Chapter 137 - -Don't know when- Part 3

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Ford was immediately on edge when he walked into the kitchen for breakfast the next day, sure that there'd be some continuation of the awfulness from the night before. He paused when he saw Miz and Bill in the kitchen and only untensed a little when he saw Stan was there as well. --Only a little, because Stan looked a little tense himself as well, and Ford didn't know why.

(Stan was still a little tense, because when he'd come downstairs to get himself some breakfast before he got cranky old man on anyone's ass -- knowing he was still in a halfway foul mood from the night before, and needed something to eat before he had to handle any more damn demon idiocy that morning -- and the demons had joined him a little later…)

(...the first words outta the kid's mouth after Stan had asked the kid 'if there was anything else either of them wanted to say to him or ask him first,' continuing off their discussion from the night before, had been Bill informing him that he was going to help Miz not to talk to Ford at all from now on, or try to be human, because he wasn't going to let 'that Stanford' tell her what she should or shouldn't do, expecting her to follow it.)

(--That had woken Stan up completely. It had left Stan with a chill down his spine and he'd nearly dropped the bowl he'd been pulling out of the cabinet for cereal in shock. --And Stan had set that one straight real damn quick, because apparently the kid thought 'having a conversation with' someone and 'understanding' them fully when they did it? In insane-triangle-talk, meant somebody agreeing with the other person afterwards, for whoever 'won' that conversation they were having!)

(Frankly, he wasn't sure how the kid had kept a lid on that one for an entire night -- though the kid had gotten his sister out of the bedroom pretty quickly after that. Because that had been the sort of shit that that younger Sixer had thought he could get Stan to pull for him, and Stan had said he would never do, that had gotten Sixer paralyzed in the throat for even suggesting that he'd ask for it, from Stan. And the demon-kid had wanted to kill Sixer for it instead, and only hadn't because of how he knew Miz and Stan would feel about the killing -- he'd been pretty clear about that at the time, within the pages of that transcript of his that he'd handed over when Stan had asked for it. But Stan was the enforcer, not the asker. And the demon-kid had thought that Stan had said--)

(But maybe that was part of it. Stan had been clear as anything at the time, in that other dimension, about never doing that to either of them, never trying to pull that one off, to hell with anything else about it, and so far, he'd always been completely consistent with the kid. And the kid knew that. ...Which was maybe the only reason why he was still alive last night; they'd all been tired and angry and irritable as all get out, but the kid had actually taken that into account for once. Not because he'd noticed the discrepancy -- which was how Stan realized how tired the kid had been at the time -- but because the kid had felt he'd had options still, instead of feeling like he'd had his back up against the wall. He hadn't taken his sister and run, like he'd talked about maybe leaving before, and he hadn't decided that that had been a deal-breaker and a line that impinged on his own that he wouldn't put up with, and just gone off on them all. The kid had not done any of that shit, because he knew he could talk to Stan afterwards, because Stan had always brought up things that he'd dropped for the next morning the next morning, with no delay unless the kid asked for it, or if he did. Because the discussion wasn't really over yet, and because Stan was flexible about stuff -- when the kid thought something was important, Stan didn't just shut him down for no reason, he tried to provide him with other options instead, better ones, ideas for things that they could all put up with and live with…)

(And really, that was the whole of it. The kid hadn't killed him, because the kid had felt like he'd had options left, still. Even if he hadn't been thinking it outright, that he would talk to Stan about it the next morning, it had become such a habit that the kid had felt it anyway. --Which was why Stan wasn't trying to 'hang' the kid with a bunch of too-strict rules in the first place! He wanted it to be damn near automatic that the kid would come to him, and say stuff to him, and look to him as somebody to talk to for working out a 'better' solution, if there was something going on that he didn't like, because 'didn't like' turned into 'cackling destructive demon' way too goddamn fast for him, and they all knew it. Stan didn't need Ford to tell him that one, and the kids sure as hell didn't, either. Hell, he'd gotten that one from the demon getting the jump on them in the pyramid, what he'd done then, and then chasing after the kids in the pyramid, and everything after.)

(...It had still left Stan feeling a little cold, at how close a call that really might've been last night, while he'd reiterated things with the demon-kid and his little sister down there in the kitchen that morning, and set the record straight. Because if the kid had been even a little more tired and less inclined to wait for their upcoming pick-up-the-talk-again in the morning…)

(Miz was still going to try to keep the chatter with Ford minimal -- which Stan was okay with overall, for now, as long as she could actually hold her end up of that even with Ford sniping at her occasionally. They'd see about that, Stan figured, but she wasn't the kid, so Stan wasn't exactly holding his breath on that one. --But hey, at least the reasons behind it now were different, and maybe almost kind of on-point now, instead of just being completely wrong and all kinds of screwed-up.)

Stan let out a breath when he saw his brother, and gave him a long look, but otherwise didn't say much of anything, just gave Ford a soft grunt that could've been charitably called a 'g'dmornin', as he turned back to his newspaper and whatever he was reading in it. Ford noted the highly nutritious can of Pitt Cola and bowl of sugary cereal sitting in front of him, half-eaten, spoon still in the bowl. ...And his brother complained that he was the one with the sweet tooth between the two of them.

Ford watched the demons as he moved into the kitchen. Neither demon so much as glanced at him though; in fact, it looked like Miz was trying to ignore him.

Watching them warily, Ford continued on his trek to obtain breakfast (and coffee -- yes Stan, he understood that coffee was not the only breakfast one needed to make it through the day, that one day on the boat had just been a fluke… or, ah, that other day when… actually, how many times had he…? … ... …hm).

He managed to grab himself a coffee mug from the cabinet without incident, fill it with coffee, and set it on the table at his place. He similarly managed to obtain both cereal bowl, spoon, milk, and cereal all four, similarly without incident, even as he needed to move past the demons to get to the fridge (for both the milk inside it and cereal boxes stop it) at one point.

Ford twitched a little when Miz moved away from the stove range to place a plate of omelettes on the table. He glanced down at the food suspiciously, noticing Miz's frown. But the man-eater didn't say anything, just went back to the cabinets to grab some more serving plates and utensils to begin setting the table for the kids. She still hadn't spoken to him, or glanced up at him.

Ford watched her as he ate his cereal and drank his coffee, just as intently as he would were he stuck in the brush with a Gremloblin roaming the woods nearby, and him without a working gun on him to use to scare it off or worse...

And when the kids came down for breakfast, Ford made it a point to warn them, "Don't touch the omelettes there, Miz made them." Which got another frown out of her, but Ford watched the dragon-demon close her eyes and take a few deep breaths before calming and going back to cleaning and putting the cooking supplies away.

"Okay!" Mabel enthused out brightly, who went for a cereal bowl herself, and some of the most sugary concoctions of the bunch (several -- she liked to mix them together, most days). Dipper went for some instant oatmeal instead. (Ford assumed the hot water in the kettle was fine. Bill wouldn't have done anything to that himself; he was nursing a cup of his own tea, and Stan had likely watched him do it, if Stan hadn't been the one to set it to boil himself.)

Miz quietly mumbled, "I didn't claim them…" Ford almost rolled his eyes. That was hardly the only issue, there! She could have done quite literally anything to them, or claimed any of the ingredients prior!

He glanced over at Stan, who seemed to be pretending not to hear any of them at the moment, despite clearly having his hearing-aid in. His brother took another sip of his soda, and turned a page of the local newspaper. (Stan held it a little low, as usual, so that he could see them all at the same time as he was reading, if need be.)

Once Miz was sure Bill was eating some roasted vegetables she'd made, she sat down to begin serving herself, taking one of the omelettes from the large serving plate at the center of the table and settling down to eat. "This one is mine. The others aren't claimed yet," she said quietly.

"That gonna be enough for you, Miz?" Stan asked, folding up the paper and setting it down next to his place at the table. Miz finished chewing her mouthful and swallowed.

"No…" she responded almost hesitantly, before continuing with, "--I was gonna go catch a few animals later…" She seemed to hesitate again, "--Unless that's not a good idea?"

(...With the way she ate?) "Don't want to go fishing or gaming out the place," Stan noted, glancing down at his cereal and stirring his spoon in the bowl, as he grimaced down at it a bit. "Gnomes are pretty gamey, too," Stan said next (which got him a chiding "Stan!" from his brother that he mostly ignored, heh). Stan sat forward in his chair a little, shoved the plate with the remaining omelettes on it towards her casually, and then grabbed one of the sugary cereal boxes from over in front of Mabel. "There's a big warehouse store one town over. We can stock up there." He poured himself a bit more of the cereal into his bowl, mixing it into what was already there. "I'll hitch the small trailer up to my car; we can get an electric cooler to put the stuff in. Been meanin' to get one of those anyway for a while. Maybe two," Stan said reflectively. Not like they ever had enough space to hold his fish when he got serious going out there on the lake. And if he ever wanted to seriously go deer hunting with Manly Dan or the kid sometime, to help keep the grocery budget low? Or keep a big supply of ice pops for the Mystery Shack just a little bit longer?

Miz seemed to think about it before nodding and wiggling in her seat. "Okay…" She ate the other omelettes quietly after claiming them.

Ford frowned a bit at Stan.

"Is that wise?" Ford said. He hadn't expected Stan to be putting out any amount of money towards one of Bill's… guests. (Continuing to do so for Bill? Perhaps. But--)

Ford looked over to Miz, frowning, and noticed how uncomfortable Miz seemed... about the idea of Stan spending money on her? Hm. (Was that the actual source of her discomfort, or no? She'd made that wiggling motion before…)

"It's fine, Ford," Stan told him. "Like I said, been meanin' to get a couple of those for awhile."

"...And now we're up to 'a couple'?" Ford said, sitting back with a feeling of vague amusement. He'd heard that tone of voice from his brother before. If they weren't careful, Stan might decide that 'large electric coolers' were a smart investment opportunity, and…

Ford sighed, closed his eyes, and rubbed his fingers across them. Because his brother, sometimes...

Miz's next words made Ford's eyebrows raise again. "I… could help?" Miz suggested, sounding unsure.

"'Course you're gonna help," said Stan. "We'll be getting some ice and the meat on the same trip. You'll have to pick out what you'll actually eat," Stan told her. "Figure your big brother'll probably want to tag along, too." Ford watched Stan eye Bill oddly. "For moral support."

