Chapter 138 - -Don't know when- Part 4

"Stan, I am tired--" Ford began, and his head was aching besides...

"--You just lied to the kid's face, Ford," Stan ground out at him under his breath. "What the hell would've happened if he'd realized you didn't mean it?!"

Ford looked up at his brother.

"I know you'd say yes to books," Stan said firmly.

"Not like that," Ford said quietly. "Not from him."

That just pissed Stan off even more. "Don't lie to me, Ford." Ford looked away from him. "You tell me why you lied to the kid. Right now. So I can do damage control when--"

"--You don't know why he reacted the way that he did to you saying you wanted him, do you," Ford said quietly, and Stan stopped talking. "You haven't really figured it out yet."

Stan frowned down at him. "'Course I do. He wants--"

"--to be wanted, yes Stan," and when Ford looked up at him, he did look tired. And his fingers were curled into the bedsheets now. "But you really don't get it, do you. What Bill thinks he heard. You don't understand the difference."

"What difference?" Stan snapped out at him. He wasn't stupid. The kid--

"He wants to be wanted for him, not wanted for what he can do," Ford said. "It took me awhile, but I think--" with the way Bill seemed to define himself--

"--I know that, Ford, I'm not an idiot," Stan ground out at him. "Why do you think I ain't askin' him for a bunch of stuff."

And at those words, Ford couldn't quite look at his brother just then. The 'popular' one. The one who everybody had wanted to be around, because he had 'personality'; because he wasn't a freak. ...The one who thought he could do something to be part of a loving family again, that he'd had options open to him; that it was something he could get, if only he did the right things, earned enough money, got enough respect...

(Ford had learned better over the years, that that wasn't really how things worked. Not for everyone. You couldn't just try harder and have whatever you wanted all work out for you, somehow. The world just didn't work that way; no world did. He couldn't even get a girl to talk to him willingly and like it, to like him--)

(Not to mention the very large problem that, the only reason that Stan had said what he had said to Bill, was seemingly because Stan had thought that it would make Bill less likely to hurt the niblings. He'd told Bill that he wanted him, but what Stan really wanted was for Bill to not do something for him: to not mess with his family. He'd wanted something that Bill could do -- to refrain from open violence -- not Bill himself. That much was clear from his earlier discussions with Stan. --Stan had lied to Bill, blatantly and horribly. And when Bill realized that Stan had lied to him about this -- and he would eventually...)

It was far easier for Ford to move on to the greater issue at hand, than to attempt to address the complex issue of separating one's self from one's ability with his brother. So he did.

"Stanley, he never even offered me the possibility of copies of other books from this dimension," Ford said, "Let alone other dimensions. He could have shown them to me in the Mindscape; I would have retained the information upon waking. But he didn't. Not once. Not ever."

"So?" Stan asked him. "What's that got to do with anything?"

"Stan, his whole 'deal' is that he knows things," Ford reminded him tiredly. "There was a time," Ford told him quietly, "When, if Bill had handed me an instruction book," Ford couldn't quite help but wince at his previous naivete, "Perhaps 'Turning A Crashed Spaceship Into An Interdimensional Portal for Smart-Alecks and Dummies'? --That I would have read it cover-to-cover, and blindly followed every last step." He looked up at his brother and asked, simply, "Why didn't Bill do that?"

Stan looked down at him.

"I don't doubt he must have thought of it at some point," Ford said slowly. "And it would have worked. I would have done exactly as he'd intended, maybe even without needing to call Fiddleford up to Gravity Falls to help me," he told his brother. "So why didn't he just ask me if I might want something like that? Why didn't he offer it to me?" Ford smiled sadly up at his brother. "Because he didn't trust me? ...You said it yourself, Stan," Ford said, looking away from his brother again. "You think that Bill wants something from us all. So what does he want from us," Ford ended bitterly.

"He won't do absolutely anything to get it," Stan said. Probably tied back to what the kid was thinking he needed to do to get his dead brother back somehow; kid had been secretive as hell about him, that 'Liam' of his. For some reason, it also had the kid getting all roundabout in his methods of getting them to do what he wanted -- instead of outright asking or telling them to do it -- for nearly every damn thing that he did. Stan would bet his last dollar on that. (And as far as Stan was concerned, getting the kid to actually tell him what he wanted sometimes was a hell of a lot of progress and a half right there, already.)

"No," Ford agreed. "But if there are things that he won't do, then what are they, exactly, and why not?"

And it was clear to see, when Ford looked up at him again, that Stan didn't have the answer to that one. (Not yet.)

"It was making him agitated," Ford said. "The idea of just handing us things." Ford smiled up at him again, grimly. "I told you I was going to try to do what I normally wouldn't do sometimes, from now on, didn't I? And what I said to him did seem to calm him down somewhat. Yes?"

Stan stared at him.

And then Stan let out a huff. "Heh. Guess so." Then Stan frowned. "Miz seems to like givin' us stuff though," Stan added a bit more soberly. "Look, if… there's something going on with the kid and the whole giving us stuff thing, I'll figure it out. Maybe ask Miz why she has no trouble with doin' it, to start with, while the kid's hanging around within earshot. See if that gets the kid talking."

"If you think that wise," Ford told him with a grimace. "Now, if you'll excuse me, I could use some additional sleep, Stan. --Uninterrupted, preferably." He'd been in an out-and-out fight earlier that morning, and he'd suffered a head injury. Contrary to what his brother might think, he did try to take what downtime he could to recover, after any harrowing experience he had, when he could, and his head was beginning to pound. "And you should get back to the niblings." Capable as they were, Ford could hardly expect Dipper and Mabel to handle Bill Cipher in physical form on their own for more than a few minutes without issue. And while Bill seemed to be following Stan's entirely made-up rules of bedrooms being 'safe zones' so far, ones that Bill would not even enter without permission, in fact… that clearly didn't extend to the shared common rooms downstairs, such as the kitchen, living room, or dining areas. (And how long would that particular 'game' of Bill's last, anyway? Another week? A day at most? Until the first time that the niblings dared slam the door in his face? Certainly not so long as Stan thought--)

"Yeah, fine," Stan grumbled out. "Just, hell, maybe give me a little warning next time? Maybe some kinda signal, when you're plannin' to go crashing across lanes?" Because for a second there, he'd thought his brother had walked over to the kid to go off and punch him in the face. And then with the lying to the kid's face...

Ford couldn't help but let out a small smile as Stan headed for the door. "I will endeavor to do my best to come up with something that Bill Cipher will not be able to decipher," he told him.

"Yeah, good luck with that," Stan snorted out.

Stan closed the door behind him, and Ford turned in place, pulling his legs up, to lie down flat on his bed, despite the aching pressure it put on the back of his head.

He started up at the ceiling for a few minutes.

And, eventually, he closed his eyes.

---

Stan returned to the living room and stared at the towers of books that now inhabited it. "...MIZ!" Stan ground out. (To which he heard a "Here!" So at least she was still in the room someplace, here.) "The heck?!" What was she tryin' to do, here? "I can't get to the TV!" he complained. That was only maybe half of the problem here, though.

He heard a shuffling sound from inside the stacks and a muffled voice call back, "Should I donate these to the Gravity Falls public library?"

Stan pulled in a breath and opened his mouth to say--

--but then he stopped and frowned. His first instinct was to tell her to get it all outta the Shack right now, but… hell, he was smarter than that. She had done this for a reason, and her brother over there hadn't stopped her for another reason, he bet. (Which meant…)

"...Donate them to the library?" Stan called back. He was starting to get a picture of what was going on here, now. Crazy dragon-lady. Going at things sideways, trying to get her way all 'sneaky' all over again. She was even more sideways than her brother about all this junk. Seriously. "What the heck are all these things, anyway -- yeah, books, I know -- but what are they and where the hell did you get them from?" And he didn't just mean 'how did you make them,' wasn't like he hadn't seen that one, too, when they'd walked in earlier. His frown deepened as there were some more shuffling sounds and a thump, and then Mabel's voice squealed out, "There's a book about advanced knitting patterns!!!"

Stan's eyes narrowed. ...Oh, he knew what he was doing here, now.

"I scanned and copy-pasted the books I thought were interesting!" Miz shuffled around inside the stacks.

"...From the book warehouse we just visited?" Stan asked slowly to confirm, trying to locate where they all were from their voices, as he edged his way into the room just slightly. (He saw the kid still standing right where he had been before, up against the wall, looking edgy still, and almost frowning at the whole mess in front of him that his sister had made.)

"....yes?" Miz called out next, almost tentatively. "Though a few are from other books I've Seen over the years, that aren't already in the Gravity Falls library…"

Bill twitched and looked annoyed at... his sister's antics. Uh huh.

...Seen over the years. Right. All several hundred billion of 'em and counting. "--Kid, I want this stuff shoved off to the sides, without somebody getting buried. Anybody. You think you can do that for me?" Stan asked, knowing about what had happened in that classroom before, and Bill made a back-and-forth sweeping gesture with both hands.

...Well, that was a mess. Kinda. Piles were still everywhere and a half, but at least he could walk through the living room to any doorway now. And see the TV and his chair. And the kids and the dragon-lady, sitting on the floor, unharmed by any of the shoved-around books...

Stan shuffled into the center of the room, looking around at it all. Mess was still a mess, but the books didn't look damaged, at least. Some of the stacks still looked about ready to fall over, but… He bent over and picked one of the books up off the top of the nearest low stack, straightened, and started paging through it almost absently. He strolled over to his armchair and leaned up against it. "So, you want to donate these to the library, huh?" Stan asked, still paging through the book he was holding. And when he saw… (Hm. That wasn't…)

"Yeah, would that be alright?" Miz asked as she looked around at the stacks.

