"Stitched Heart! Come in and sit over there," Bill gestured to the beanbag chair a little in front of and next to the one that he'd claimed for his own. "The dark-grey one. There." the beanbag chair wasn't quite black; it looked like it had little red sparkles stitched into the material here and there, too.
For a second, it looked like Robbie was going to protest and sit anywhere else, but then Bill walked right over and behind him, to start pushing at his back to steer him over… and he moved along, groaning almost long-sufferingly along the way. It took him a moment to start walking fast enough to get out in front of Bill enough that Bill stopped pushing him; and, once he did that, he trudged his own way over himself, to plop down onto it.
"Whatever," Robbie muttered out, as Bill smiled and made his way back over to the snacks table.
Miz was raising a hand and pointing at the wall. A screen appeared, like some kind of hologram and Pacifica's eyes widened at this casual use of power. ...Had that been magic? Was that what this was? Or was it something else?
Miz spent a few seconds adjusting the size of the screen. "Can everyone see alright?" Miz asked as she made some words appear on the screen. It said 'Testing'.
"I can see just fine," Bill said, not even looking at the screen, as he continued putting food onto a pair of plates. "No problems with my stupid human-ish eyes here! ...Why? Were you trying to blind someone?" The demon straightened in place and turned around, a plate full of assorted foodstuffs in each hand.
"Can you move it a little to the right?" Candy asked. Miz obliged and shifted the screen over a little.
Wendy sat back in her beanbag and eyed the demon. "Naw, dude. I think she just wants to know if everyone can read the subtitles."
"Oh." Bill blinked. Then he looked over at the assorted group. "CAN you read the subtitles?" He was fairly certain that they all knew American English, and were literate. ...If they couldn't, he'd have to work on better educating his Zodiac and their friends! He was fairly certain that they could, though. Anything he'd Seen about them would suggest that they could, not that they couldn't.
"EVERYTHING'S FINE ON MY END." Grenda gave Miz a thumb's up.
"From where we're sitting, Bill," Dipper said, half groaning it out. "Because it's farther down on the screen."
Bill looked over at his sister. "Just put the words at the top of the screen, then?" he (half-)asked (half-told) them all reasonably.
"It's harder to read them that way," Miz explained. "It's easier to glance down then look up without moving your head."
"So?" said Bill, to a, "We're trying to relax while we're watching, and put in the least amount of effort needed to watch," from his sister.
Bill frowned. "It isn't that much of a difference, is it?" He'd never noticed it when he'd been possessing other humans, before. Everything had seemed to swivel around as it should just fine! It hadn't seemed like THAT much extra strain on those ligaments and muscles...
"Well, it's also easier to see the images happening on screen if the words are on the bottom. If they were on top, human eyesight would miss the stuff happening below." Miz said simply. "Having the subs on top every now and then is fine, but for the most part, it's easier having them on the bottom."
Bill frowned at her, as he carried his two heaping plates of food over to his chair. "But it doesn't take that long to read things," Bill said. "Just a quick flicker upwards to See and memorize what it all looks like, then parse as needed while you're looking at everything else new that is going on after."
"Some of us can't read as fast as you can, Bill," Dipper sighed, beginning to realize the problem. Mabel raised her hand. "I take longer to read stuff than Dipper does." And Bill looked over at them, stunned.
"What? How long does it take you to read something?" the demon demanded out of Mabel, and when she told him, "Um, maybe a couple paragraphs in a minute?" he looked legitimately blown away by this information (and not in a good way).
"My sister Zeon used to have trouble reading quickly." Miz told her brother. "She had dyslexia and it took her a lot more work to read than most people." She paused, then added, "But also, some people just can't translate sight to meaning as quickly. They can read a sentence, know what each of the words are, but can't translate that into the 'meaning' of the sentence unless they read it a few times."