"Mm," said Bill. (Ford blinked. That was… usually a 'noncommittal yes' from him these days, wasn't it? Ford glanced over at Dipper, who glanced up from his oatmeal and nodded at him ever so slightly. ...So that was a yes. He hadn't misheard.)

Miz looked a little confused but nodded slowly. "Can I fly above your car? I can go invisible?"

Stan shrugged. "Hey, I ain't askin' you to get in the car when you don't want to." Wasn't like he'd forgotten what she'd told them before about that car crash stuff. "Figure you can either just sit on top, sit in the open trailer in back, fly with your brother above, or fly yourself. Just, y'know, try to stay in sight so I know what's what with you, yeah?" Miz looked relieved at that. She still looked like she had something on her mind.

"But, should I help with anything else?" she asked again.

"Kid should be able to help me load stuff up into the trailer. Don't worry about it," Stan told her, and to this, Miz wiggled in place again.

"I can help too...?" she trailed off, seeming more confused.

Stan eyed Miz for a moment. "There somethin' in particular you were thinking of helping with there, Miz?" Ford's brother asked her next -- fishing for what, exactly, Ford did not know.

Miz wiggled again. "I can enchant the cooler to stay cool without needing ice?" she suggested. Before Stan could respond, Miz continued with, "I want to help out but I don't know what I can really do?" She alternated between fiddling with the hem of her shirt and looking up at Stan briefly before looking back at her lap.

Stan gave her a slight frown, and a thinking look. "Y'know, your big brother there can keep things staying cool with those scratched-in runes of his, without getting as hungry or as tired," Stan put out there. "You remember what you told the kid on the boat, about him helping out with the fish?" Miz nodded. "You don't have to do something big to help out. Havin' you along to pick out the meat you'll eat, so the kid will know he's gettin' it right, and to be with the kid, flyin' along or whatever, to be spending time with him there, is enough. That's two things right there. Yeah?"

Miz seemed to think about that for a little while before relaxing slightly. "Okay. Um…" She fidgeted a little, glancing over at Ford before looking back at Stan, "Can I cook for you guys too? Or should I just cook for brother?"

Dipper and Mabel both got up from the table at that point to head out, and the conversation paused for a moment as Stan not quite grilled them on where they were gonna go, what they were gonna do, and who-with: evidently, hang out with Pacifica Northwest at McGucket mansion. (Stan warned them that they were gonna get penalized for the whole 'time tape' thing still, and to enjoy their last day of freedom for awhile while it lasted, to a pair of twin groans from the niblings.)

Ford watched them head off, and wished that he could join them. If he went over now, though… well, Bill wasn't quite that stupid. Bill would know that he was likely going over there to talk to Fiddleford about that time tape, among several other things, and...

It was best if he stayed here, at least for today. He didn't want Bill connecting his own visits to the niblings' interactions with Fiddleford, and vice-versa. Best to leave some plausible deniability for later, for what that was worth. (Likely not much at all, but Fiddleford did have his own mystical barrier up around the mansion that would block Bill's Sight...)

So Ford stayed behind at the table, and refocused on the conversation as he got up to place his dishes in the sink, sending Stan a long look as he did so. (Because had Stan told the man-eater to cook for them all?) But Stan shook his head.

"Ford don't got nothin' he can use to check out the food as much as he'd want to, to make sure it's okay for him, or the kids, or anyone else," Stan explained, picking up his conversation with the dragon-lady again. (Ford frowned. That wasn't entirely true. He could scan it for poisons; scanning things for 'ownership' was what was tricky enough that…) "And the kid don't do meat, you know," Stan said. "Kinda narrows things down."

Ford let out a snort, because was Stan being serious, here?

Miz nodded. "I know. I just like cooking and…" She looked embarrassed again. "I like it when people enjoy my cooking…"

"Might be able to get Melody and Soos to eat it," Stan put out there, annd Ford nearly startled in place. He could hardly believe that Stan would put Soos at risk in such a way-- "Maybe have 'em and Abuelita over for dinner sometime, make up for the last time the two of 'em were over helping cook stuff for us. --They're adults," Stan said before Ford could quite protest. "They can make their own decisions. ...After you get done 'warning them' about eating it and junk, or whatever." Stan shrugged off.

Ford let out a breath of annoyance. Well, at least Dipper and Mabel weren't here for this, thank goodness. "--Bill 'does' meat. He feeds on other beings!" Ford protested, feeling a bit sick as he said it. (It was one of those things that he really wished he hadn't known, because the process by which Bill did it was not for the faint of heart. Or mind. Or stomach...)

Stan looked over at him and blinked.

Miz turned away and took a few more deep breaths but didn't say anything to Ford otherwise. Stan made a note that she was apparently trying. He sent a look Bill's way.

Bill speared another piece of plant matter with a fork from his bowl, and used his other hand to start half-patting half-petting his little sister on top of her head.

"Kid? --Thanks," Stan noted as the kid started calming down his sister for him, then Stan added, "You wanna explain that one, though?" Stan put out there, looking back at Ford. "Along with the veggies and whatever else?"

"As a being of pure energy, I feed on energy," was what Bill said next. "But with a body," Bill looked down at himself and the food in front of him and grimaced slightly, "I need to eat physical things, too. Not just energy."

"And meat don't work because…" Stan said next.

"Oh, it'll 'work'," Bill said, twirling the captured cut-and-cooked vegetable around on his fork. "But I don't like eating previously-sentient or -sapient beings I haven't fully sanitized first," Bill told him. "Preferably with fire. --It's a process," Bill told him shortly. "No plants on this planet in this dimension are either of those two things. So I don't have to worry about accidentally ingesting any remnants or echoes of anyone's mental energies or souls, so long as I stick to eating native-plants here." And at that, Bill shoved what was on the end of his fork into his mouth, bit down on it, and chewed.

Miz spoke up quietly, "I make sure there's no souls in my food."

"So do I," Bill said, after swallowing, and he patted her on the head once more before lowering his hand. "But it's a good chunk of work and some energy-expenditure to do it, and it's much harder to do when I'm all anchored down like this," Bill made an abrupt gesture of disgust at his body. "And even harder to fix if I get it wrong and need to try and clean or shift things around in my energy form after the fact, if I screw something up. Inside this stupid human-ish body." Bill screwed up his face. "Because of this stupid anchor."

"Okay," said Stan. He sidestepped the anchor-talk and focused instead on the rest (not about to try and force the issue on maybe trying again to get the kid to explain that one when the kid didn't have to, especially since it'd just have the kid getting all belligerent and noncommunicative with him again; the kid really hadn't explained that one, yet, and Stan didn't see that changing today). "And fungi are out because why?" Stan said half-skeptically. (Ford shot him a look.)

Miz actually responded this time. "Because they're decomposers, they feed off other living AND dead things. Both other plants and animals."

"Same with bacteria," Bill pointed out. "And bacteria DON'T filter out and reject Soul- and Mindscape-matter the way that your Earth-based plants do. Your plants do get a LOT of bacteria ON and IN them, though! --Hence the cooking of vegetables until they are charred, and all bacteria is thoroughly dead and unable to hold on to any of those little fragments, to them, anymore," Bill added, spearing another 'charred' (thoroughly cooked) vegetable that Miz had prepared for him and showing it off a bit on the end of his fork. "Many fungi are also very close to the type of neural-patterned brain-networking you usually See in sentient species, in their 'shelf-roots'. Mycelia. And some fungi can set up and multiply in the body much easier than almost any other familia-related non-mobile species on this planet. So I'd rather not eat them, either. --Better safe than sorry!"

Miz actually shuddered. "Damn parasitic mushrooms, so creepy…"

"...Yeah," said Stan. "Think we're startin' to get into nightmare territory there, you two." (Miz looked a little embarrassed. "I always fully cook them! So they're dead," she mumbled.)

"You asked," Bill pointed out.

"Yeah, I did," said Stan. "And you two still don't know where to stop without somebody else tellin' you," Stan sighed out, pushing himself back away from the table, as a precursor to him standing up. Miz wilted slightly, frowning as she wondered what she did wrong this time. Parasitic mushrooms were native to Earth, they had those things here too...

Bill was a bit confused himself. To be more careful, he relegated 'fungi' to a list of 'needing clarification on' items, and didn't talk about it further. (For the moment...)

Miz finished the rest of her food before commenting, "I cook things hot enough to kill bacteria, without having to char them…" And she always cleaned her ingredients because she didn't like germs either.

"Depends on the bacteria and… other-things," Bill said, of that and of fungus.

"Bill, you have bacteria colonies living inside you," Ford pointed out rather pointedly.

Bill sent him a long look. "Yes, Sixer. I know," Bill said, sounding highly annoyed as he got up from the table, and picked up his used bowl and utensil and empty mug. "That doesn't mean that I feel overly inclined to go off ingesting any MORE of them into my stupid human-ish body's stupid digestive tract when I don't have to."

Ford leaned back against the counter, as Bill walked up to the sink and put his own dishes in… and then turned on the water and started to wash everything, one by one. (...Including his own dishes, Ford noted with a narrow-eyed gaze at Bill.)

Ford crossed his arms.

"You do realize that this whole conversation is academic, don't you?" Ford began, about to point out that--

"Not really," said Stan, getting up himself to add his own dishes to the stack. "Move a bit, yeah?" Stan asked Ford. (Ford grimaced, but moved over a bit more, to watch Stan open up a drawer and pull out a clean dish towel.) "Figure it might kinda be important to know if the kid's getting everything he needs to eat." Stan glanced over at Bill as he took a dish from Bill to dry. "So how much energy do you need to 'feed' on when you're tied down like that?" is what Stan asked Bill next.

And that left Ford absolutely expressionless and aghast, because Stan could not possibly mean to help Bill in--!!

(Oh dear Axolotl. --His brother had absolutely no idea what he'd just said. No concept. None.)

Bill… seemed to hesitate for a second in place. He actually stopped moving at all for one long moment.

Then Bill continued with his dishwashing and said, "...I don't think I need ANY right now. I do have a reserve."

"That isn't all that weirdness-energy stuff I'm holding onto for ya?" Stan asked him. (And Ford eyed his brother, because that was a very highly-nonstandard way to put it, if he was understanding the situation between the two of them, with this 'anchor' of Bill's, correctly.)