"Aren't ya not allowed to give away stuff for free, though?" Stan asked, glancing up to side-eye her over the book.

Miz hummed as she thought about how to explain it. "I can give stuff if it's because I want to give stuff because I want other people to do something, like learning, and not because someone else wants or needs something from me. Knowledge is different from other things I can give away." Miz told him, "Knowledge is part of my Pillar. I like teaching people. And I can get away with giving knowledge without demanding anything back, so long as I'm feeling okay. Balanced." Miz frowned. "It's a little hard to explain."

"You wanted to be a teacher, right?" Mabel was flipping through the knitting book, which apparently she'd grabbed earlier before the kid's book-'fling'. Stan glanced over at the kids.

"So you can give away books for free?" Stan asked almost leadingly.

Miz tilted her head to the side and thought about how to put it. "I'm not giving them to anyone in particular. I'm simply dropping them off. And I can teach people stuff for free under certain circumstances. Like inspiration inside their dreams."

Stan frowned immediately, almost a glower. "...Inspiring 'em?"

Miz immediately waved her hands. "W-well I'm nowhere near brother's level in that sense." Stan sent the kid a look next when said demon-kid let out a "HA! --You're still young, you have time! I'll teach you!" to Stan's disapproving glare.

Miz fidgeted in place. "I don't want to make people end up obsessed in such a bad way. I just give them the help they need to get past their mental blocks. I… I like helping people achieve what they can, support them to be able to do more and grow and--" she stopped as Bill walked over to pat-pet her on the head. And Bill was looking a bit more relaxed than before as he said, "You're a Muse, too. It's what you do."

Stan frowned at the kid. "What exactly does that..." mean. He stopped himself. Bill had mentioned that once before, after Miz had wanted to give college pamphlets to some girl at the high school in that other dimension. Something about wanting to help people live up to their potential, or whatever. --Nope. No. And nope. He wasn't letting himself get sidetracked here.

So Stan stopped himself right there, and went for the thing he needed to say instead, before he started really getting this whole thing back on track again. "Yeah. Sure. That thing. 'Helping' people. --Like that one teacher you talked to at school, where you didn't realize you'd 'inspired' then too much until you saw what happened with that science teacher?" he said almost darkly and leadingly, then (at Miz's wince) followed it up with, "How do you know you haven't inspired anybody else and their dog into a really bad place before this?" to really drive the point home. (Because the kid had sure messed that one up a lot of times himself, if what Stan had got outta Ford was what he'd thought it was, along with the kid himself.)

(The kids were glancing between them now.)

"I guess I wouldn't know unless I go and check on the people I've worked with… but they seemed fine, they weren't neglecting their personal lives to go around pursuing their interests..." she thought about it. "Maybe it's just a human thing?"

Stan couldn't really say anything more than a flat, "Uh huh..." while keeping a level stare on Miz as she got more and more guilty-looking, as the seconds ticked by...

Finally, she puffed out her cheeks with a petulant, "It's not like I knew that was going to be a problem I had to look out for!"

"Well, now ya know," Stan told her evenly.

Miz pouted. "Well just giving books to people shouldn't cause such a problem, right?" (Stan eyed her over that one.) She looked away, over to the stacks around her. She pulled one out to place at Stan's feet, one that looked really familiar after finding it outside at the car and carting it around for a minute. "This one's for Ford, he wanted it. But if he doesn't want it, you can just donate it with the others that Mabel or Dipper don't want to keep. Or Soos. I should ask if he wants any…"

...Oh, he had her now. "You can give stuff to Soos and the kids?" Stan asked.

Miz shrugged. "I like Soos and Mabel. Besides, I want to chat with Soos about the newest season of That Hero University…" Stan rolled his eyes. Right. That anime thing.

Time for the kicker. "Well, I ain't so sure about all this stuff, yet," Stan told her, looking around at it all. "Don't even know what-all it is." He let the 'for Ford' one sit for now; she should've known his brother wouldn't take it from her from how he'd reacted to the kid just then, but Stan wasn't gonna get into that right now. He looked down at the book he was holding. "--And hey, you can give stuff to, what, everybody but me?" He looked over at her and said almost jokingly next: "Really feelin' the love here, Miz."

Miz thought about it before shrugging. "Any book you want, you can get yourself. And you're not too into reading."

"Hey, I read," Stan objected. He just hadn't had a lot of time for it, lately. Not 'for fun', or whatever. Not before he'd, well… Whatever. Anyway. "What if I want all of 'em?" Stan told her, weighing the book in his hand.

"All books in general, or just the ones here?" Miz asked for clarification.

Stan raised his eyebrows at her. "'Just' the ones in here, that you made here, and all."

"Well they're not mine, and I don't need the physical copies, so if you did want them, you'd just be taking the things I'm discarding." Miz had a wry smile on, having messed around with her parameters for ages to find all sorts of loopholes for being able to give free stuff to people. And in her opinion? This was one of the best ones!

Stan's eyes glinted. Gotcha.

"Good," Stan said, and he slapped the book he was holding shut one-handed, and turned to the niblings and demon-kids both. "I'm claiming all of these books. All of these books are mine," he intoned out, and he watched the kid straighten up ever so slightly, eyes going a little sharp.

And then, after no protest from Miz or the demon-kid, and while the kids were still blinking up at him in something like shock, Stan put on his grumpy face and said, "You two, you're gettin' your penalty now."

And then he put on his Mr. Mystery grin. The money-making one.

"--Wait," Dipper said, way way too late, as he started to realize how wrong things were about to go now, but Stan just steamrolled right over him as he looked around the room.

"All of this? We're puttin' it up on c-Pay. Every. Last. One." Stan intoned out, as he looked down at the niblings -- Dipper's growing look of horror, and Mabel's beginnings of confusion. "--And no, Miz, you ain't doing this thing again," he told her next. "You put your brother in a bad place, here, and we don't got space for any of this junk," he said next, gesturing around at the piles. "And neither does the library. --Those town yokels would just take all this stuff, and trash what they've already got, throwin' stuff out of the shelves and out into the town square to burn 'em all, to make room for it. We ain't doin' that." Stan normally wouldn't have bothered with adding that extra info at the end right there, but he'd been in town long enough to know this stuff, and he knew Miz needed explanations for things to go along with stuff.

Miz blinked slowly, processing this. "....okay?" she twitched a little. "They would just burn old books? What the heck??"

"Town ordinance," Stan said. "They treat it like flag burning, or something."

"Isn't it illegal to deface the American flag?" Miz looked even more confused now.

Stan eyed her, but Dipper spoke up for him. "That's protected free speech, and the only way to get rid of old flags. You're supposed to burn them, not throw them away in the trash…"

"--Because throwing them away like garbage to go to a landfill is supposed to be worse!" Mabel ended for him brightly, to Dipper's slight embarrassment. Miz seemed to accept that and nodded to show she understood.

"Why do we have to sell them all, though?" Dipper said, starting to get angry. "How is this supposed to be--" fair?! he wanted to demand out of his Grunkle Stan, because this was just-- just--!!

But Grunkle Stan just tossed the book he was holding onto one of the piles, and frowned down at them both.

"You two," Stan said, "Went jumping into another dimension, tryin' to jump back in time to try and get rid of this one," he said, tossing a thumb Bill's way. "If he was dead -- or never here, whatever -- then Miz wouldn't be here to be makin' up all'a these books for you to maybe be able to read. --No kid, no Miz, no books. You wanted no Bill so bad? You get to see what it'd be like if he wasn't here," Stan groused out, turning away from them, "At least a little bit."

"That's not fair!" Mabel rang out, sounding aggressively-defensive. (She knew how badly Dip-Dop wanted all of these books!). "It was my--"

"--Stop," Stan thundered out, and Mabel stopped, shocked. "Don't go coverin' up for somebody else," Stan said slowly, as he tried not to sweat. Because whether or not Mabel was covering for Dipper, if she made it completely clear that she was going to try and do this again--

"--It's Glasses or Sixer's influence. Or both. I know that," Stan heard from the kid, and Stan turned towards the kid slowly, almost in shock. And then the kid said next, in neutral tones, hand still held on top of his sister's head, "Pine Tree and Shooting Star are part of the agreement, but they are young. They will make mistakes. And I didn't have to fight them on this, this time." Because I took precautions weighed heavily in the silence there, but Stan pulled in a breath (that was slightly shaky, despite everything). Because… "They didn't quite violate the mutual non-aggression agreement," Bill said next, which had the twins flinching as they finally, finally realized… "'Going back in time' wouldn't be enough to be considered an attack. I don't always go after people for 'intent' before they actually try and pull off their latest idiocy." But the demon-kid didn't exactly look happy as he said, "And I know you don't want me to."

Yeah, that one was heard loud and clear. Stan should've stopped them before they'd pulled this shit, behind his back and on his watch. He was the agreement-holder. He was the enforcer.

...And the kid was giving him a hell of a lot of leeway here. The kids had straight-up said why they'd wanted to go back and try and 'fix' things between him and Ford when they'd all been in that other dimension, right in front of the kid. And the niblings hadn't stopped to think twice about the other consequences of that before doing it, in the face of...

...well. They had probably thought they were gonna be able to pull it all off. (Stan knew better. He planned stuff out for when things didn't work out for him, too.)

