallway, if not the whole school entire.
The kids in the hallway stayed frozen for one long moment, except for the few frightened individuals who hurriedly moved out of Bill's path (or anything looking like it was within arm's reach of the crazy girl as she moved).
A teacher poked their head out of a doorway and looked around (not having many students in attendance for homeroom yet) and called out, "What the hell are you all doing, standing around out there?"
And then everyone started moving again in a rush.
Everyone, that is, except Crampelter.
----
Miz and the young Stans made it to the homeroom they shared. Bill was already there, having claimed the desk that he wanted, right in the first row in the front-and-center of the classroom. Miz giggled as she walked over, hips rocking back and forth. "Well, that's one way to win at high school." She glanced around before claiming her own seat. The twins sat down near them, Sixer was staring at Bill in awe, still clutching Bill's duffel bag to his chest. "That... wAs…" his voice cracked. "...AWESOME! Tha-that was amazing!" he squealed out.
Bill didn't just enjoy the praise, he absolutely preened under it. Sixer was practically bouncing in his seat. Watching the bully who'd tormented him all his life get taken down so easily was… it was so COOL. Miz glanced around, the students that were already here were giving them a wide berth. "I wonder if Stan would find out about this?" (And to this, Bill just gave her a smile.)
Lee looked over at them, feeling uneasy and not exactly liking what had just happened out there. --Yeah, sure, their old bully had gotten himself beaten up to hell and back; hooray. But Lee had kept up with his boxing lessons, unlike Sixer; he had a better idea exactly what that kinda shit took, and how badly a beating Crampelter had just been given. And he'd seen how the guy had hit the lockers -- kind of sideways at least, rather than directly head-on -- but… he'd also seen how he hadn't been moving afterwards, and heard how he'd barely been groaning. And they'd all just walked off and left him there. So…
"...Is he dead?" was Lee's question to the really fucking dangerous demon who was currently sitting in a seat that his brother had just sat himself right down next to without a care in the world. Within arm's reach.
"Don't worry so much." Miz told Lee. "This way, no one in the school would dare to mess with Bill, and us by proxy." She neatly took out a notebook and other supplies from a small pink backpack she had created to put her school stuff in. Might as well check to see if she had everything she needed. "Just go about your school day like usual."
"Is he dead," Lee repeated, starting to wonder exactly what he and his brother had just stepped into, and then Bill said, "No, he's not dead." Lee let out a breath of relief, up until Bill said next, "If I killed him or sent him to the hospital, I'd lose Stanley's challenge!"
Lee stared at him. "...What challenge," he said slowly to the crazy, way-way-way too strong to be human, killer demon.
"Just a little game," Bill told him with a grin. "And I intend to WIN."
Miz was sharpening her pencils. "Don't worry about it. Stan's really firm about the whole 'not killing' thing." She grinned at Lee. "This is all about getting Bill to learn how to socialize with humans better!"
Lee stared at her incredulously. "How was that socializing?" he complained, gesturing at the door to the hallway.
Miz rolled her eyes. "He didn't kill him. Also, Crampelter attacked Bill first. Right then. So Bill defended himself."
Lee frowned. "But he challenged him," Lee pointed out.
Miz raised an eyebrow. "And that kid accepted. Or rather, he attacked, which, in a way, was an agreement." She didn't see the problem. That bully hurt the twins for years. She had no sympathy for him. And he wasn't dead and didn't require hospitalization. So there was no issue.
Lee was getting a headache from all of this. "You shouldn't be picking fights in school," he said to the older demon. Hell, was the older-him okay with this kinda shit? Or had he just gotten used to it, with the older-Sixer getting into fights with cops all of the time, instead of knowing how to run away well enough to lose them without getting into an actual fight with them all?
"I didn't start a fight with him, he started a fight with me," Bill said easily. "I challenged him. He could have said no."
Lee stared at him.
"Challenging a guy is starting a fight with him," Lee told him. Because seriously, what the hell?! Did the demon not realize a challenge was starting a fight?!
Bill looked over at him, and the demon actually looked surprised. (Hell. Was this an actual thing?)
Bill opened his mouth to say something, but the bell rang again to signal that homeroom was starting and drowned him out. Bill frowned as Lee waved him off, grimacing himself. The demon mostly settled in, as the teacher started reading the notice from the office.
Ah, new students. The teacher looked up to immediately spot the two new girls sitting in the front row of the classroom. "Everyone, we have two new students joining us today. Please stand up and introduce yourselves."