"My reserve is incorporated into my form," Bill said neutrally.

"You'll tell me if it gets to be a problem?" Stan said. "Or looks like it's gonna be?"

"--Stan," Ford said warningly. "I don't think you realize what he has to do in order to--"

"--I can BUY IT in another dimension, you idiot," was what Bill ground out at him next. "And then eat it right there on the spot, after just a little more burning-it cleaning. As long as I don't have to carry the energy through a portal," was what Bill said almost-disparagingly next, "I WON'T have to worry about having to potentially clean out any hard resonances, that would end up taking me more energy to clean out of that stupid stuff then I'd be receiving back in. IT'S FINE."

Ford clenched his jaw. "That's just shifting the ethical problem to--"

"--I can get it sourced from WHOEVER I WANT, if you REALLY want to go THAT FAR and THAT FLAT!" Bill snarled out at him, slapping the dishcloth he was using down into the sink. "It's EASIER and CHEAPER if I get it from NON-SENTIENT NON-SAPIENT growing-things anyway in the FIRST PLACE!" Bill rounded on him, before looking over at Stan. "--It's fine!" Bill repeated, sounding thoroughly stressed.

Stan looked down at him. "I don't want you going off places alone," said Stan. Ford shot a glare his way, because that was not the issue--!

"Then you can come with me," Bill said tersely, turning back to the sink and grabbing up his dishcloth again. Ford barely suppressed the urge to throttle Bill at that; he wasn't about to let Bill use an excuse to portal-jump his brother off anyplace he wouldn't be able to get back from on his own.

"I hear ya, kid. We'll figure something out that'll work," Stan said, as he looked over at Ford. Ford let out a long slow breath, and forced himself to try and relax, as he realized that his brother wasn't simply saying 'yes' to Bill. His brother hadn't forgotten Ford's worries in either of the other two dimensions that they'd visited with Bill so far.

Miz seemed to be thinking about the amount she would need during their conversation, because she spoke up with, "It's… more difficult to do stuff in this dimensional set than in my own. I know back home I don't technically need to eat in the traditional sense, and only feel hungry when I want to be. So I'm burning through more energy here than I would back home. I need to eat here to replenish more quickly. I could technically not eat and just do nothing for a day to get my energy levels back up, but I like eating…" She pressed a few fingers to her headband. "And I can't feed on emotions while I'm here, so I need to get it from elsewhere." She took her dirty dishes over to the sink. "Though at least I can just feed on the atomic bonds between molecules for energy if I need to. It's much more efficient than being tied down into a human-ish body with its limited energy conversion…"

"Yes," Bill agreed, taking her dishes from her, and working on cleaning those next.

"So Miz don't need to feed on energy, just eat something she can get energy from, and you need food and, uh, water, and you'll need more energy… eventually," Stan reiterated, trying to summarize. "I got that right, kid?"

"Eventually, yes. And yes," was Bill's response.

Ford pulled in another breath. (At least Bill wasn't planning on doing that again anytime soon. Supposedly.)

"Should I call Melody and ask her to come over to watch Bill?" Ford asked of Stan next, sending a look Bill's way. This was another of those days that the Mystery Shack was closed for the day. "Since he's not actually going anywhere on this little trip of yours out-of-town."

Stan looked over at him, then down at the kid. "You didn't tell him."

"Not like the subject's come up," Bill said. "Or that you've been out of the room when I've been with him, long enough for it to come up as part of some 'taunting'," Bill said next.

"Not even in the woods?" Stan said, sounding surprised. "Either time?"

"Was running and laughing mostly, the first time," Bill said, handing over the last of Stan's now-clean dishes. "Second time with Miz, I was focused on Miz. So was he."

Ford saw Stan's frown, and, irritated, Ford asked, "What don't I know?!"

Bill smiled widely, and looked about to say something… but ended up not, while Stan (for his part) glanced over at him again. He looked almost apologetic. "Ford, the kid ain't stuck in town."

Ford stared at him. "Stanley, of course he's--" stuck in town. (Otherwise, the problem of where Bill would stay and potentially who-with or nearby -- along with the problem of the rest of the townspeople potentially finding out about Bill being back -- would be purely academic, if Bill could simply leave the surrounding environs and--) His brother was shaking his head at him. Why was he--?

"Ford, you almost ran him out past that 'weird barrier's edge that one time with the explosion and the monster," Stan told him, sighing. He finished drying the last bowl, set it down, and then tossed the dish towel over his shoulder. "You really didn't think the kid didn't check it out right then?"

But that wasn't-- "He never said--" Ford began, then stared down and across his brother at Bill. "Bill, can you--" Ford swallowed hard, mind racing. "Can you get outside the barrier surrounding the town?"

"Yes," said Bill.

Ford stared. Because Bill wasn't lying. "But--"

"Ford," Stan said, sounding tired. "The kid can make portals to completely other dimensions. And back here again. Wherever, and whenever, he wants. Even if he was really 'stuck' here, he could just make one to someplace else in another dimension, make another one back here from there to somewhere else outside the town here, and just pop right back on through. Yeah?"

The worst part was, his brother was saying it all in 'you really didn't think of this?' tones.

"--But he acted like he couldn't get out before, during Weirdmageddon, when--!!" Ford protested, then stopped when Bill said:

"I wasn't thinking clearly. I listened to you, when you told me it was your dumb idea all over again. The 'Falls 'natural law of weirdness magnetism', and all that," Bill waved off. "It wasn't that," Bill said simply, with an odd sort of calm to his tone. (And Stan watched the kid carefully, because he knew that that seemingly 'calm' wasn't actually calm at all.)

Miz sat back down and just listened to this. Hm. She really needed to figure out what that barrier keeping her from her own 3rd Dimension was all about. It didn't seem to exist HERE so it must be something unique to her own dimensional set, right? And hers wasn't limited to just the area around Gravity Falls, but the entire dimension as it were.

"It… it wasn't?" Ford said, feeling a little off-balance, and very much lost.

"No," said Bill. "Not LEAST of which because it's MY WEIRDNESS, understand?" Bill let out an annoyed click-chirp-chitter, then added, "Got all sidetracked when you started acting like you wanted to make it one of those… 'I'll never tell you ANYTHING, villain!' moments." Bill rolled his eyes (...at himself?), as he turned off the water to the sink, and rung out the dishcloth, to hang it up to dry. "So there goes critical thinking! Right out the window, along with the bathwater!" Bill said almost sing-song, with a particular edge to his tone, waving a hand around. "Because what Sixer wants--"

"--Bill," Stan said warningly, and Bill grimaced and stopped. "You're bumpin' up against the line," Stan told Bill (as Ford himself fought for breath in his anger. Because of Cipher's stupid games--) "Take a breath. Stick to the facts and numbers. Things, not people. And look out the window," Stan said next. "Don't look at Ford." (Ford stared at Stan, at the last.)

"--Fine," Bill said, still looking very annoyed... after taking a deep breath, and letting it out, and fixing his gaze (continually) out the window. (What…) "I should've known better even without the rest. A magnetism pull would be stronger in the center, weaker at the edges -- NOT a stupid 'bubble' with a sharp boundary-edge; I should've been able to CRAWL UP the entire gradient-curve if it was THAT." Bill bared his teeth at no-one in particular. "And WHAT exactly in this-your-world, under or in or of a 'gravity' sort of field, EVER looks like a perfect sphere--"

"--except something that's man-made," Stan finished for him(!?).

"Yes," said Bill, his visage even from the side looking angry. "Stupid Time 'Police'. Set up a barrier. The jerks." Bill said in a sneer, then gave a slight (angry?) laugh, as he passed his hands… against the sides of his head on both sides of it. "Didn't even tune it to my energy waveforms properly! I walked right on through after…" Bill looked down at himself and grimaced.

Time Police Barrier? Miz tilted her head at that. There was no way she'd be held back by anything the Time Police in her own world tried on her. She was stronger than Time Baby now, even without a true body. But then again, she supposed they hadn't really tried to take her down with all their forces before...

"Wasn't thinking clearly," Bill muttered out again. "Probably shouldn't have had that much Time Punch at the party when I was the one hosting it, either. Then the Henchmaniacs couldn't get out when I told them they could go out there, on to Phase Two, and they started getting restless..." Ford stared at Bill, as Bill's face got an almost strained quality to it.

Ford shook his head at this. "But… but the natural weirdness of Gravity Falls--" Ford nearly stumbled over the thought that the weirdness wasn't natural, wasn't just 'leaking in' from the Nightmare Realm, the weirdness was Bill's(?!) "--must do something!" Ford blurted out. ...And then he realized exactly how he'd sounded, in saying that.

...But Bill didn't jeer at or mock him for it, and Stan didn't call him out on it. Bill just stretched a bit in place, and Stan didn't react negatively to what he'd just said in the least.

"It DOES do something," Bill told him, turning around back to face him. "It makes it ACTUALLY COMFORTABLE here," Bil informed him, "Like--" and then Bill blinked and cut himself off right there.

Ford frowned at him. So did Stanley, but it was his thinking frown again.

"...Like?" Stan prompted Bill, and Bill looked away, looking distinctly uncomfortable for some reason, though Ford couldn't imagine why--

"Like home," Bill said quietly, after a long moment. "It makes it feel more like home." Miz blinked at that response. Well, she tilted her head and Felt around. It did feel kinda like being surrounded by energy, pressing in… almost like a hug but not?

Ford stared, and Stan asked next, "What does it feel like too far out from the town? Away from all the weirdness junk?"

Bill looked over at Stan and frowned a little.

"...Colder," Bill said slowly, as if he wasn't entirely sure that the concept was the closest one to correct. He looked a bit uncomfortable as he explained, "It feels 'colder'." Then Bill seemed to shake the feeling off. "It's more comfortable here," Bill repeated, seeming to relax a bit in place as he said it.

Ford stared, because… that was very nearly the same sort of reaction that he seen in most cryptids he could actually converse with, when he mentioned what they thought of leaving the area. (They hadn't been able to describe the feeling itself, other than simply 'liking it better here', but the casual disregard for the idea of ever leaving to go someplace else? That was exactly the same as he'd seen with-- EXACTLY the same--) And of the cryptids which he hadn't been able to talk to? --Trying to drive or direct them (at an amble or a run) past the edges of the most-strict fall-off in weirdness had had those cryptids reacting with clear discomfort, turning around and trying to get past him -- or go 'straight-through' the source of the noises (that he was making) that were disturbing or alarming them enough to otherwise avoid said source of said noise -- despite the agitation doubling-back to move towards those noises again would have otherwise caused them.)