(And apparently, so did the kid. Setttin' stuff up like that, to 'bounce' people tryin' to mess with the timeline or whatever, any more than anybody already had…)

Stan had been expecting a fight outta the kid on this one, or at least some kinda angry argument or four, and a hell of a lot earlier than this, to boot. He should've known better, thinking that maybe the kid hadn't quite thought that… or been too distracted to... and Stan had thought it was maybe safe to try and bring it up now, because when it had come up the last time before this…

He'd been wondering why the kid hadn't gone off on them all in that other dimension, but now? Now he was starting to get it, he thought. (After two good nights of sleep, and bein' home and having a chance to breathe, and everything….)

--Because if the kid had protested then, gone all demon-y on them then, while they'd all been stuck in that other dimension, with no portal in sight that they could use to get them all home again… It wasn't just that the kids had nearly killed themselves doing it that the kid hadn't kicked up a fuss and come down on them then, Stan realized, or because what the niblings had done had been a completely-failed attempt with no chance of success from the kid's point of view. No. It was probably because the kid had known that Ford would've been twelve times more tense if he'd acted out that way, as a start. Stan was pretty sure his brother had thought they'd been all straight-up trapped over there, and never getting back home again ever, and if the kid had pulled anything even as, hell, mild as what he was pulling right here and now, over there then? That probably would've gotten him shot. By Ford. Maybe even outta reflex. And then--

Stan had been expecting at least an argument outta the kid on this one, at some point, but he wasn't getting one from him, even now. Instead, he was getting his own (defensive) reasoning tossed out at him, right from the start -- and that would've been the argument Stan would've gone with, tossing things back at the kid, to a T.

Stan shook his head. And he said, "Yeah, I know, kid. These two are gettin' babysitted or watched for at least the next week or so, from here on out. I figured letting these two hit the mansion this morning would get that time-tape thing outta the way and away from Ford, and let 'em tell Old Man McGucket how really not workable that garbage-idea of his was. Puttin' the kids in your way back then like that." Hell, Stan wasn't above putting the blame on somebody else. And hell, he wasn't even sure if it wasn't all that true. He was pretty sure that McGucket was one of the only people, if not the only person, who could've made some time-travel doohicky actually work, besides Ford. And Ford had better sense. Which meant Old Man McGucket had been enabling the kids to pull this shit. ...Which meant he'd known exactly what he was doing when he'd done it.

"...Grunkle Stan," Mabel said slowly, looking between them all. She was clutching that knitting book to her chest now like it was some kinda stuffed animal, or her pet pig.

"Kid's goin' easy on you here, and you two know it; he ain't even kicking up a fuss," Stan said. "But I'm the agreement-holder here, and I sure as hell ain't gonna let this one slide. --You two are not pulling this junk on anybody ever again," Stan intoned out roughly. "Losing all this is penalty number one," he said, gesturing around at the mess of books. "Penalty two is you two getting babysat, maybe for the rest of the summer," Stan told them. "--You ain't leaving the Shack at all for the next week," he informed them gruffly, "And you ain't going unsupervised by me, Soos, or Melody for the next two weeks, minimum," he said. "And the kid's in the 'supervision' rotation starting week two," once he was sure that the kid actually knew what 'babysitting' really meant for these two.

Dipper looked downright horrified by this turn of events. Mabel was starting to look more and more worried.

The kid eyed him at that. (Well, the kid was taking Mabel out to the spaceship for those science lessons sometimes. Stan wasn't gonna let the kid do that, take her off all alone anyplace, when he might still be fuming internally about all of this shit; Stan knew better. Kid had a temper, and his limits. Stan wasn't gonna test them -- not that far, not by a longshot -- and he sure wasn't gonna let the kid test them himself, either. Not anytime soon. Not if he could help it.)

"Far as I'm concerned," Stan continued, "You two can spend the whole time around Ford," he said next, to see Mabel start to relax, and Dipper start to look suspicious, "But me or Soos or Melody are still gonna have to be in there with you." He wasn't so sure he could trust the three of them together on their own, kinda. Ford could help them get around whatever real easy, Stan bet. And the kid wouldn't think Ford was 'babysitting' material, being farther down the priority list than the twins right now. (Yeah, Stan already saw that one coming a mile away…)

"....I think house arrest is a bit much," Miz spoke up. "How about, they can't leave the Shack unless you or another supervisor is with them?" Everyone turned to stare at her. Miz fidgeted in place. "Back when I was a triangle, the Circles placed guards around my house so I wouldn't be able to run off and see my brother, or my family. I had to sneak out…"

"They can still see people," Stan told her. "I ain't keeping anybody from coming here to see them if they want to," though the kid being here should probably cut down on some of that, "And I ain't keeping them from using the internet, or their phones, either," Stan told her. "And they're only getting grounded grounded for the first week, hard. --Hell, I got grounded for a whole summer for borrowing something outta my old man's pawnshop once," and lying about it, "And what these two just tried to pull... --They ain't getting off of any of this scot-free," Stan told her. "And, y'know, maybe if they're spending a bit more time around Ford," Stan told her and the kids next, "They'll get some kinda idea of exactly how stupid an idea it was to try and go back and 'fix' things themselves without even talkin' to any of us first, to see how we felt about it," which still really got his goat, even more now, "And, y'know, maybe appreciate the Ford that they got, right here and right now." He looked over at them. "Because they just about killed him with this little stunt they just pulled. --He wouldn't have been the same him that you two know and love if you did that," Stan told them. And hell, neither would he. "It ain't just Bill you were going off and about to try and get rid of there, either, or even yourselves. You woulda been getting rid of Ford, too." And me.

And that finally got the twins looking appropriately horrified. Yeah, they better. Stan let this sink in a bit for the two of them.

"No," Dipper said, feeling terrified and sick suddenly at the thought that, when he'd been using the time-tape to try and win that prize for Wendy, that he might've been killing his sister, Wendy, everybody that he'd rolled back time on when he'd-- over and over again-- and--! No. "No! That's not how it--"

"--Even with that much of a gap in the time-jump, if they'd done it in this dimension instead, you would have been different, but also the same," the kid said slowly, "Still my Zodiac," the kid added, still watching Dipper. "The 'morality' of time-travel is… ha… a bit advanced." He glanced up at Stan. "You, and they, shouldn't worry about that."

And Stan hesitated. Because he knew that tone of voice outta the kid by now.

"...What should we be worried about," Stan said slowly next.

And the kid smiled.

"Don't worry," the kid said casually, eyes glinting. "I fixed it."

Stan tensed. "Fixed what," he ground out. Was this the thing the kid been taunting Ford about 'losing him' over, and junk, finally rearing its ugly head?

The kid looked down at his fingers, under the fingernails of his one hand. "Well," the kid began, "Pine Tree and Shooting Star did 'force' the Axolotl to create a dimension, just for them." He looked up at Stan. "Do you know what happens when the Axolotl has to do that?"

"...What happens," Dipper said slowly, looking about as tense as Stan felt just then, and Mabel didn't look any better.

Bill's smile widened slightly.

"...Have you ever wondered why there aren't any other demon summonings that work in this dimension?" Bill said, then added, almost as if savoring the word, "...Anymore?"

It took Stan a moment.

"--Kid," Stan began, feeling alarmed as all get out at what might happen to those other younger them's next -- let alone anybody else over there -- but he stopped when the kid's smile thinned out, and the kid shook his head at him slightly.

"I handled it on the way out," Bill Cipher told all of his Zodiac present.

"Handled what," Dipper said flatly, looking more and more tense as he wrapped his arms around his sides, and his sister clutched the book she was holding even tighter to her chest.

And the demon-kid looked down at Dipper and blinked.

"Securing your ownership," the demon said, "And locking out any other demons in existence from being able to travel to that dimension anymore, among other things." He glanced up at Stan again. "No others jumped in before I did so. It's 'clean' and 'pristine' as can be!"

"That other dimension is yours now," Miz piped up, sitting down and regarding the twins calmly. Hm, the way the Ax here did things was very different from home. Back home, if Ax made a new dimension, he needed both her and Time Baby to help out too. And no one really claimed it, but they could 'claim' it, by telling the other two they wanted that dimension and the other two agreeing to it.

"...Kid," Stan said slowly. "I'm gonna need a little more explanation than that. Like a little bit of how. And why."

"Was that really necessary?" Dipper said, starting to sound a little freaked out. "I-- I mean-- the ownership thing?!" ...Yeah, he'd caught on to the demon problem pretty quick there, huh.

And the kid… actually explained. (Hell. If this was what things were gonna be like from now on, with the kid being 'his' and everything else… Damn.)

"The stupid lizard is lazy," the demon-kid told them all. "It doesn't spin up dimensions unless and until it has to. --So when it 'has to'," he continued, with no small exasperation, "The first 'people' -- or demons -- to visit? Own the dimension. At least until they leave it," the demon-kid told them. "Unless they claim it before they leave and secure ownership! But most beings don't know how to secure ownership," the demon-kid told them next, "And ownership can be lost just as easily between demons, too! --And that isn't even getting into buying or selling them, or what you can do with them--" the demon-kid said, starting to look excited as he began to warm up to the topic.

--And Stan figured he'd better stop him there. "So, what. You took the dimension from the kids to do that?" Stan asked him. (That didn't make sense. The kid was careful with his words, and hadn't the kid said…?)

The demon-kid smiled widely. "No," the kid said. "I didn't have to do that."

"Why not," Dipper said almost angrily, starting to glare. Because if he and his sister had just handed another entire dimension over to Bill Cipher, one with a bunch of human people they knew in it-- Great-Uncle Ford had talked about what happened when--!