Bill glanced around and started to stand up, then paused with a frown, and made a twisting motion with his right hand before slapping it against his left wrist. Then he sent a glance over his shoulder, back Miz's way. (Bill didn't know why Miz had tossed up a Perception Filter centered on him, but the readings from his suit told him that it had been on him since right after his challenge to Crampelter in the hallway…) How was he supposed to be winning Stanley's challenge if she was helping him cheat when he was trying to win it by Stanley's own rules? (All he could do was try to cancel out or override the sound-altering magic with his own mix of science- and magic-based tech, but that part was experimental for other-magic-and-weirdness-not-cast-by-him, he didn't know if it would ACTUALLY WORK to...)
Miz caught the glance and took down her filter, giving Bill an exasperated look. Her expression was 'Please don't cause a scene now that we're in class' before she packed up her school supplies.
Bill frowned, and twisted his hand the opposite direction (following it up with a plucking motion to cancel the previous command and turn off and depower that experimental functionality again), before lifting it away from his wrist again. He didn't really understand why Miz seemed to have a problem with… him?
Bill looked down at his wrist, then blinked away the visual overlay from his suit (being beamed directly into his eyes) for the moment, and finished standing up. He moved to the front of the classroom, having Seen this sort of thing enough to know how this was supposed to go, from several of his memories of human things that he'd Seen before.
Miz got up and followed; the two of them drew glances from everyone in class. Terror for Bill and wariness for Miz. She also noted all the stares going towards her chest. Ah… this was… a little… embarrassing...
...but she wasn't going to let that get her down! She was going to enjoy having a mature, sexy body while she was here, and screw what everyone else thought! She wasn't going to be a child anymore! She's a big girl now! (Miz carefully ignored the part of her mind pointing out that she was just trying to justify this to herself and wasn't really fooling anyone. Shush brain! Let me have my busty anime girl fantasies~!!!)
"Hello!" Miz said cheerfully. "Um… I'm Miz Cipher. It's very nice to meet you all." She smiled like a sweet little angel, tilting her head adorably to the side. Lee stared incredulously. Some of the guys in class were already grinning stupidly at her.
Bill started out by laughing a bit, "AHAHAHAHA! AHAHAHAHAHAHA! AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!" with his hands on his hips. Then he stopped and said, "WELL WELL WELL." He leaned forward slightly, looking around the classroom. "LOOK at ALL of YOU!" he said while made a wide sweeping gesture at the class, then slapped his other hand to his chest. "My name is BILL CIPHER," he said, grinning out at all of them. "But YOU can call me BILL!" he said cheerfully to the entire class.
And then Bill dropped the smile.
He also dropped both his hands back to his hips, but moved them to a more relaxed pose this time, in loose fists, knuckles resting against his hips, shoulders relaxed and dropped a bit.
"It has come to my attention," Bill paused only briefly, to look over at Lee, before moving his gaze back up to the rest of the students in front of him, "That challenging someone to a fight here is something YOU ALL consider to be the same as STARTING a fight." Bill smiled slightly. "This is incorrect!" Bill told them quite cheerfully, pointing a finger up to the ceiling. "You can say no to challenges!" Then he dropped his hand and the smile, looking serious again. "But to avoid confusion, I will make this clear in the future by using the word for whatever YOU ALL call a CHALLENGE instead, if I decide that I want to do WHATEVER you all call a challenge at some indeterminate point in the future, as yet to be specified, that will probably happen sometime soon, because of course it will, but maybe just not here!" Bill said, giving them all an odd sort of smile at the end of this (because, really, even he didn't entirely believe what he was saying about the 'maybe just not here').
He looked out at the class. The class of students looked back at him.
Miz was face palming. Well. Y'know what, whatever. Let Bill do what he wants.
"Also!" Bill said next, with his original level of enthusiasm. "I will not start any fights with anyone! I will only end them! In self-defense!" he told them with a grin. "--Unless you start a fight with my sister, in which case I will destroy you," Bill said very seriously again with a nod -- and quite reasonably, he thought! Warning was now given! Ground rules established. "ANY QUESTIONS?" he asked them all, looking around the room, looking (and feeling) very interested in anything that any of them might have to say to him.
(And, before the teacher could quite respond to any of this…) One very brave (or foolish?) soul in the back of the classroom raised their hand upwards quite tentatively.