"You need a weirdness-sweater, or something, for the trip?" Stan said to Bill next, and Ford (quite startled by Stan's recommendation) looked over at his brother, wondering...

Miz suddenly got a glint in her eye, to which Stan sighed and said, "No, Miz. Don't go making him an actual weirdness-sweater. Let the kid do it himself if he wants it." Miz pouted. "Awww…"

"Hey," Stan complained at her. "You want to try and explain to Mabel why she can't help you out with some kind of sweater-making thing? --Yeah, didn't think so," Stan said, at Miz's next look. (Ford couldn't help but give a sympathetic wince at the idea of the culmination of that particular scenario.) "Kid?" Stan asked again.

"...I'll be fine," Bill said slowly. But Ford noticed that the triangle demon, head tilted slightly, was looking at Stan a bit oddly now.

"You sure?" Stan said to that, to which Bill replied much more firmly: "Yes."

"Heh. Fine," said Stan, tossing the dishcloth to the side for the laundry. "Hey, why don't you and your sister talk 'seating accommodations' for the trip, how you're gonna handle that whole thing. Let me talk to Ford alone for a minute," Stan added.

Miz got up and pattered out of the kitchen, heading up the stairs, turning to check if Bill was following. (Bill was, though at his own, somewhat-slower and more easygoing, unrushed pace.)

Ford glanced over at his brother.

"So, I got half-ambushed by the kid and his sister last night," Stan told him. "Had to explain why you keep getting all pissy with Miz when she gets all talky on things you don't like."

Ford frowned at him. "Do I dare ask what you actually told them?" Ford said, taking off his glasses to rub a hand across his face, feeling tired. (Maybe he should just go back to bed... while his brother and the demons were out…)

"Mostly, just that you're only tryin' to tell Miz what she's doin' wrong because you think maybe she'll stop doin' it if you do, though you ain't holdin' your breath on that one," Stan told him. "And that they need to stop talking to the kids about all the 'back then' horribleness so much -- though the demons still don't got a handle on any of that, so we'll see how it goes." Stan frowned, and leaned back against the counter. "Kid was surprised when I told them how pissed off I was gettin' at some of the junk that the dragon-lady keeps tryin' to pull. So, he didn't know, I guess. So I'm gonna need to talk through more 'mental attack' stuff with him, again," Stan said with a sigh, as Ford stared at him. "And I told 'em that I'd come down on his sister a lot harder, if she wanted to go with bein' told direct instead of lettin' her figure it out for herself -- and she went with direct, so… yeah," which had Ford blinking multiple times at his brother. "Guess that's pretty much it," was what Stan ended on.

Ford opened his mouth, paused, and closed it again. He rubbed his face with both hands before finally letting out a, "Right. And you think they're going to listen?"

"You do," Stan said. "Or you wouldn't keep talkin' to Miz." Ford hesitated in place, as Stan looked up at him. "You would've put her on that kill list with Bill by now, instead. You ain't tryin' to get her to 'strike out' with him, either."

Ford shifted in place slightly, feeling more than a little off-balance there.

"I'm not trying to--" Ford began, then paused.

"Kids told me you ain't so sure the kid's one of your 'demons' anymore," Stan said neutrally. "'From the outside' of someplace? Just a different 'type' maybe, but still different. --And I know you ain't actually sure about Miz, other than her 'demon' behavior," Stan said, and Ford looked away, grimacing.

"It hardly matters all that much, if I'm still not able to kill her properly and permanently, myself, if it comes to that," Ford said defensively, crossing his arms across his chest.

"Except you were sayin' before, that the point of needin' to kill Bill 'right'," and Stan made actual air-quotes at him, with his fingers, "Is to make sure that he won't come back. You don't know if you can't kill her or not, and you know that there's a way to 'stake' her down," Stan said. "But I don't see you going off and obsessing down in your lab over how to do that."

"You don't know that I haven't been thinking about it. Frequently." Ford felt more than a little pissed. Because it wasn't like he hadn't thought about-- it just wasn't practical or feasible at this stage-- and the horror of actually managing to do so, in that way--

"--Ford, do you want to come with us on this thing or not?" was what Stan asked him next, giving him a feeling of mental whiplash.

"No," Ford said tensely, literally tensing up at just the idea of being stuck in a car with Bill Cipher, for however long--

"What're you plannin' on doing while we're gone?" was what Stan asked him next, and Ford let out a breath and slowly began to relax in place a little bit, his arms loosening.

"Sleeping, most likely," Ford said, which got a skeptical eyebrow raise out of his brother. "Either the niblings swapped out the coffee on me again, or I actually do feel tired, Stan," Ford told his brother.

"You can sleep in the car," Stan told him, and Ford sent him a sharp look. "Pretty sure that the kid's gonna end up flyin' outside the thing along with the dragon-lady," Stan told him. "You can always walk out to the car with us, to 'see us off', and decide after you figure out the seating arrangement," Stan put out there.

Ford grimaced, as Stan straightened away from the counter next to him. Ford put his glasses on and asked of his brother sarcastically as he did so, "Why in the world would I want to do that?"

"To keep an eye on the kid when he's not interacting with people who are dumb as sticks, like the idiots in town," Stan told him, simply and straightforwardly, and Ford jerked his head up to look at him with a feeling of raw panic-- "I'll be keepin' an eye on him too," his brother told him, as he walked out of the kitchen, "But still… y'know?"

Ford stared after his brother, as he disappeared around the corner, presumably to his bedroom, to change into some actual clothing.

And Ford had a feeling a bit like cold water had just been dumped on him when he realized… had Stan just tried to blackmail him into coming along?

---

Miz's Cooking Tangent!

A simple recipe using mostly veggies and no added salt! Of course, you don't have to cook it as much as BlueBill needs to! There's also an omelette version if you like eggs.

What you'll need:

-Veggies! I used Kale for this sample recipe. Wash and chop them up!

-Fruit Juice! I used Cranberry for this sample recipe because it's sour. Works best if you use something you enjoy.

-A nonstick skillet or wok, so you don't have to use oil (though some veggie oil is fine if you want to be sure it doesn't stick.)

-A rubber/wooden spatula (because you can't use metal with non-stick surfaces.)

-Three large eggs (if you want to make an omelette.)

Turn the heat up to medium, place the washed vegetables in the wok. You don't have to dry them since all the liquid's going to boil off anyway and the moisture helps with cooking. Once the wok heats up, gently stir and move the veggies around so they all cook evenly. Once the water has evaporated off, pour in a little fruit juice. Not too much, the point is to flavor the veggies. Pour in a little juice, listen to it sizzle and bubble as it boils. Continue stirring the veggies around as they cook in the juices. Turn the heat lower if you're afraid it might burn.

Once the veggies are cooked and you've added and evaporated off enough fruit juice to flavor, turn off the heat and serve. It's an easy way to make people eat veggies since they'll be flavored semi-sweet or sour now.

If you want to make the omelette version, simply follow the same steps, and then add eggs.

You can beat the eggs separately in a bowl and pour it into the cooking veggies (after they've been flavored with fruit juice) or you can be lazy and just crack 'em right in and stir quickly with your spatula, we're not trying to scramble them so once they're mixed up, leave it alone to cook for a bit.

Once you can slip your spatula underneath the egg mix and begin lifting it up and away from the wok, pour in a little more fruit juice around the egg mix, lifting it to let the juices slide under and cook into the egg. Once the liquid has boiled off, flip the omelette over to cook the other side, repeating the fruit juice thing when it's cooked enough you can lift the edges.

And there you go. A sweet veggie/egg omelette. I used Kale and cranberry juice in mine but I'd love to see what other people make.

End of Miz's Cooking Tangent!

---

After Stan called Fiddleford (both to check that the kids were actually with him -- and that the Northwest girl was actually there with them, too -- and to tell them more of the specifics on his plan for the day), they all went outside to the car. Stan took his time hooking up the small trailer to the tow hitch at the back of it (which looked more like an oversized cart than an actual trailer). Meanwhile, Miz shifted into her dragon form, smaller than her full size (for Ford's peace of mind), and was shivering as she applied a Perception Filter that blocked her from sight from anyone else except their group.

"Are you all right?" Bill asked her, as he walked back over from retrieving his lantern-hook rod. He turned it sideways-to-hover, and sat down on it side-saddle, then frowned as he got an even better up-close look at her. "You're shaking."

Miz nodded. "I'm fine. I'm just… thinking." Of how to reevaluate who she was as a person, how to interact with people, how to be a better person...

"About what?" Stan asked her, as he opened up the driver's side door of the Stanleymobile. (He wondered if the car was too close to her…)

Miz sighed. "I'm an asshole," she 'said' to him despairingly.

Heh. "Well, yeah," said Stan, leaning against the driver's side door with a relaxed stance. "So am I." Ford let out a huff of breath and slapped him in the arm for his trouble, which had Stan grinning up a storm at him for the chastisement.

Miz floated into the air, hovering and wiggling like a ribbon caught in the wind. "I am supposed to try and not be as much of an asshole?" Miz asked, sounding unsure.

Stan sighed. Hadn't she been listening at all last night? (...Then again, the kid had misunderstood him on some of the 'talking to Ford' stuff, too.)

"--You're supposed to not go around mentally and physically attacking people," he told her. Not like that had changed. "You screw up at that? You learn why you screwed up, and you try not to make the same mistake again. Actually try, and actually learn. --Being 'an asshole' or not's got nothing to do with that; neither does bein' a saint," Stan added at the end for his brother's benefit, sending a loaded glance Ford's way. "It's just your basic, 'keep your damn claws to yourself' kinda junk, dragon-lady," he directed back up at her. "Unless you've got a really good reason not to, because somebody started a fight with you by trying to attack you first. That's all."

Miz nodded. "So, I should try to figure out what counts as an attack?" She frowned. "That's the part I have to really figure out." She tilted her head. "I need a list or something." And then she needed to avoid them, because talking about that sort of thing when people didn't like it was asshole behavior.