But Dipper went back to feeling shocked all over again as Bill turned to him and said, "Because you're mine." Then he turned to Grunkle Stan next and said, "I secured ownership for them. Because they're mine, I can do that for them. It isn't held in my name; it's in theirs. --Other demons can tell," Bill told Grunkle Stan next. "I didn't lock out Sight, or try and shield the dimension from notice. --I couldn't do that from the start, since they did it when I wasn't Looking, aware, or prepared for it," Bill told him, looking annoyed now, "And doing that after the fact would draw all kinds of notice." And the way Bill was talking, it sounded like that was something… he didn't want?

It became a little more clear why when Grunkle Stan said a little more grumpily next, almost leadingly, "So your demon-friends can't tell that you're still alive and kicking from looking at stuff in the right place."

Bill grimaced a little at that. "That's… not entirely accurate," Bill said. "If they knew to look, they could find someone else with a similar -- but not NEARLY as good-at-it -- Sight," wow, you dumb dorito, touchy about it much? "--But new dimensions popping up? That gets noticed by everyone who is anyone QUICKLY," Bill told him. "I locked out other inbound portal-connections on our way in, so that nothing will work that I don't allow or control though, being and demon alike!" Bill grinned.

Miz couldn't help but comment, "It doesn't work that way in my dimensional set. I'm not sure if this way or my way is better." She thought about it. "But in my dimensional set, I just tell Time Baby or Ax if I wanted to claim a dimension or planet as my own, and they agree or disagree. Ax is fine with letting me do what I want, but I have to convince Time Baby or exchange a favor for it."

Stan frowned at this, and the twins looked alarmed, but the kid cut in with, "Demons in your dimension are different than here, I believe, from what you've told me. --The ones HERE will jump in on ANYTHING new, just like THAT!" Bill snapped his fingers at head-height, "As soon as they can! And start wrecking the place just as quickly," Bill said next without judgment, as he lowered his hand.

Like he was talking about the weather. Like that wasn't a problem.

Stan stared at him, thinking--

"...Wait," Mabel said. "If it's our dimension--" She paused for a moment, then brightened. "Could we make it so that there are bouncy castles for everyone?"

"--Mabel!!" Dipper hissed out. Because that was almost as bad as the 'death!!' at the end of Globnar, getting way too carried away about something really horribly serious!

But Bill just eyed her and said, "Only if you know how to do that. DO YOU know how to do that?" the dream demon said almost cheerfully. (And Dipper had to let out a breath of relief as Mabel groaned at this -- because no. No, she didn't know how to 'manage' a dimension, or whatever-it-was that demons usually did to them when they 'owned' them. But the way Great-Uncle Ford had talked about it, it was like they almost became that dimension's demi-god or something, and Bill had better not teach her how to--)

"There was a bouncy house dimension that I've been to. I can show you how it works." Miz said helpfully.

Dipper stared at her in horror and mentally sighed in relief when Stan told Miz, "No." (And felt slightly horrified all over again when Bill added, "--Not anytime soon!" with a grin, and that got a "Boo!" out of Mabel, and all Stan did to any of this was to roll his eyes at the demon.)

"--Anything else I gotta worry about over there, besides the kids owning a dimension now, that other demons and nobody else can get into but us?" Stan asked, trying to get things back on track again. The kid paused for a moment, then shook his head 'no'. (...Yeah, 'cause that pause there wasn't suspicious at all.) "Good. --Dipper, Mabel, you two are getting both your penalties starting right now," Stan told them both, and they startled in place. "Dipper, get your laptop. You're on cataloguing and listing duty for these things, no reading them. You don't even get to open them unless I say so, and I don't say so," Stan told him with a glare, which had Dipper looking angry, but not belligerent enough that Stan was gonna get ignored on this one. "Mabel, you're on wrapping and post-it note duty," Stan commanded out next. "Gonna get these wrapped up in dull, brown paper wrapping and twine-string -- nothing fancy," Stan said, to Mabel's pout. "You don't get to sticker these things or glitter them up or anything, or read any of them, either," Stan noted, eyeing that knitting book that she was still holding.

Mabel let out an almost anguished cry at that. "No fair!"

"It's a penalty," Stan said, "It ain't supposed to be 'fair'. Like I told the kid, it's supposed to teach you not to do stupid stuff anymore, like what you two just got done doing!" Stan told them both, really getting freaking tired of having to say this. "--You two almost ended up killing yourselves over there, maybe starving to death in the streets, y'know! This isn't supposed to be fun. --You're making me some money, here," Stan said next, with a Mr. Mystery grin, to soften the blow somewhat by making it more-expected 'grunkly' behavior out of him, in their eyes. "So get to work! --Mabel, grab some big boxes from the back storeroom while you're at it, sweetie," Stan barked out next, almost absently, as he turned to survey the piles.

Mabel turned to Miz with an almost desperate expression.

"And Miz ain't making you lot any more books," Stan said next, glancing back at them. "You want 'em? Talk to Bill, first. He gets to decide." That oughta teach 'em, thinking that getting stuff from the other demon was really all that different from getting them from the kid himself. (Because it wasn't. Miz was only doin' this stuff because the kid was here, and she was just hanging around.)

Stan eyed Miz. "I ain't so sure about all of this stuff, here, as-is," he said next, as Dipper got up, hunched shoulders, to go off and grab his laptop from upstairs.

Mabel sadly put down the knitting book and got up to go get the post-it notes and boring wrapping supplies. Miz looked at the books and then up at Stan. "This too, is a learning experience," Miz concluded.

Stan snorted. "Yeah, it is." Stan glanced between them. "You really didn't notice how out-of-torque your brother was gettin' over there at you doin' this stuff?" he asked her, then shook his head. "Y'know what, hold that thought. You two can talk that one out later between you. --Right now, what I gotta know is, is there anything about these books that might make 'em sell for less than they should?" he asked her. (Not that he didn't know at least part of the answer to that one, since he knew how most nerds responded to library books that looked like they'd been…)

"I made some corrections for the inaccurate information."

(...yeah, he'd thought so. Those penciled-in comments had sure sounded kinda familiar. Ish. Kinda like the dragon-lady when she talked.) ...Well, that wasn't gonna fly.

"Kid, think I'm gonna have you remove that stuff," Stan floated the idea first, before asking it. Because Stan knew that leaving any weird markings or comments or highlighting or whatever in there was gonna lower the value, and he didn't know what-all Miz might've put in there that might be a problem. ...He also knew that the demon-kid liked writing in other people's books himself. Like Ford's journal. So maybe this would be a bit of 'practice' pre-penalty for not doing that anym--

"--I can remove them easily," Miz agreed. She didn't seem happy to have the books contain the wrong information though.

Stan sighed. Wrong 'kid', there, dragon-lady. "You put 'em in, the kid can take 'em out," Stan clarified to her. "You're supposed to be conserving your energy, remember?" Stan said. "And I don't want to risk ya unbalancing yourself here, taking knowledge away from these things.. Besides, the kid knows what stuff this dimension does and doesn't have." Books she's seen places. He'd caught how not exact she'd been on that one, there. He wasn't about to let that one slide, when it could be a problem. 'Portals for Dummies' books, and all that. "You've gotten confused on stuff before. --Kid? You think you can do that? Clean up the ones that're here, and rewrite the ones that people can't already get from a library or bookstore here someplace else right now?" Stan asked, not quite making it a challenge, to see how the kid took it (now that the kid wasn't giving him 'unlimited' help, now that they were all back home, here). The kid hesitated, glancing over at his little sister, but then nodded at him. Huh.

"Okay…" Miz sighed.

"Hey, at least somebody's gonna end up buying and reading them, instead of them just getting stuck on some shelf forever gatherin' dust," Stan told her. No way any nerd wouldn't read some book that they'd bought off of that website, not for the prices he'd be offering. (He knew better than to let 'em rack up as bids. He was just gonna post 'em as list price plus shipping, as much as it truly pained him not to do an even steeper markup of the prices. ...Eh, most of them didn't look all that old, anyway. And Stan knew none of them would probably sell online if he didn't do that. Online wasn't the Mystery Shack gift shop; another cheaper copy of a book online was just one simple click on a search page away...)

"I'll have the kids box up the books first, to carry 'em out there to the picnic tables," Stan told the two demons. (Because as far as Stan was concerned, the Shack included the house itself, sure, but also the parking lot, the picnic tables, and the whole area out to the treeline, really.) "Kid, you maybe wanna take your little sister out there now, and explain to her why you don't think it's such a good idea to just go around giving people books around here?" Stan said to him next. Because he knew the kid had a reason for it. (Whether or not it was whatever Ford was gonna come up with for that one, Stan wasn't about to lay any bets on right now, though, one way or the other.)

Bill nodded and took Miz out of the room, already starting his explanation about how people reacted to things they were given, versus how they thought about and 'felt about' and valued and 'better understood' the things they achieved on their own...

...which quickly escalated to the twins maybe being able to bike or Mystery-Shack-tourcart-ride their way over to that warehouse full of books themselves (later, post-house-arrest) -- a little too damn quickly, in Stan's opinion, because the demon-kids got there before they'd even made it out of the house and out onto the back porch...

Stan let out a deep sigh as the door slammed shut and ran a hand across his face, already feeling tired as all get-out. Was he already gettin' undermined here by the demon-pair?