"YES!" Bill said quite happily, pointing at the student in the back. "Miss Mary Johnson of 121 Turtle Lane, Glass Shard Beach, New Jersey, of Earth! What is your question?" he said, looking downright excited.
Pretty much the entire class stared at Bill.
And then, nearly as one, they all turned in their chairs to stare back at the girl in the back of the classroom. (Except for two small groups of teenagers scattered at the sides of the room, who actually knew Mary and were all exchanging glances with each other, wondering how in the hell the new girl had known both her name and her address…)
Mary (who had gotten to class early, and had no idea what had just happened in the hallway) asked of the new girl at the front of the classroom, "Your name is Bill? Not Billie?"
"Yes!" Bill said. "My name is Bill Cipher. --Also, no!" Bill said quite happily. "My name is--" and he let out a fast series of odd clicking chirping sounds rather quickly, "Which translates most closely to 'William Cipher' in the current-day iteration of your silly arbitrary and constantly-shifting human American English language. --But YOU can call me Bill, because I said so!" Bill told her with a winning smile, like he thought Miss Mary Johnson in the very back of the backrow of the classroom had just won some sort of very special prize.
Now BOTH Lee and Miz were face palming. (Sixer, on the other hand, was feverishly taking notes on what he was tentatively calling, for now, demonology…)
"Um," said Mary. "But, you're a girl?"
"Incorrect!" proclaimed Bill. "I am a guy! My body just happens to be female-bio-sexed right now, because I decided that I wanted to do that," Bill told her with a nod. "And then I did that!"
There were the starts of a few 'is she serious?' smiles getting exchanged around different parts of the classroom, and definitely a lot of incredulous glances.
"...Why did you decide to do that?" Mary asked, propping her head up on her palm and just going along with it. She was used to homeroom being boring, but… this wasn't. And at least nobody was laughing at her for asking a stupid question from the new girl or anything, like they usually did?
"Because being a female human is SOOOOOOOO much EASIER!" Bill told her enthusiastically, holding his arms out from his sides and then kicking one foot off the ground and spinning around in place exactly 360 degrees on his foot, before coming to a stop again, and putting his other foot down again. "Meditation is SUPER-EASY!" he told her, dropping his hands to his hips again. "Male humans can't do it properly at all," Bill waved off. "And tossing people is so much easier, because the female human center of mass is much lower than the male--"
"--All right!" the teacher said, clapping her hands together. "I think we're done here!" she said a bit brittlely, which had Bill blinking and turning in place.
"We are?" Bill asked.
"Yes," the teacher said firmly.
"Why?" asked Bill, which sent another round of glances around the classroom.
"Because I said so," said the teacher, and Bill's eyes narrowed to slits.
Bill stared at the teacher for a long moment. "...Why do you say so," Bill said finally, not smiling at all, and not having moved from his current position at the front of the classroom. Miz wasn't sure if she should step in or not.
"...Because we need to let the rest of the kids introduce themselves to us too?" Miz asked tentatively.
Bill turned and looked at his sister. He turned and looked back at the teacher.
"Logical," Bill said to Miz. "But your explanation was flawed," he informed the teacher. "You should work on that! You can tell me your full reasoning. I am not stupid; I will understand you!" And then Bill turned around and took the few steps he needed to, to go back to his claimed desk and sit himself back down again. Miz sat down as well.
The teacher pulled in a deep breath, and debated whether sending the girl to the office was worth it… and thought about the questioning she would likely get from the girl before she actually left the room on it, if what had just happened was any indication, and exactly how long that would take. ...And then she decided, for the moment, to just avoid the potential headache by letting it go for now.
"Mrs. Kimberly--" Miz spoke up, "--Just saying 'Because I said so' is not a reason. It is just a statement. It doesn't explain anything. Please think more carefully in the future so you can give an actual reason when you ask for something." It would certainly save the woman a world of headache when dealing with Bill.
The teacher gritted her teeth, then straightened her dress.
"Detention, for the both of you," she said firmly. And at least she wasn't on the rotation for that day -- and good luck to whoever was, because she had a feeling that they would need it.
Miz frowned. "Why are we getting detention?" she asked.
"Your sister was being rude and discussing about how she's going to be getting into fights with people, and you interrupted me without raising your hand," the teacher told her promptly, turning away from her towards the blackboard at the front of the room. Miz raised her hand. Then she waved her hand when Mrs. Kimberly didn't see it.