"Yeah, that's the part you really have to figure out," Stan repeated back to her, for clarity. "So does the kid, still," Stan told her, "Along with how to handle stopping stuff nonlethally without that stuff staying or becoming even more of a problem again later." Because that was the main reason the kid had for immediately jumping to 'kill it! kill it now!' in the first place. "Have the kid run through what he does know, that I've told him already, with you, if he hasn't already. Maybe on the way? Give you two something to talk about up there, for the trip?" Stan put out there. Miz nodded and flew up a little so she was near the car but nowhere close to touching it; above it and in front of it slightly. She stayed within view.

Bill floated up via his lantern-hook rod himself, to sit on it sidesaddle and in-line with her, floating next to her side.

They both looked down at Stan and the car and trailer-hitch, waiting.

Stan looked up at them (so did Ford), and then he looked down to look at his brother, who was standing right next to him.

Stan tilted his head at him slightly, with that smile on his face… that just kept getting wider...

Ford's shoulders came up, and he glared at his brother as he clenched his fists at his side.

(...and kept getting wider...)

"Fine!" Ford snapped out at him, feeling incredibly pissed off as he stomped around to the other side of the car and yanked on the car door handle.

...which didn't open, obviously, because Stan hadn't unlocked the damn passenger's side door for him yet. (Ford felt the nearly overwhelming urge to faceplant forehead-first into the car roof right in front of him, as he heard his brother chuckle and saw him ease his way down into the driver's seat of the car.)

...and Miz was trying to quickly muffle a giggle too… Which didn't make Ford feel any better. (...though it did have him glaring up at her as he waited for Stan to just--)

Stan reached over across the emergency brake and unlocked the passenger's side door first, before reaching out for the handle to grab and slam his own car door closed.

Ford pulled open the door, got in, sat down, and slammed his own door shut with a huff.

(He didn't exactly like how incredibly nervous he felt as he did all of these simple, straightforward things--)

"Seatbelt, Ford," his brother chided him, as he put on his own, and Ford nearly said something disparaging about how, with the number of crash-landings of actual spacecraft from orbit that he'd survived, he highly doubted that a simple car crash would be the way that he'd go--

...But those spacecraft had had miles-beyond far more safety features in them than his brother's 'hunk of junk' could ever dream of hoping to ever reach some fateful day, if Ford ever got his hands on it for any serious length of time, and so Ford simply yanked his seatbelt down and buckled it in place in one smooth motion, without comment.

"Seat belts are important." Miz said seriously from above. --Right, she claimed to have died in a car crash. Ford rolled his eyes but chose not to comment.

"She isn't going to try and crash this car from above, is she?" Ford muttered out at his brother, rather seriously. "Or set it on fire?"

"Eh, it's fine. I got a fire extinguisher in the back… maybe," was his brother's laissez-faire response (with accompanying shrug) to his very valid concerns.

Miz huffed before calling out calmly, "No I will not. Mabel would be quite distressed if her favorite grunkles didn't make it back home safely from their trip!"

...Somehow, Ford did not think that Mabel's potential future distress would faze the man-eater in the least. And it wasn't as if Bill could not simply 'roll them back' to a time before either of the niblings had ever met either of them, apparently, if he so desired. It wasn't as though Bill was required to 'kick them out of their bodies' before 'de-aging' them if he wanted to, was he?

Ford thought dourly on this and other demon-related thoughts, as Stan started the car, and they were all on their way.

"How long is this trip going to take?" Ford asked Stan, as they pulled out onto the highway.

"Really?" Stan said, glancing over at him. "You're really gonna pull the 'are we there yet' on me on this one?"

Ford let out a long and lengthy sigh, and half-slid, half-slumped down a bit in his seat.

Despite Ford's worries, the drive was uneventful. He even nodded off only a few minutes in to the rather smooth ride of the car (generally uncharacteristic of Stan's usual driving style, which was more racecar-esque on a good day) and the rumbling engine. The demons' overall chatter was unintelligible to the two humans below them at the highway speeds they were traveling at, having simply faded into and well under the background noise of the engine and wind when the drive first picked up.

Miz had shivered as they passed the edge of town. "This feels nothing like the barrier around my 3rd dimension. It's warm? No, that's not quite the right word…"

"Yes," Bill agreed, of 'warm' and 'cold' being not quite the right words to describe the sensation of 'home'. The barrier being in place made it a hard and artificially-quick shift, not a soft and natural transition gradient. Then Bill smiled and added, "The barrier is mine now. I didn't take it down; I re-tuned the stupid thing to bad-things-not-me and locked it," Bill said of the 'Time Police' barrier in-passing. (--which was now HIS! ALL HIS! HAHAHAHAHA!) "Why get rid of a perfectly useful working tool, when I can make it work for ME and ONLY ME?" the triangle demon said somewhat rhetorically. "--I added you to it awhile ago," Bill said. It hadn't taken but a few moments with his (currently invisible) bodysuit's wrist control and his private visual interface; he'd done it the first day, as soon as it had occurred to him that she might be staying awhile, and why he might want to do it.

Miz flew a little closer to nuzzle Bill. "Thanks." (Bill smiled, and reached out a hand to run across her scales lightly in-passing.) She also kept her Eye out for any danger on the roads. She wasn't going to crash Stan's car and she sure as fuck wasn't going to let some other thing crash into it. Other drivers were the most dangerous thing on the road.

After awhile, Stan took an exit ramp off of the highway, and followed the road for a bit. Eventually, he ended up passing more and more landmarks of 'actual civilization', until he reached a rather big warehouse-looking district, and slowed down further to pull into a very large parking lot soon after.

Miz floated down and shimmered back into her human form, shaking her arms and stretching as she got used to having a bipedal body again. Bill, for his part, slowly drifted further and further down, then slid off of his lantern-hook rod smoothly to a standing posture. (Then he leaned it against his shoulder, in the crook of his arm, as he pulled his 'eyepatch'-hat out of a pocket and 'foofed' it out, to lift and drop the rod straight back down into it. He re'folded' his hat back into its new eyepatch form and shoved it back into his pocket directly after, as if he'd done it a million times before.)

Ford shifted and stirred as the car came to a stop, and the engine turned off. He lifted his head slightly, looking a bit confused.

"...You did that on purpose," Ford said accusingly, though most of the bite was taken out of it, as he was still half-asleep as he said it. He slowly sat up and looked around, scratching a hand through his hair.

Stan smiled. He knew Ford was complaining about the drive being too smooth. "You said you wanted to sleep some more," Stan shrugged off with no small amusement, to which he got a petulant glower that he couldn't help but chuckle at. "Rise and shine, sleepyhead, c'mon," he told his brother, as he pulled the keys from the ignition and shoved the car door open. (Sure, maybe his brother was gonna screw up his sleep schedule by sleeping more during the day for this, but if he really had felt tired before, even with the caffeine...)

(Ford let out a sigh, long and deep, but he followed him.)

Miz was looking up at the warehouse while shuffling closer to her brother at the sight of the crowds. Stan noted she was now dressed in a pink hoodie with black pants, which wasn't what she was wearing before. Huh. ...Maybe she liked to change up her clothes?

"Come on." Stan called out as he strode forward into the building, pulling out his membership card to show the worker at the door. This place sold stuff in bulk but required a membership. Luckily, their cards were easy to forge and Stan didn't have to pay the monthly fee. Hah!

"Cos'bro?" Miz raised an eyebrow.

"Yeah," said Stan. "You get a lot of frat boys here for the beer, and farm boys here for the meat. Otherwise, it ain't so bad. --Hey, get your own cart!" Stan yelled out at the ninety-year-old looking woman who tried to wrestle him for, yes, what looked like the very last one.

After a bit of a tug of war and a tussle, Stan managed to hip-check her off of the thing and ran off with it, wheels rattling and flying, yelling out "YES! IN YOUR FACE YOU LOUSY GRANDMA!" as he went -- laughing up a storm at the win, as she cursed at him from the floor and waved an angry fist at his quickly vanishing-into-the-distance backside.

Stan then slowed down a bit, as Ford and the demons caught up to him. "Oh, yeah. And the tea-party grandmas," Stan said, picking up his conversation right where he'd left off, "'Cause the tea here comes in these, I dunno, some kinda wooden barrel-sized cylinder-bin things or something." Stan waved it off like he didn't care. "--Gotta play it smart, here," Stan told them all with a grin.

Ford looked at Stan with sheer exasperation, while Miz nodded, noting down Stan's behavior as apparently 'kinda, sorta, acceptable within a human setting'. "Can we get one of those tea canisters…" Miz seemed to realize something. "Is this where you got those industrial-sized sprinkle containers for Mabel?"

"Well, yeah," Stan said. "Uh. Kinda. --Had to take one of the metal barrels they usually use for vegetable oil and stuff it full of the stuff from a bunch of those smaller fertilizer-sized sprinkle bags instead," Stan told her. "'Cause they were outta the actual ones, but I'd promised her. --Managed to get one of the right labels for it, even." Apparently it had fallen off of one of the other containers that they'd sold; the guy had found it for him in the back-back room of the warehouse, waiting for the next shipment to arrive. Rodrigo had owed him a solid, and boy, had Stan collected.

Ford was rubbing his temples. Why had he thought that Stan would be able to teach the demons about 'normal' human behavior?! "Is that woman alright?" Ford asked, as he glanced back in the direction of the entrance, where they'd left the old woman who was last seen cursing up a storm behind them.

"Yeah, she's fine," said Stan. "Pretty sure she's about to try and ambush us from behind the cat litter pile over there. --Quick, dump a couple of those licorice bags in here! And one a' those triple-black coffee bags!" Stan said with an excited grin, pointing to two areas on the shelves ahead of them, at the end of the aisle they were just passing, with bags that Ford swore were at least as large as Mabel's pig was nowadays. "That'll scare her off!"

Bill and Miz moved quickly to comply, in their usual odd sort of unsynchronized unison, and, sure enough, when they moved past the enormous cat litter pile (a pyramid of gigantic bags boldly emblazoned with a claim of a '900-day supply' that Ford swore disappeared up into the rafters…)

...the same old woman jumped out at them, brandishing a cane at them this time as she grabbed the side of the cart, looked down to see what was in it-- and hissed at them all. She let go and stumbled back -- to be nearly mowed down by another freewheeling cart (to both Ford's horror and his dismay), and he ran off with them all away from the scene of the crime, to the tune of a "Hah! Thought I smelled the cat piss on her!" from his far-too-jubilant at the madness surrounding them brother.