...Well, maybe not yet. The kid hadn't looked like he'd wanted his sister to be giving them any of those books. And if the kid thought the promise of them getting to read the stuff eventually, once they were no longer under 'house arrest', was gonna keep his dragon-lady sister from sneaking the two of them books under the table and really undermining him (hell, either of them?) there, then…

Stan looked over and around at all the multitudinous stacks of books Miz had made in the living room again (...and how the heck had she done that, exactly? there wasn't that much dust and junk around in here, was there?), before he bent down and picked up the book that Miz had told him was supposed to be 'for Ford' lying at his feet. It was the one book that maybe he couldn't go off just 'claiming' for himself, here. ...Welp. This one he was definitely gonna have to look through himself…

...especially since there were probably a bunch of 'corrections' in there in pencil like the other one he'd picked up at-random before. Stan looked over the cover of it. ...Some kinda scientific study on light being both a wave and a particle, huh? Why would Ford get all excited about that? Wasn't that just one of those 'basic physics' things of his…?

----

Miz was singing again. Stan watched her sing and dance in the backyard (just outside the boundaries of the unicorn barrier) while he sat on the couch out on the back porch, watching the kids and the demon-kid as they worked, and skimming through the light-particle-whatever book himself -- y'know, the one that she'd been trying to give Ford. (He didn't really get what the big deal over this book was about. Because yeah, Ford had seemed all interested about it for some reason, but the book didn't seem all that interesting to him, and Miz hadn't marked up any of the pages yet anyplace that he'd seen. Maybe it was just another one of those nerdbot things all over again, but Stan really didn't get it, why Ford might think...)

Stan looked up from the book again for a bit to pay a little more attention to what was going on out in the yard, taking a break from the book. He couldn't understand the words to this particular song, though; it seemed to be in another language again, one he didn't know. There was a glowing orb rotating around Miz that was releasing the music, and Mabel was bopping in place along to it as she wrapped up the books that Bill had 'cleaned' and Dipper had already catalogued in his laptop nearby.

And maybe the music was making things a little better for her, but Mabel tried not to sigh as she looked over at her brother. Poor Dip-Dop was just the biggest grumpy-cat face that she ever did see right now, because Grunkle Stan had caught him every time he tried to sneak a peek at a book beyond the cover page where the 'publishing year' was written, so many times that Dip-Dop had finally just given up and stopped trying. Mabel felt kind of sorry for her brother, here. She'd only found one book that had looked interesting, but Dipper had looked like he'd wanted every single one.

But yeah, looking on the bright side over here! --The music made things a little better and less-boring. It was a nice folky-song type of melody. Miz even had a little fiddle she was playing on for this one. And Bill was sitting at one of the picnic tables, watching his sister 'play' with (well, more nearby than with) Mabel, as she worked. (Grunkle Stan, for his part, was sitting out on the back porch, holding some other book and nursing a Pitt Cola, Mr. Mystery-overseeing this whole big old mess -- boxes of books waiting for cleanup by Bill, cataloguing over by Dipper, and carting back into the house over by Mabel herself at the very end of the work line!)

Stan heard the door go, and he wasn't too surprised to see Ford sit down beside him on the couch on the back porch, or the frowning he was doing as he looked over everything. (Not like his brother had gotten more than another two or three hours of sleep there; of course he'd still be in a pretty bad mood over everything, considering.)

Ford sighed as he sat down, his head still throbbing a bit, and he asked his brother, "Stan, what, exactly, do you have them all working on here?" Well, except for the man-eater, who seemed to be prancing about wholly-unhelpfully. And where had all these books come from?

"Figured out the penalty for the kids bouncing themselves into another dimension without us," Stan told him. He paused to take a sip of his soda before saying, "Miz made up a bunch more books while we were talking, 'for the kids', but they're not gonna get to keep or read any of 'em. We're sellin' them instead." Ford stared at Stan incredulously at this, as his brother took another sip of his soda before adding, "And I'm grounding them to the Shack for a week; they're getting supervised by me or Melody or Soos for the rest of the summer. Gonna pull the kid into it on week two, once I'm sure that he actually knows what 'babysitting' means--"

"--Stan," Ford interrupted. "Why are you getting rid of--" no, scratch that. Ford grimaced. "Never mind. I can think of several reasons why no-one in their right mind would want to accept books from a Bill Cipher," he must have hit his head harder than he'd thought, "But what are you having Bill do to those books?" Ford asked of his brother next.

"Cleanin' them up," Stan told him. "Miz wrote a bunch of stuff in some of them when she made 'em up, so…" he took another sip of his soda, "I'm havin' the kid clean 'em all up."

Ford debated whether or not he should argue with his brother about the rather dubious merits of having Bill Cipher lay hands on a bunch of books, to supposedly clean them up after... He mentally shook his head instead, and sat back on the couch, tilting his head back and closing his eyes.

He heard his brother shuffle around, doing something beside him, and after a few moments (and a 'clap-thud' of a sort he recognized), he slowly slitted open his eyes to the sight of his brother holding out an unopened can of soda in front of his face.

Ford sighed and reached out, to take it from him.

"Yours," Stan said, with something of a laugh in his tone, and Ford snorted.

"I dare you to try and take it from me," Ford said almost lazily, as he popped the tab and took a swig of it. (It was almost cold. ...Hm. He really should replace that small under-couch cooler with something far more efficient… those larger ones Stan had gotten were far too large to fit out here for that purpose.) His words got him a soft laugh out of his brother, but Ford felt the smile slowly drop off of his face next. "We should take the niblings with us, the next time we visit that warehouse," he told him.

"Not this week," Stan said, taking another swig of his drink. "This week, they're staying right here where I can keep an eye on 'em."

Ford sighed and risked a glance over at his brother. Stan truly looked serious.

"You think grounding them is really going to be effective," Ford asked him next.

"Worked on us 'round that age," Stan said, almost upending his can to get the last of the soda out of it. He sighed and lowered his can. "They're too used to running around here, getting caught up in all sorts'a dangerous messes."

"They're safer away from the house and the demons," Ford told him in all seriousness, but that got him a snort out of his brother.

"Yeah, sure," Stan said, tapping a finger against his soda can, before tossing it off into a nearby trash can. "Because if they were nearby the house when they'd tried to pull that mess, the kid definitely wouldn't have been able to stop that."

Ford looked away at the long stare Stan was giving him now. ...Yes, Stan, I knew about that. Somewhat. But though the niblings had discussed time travel as a potential 'solution' against Bill once in-passing, Ford hadn't actually thought that they'd be able to get their hands on that 'broken into a million pieces' time tape that they'd read of, that must have been several entire states farther away. Nor would he have thought that Fiddleford would have been able to fix such a thing so quickly once he'd (Ford had presumed eventually) gotten his hands on every last piece of it -- except he must have, because the scant number of days that had passed between those two events had only been…

Ford let out a tired sigh, and pinched the bridge of his nose with his fingers. ...In retrospect, he supposed he should have known better. He should have discussed the niblings idea with them fully, before they'd ever thought to...

Truly, he'd thought they might try to go back to just before Weirdmageddon itself, never so far back as to his and Stan's own pasts, to try and… Truly, he still didn't understand what, exactly, they must have been thinking. They should have come to him, first...

Ford glanced up as the music stopped, then changed key and tempo, and he frowned.

"Why must she always select the most horrible...?" the scientist muttered, because truly, the lyrics to this one were quite unpleasant -- even more so when one knew they were being sung by a 'Bill Cipher'.

Stan glanced over at him. "What's this one about?"

Before Ford could do more than open his mouth to prepare to respond, Miz called out, "It's about perseverance and finding what little joy we can in an unfair world."

Ford frowned. "No, it's about singing and dancing as the world burns down around you," Ford corrected her, "All while ignoring the crying prayers of limited 'temporal' beings like humans, who just want to survive." Which was, frankly, typical of Bill himself. The only thing missing from the lyrics was a reference to insane bouts of laughter while they were doing it.

Miz rolled her eyes. "It's poetic! A metaphor! You don't have to take it literally. It's about how, even when the world is going to shit, you can still find some way to be happy despite it. Find a reason to continue going on instead of just despairing and..." He wasn't hearing the real message of the song at all! (Mabel pouted; she'd liked the sound of the song.)

Bill threw in his own two cents, "Don't be such a stick-in-the-mud, Sixer. This song is great!" and Miz frowned as Ford seemed to be gearing up to find some way to turn that throwaway chiding statement into a full-blown argument, just because.

Before things could escalate any further though, Stan interjected, "As long as you're having fun and no one's getting hurt, it's fine. --Hey, do me a favor and cut my brother some slack, yeah? He's probably got a hell of a headache going on. Anything with a loud beat is probably just gonna make it worse, and he's already in a 'grunkly' mood 'cause he just got done waking up." (Ford rolled his eyes at this.)

"Grunkle Ford? Are you okay?" Mabel called out, wondering what was wrong and why.

"I'm fine," Ford called out to her, trying not to wince. "I just… had an unavoidable altercation in the parking lot of the first location that Stan stopped at for errands this morning."

("Oh, is that what we're calling it now?" Stan teased him with a knowing look, and Ford blithely ignored him for his trouble.)

Miz sighed and backed down, accepting this angle from Stan. "I like the tune. Folk music is nice. Though most human folk songs and childrens' songs tend to contain dark subject matter. I could find a softer instrumental song instead?"

"Yes, please!" Mabel spoke up. She was all for her other favorite Grunkle feeling better post-haste. Then she thought of something else, about the other thing else Miz had mentioned. "Ooh. Dark stuff. Like how Ring Around the Rosie is about the black plague?"

Miz nodded. "And Rock a Bye Baby is about an infant falling off a tree." She paused. "But that's kind of wrong, there's a full version of the song where the mother catches them." Miz got a far off look in her eyes. "That would be nice… why don't more people sing the version where the baby gets saved?"

Stan saw Ford looking ready to go be a jerk again, and he jumped in smoothly with, "Right, well, we've already talked about how just because something is 'human' doesn't make it right. So, lay off on that, 'kay?" Stan said easily to both Ford and Miz before the situation escalated any further, again.

(Meanwhile, Ford was frowning at the thought of what some of the other nursery rhymes he remembered might actually mean, now that the subject had come up. Despite the historical example that Mabel had just given, this topic was not something which he had ever researched in any sort of depth…)

Miz huffed. "It's not like I wrote these songs anyway, they were made by humans. I am simply enjoying them," she said to them, referring to the folk song she had been singing that had started this latest not-quite confrontation between herself and Ford. "And most songs are metaphorical anyway. It's not like I'm dropping some Emo songs on you guys right now."

Mabel let out a snort of laughter. "Robbie likes those songs."

Miz giggled. "Yeah, I wonder if I could show him a few that I know, he might enjoy them." She got the weirdest feeling he'd like Evanescence or Linkin Park...

Stan grunted out, "Ask him first," as he reopened his book where he'd been holding his place with his thumb, and flipped another page in said book. He really was just skimming through the thing, mostly. A lot of it was going over his head; not like that was new -- he didn't get half the references, for one thing. It sounded like a nerdy-book, though, and his brother did usually seem to really like the ones that seemed to read kind of like this one was to him. ...Too bad the demon had made it. Maybe he could find a different one online?

Stan flipped through the pages pretty quickly after that, confirming that there didn't seem to be any markings inside the thing, in either pencil or pen. He sighed, and got himself up, to trudge across the porch and down onto the grass, making his way over to casually toss the book into the last box of books that the kid was going through and 'cleaning' before handing them off to Dipper for cataloguing, in the ever-decreasing pile. He glanced over Dipper's shoulder at the screen of his laptop, to look at the list he'd been making.

Huh. Most of the stuff Miz had made seemed to be biographies, science stuff, history books, or instructional manuals. ...Yup, that was all definitely 'learning stuff'; no fiction in there.

Stan glanced over at the kid as he finished up the last book -- the one he'd just added to the box -- and tossed it into Dipper's box for him to work on. And Stan caught the look the kid was giving him, as he walked away from the table and over to his sister. ...Yeah, Stan had read some of Miz's handwritten notes in one of the other books earlier, 'correcting' some information that she'd thought was inaccurate. And yeah, he knew. None of the corrections had been anything outrageous; she'd marked out things like the year in which some event had happened, or the actual number of people involved in something or another that had happened, and in one instance (in the history book Stan had been glancing through before he'd given the kids their penalty), she'd circled a whole paragraph and written, 'This is all sensational propaganda and they left out half the story'. Maybe it would've been fine to leave it all in, but Stan wasn't taking any chances, and he couldn't sell them for full price with that stuff in 'em, anyway. So yeah, of course he'd had the kid fix the books to get rid of them.

...And the kid had done it for him without a complaint. He hadn't asked anything for it, either. No negotiation. Stan hadn't done anything much differently with how he'd asked the kid this time, from before when the kid was being 'helpful' and all in that other dimension, but he still got the feeling that something was different this time. ...Stan just wasn't sure what was all that different yet.

The corrections had been written pretty lightly in pencil, too. Stan figure that if he'd wanted to, he probably could've easily erased them all himself. Stan wondered if Miz had made them like that on purpose, for if Stan decided they weren't appropriate, then snorted at the idea that she would've done something like that by accident.

Stan looked over all of the books, most of which were almost completely handled by now, and sighed. None of them had seemed to stand out; he'd told Dipper to let him know if any of them did. There were no rare books in the set; no first printings of anything older than 30 years ago. They all seemed... normal, mostly. They were all just books in English for a bunch of nerdy people to read. Stan doubted it wouldn't be a problem to sell them, once the kids finished up their parts of things and Dipper got them all posted online.

Stan glanced over at the science nerd book that Miz had tried to 'drop off' for Ford, still waiting in Dipper's pile for cataloguing. ...Hell, if Stan thought about it, Miz was likely trying to do the gifts-as-apologizing thing again, since she didn't know how to apologize right, to stop feeling sorry with just words.

So Stan was going to have to tell her to stop. (And give her back the gold necklace and other stuff too, while he was at it.) Stan could see why she was trying to do it, but Ford would never accept it from her. It was one of those 'principle' things; if Ford wouldn't take it from the kid, and Miz kept on saying she was, or was trying to be like, Bill Cipher, then...

Well, whatever. Stan didn't want to keep the books; they didn't have room at the Shack for them, anyway. Ford probably could've stuffed them all down in his lab, but Stan knew his brother wouldn't trust them, and he wasn't going to do that, anyway. He kept the big space down there practically empty, for some reason or another; Stan didn't know why.

Miz materialized a small piano out of some dead plant matter along the ground and changed her fiddle into a guitar. "Wanna duet with me?" she asked Bill. He smiled at her -- halfway between his wide grin and his smaller smiles -- and patted her head. "Yes!" he told her. Miz waved a hand to make the music sheets appear and handed them to Bill.

Stan raised an eyebrow at the display. "Should you really be usin' your powers all that much, dragon-lady?" He was starting to wonder why the kid wasn't saying 'no' to her on any of this stuff, when the kid had been worried about it before.

"I'm fine. I need to practice them to get used to having the effects happen more efficiently with less energy loss anyway." Miz waved him off. "Also, I've modified my vessel to be capable of absorbing UV rays." She wanted to explore her Doors after all, so she'd need to figure out how to regulate her energy better, and practice helped.

"She is being more efficient about it," Bill chimed in, as he looked over the sheet music. "Practice makes perfectly-imperfect! She is getting better at being more-worse," the kid told them next. ("More worse…" Ford muttered out almost darkly.) And the kid (not hearing him outright) then almost casually waved a hand at the ground (making a nearly inaudible clicking noise under his breath that only his sister heard) and seemed to… pull up some roots that were already there to make a bench to sit down on? Or did he grow them himself? ...Actually, now that Stan looked closer, the piano seemed to be… a living plant, too? Like, wood shaped into a piano-shape, with thick vine 'wires' peeking over the edge?

It left Stan wondering what the insides looked like; pianos had metal wires inside them, Stan knew that much. He glanced over at Ford, who was frowning at this, but also looked surprised for some reason.

"Somethin' wrong?" Stan asked his brother quietly. But Ford just glanced over at him, grimaced, and shook his head slightly, before taking another sip of his soda while watching the demons over the rim of it. (Nothing more than the usual problem of either Bill doing anything musical in his presence. Ford generally found it grating at this point. And his burgeoning headache wasn't doing him any favors.)

"So, uh…" Stan searched for something else to say. "You think we're gonna need to water that thing at some point?" he wondered out loud to his brother, under his breath. It got him a snort from Ford, and an, "Only if they don't immediately destroy it when they're done with it."

"Hm," said Stan, eyeing the whole setup, as he watched the kid sit down on the new 'bench'. (Well, there went Dipper's 'the dumb dorito's not using much magic casually for anything' theory.) "Think if I ask the demon-kids to keep it around, it'd make a good attraction for the Shack? Soos could call it the, uh, Tree-piano? --Treeano! Yeah?" Stan asked his brother next. Miz had grown the thing in a spot that could very well have a fence set up, and "I-- uh, Soos, could have tourists pay to play the thing!" Stan enthused out next, before getting a good look at his brother's face. "...What?" Because Ford was looking amused at him here, over a demon-y thing no less.

Ford paused for a moment, and then he said, with great suppressed amusement, "Well, if you're willing to put up with the racket from random tourists pounding on it whenever they like, when they don't know how to play it…" Ford teased, and Stan grimaced. "...Or the local teenagers. Late at night. When you're trying to fall asleep at 8pm." Stan glanced over at him, giving Ford an old-man glare over his teasing, but it didn't seem enough to bring his own brother's amused look down in the slightest.

"Well, I can set up a fence, have Dipper put up some keep away signs," Stan grumbled. Then he blinked and grinned. "Hey, if I put up a fence that's high enough, I can charge 'em just to see it!" Stan thought up next. "Make it not part of the regular tour -- somethin' extra instead. Thing's gonna need more maintenance if I gotta keep the thing watered," he justified to himself (but mostly his brother).

Ford rubbed a hand across his face at his brother's money-grubbing ways. He looked away from him momentarily as he wracked his brain for some other potential excuse, one he might be able to use to somehow dissuade his brother from this course of action, and...

Aha. "A fence isn't going to keep the gnomes out," Ford tried next. "They'll just climb over it. And they're nocturnal." Very nocturnal. ...Some days. Not that Stan needed to know all the details of that.

"Could get Gompers to guard it," Stan muttered.

"The goat?" Ford said, feeling a bit confused, but Stan just grimaced and waved him off, so Ford sat back and let it lie, though he couldn't help but continue to give his brother a questioning look at the odd 'apropos of nothing' comment.

Miz called out across the lawn, "It locks down closed at night, like a crocus. Only opens up when there's sunlight."

Ford twitched. The man-eater had heard their conversation? It appeared her hearing was better than he thought. Then again, she had said she'd made her vessel genetically a dragon, and if she really hadn't been lying about that, then...

Bill twitched too where he was sitting on his newly-grown and very-green 'bench', having been just about ready to put his hands to the keys… up until he'd heard that.

"...You didn't add a lot of Venus Flytrap to the mix, did you?" Bill said almost suspiciously, his fingers twitching forward, then away from the keys again as he leaned in ever-so-slightly, to squint his eyes a little and peer a bit more closely at the leaf patterns coming off of the sides of the piano-plant (and also his suit's scanner-readouts)...