Ford had a hand held over his mouth, as he tried not to feel (or at least tried to feel a little less of) the sheer mortification he was currently feeling with his brother just then. Could he get away with trying to pretend that he didn't know them? ...No, that wouldn't work, they had the same face. (And the last time that Ford had tried that on Stan, when they'd been on their boat adventure, Stan had nearly left him behind at the pier later, until he'd made Ford do something just as stupid incredibly loudly out in front of everyone and their dog who was within hearing distance at the dock, before leaving port. In order to show him that 'it doesn't matter, Ford; no one cares -- so why should you? Just have fun with it!') And-- was Miz applauding Stan's 'genius'? ...Yes; yes, she was. She was applauding Stan for this. Actually applauding him!!!

Stan let out a laugh of pure happiness and glee, and took a bow, and--

It suddenly occurred to Ford in a flash why the Axolotl, in its infinite wisdom and patience, might have actually 'saddled' Bill with his brother. And vice-versa.

...Unfortunately for him, Ford did not have the patience of the Axolotl. (A fact which he well knew.)

It was still a little more than disheartening to see, and-- hell, call it what it was, Ford felt physically ill at watching this display. He'd never actually made the comparison before. But seeing his brother acting this way now, against this backdrop of people and madness and demons, with the last gasping vestiges of common-sense seemingly completely overridden by the pure and grasping greed surrounding them--

Ford turned on his heel and walked right back out of the store.

---

Somehow, Miz had managed to sweet talk a whole bundle of Cup Ramen AND a non-lactose milk carton out of the workers. They gave her a coupon code for 30% off her 'family's' purchase. She had gone back to Stan with an armful of noodles cups and a wide grin as she held up the coupon. "Was this good for a first try?" she asked.

"Heh," Stan said, taking the coupon from her and shoving it in a jacket pocket. "You're a natural, kid," he praised her, not least of which because she was. That was some Mabel-level stuff that he'd just seen going on, right there.

He saw Bill glancing over in the direction of the front entrance (and exit) again, and Stan said, "Stop worrying about it, kid."

"I'm not worried," Bill said, not looking worried. (Yeah, he looked annoyed, not worried, but that was what worried looked like on the kid.)

"Ford's fine," he told the demon-kid. "He does this sometimes. Had to take a breather once in awhile, even on the boat. --They don't got a book section here, or a music one. It was gonna happen eventually."

"He's embarrassed to be seen with us?" Miz asked. She could pick up on this somewhat, she knew a few people who would be embarrassed to be around her in public sometimes. And she HAD seen his mortified expression earlier, before he left.

Stan glanced over at her. "If he is," he told the demons as he pushed the cart down the next aisle, "I'll just make him go off and sing the first twelve verses of 'A Drunken Sailor-Wife' at the whole parking lot before we leave," just like he had at that one pier, when Ford had been getting all weird about his hands, and all the normal people around 'looking at them' like he just wasn't used to, just for being themselves. Stan wasn't too worried about it. Wasn't like Ford didn't get all excited himself and stop worrying about what he looked like to other people, when he got all riled up over stuff. It just had to be the right stuff. (Like the place he was plannin' on taking Ford next, for coming along on this supply run…)

Miz tilted her head, eyes flickering as she checked on Ford outside. "He's just hanging around the car. He's fine," she said for Bill's benefit.

Bill let out a huff of breath. "I'm NOT WORRIED about him," he repeated, looking away from all of them. Miz and Stan both gave him a deadpan and skeptical stare each, not fooled in the slightest. Miz took pity on Bill's pride and went off into the shelves to grab at a packet of ground beef. And a huge packet of chicken breasts. If her brother wanted to be weirdly Tsun-Tsun in his own way, she would leave him be.

"I'm worried about THEM," the kid said next, and that had Stan stopping the cart in place.

"Say that again," said Stan, and the kid let out another huff. "I'm worried about THEM. --Your brother and the frat boys," Bill said, and Stan still didn't get it. Ford had gone to college, what was so-- "The ones who came here to get all that alcohol, to get drunk? And are getting drunk? And are going to try and 'tease' your brother about his hands, right before things get that-much-worse?" Bill prompted him, and it only took Stan a moment.

"Aren't I supposed to be 'looking out for him' as the last one on the list for your priority order for the agreement? How am I supposed to do that if--" Bill didn't quite finish saying, before Stan shoved the cart at him and raced off for the front of the store.

Bill let out a sigh and looked to Miz.

"ALWAYS getting into trouble," Bill told his little sister, of that Stanford, as he took over pushing the cart. "EVERY TIME."

---

Stan ran out to the front of the store, looking for a fight with a bunch of dumb frat boy punks--

--and lowered his knuckle-duster-laden fists for a moment, as he took in the scene.

Ford was, quite literally, leading the charge against an entire contingent of tea-party grandmas, with at least five truckloads of frat boys at his back.

They all looked unbelievably drunk.

(The grandmas on their 'special' tea, and the frat boys -- and Ford -- on… who-the-hell knew what kind of beer cut with moonshine. ...Seriously, Oregon sometimes.)

"RAAAWR!!!" A (smart?) glasses-wearing frat boy with his t-shirt tied around his head like a bandana (and those glasses slipping half-off his face) roared out at the line, as he staggered forward with a swaying gait, squinting at the row of shrieking grandmas. (Stan supposed it was meant to be a glare but he got the feeling the kid was actually just trying desperately to see straight.) Ford pointed forward and thundered out, "Focus, men! The goal is THERE!" (And THERE was apparently… the grandma-in-charge making faces at them and swinging somebody's textbook around above her head? ...Well, that was straight-up nerd-bait, if Stan had ever saw it. Good thing he'd made Ford leave his guns in the car, or there'd really be blood -- those grandmas knew how to shoot straight back...)

...Yeah, Ford's side definitely was a lost cause. the grandmas were just toying with them. (They didn't even have the guns out.) Frat boys were never gonna survive this. Five-to-one wasn't anything like good enough odds for them to pull off a--

"--CHAAAARGE!!" Ford yelled out, as the two sides gave up all pretenses and ran straight for each other, eager for battle.

"Ford, you idiot," Stan sighed out as the two sides clashed in the middle, transforming half the parking lot into sheer mayhem, because had his brother never learned to read the odds? He shook his head and turned around to head back inside the store. (He was gonna need supplies for this…)

Miz waved at Stan when he came back. "I said he's fine." She shrugged. The cart was filled with bags of vegetables, meat, bread, dried pasta, canned fruits...

"Yeah, no. He's goin' down," said Stan. "They're gonna surround him and cage him in 'time out' and everything. Or worse." He eyed the cart. "We're gonna need at least twelve more containers of this black-coffee stuff to extract him." Tossing handfuls of it at those tea-loving grandmas worked like a peach; better than sacred salt on those ghosts that thought they were vampires (the idiots).

Miz nodded and ran off to grab a few more containers. Bill turned to Stan and handed him some more slips of paper. "She got a few more coupons…" the demon informed Stan.

"Good," said Stan, already thinking a bit more strategically about his upcoming purchases...

---

"...I almost won?" Ford said, as he stared up at Stan from the backseat of the car, after successful coffee-and-'soda-bomb'-spray extraction from the 'grandma time out' corner.

"The Cos'bro cops thought you were a grandma," Stan said. He'd thought that he'd find Ford all tied up in the middle of the group of grandmas, with the Cos'bro cops still in the middle of negotiating for the hostages; maybe surrounded by a pack of jeering grandmas, caged in the 'time out' area for the frat boys instead, while the Cos'bro cops were still in the middle of rounding up the rest of the grandmas, at best. But instead, Stan had found Ford in the middle of the grandma one, surrounded by Cos'bro cops, and not even tied up or anything neither. "That ain't winning."

"But I successfully infiltrated their side and stole the textbook back!" Ford said, with a gleam in his eye, and Stan craned his head back at his brother (still cradling an icepack on his head) and really looked at him.

"...You're not even a little bit drunk, are you," Stan said in descending tones, and Ford laughed.

Stan sighed. --His brother, really.

"How the hell did you manage that, anyway? They wouldn't think you were one of them unless you knew about everything from green oolong to black orange delight. Thought you didn't like tea," Stan asked him, as he slowly pulled the fully-loaded up vehicle out of the parking lot, with two 'invisible' demons hovering above him (and two brand-spanking new electric coolers in the back trailer, that the frat boys had helped load up for them for all the trouble of getting the one guy's $250 textbook back -- never leave your truck unlocked around here, guy, geeze, hadn't his buddies warned him about those grandmas?) -- and to this, Stan got a quiet, "...I used to."

Stan stopped at the traffic light, and looked back at him again. (His brother had used to like tea? When?)

Then Stan let out a sigh and turned away from him again, back to watching the light.

"...Ya still shouldn't have done it," Stan told him after a long moment. "Taking on an entire bakers-dozen contingent of tea-party grandmas out there. With a senior doily-maker as the thirteenth one, overseeing them." What, was Ford trying to get himself killed?

"Well, it was for a good cause." Ford said, like that explained everything (because it did), as he pulled the ice away from his head to press his fingers against the bump, wincing a little. Miz had offered to heal him, which he had shot down immediately (not trusting her an inch with the least little bit of his body, in part or in whole). Miz had huffed but hadn't pressed the issue. Bill had just looked on, made a single short 'tsk' sound at him upon seeing him, looked over at Stan... and hadn't said one single solitary word about any of it.

"Kid's pissed off at you, y'know," Stan said in conversational tones to his brother. Ford made a scoffing sound at him. "Seriously; kid was worried about you. Brought up the agreement--"

"--He wasn't worried about me," Ford cut in caustically. "He was worried about not 'keeping' you."

Stan glanced back at him in the rear view mirror as he drove. Ford was avoiding his gaze, head turned away a bit from him, towards the backseat cushions instead. Ford was looking out the back window to avoid Stan's eyes. (He could just about see the end of the dragon's tail…)

"Same difference, ain't it," Stan said, looking back to the road, and all the traffic on it.

"No," said Ford quietly.

Stan shrugged. "Same result, then," he responded easily.