"Course not. That would be too dangerous. And not funny." Miz huffed. Playing around with genetics was like, her jam. She knew what to add or not to add, how to make it all work together and how to avoid adding things she didn't want!

"...Could be funny sometimes," Bill muttered, as he straightened up in place again. If it was someone she didn't like. Or another demon with harder skin and a real sense of humor to go with their age. (It wasn't like Bill himself wasn't known for his demon humor. It just… worked a lot better when one was generally invulnerable to physical harm. And he wasn't quite that right now. Yes, he had his suit on, which he'd made for this very exact sort of reason! But that was still just-and-only a very sturdy but paper-thin wrapping around his currently very-chewy and watered-down meaty and anchored-down-to center of his current stupid human-ish body, right at this very specific moment in time.)

"I used to be worried that normal pianos would close on my fingers, I don't wanna make one where that would actually happen." Miz told her brother (and everyone else, as part of that 'explain how this would negatively affect her as well' thing to ease Ford's worries). Stan noticed.

"Mm," said Bill. He hadn't thought she'd intentionally hurt him -- that thought hadn't crossed his Mind at all one bit. What he'd been more worried about was something he himself would've termed as 'carelessness'.

Bill took a moment, and then reached forward and placed his hands on the keys, both slowly and gently. And then he blinked. And then he ran his fingers across the keys -- lightly, not playing, just literally sliding them across the surface of the keys like he was feeling them via touch. And then Bill grinned.

"Feels WEIRD," Bill enthused out, still grinning. He kicked his feet in front of him a bit in his glee.

Miz glanced over at Bill as he 'played about' with the keys and pedals and his sheet music a bit more -- settling in where he was sitting, it seemed -- and waited patiently for him until he was ready to give her an 'ok' nod to show he was ready to start.

"Ford, you gonna be okay with this?" Stan muttered to his brother under his breath. Because he knew how Ford got at Bill playing usually. The last time that Bill had needed to-- yeah, actually needed to...

"If I'm not fine, I can tell them to stop," Ford said quietly. "Correct?"

"...Yeah," Stan said slowly. "And you should if you need to." That was… not something his brother was usually able to do, though. (Or even really thought of? So… did that mean this was… progress?)

(Then Stan grimaced internally. The kid would think it was progress at this point, too. Stan wanted his brother to speak up more, but Ford actually speaking out sometimes seemed like… well, lately, it seemed like something the kid had wanted him to do, too. To be 'less flat'. ...Stan sure as hell wasn't gonna tell his brother that one, though.)

"Hey, Miz," Stan called out. "Hate to ask this, but, uh…" Stan wasn't too sure how to put it. "You think you could make this thing wordless, when you sing, or whatever?" Stan tried, not really sure how to put what he was asking. Because Mabel liked the music, and it was helping keep her going with the book packaging, and so far, Ford had only been objecting to the words in the songs she'd been singing, not the actual music. So if the dragon-lady could manage that, then… (yeah, okay, Ford would still have one thing he didn't like, which was the fact that the kid himself would be playing, but it might only be that one thing at least, and Ford hadn't said 'no' immediately to that, so...)

"Yeah that's fine." Miz agreed easily. (That got both of them a look from Ford, but he didn't object.) "Three, two, one--" and…

The demons began to play together.

Bill started playing at Miz's cue, and after a few beats, Miz started singing.

...That is, Miz hummed along to the song, but didn't actually sing the words aloud. She'd picked up on what Stan had been trying to do there, but in truth, she'd already been planning on doing so herself. Knowing Ford, he'd continue to find issue with any lyrics she sang, no matter what it was. And so, because of this…

Miz was secretly glad that some of the songs from her first life didn't seem to exist here -- less chance of people knowing the meaning behind them when she didn't actually reveal the lyrics -- and the one she had just given Bill the sheet music to earlier was one of them.

Mabel looked up for a moment, genuinely surprised that Bill was playing the piano so gently. She'd thought he would be more forceful about it. (She'd heard him with that electric piano -- which he'd enthusiastically hated, but 'made do with' -- before, when Stan had told her to leave him to it, off in the farthest part of the museum, away from the Shack, a couple weeks ago, and… he'd been loud. And he'd made it sound discordant, and angry, but after awhile he'd made it sing...)

(But it had all been forceful and LOUD.)

Ford twitched a little at Bill's playing at and on the piano, but when Bill didn't taunt Ford or even look over at him… (or start to sing himself…) and Ford realized that this wasn't an attack on him of some sort… Ford slowly began to untense his muscles, neck, legs, shoulders and chest...

(Stan was watching, and Stan noticed this. He noticed how his brother began to relax at his side. He noticed how his head tilted back slightly, and his eyes slowly closed. He watched, and he paid attention to how his brother was listening to it. And he noticed how the look on his brother's face now... wasn't all that different from how he'd looked then, when the kid had been all sponge-edged talk with that magic act in the background, a smooth and easy prattle…)

(...so the kid must've done this for him before, at least a couple times, too. Damn him. What had he done to his brother, before and since then--)

The song was soft, somewhat sad and Miz was singing wordlessly to a tune that went along with the music. Mabel and Dipper went back to their work.

Stan watched his brother for awhile longer, and once he was sure that Ford wasn't gonna have any problems with it (one way or the other, now or afterwards), Stan let himself relax a bit, too. He settled in beside his brother, sipping his soda and letting himself enjoy the soft music the demon kids were making. And… it wasn't bad, it was almost… nice.

And that was how they spent the rest of their afternoon. The demons would pause after each song while Miz chose a new one, still gentle and easy on Ford's headache to listen to, as the kids finished up the work that was part of their 'penalty number one'. Ford went from being untensed to being relaxed over time. He chatted lightly and lazily with Stan as he became more and more drowsy under the sound of the relaxing music, the just-right amount of shade of the porch over them under the summer sun, the gentle warm breeze blowing through the trees, his brother at his side just as relaxed and happy as he was, and the soft sounds of the niblings talking and working in the background… all was calm, all was well, he was safe here…

When Dipper and Mabel finally announced that they were done (with a cheer from Mabel and a verbalized 'whew! ...ugh' from Dipper), Miz cheered as well before putting down her instrument (which had changed between a guitar, violin, and even a guzheng at one point, and was again a violin now) onto the picnic table. Then, Miz all but face planted onto the picnic table next to where Mabel was sitting on the bench, and let out a deep sigh (as Bill walked over to flip himself up onto the table, to lay flat on his back across the top of it himself). The teenager patted Miz's shoulder.

"You okay?" Mabel asked. Miz mumbled unintelligently before turning slightly and whispering so that Stan wouldn't hear, "So is this better or worse than a penalty where you have to clean the Mystery Shack bathrooms?"

Mabel blinked and stared at Miz. "Did you… plan this?" Mabel asked her.

"Not really, Stan was still trying to figure out a good penalty for you two. And, well, taking away something you want is a pretty usual type of punishment, right?" Miz shrugged. "I actually just wanted to practice with my powers and knowledge was something I have more leeway in messing with, and well, when you and Dipper started showing an interest…" Miz shrugged.

Mabel let out a bit of a sigh that puffed up her cheeks, then pouted. "I think having the books right in front of us and then having them taken away again is worse."

Miz raised an eyebrow. "You two haven't found the loopholes?" She thought it was pretty obvious. At Mabel's confused look, Miz sighed. There were a whole bunch of ways for the twins to get around this penalty, like they knew the titles, they could buy the books themselves, or ask Miz what was in them, or ask their parents to buy them from Stan's c-Pay. Dipper was the one putting them up so he could easily send them links…

"If you two really wanted to get around this, and get the books you wanted, there are many ways you could, if you only think about it." Miz told her. She was tempted to just tell them all the ways, but brother had said that giving people all the answers all the time was going to make them less likely to think for themselves. And Miz thought that was pretty accurate, so she'd simply put the idea out there and let the kids figure it out themselves.

"Do you want hints?" Bill asked them, thinking along the same lines as his sister (except they were his Zodiac, and he was feeling a bit pleasantly vibrating-buzzed from all the music-making still, so… a bit more open at the moment to being more straightforward with them than he usually was these days). They knew what all the books were, they had the entire catalogue of them now, and the prices. "All of these are still in print, aaaaaand…" They could decide what they wanted, first-second-third, instead of being purely overwhelmed as they had been before, and…

Bill slipped a hand into his pocket and pulled out his phone where he was bodily lying across the top of the picnic table, head at the edge nearest Pine Tree. He tapped a few keys, and then turned the phone towards him, with one of the books Pine Tree had shown the most interest towards listed on the screen. "...they are FAR less expensive as eBooks, even at full price," Bill informed them, then frowned slightly as he pulled the phone away and back towards him again.

"...Most of them," Bill corrected, "Most of them are eBooks," he told them, after checking something else. (So his knowledge of everything-and-anything in this dimension was just a few months outdated right now, fine -- so sue him! He'd Look at it all again eventually when it suited him! He could make up that 'lost' time EASILY! In a flash and a quick-flickering! Whenever! he! wanted! --So there!)

"Miz scanned these books from a warehouse only 30 miles away from here, as well," Bill informed them next, letting his hand drop down, to let the phone lie on his chest, 'captured' in place between his chest and his hand. "That Stanford will insist on traveling there multiple times…" he informed them both, and let the leading 'So…' remain nonverbal, raising his eyebrows at them to communicate it that way, instead.

Pine Tree just frowned at him, though, and said, "I can't get eBooks. I don't have a phone."

"Dip-Dop, you can run phone apps on your computer," Mabel told him, from a happy point of authority on the matter. Because she had a few friends at school that she knew who did just that! They had messenger apps, and writing apps, and drawing apps--!

Dipper frowned at her, because he didn't think that was right, because… "But the operating system is different…"

"Don't be silly, Dip-Dop!" Mabel began, 'boop'ing him on the nose with a sweater-covered arm. "They--"

"Alright kids, I'm gonna be starting dinner. Head inside and wash up," Stan called out to the kids, both demon- and human- alike, as he heaved himself to his feet, before making his way back inside. Ford jolted in place at his brother's raised voice and the soft hand clapped to his shoulder, having dozed off because of the soft, soothing music. The scientist tried to pretend he hadn't been half-asleep as he quickly sat up.

Miz let out a happy "FOOD!" and rushed at the Shack, smacking against the side of the barrier with an "Oof!" as she tumbled back. (Bill sat up straight immediately, looking a bit shocked and alarmed as she did so.) "Right, I need to put these back on…" she muttered as she made a quick U-turn and went to grab her cuffs back up from the table, where she'd taken them off and left them earlier.

Dipper let out a snort of laughter before he could stop himself. Especially since Miz was rubbing at her nose with a disgruntled look. Miz sent Dipper a pout and Bill narrowed his eyes at him.

"It's NOT FUNNY, Pine Tree. That barrier is--" but Bill cut himself off before the usual 'annoying' remark that he made, and it left both Dipper and Mabel wondering… had that really been what the dream demon had been about to say?

"At least it doesn't hurt unless I hit it too hard." Miz shrugged, clicking on the wooden clasps and making her way inside the Shack.

Bill made a surrussing-sharp clattering set of rapid clicks out loud, as he kicked his legs up into the air and then around for momentum, and spun his way over and around and down onto his feet, on the ground -- with no chirps or short-whistles at all -- and Dipper and Mabel exchanged a look. Bill looked a bit sharper, all angles, for a moment, and none-too-happy about something that was going on.

"You're not going to take down the barrier," Dipper said, and he tried to make it a statement, instead of a challenge.

"Of course not!" Bill practically spat out at him, "It's more useful in-place than it isn't!" he elaborated to them briefly, as he grabbed up the last box of books and stomped his way forward across the lawn, somehow still leaving the two of them behind in the dust.

"Bill, wait!" Mabel said next, hurrying to catch up with him. She reached out to tug at his sleeve a bit, and… he moved his arm away from her before she could do so, despite the box he was carrying. She blinked, but let that go (with not even a frown, Bill just got a little touchy sometimes). Instead, she opted to jump forward a bit more quickly, getting around in front of him, almost.

--Not completely in his way, she stayed a little to his right -- because she wasn't trying to stop him from moving forward. She knew now -- from multiple trips through the woods to the spaceship -- that he would do that if she got in front of him that much, whether he wanted to or not. For some reason, it came across as aggressive to him.

Dipper let out a breath when Bill stopped in place, even if Mabel bit her lip a little when Bill did it. What Dipper wasn't expecting his sister to ask the demon next though, was, "Why are you so mad right now?"

"I'm not MAD--" Bill began harshly, but then stopped. And blinked. And frowned (even more, because he was already frowning a bit). And then he said, "I'm not--" Except he let out a huff and stopped talking again.

Dipper stared. Bill was… well, yeah, of course he was mad right now, anybody could see that. But... Mabel could just stand right there in front of him and tell him that? And not have him arguing about it with her -- without getting even angrier with her about it?!

"I think you are, big brother," Miz stood just in front of the doorway, looking back at them with a frown. "Why? It didn't really hurt, just surprised me a bit."

And Bill looked a bit uncomfortable, chittering to himself under his breath again and looking like he didn't know what to say. (He just wanted to walk forward, up onto the porch, and put the stupid box down, and go inside the stupid house! Feelings were stupid! AND HE WAS ALWAYS MAD!! ...But he also knew that that wasn't what Shooting Star had meant there; what she'd actually meant had been something to do with his (stupid) human-ish body-behavior there, not his usual common-state-of-everything, and that wasn't really… it wasn't...

Miz thought about it. "It's okay with me," she said carefully. "It's… not the best situation, but it's not that bad. Like wearing pants that are just a little tight, uncomfortable but not to the point of pain." Or holding her breath and only being able to breathe shallowly once every few hours. But she didn't say that part aloud.

"It's not-- it's-- mmmn." Bill shifted from side to side slightly, not quite a fluid bobbing motion with his torso, but almost. "Iiiiiii… don't like it when you almost damage yourself," Bill finally muttered out, not looking at any of them as he hunched his shoulders slightly, and the grip he had on the box tightened just a little bit more. "It's NOT 'okay' with ME." he added, even more quietly, still refusing to look at any of them, his head ducked away from them slightly to the side. Because to him, it wasn't the bracelets that were the problem.

Miz smiled softly as a warm feeling swelled up in her chest. "I'll be more careful," she told him. Then she grinned and teased. "You're not mad, you're worried in a 'I care about you and don't want you to hurt' kind of way."

She saw the way Bill twitched and then straightened in place and leaned back slightly, chin up, as he not quite blurted out, "Well, YES!!" -- acting as if he was trying to act like he thought that of course there was nothing wrong with him saying so out loud and in front of anyone else at all -- and the twins stared wide-eyed at Bill as he actually stood there and admitted it, right in front of them all.

"That's fine. I don't want you to get hurt either." Miz took a few steps away from the door and made her way back to Bill's side. "Because I care about you too." She told him firmly before opening her arms for a hug, waiting to see if Bill would want to embrace her. He did last night, but that had been when he was overcome with fear that someone might kill her, she knew Bill wasn't too good with physical affection yet, so she would let him choose to hug her back.

Bill still looked a little… (embarrassed?! his cheeks were actually turning slightly pink, Dipper couldn't believe his eyes) but he did stare at Miz for a moment, and then he said to her without expression…

"Box."

...as he lifted it up ever so slightly, because he was still holding the big box of wrapped books in his arms.

Dipper coughed, stifling another laugh (a little more effectively this time), while Mabel stared at this whole display, wide-eyed still.

Miz nodded at him. "Yes." She knew that. But that wasn't going to stop her from wanting a hug.

He stood there. She stood there with her arms outstretched towards him. And…

The twins stood there, staring at this display for a long moment, until Bill said, "...I'm going to go put the box down now!" and headed off for the door with a bit of a straight-backed looking-straight-in-front-of-him walk, vanishing inside the Shack.

Mabel and Dipper stared after him, then looked over at Miz… who had lowered her arms a little bit now, but she'd turned towards the Shack and... looked like she was going to… wait for Bill to come back and hug her?

It wasn't even another half-minute before Stan poked his head out of the Shack with an, "Okay, what's the holdup her..." Stan trailed off as he spotted the three of them just standing around, and Stan looked around at them all in confusion from the porch.

"Stan? What's going--" Ford said, having noticed the absence of the niblings and demons both when he saw Stan head back out for the back porch, and following out to see what was going on out in the backyard himself.

--and he startled forward and somewhat out of the doorway as Bill came right up behind him, right before Bill then began to snake around him and through the doorway, around and past him.

Headed straight for Miz.

Who Bill then wrapped his arms around in a hug.

...and seemed to whisper something to her as he did it, but neither of the twins quite caught what he said to her, right in her ear.

("I don't like it when you do things like that to yourself. You have too many 'accidents'. --I'm NOT stupid. 'Didn't really hurt' means it still hurt you some. --I don't want you damaging yourself. It makes me want to BREAK things that I definitely shouldn't be breaking right now.")

Mabel clutched her hands together under her chin, going all starry-eyed over this. Dipper was frowning.

And Miz whispered back, ("I'm still not used to having someone care so much when I get hurt even a little. My friends worry, but that's mainly for the serious injuries…") as she pressed herself close to her brother. She felt his hold on her tighten the ever so-slightest-little-bit before relaxing again, almost as if he was afraid he might hurt her if he hugged her too tightly.

This too, was something Miz would have to learn, that even if it wasn't a lot of hurting, it would still make someone who cared about her unhappy if she was hurt. Miz hadn't thought about it this way before. Her friends all knew she was immortal after all, they assumed she'd be fine so long as she wasn't outright destroyed or bleeding out in front of them...

Ford both looked and felt uncomfortable at seeing this display in front of him by these two (demons); Stan was mostly used to seeing this sort of thing from them by now.

"Dipper, Mabel, inside; now," Stan called out, as he turned around and walked himself back inside.

They did so, and as they passed Ford… their great-uncle seemed to startle 'awake', and he turned his stare away from the demons to stride back inside after the rest of his family, at a not-quite-hurried pace of his own.

Miz and Bill finally broke their hug and Miz smiled up at him. "So what would you like for dinner?" she asked as she gently took his hand to walk back inside the Shack properly (and Bill followed along at her side, letting her lead him along).

Bill shrugged, not really caring too much either way, but at the look Miz was giving him, he mentally sighed and thought about it, and told her, "The roasted pepper-rubbed broccoli wasn't bad."

Miz giggled as she lightly swung their interlocked hands back and forth. "I can do you one better, Stan and I bought some jalapeno peppers. I've never tried cooking with them before, and it's gonna be too spicy for me, but you might enjoy them. I'll just use a little bit for now, in case you don't, but if you like them, I'm gonna experiment with some recipes."

Bill hummed in thought as he smiled down at his little sister, before raising his free hand up to pet her on the head a bit as they walked into the kitchen, hand in hand.

"I think I would like that." Bill grinned at her. "--Let's find out!"

---