"No, it isn't," Ford said. Stan glanced back at him, and waited, until Ford took in a breath and said quietly next, "If I had this 'agreement' of yours with him, and he was actually following it, he would have been right out there beside me."

Stan frowned slightly at this.

"No, he wouldn't," Stan said. "If it had been me out there, the kid wouldn't have had to do a thing," Stan told him. "My job is to keep the fight offa the kid; my fights aren't the kid's fights, and that wasn't the kid's fight. --That would've been my fight alone out there, goin' solo," Stan told him. "If anything," Stan said, "The kid should've been out there, outside, along with you this time," Stan told him, frowning. "Only reason he wasn't, was because Miz was here, and he was tryin' to keep her away from it, from going overboard. If he hadn't, somebody might've gotten torched," he told Ford, who was looking over at him now. "Too much chaos and collateral damage, not enough control; he don't know how she fights, and he wouldn't be able to guarantee you wouldn't get hurt worse with them bein' there than not." (Stan had a feeling that she might be a lot more destructive than the kid was, more of the time, what with being that much less than the kid was about the control. At least the kid knew how to avoid collateral damage when he wanted to. ...And Ford was frowning at him now.)

"You're saying that if Miz wasn't here…" Ford said slowly.

"Then because of the agreement I've got going with him, the kid would've been right out there with you, and he would've either dragged your dumb ass right back outta that mess, or waded right in alongside you. And you probably wouldn't have a single scratch on you right now," Stan confirmed grimly, to dead silence from the backseat.

And there was silence in the car for a while after, too, except for the sound of the engine and the road they were driving on. Every now and then they would hear faint humming from Miz outside as she continued singing to entertain herself.

Until…

"--Take me out of the priority order," was what Ford said next.

"Hell no," said Stan. "Why the hell would I do--"

"--You don't know what it's like," Ford said next, and Stan damn near slammed on the brakes as a chill ran down his spine.

And then Stan nearly let his foot come off the gas, to coast them to a stop at the side of the road, as something else occurred to him beyond that, and his stomach dropped next.

Stan didn't do either of those things, though. He kept on driving.

(Bein' a getaway driver that many times, you got used to riding out certain things.)

"Do I gotta ask?" Stan said to his brother, hands and fingers tightening around the wheel. "--Do you want me to ask?!" he repeated when his brother said nothing, shoulders tense.

"...I didn't--" Ford began, then managed to get out a half-strangled "...know that--"

Stan glanced into the rearview mirror again, and Ford was grimacing -- and not from the bruises and all the bumps, either.

"No," Ford said finally, looking away from him, refusing to meet his eyes. "Don't ask."

...Stan turned his gaze back to the roadway he could see out in front of him, through the windshield.

"I'm not contradicting myself to the kid on you," he told his brother staunchly. "You're my brother, you're my family, and you're on the priority list."

"...Fine," Ford said quietly, so quietly that Stan almost didn't even hear him.

Stan drove.

---

Ford blinked his eyes open slowly. He struggled upright in the backseat, back against the side door, and he looked a bit confused as he realized that Stan had pulled up to a stop someplace that wasn't home.

"This one's a little less crazy," Stan told him. "Was planning on stopping off here on the way back before…" he waved off the whole parking lot feud. "I figure still coming here when you can't barely stay upright long enough to walk around and really appreciate the place, is a good enough penalty for you walkin' out on us back at the last place. ...Probably couldn't get away with tryin' to make you sing over that whole ruckus," Stan muttered out at the last. (The place had still been half a zoo by the time they'd finally gotten out of there, after all that.)

Ford looked at his brother, as Stan got out of the car and slammed the door closed behind him.

(And he debated staying inside the car. He wasn't entirely sure he liked the look of this warehouse...)

He startled slightly as Stan slapped his hand against the roof of the car twice.

"C'mon, Ford, there are books. You like books, don'tcha?" was what Stan said to him next.

Ford debated this, as he winced his way further upright. (Really, if Stan had just given him a proper briefing before the last warehouse, he would've known he'd have to be more strategic about the textbook-retrieval right from the start...)

And, after a long moment of struggle (damn his unyielding curiosity!), Ford exited the car.

---

"I want to live here forever," Ford stated, as he stood in the center of what was veritably a cathedral of books, in the middle of a warehouse that in no way resembled a warehouse on the inside, and looked up. (And saw that they even had small vents intricately interwoven into the-- dear lord, of course they had the place fully climate- and temperature-controlled. Such a detail would not have gone overlooked, in such a place as this.)

"Big mood." Miz was staring up at the stacks with a thrilled expression. She was planning to Scan ALL of these! Om Nom that delicious knowledge! Tastier than emotions any day!

"You know this existed back when you were first farming out the building of that house of yours thirty miles west of here, right?" was Bill's drawled out and laconic contribution to the discussion.

"I hate you and everything you stand for," was Ford's almost-automatic reply, to which Bill just rolled his eyes, threw his hands up, and walked away.

"Uh, Ford…" Stan began, not really sure how to take that one. The kid had been being a little punk there about things, sure… but that had been a little… knee-jerk there from Ford, a little too much more than Stan had expected, and Ford...

"There are so many books…!" was what Ford blurted out next, and Stan was starting to get worried, 'cause how was he supposed to know if Ford's reaction here was from a book-overload, or from a concussion, if he started to outright drool or somethin' instead? To add to his worry, Miz was attempting to climb a stack, reaching for a book about the history of agriculture.

"--Rolling ladders, over there!" Stan barked out at her, pointing at the nearest ladder, three aisles down. Miz looked back at him before running off to get a ladder instead.

Stan got in front of his brother and snapped his fingers in front of his face a few times.

"I…" Ford trailed off, blinked, winced away from him at the third snap, and managed to capture his hand at the fourth. Then he blinked and seemed to get his bearings… kinda. "Stan, how did you even find this place?" Ford asked him. (Because there had been no road markings, no identifiable features, not even a sign. Even the parking lot had looked… But then, if the clientele were anything like him, they'd drive an old jalopy just to use the money-savings on more books, Ford gathered.)

"Couldn't find half the stuff I needed in the town library," Stan told him, straightening back up. "Your textbooks have got entire textbooks for references; you know that?" Stan complained at him.

Ford frowned over at him slightly in confusion (and yeah, Stan was blaming the probably-maybe-almost-a-concussion on that one), as Miz headed back over, having captured one of the ladders (after a polite back-and-forth of, 'oh you' - 'no you', from somebody else who had actually gotten there first).

"I thought you hated ladders?" Miz asked quietly. That made Stan blink. What did him hating ladders have to do with her not wanting to use one? (Miz had been trying to be considerate, not using a ladder because she'd thought he didn't like even seeing them.) Geez, this kid.

I use 'em when I need to," Stan told her. "Wouldn't be able to do work on the roof, otherwise. Or set off fireworks with the kids." He had that ladder right in the middle of the gift shop, up to the hatch, didn't he? How did she think he'd got up there, to put up the sign? Had she thought he'd actually paid somebody else to do it for him? --That kinda stuff cost money! Then Stan considered that maybe she thought he'd climbed the side of the Shack for it… which… seriously, that was even more dangerous. He couldn't float like the demons could...

"I want this place," Ford said next, in something of a daze, as he swayed a bit and turned in place, taking it all in. "This place is mine."

"Yeah, yeah," said Stan, getting a hand at Ford's back and gently steering him back towards the door. He figured it was probably a bad sign, if his brother was startin' to sound a little like the kid...

Miz tilted her head, as she trotted along beside them. "I could ask about who owns this place?" Could probably buy it off them, they still accept gold right?

"I know who owns the place," Stan told her. "Ain't no big mystery."

They met Bill at the front door.

And the kid took one look at Ford and said to Stan, "Better get him out in the next thirty seconds, or he'll get away from you. Sixty-three to the car next and locked in tight. I'll handle the seatbelt."

...Well, the kid was right about the thirty seconds. Ford seemed to wake up a bit at realizing he'd just been tricked into getting dragged out of this huge nerdy book nirvana, but the sunlight temporarily blinded him to send him blinking long enough that Stan actually got him the six more steps over that he needed to get him from the door to the car. (Yeah, of course he'd used his totally legally-obtained handicapped hang-tag thing in his car for that -- and hey, his brother sure needed it right now, okay?)

"One minute!" Miz called out, "I'll be right back!" And she rushed back inside before the door closed behind her.

Stan turned to Bill. "Kid, go get your sister, yeah?"

Bill sighed as Stanley manhandled that Stanford back into the car. He didn't even bother trying to help with the seatbelt after what Stanley had just said; Stanley wasn't listening to him again. So he just turned around and walked back inside, and it didn't take him long to find Miz, standing on a ladder, with her head tilted up as her eyes Flickered near-constantly.

"How long do you need?" Bill asked her, trying to confirm whether 'one minute!' was actually one minute. Because if it was... "Is distance a problem?"

Miz mumbled various info for a few seconds before she blinked and smiled down at him. "It's easier to See when I'm closer. Less effort. I should be done in a minute." She turned back up and Flickered some more.

Bill sighed and leaned up against the ladder. They were definitely going to miss the deadline then, but this WAS what Stanley had asked for. And he suspected the time it would take him to convince Miz to leave would take longer than this 'minute' of hers would. So he waited.

Miz didn't take long -- really only about a minute -- before climbing back down and shaking her head. "If Ford asks, I can recreate any of these books for him," she informed him.

"Don't ask, don't tell," said Bill, straightening up and walking towards the exit with her. "He'll be asking you -- or me -- to do that with every book that's ever existed for him, forever, if you do that."

"You know I made a huge library maze back home? It's filled with a bunch of the knowledge I've accumulated over the years." Miz grinned, skipping merrily.

"Don't tell my Stanford that, either," Bill informed her dryly. "He'd want to go there, too."

Miz giggled. "It's a 'challenge'. The place is filled with traps. I got a TV show made of people attempting to find stuff in there. Makes good revenue and entertains people."

Bill looked over at her. "You realize that he'd want to go, just to try and break the place, to steal every last book to 'set them free' for everyone who couldn't last long enough to really compete and find what they wanted," Bill told her.

Miz shrugged. "Well, I've put up a Curse that teleports people out before they get killed, but they're not allowed to compete a second time." Which didn't prevent injuries, just outright deaths. She was still tweaking the settings on that particular Curse to heal the participants of any wounds as well.

"Getting kicked out of libraries and banned from the premises before he's done looking for things is also a 'pet peeve' of his," Bill added, as he held the door back to the outside open for her.

Miz rolled her eyes. "I'm tempted to build a library here, or donate 'books' to the Gravity Falls library, would that be considered a practical thing to do?" Would that be considered 'good'?

"Ask Stanley?" Bill said as they both walked out, then glanced over at the car and added, "Maybe after he gets that Stanford to release him from that headlock he's got him in."

"Oops," said Miz -- the cause for the sixty-three-seconds-later deadline having been made impossible to meet. Bill sighed out (in annoyance), and the two demons went over to give Stan some back-up assistance.

Ford was growling out, "I will not be shown that many books, only to have you take them all away! You cannot do that to me!!"

"Oh yes I can!" Stan said, trying an elbow to the gut next. "--And you can get them back later!" Stan told him quickly next, once he'd found out that that hadn't worked, either. At the tightening pressure, Stan yelped out, "We'll come back later! Ford! The, uh, the place is closed!" Stan cried out, lying his ass off.

"Oh," Ford said, letting go of him. "Why didn't you just say so?"

"...Didn't want to cause a scene," Stan muttered at his lunatic brother, as he rubbed at his neck. Because the place was actually open 24-7. Good thing they didn't have any signs on the outside doors... "Now get in the damn car."

"But we are coming back here later," Ford said next.

"Yeah," Stan said, only to have his brother lifting him by his shirt lapels and setting him back on his feet again, to then find himself nose-to-nose with him, said brother demanding, "Tomorrow."

Stan stared into his brother's angry face, and it occurred to him, finally, that his oh-(not)-so-(very)-saintly brother had gone toe-to-toe with thirteen grandmas on that last parking lot and only come out of it with a couple of aches and pains and a single bump on the noggin where somebody had gotten him in the back of the head where he couldn't see them -- no black eyes, no cuts or bruises, no broken bones, or anything else of the sort that he could see, now that Stan was staring at him from only inches away, perfectly upright and mad and angrily-aggressively healthy. And he'd gotten that book back at the end.

"Yup," said Stan. "Tomorrow. Definitely gonna do that. Uh huh." (...And he was totally gonna die tomorrow, when his brother actually asked someone about the visiting hours and days, the next time that they were here.)

Ford let go of him, and got into the Stanleymobile on his own, retrieving the ice compress from the car floor along the way.

'Yup. That had totally been a great idea, there; good job, Stanley,' Stan thought to himself, as he got himself back into the Stanleymobile, and Ford got in behind him. The demons got themselves airborne, Stan pulled his car out of the parking lot, trailer pulled about smoothly around behind him...

...and then Stan realized something partway through the drive back -- he had blackmail material here. Because Ford hadn't been looking at the scenery on the way there. And his brother had fallen asleep not two minutes into the drive on the way back home from there.

Ford had no idea where the place was. And it was totally his brother's own fault.

Stan grinned.

And from outside the car, Miz blinked at the maniacal laughter suddenly emanating from within it. She turned her head towards Bill and blinked. "Is that usual behavior?" she asked.

"Sometimes!" Bill told her with a grin, then leaned in a little as he confided in her: "They really should do it more often."

---

Miz seemed to be settling down, less unsure now as she helped Stan unload the car (along with Bill and Soos, who had heard about the 'electric coolers' from a text from Mabel, and had come over to help resituate them somewhere both useful and easy for them to get to). Stan noted that she seemed relieved to be doing something to 'help'. He debated confronting her about what the heck her problem was, but decided not to press it for the moment. Miz had been on good behavior today, hadn't snapped at Ford like she usually did, and seemed to have actually talked with the kid about what things were and weren't okay to talk about.

Stan sighed. At least she was trying, now that she knew. He kinda wished Miz would have wised up on her own, but he was starting to get the idea that she couldn't pick up on this sort of thing on her own -- some things she got, but other stuff went right over her head. ...Just like with the kid.

Stan watched idly as Miz pulled a large book out from seemingly nowhere and placed it on the hood of the car before darting away. He sighed. The heck was she doing? "Miz," he said, picking up the book and leaving Ford in the backseat of the car still for a moment. "You forgot your book!" He sighed as she stopped at the door to look back at him, and then disappeared inside the house even faster. ...Great. The heck was that all about?

Stan sighed, looking down at the book. Some nerdy-looking thing about light…? Figured. Buncha nerds. He shoved it under an arm, and knocked on the rear passenger's side door window.

...Ford slowly sat up.

"...I don't think that coffee this morning was the not-decaf," Ford complained, as he managed to drag himself up out of the motor vehicle. "I think that coffee was the decaf."

"Wouldn't be surprised," Stan told his brother, slapping him on the shoulder. Ford glanced at him, and then his eyesight caught on the book Stan was holding under his arm.

"That's…" Ford reached for it, and managed to grab and yank it loose before Stan could tell him that-- "I was looking at this one earlier…" That had Stan stiffening in place. Stan glanced down at the nerd book Ford was holding, and then let out a sigh, slumping his shoulders and rubbing at his eyes under his glasses. This was like the gold necklace all over again.

"You takin' gifts from demons now?" was what Stan said to his brother, and that had Ford stiffening in place. "Miz left it. Give it here."

Ford looked incredibly reluctant, but then he got a determined look to his face after a moment, and he did slap the book back into Stan's chest for him to take.

"We are going back tomorrow to return what she stole, though," Ford said, as Stan took the book from him, and they both headed for the house. Stan sighed.

"Sure, Ford. Can't have her stealin' stuff for no good reason." He wasn't gonna get in an argument with his brother on this right now, and he hadn't seen where she'd gotten it from. She could create stuff, sure; but she'd also been in that warehouse at the end there long enough that she could've just grabbed it instead, and Stan didn't know which she'd gone with. And the place wasn't a lending library...

Though Stan was hoping Miz didn't steal it. Stan had told the demons that stealing hadn't been worth the heat in the other dimension. And it wouldn't have been worth the heat from that place, either. She should know that, and she should know that what he'd said applied to both pick-pocketing and general stealing…

...but if she'd looked him up, she'd have seen him stealing a lot of stuff in this dimension lots of times before. And she didn't always get things unless they were completely explained out to her, just like the kid. ...Whatever. If she had stolen it, they could just sneakily shove it back onto a shelf the next time they were there.

The two older Pines walked inside to see that the younger set of twins had returned. Miz was sitting among a pile of books, showing them off to Dipper. "This one's a complete history, as far as the author knew, on the discovery and study of the tomb of Pharaoh Hsekiu…" Dipper looked torn between really wanting that book, and looking at all the other books around her. As they all stared, Miz wiggled her fingers, causing her high tech body suit to light up and some lint and dust along the ground swirled together to form another book. "This one's a biography of Alexander Hamilton, the founding father who most embodied the hip-hop lifestyle…"

Dipper made a face at that. "I'm not sure hip hop was a thing back then…"

"Shows how much you know! Hah!" Miz teased cheerfully. Dipper rolled his eyes.

"Should you even be using your suit for things like this?" Dipper gestured to the books.

Miz shrugged. "I've been storing up a bunch of energy throughout the day, absorbing the ambient energy in the air after some filtering, and using a template makes it much easier." She paused before adding, "And it cleans out all the lint, dirt l, and grime around here by turning it into something useful," which was a big part of why she was doing it. This place was filthy!

Stan raised his eyebrows at this, then looked over at Bill, who was standing off to the side, leaning up against the wall. The kid had his arms crossed, and he looked annoyed. Kid wasn't looking at any of them; not even his sister.

"Kid?" Stan asked. "What's wrong."

"Tch," said the kid.

"He's being perfectly selfish and unhelpful, is what is wrong," Ford said, sending along look at the kid. "Knowledge should be shared."

"--I'm NOT your personal library!!" Bill snapped out, pulling his arms in more tightly around his chest, and… Stan saw his brother straighten up suddenly, looking absolutely shocked. Like something had just occurred to him--

Bill quite literally bristled in place.

"Somebody explain to me what is going on. Kid? Ford?" But Ford was staring holes in the kid, and the kid was hunching his shoulders; he looked like he wanted to go upstairs, but...

Stan glanced down at Miz, who was sitting on the floor of the living room. ...Kid wasn't gonna leave his little sister behind. Which meant, the kid probably felt...

"Kid, I can watch your little sister for--"

"--No," the kid said, turning his head away from him even further. Kid was fuming about this, and downright fidgeting and twitching in place.

And Stan startled slightly when Ford suddenly strode forward to come to a stop, standing right in front of Bill.

"Ford…" Stan began, starting to walk over quickly.

"--I don't want anything you can give me," Ford told the demon, straight to his face, and the demon stilled. "I don't trust you, I don't trust anything that you might give me," Ford continued, hands on his hips as he stared Bill down, "And if you tried to hand me a book, I wouldn't trust the contents of it one bit. --You hear me, Bill?"

Stan clenched his jaw and nearly let out a curse as he came to a stop next to his brother's shoulder, because his brother had just-- and--

Bill let out a laugh.

...It sounded a little hysterical.

The kid was smiling, but...

"Of course, of course you wouldn't!" the kid chortled out, but his body was twisted away from Ford slightly and the smile the kid had going was… off. Kind of… wrong somehow. "Of course you wouldn't, you don't like ANYTHING if it comes from me, if I try to give it to you!"

To this, Ford just nodded once, turned on his heel, and walked away, headed in the direction of his bedroom. (Son of a…)

Stan took a step forward, patting the kid on the head once in passing (the kid was shivering a bit), and as he handed the book Miz had left at the car over to the kid, he told the kid, "Stay here."

Stan walked off after Ford.

---

"--The hell was that?" Stan demanded out of Ford, after he slammed his way into his brother's bedroom.

"Aren't you supposed to ask permission…?" Ford said blandly, as he sat down on his bed, and began to take his boots off.

Stan glared at him. "You tellin' me that--"

"No," Ford sighed, looking away with a grimace. "You know you have 'blanket permission' to--"

"--Damnit, Ford!" Stan shoved the door shut, and stomped his way over, to stand in front of him and glower down at him. "What the hell were you thinking?!"