"That's not-- ugh." Bill made an ugly chittering sound, as he passed one of the plates he was holding over to Robbie, and then rubbed at his left temple with his free (left) hand as he settled into place in the blue beanbag chair, holding the other plate carefully as he lowered himself down. He'd just said memorization first, not… But he remembered Miz mentioning something about her sisters during their talks (dyslexia might have come up), but he thought it only made it harder for Zeon to learn to read, not… have trouble forever and always for reading. "That is NOT the most efficient way to handle input. You memorize it first, and parse it all LATER," he not-quite grumbled out.
"Well, we don't get to choose how we take in information," Dipper told him. "Some people pick up on stuff easier than other people, you know." And the dumb dorito should know that, that everyone was different, because he'd been teaching his twin sister science in that spaceship differently -- Bill had admitted that. "I know a kid in my English class who can't read aloud without stumbling and mixing his words together. --He's not stupid, it's just some brain thing," he added quickly, trying to cut Bill off at the pass before he could say something horrible about it.
Wendy spoke up, adding in, "One of my brothers has to read stuff aloud to himself to understand it. If he doesn't say it out loud, he just can't keep it in his head."
Bill looked decidedly uncomfortable at all this. He looked away from them, his eyelids closing partway in something that wasn't quite a squint.
"...Stupid human bodies," Bill said after awhile, straightening up a bit in place, before settling into his beanbag chair once again. "--You DO have direct control over SOME things, you know," he added after a moment, for good measure. "Some problems aren't on the biology-based epigenetics-influenced sensory-intake-pathway end, they're just learned." And those things could be unlearned, or improved upon easily, with a little time and effort -- and without any larger biological changes being necessary, even!
Pacifica was making mental notes. So the younger sister knew more about humans than Bill did? And she'd also mentioned another sister, but in the past tense. So, was the rest of their demon family really dead? And… she hadn't known that demons could have dyslexia… but Bill had also complained about human bodies specifically, when talking about that… so... demons could be human?
"-ome on, Ford. It's just a cartoon marathon or something. It's not gonna kill ya to take a break for once and spend it with--" A gravelly voice came from the doorway.
"Is this really necessary," Ford complained, as his brother not quite shoved him into the converted 'storage' room from behind. "I was right in the middle of--" He not quite froze in place as he realized how many other people were in the room with him and his brother. "Ah…" He adjusted his glasses with one hand, almost nervously, as he looked around the room at all of them, noting (and recognizing) all the faces...
"Look, it's a group activity, and the least you can do is hang out with the kids a little more often," Stan grunted out at him as moved over to the snack table for a moment. Bill was sitting on the blue beanbag with Miz settled in at his side.
"Stanford," Bill said. "You sit over here." He pointed to the one (tan-colored) beanbag chair left in the room, which was sitting on the other side of Robbie, at the far side of the room; it was the last one in the front row, with Bill's own beanbag chair a bit off to the side and behind Robbie's, but far enough away from the tan-colored one not to be able to be called 'behind' it, either.
Ford frowned at this arrangement.
"I think I'd rather take the--" Ford began, moving for the wooden chair on the opposite side of the room, but Stan grabbed his arm on his way past him, and Ford glanced back at him, stopping in place.
"Kid, you mind if he moves that chair over there closer to me and the kids?" Stan said.
There was a pause. "...He should sit next to Stitched-Heart," was Bill's neutral reply.
Ford looked over at Bill at that, while the younger twins exchanged a glance.
"Uh…" said Robbie, not really sure about all this, because why did the demon want him sitting next to the old guy?
Then Ford really looked at the room. He pulled in a breath in almost a hiss. It was the circle, only… not quite. They were missing two, and had some extras, but...
...No, no. It wasn't the circle, not quite. The order was actually a mix of the summoning circle and the destroying one. Ford frowned as he looked them all over.
Robbie winced, looking at the old dude. "...Man, c'mon," the teenager complained back at Bill. "The old dude's kind of lame. I don't want to--"
Ford walked right over and dropped down into the beanbag chair, sitting right down next to him. (It was rather a matter of principle, now.)
"...Great," Robbie said, after a beat, slumping down a little more in his chair, almost like he was curling up around his food.
Wendy snorted. "Suck it up man, it's not like you have to hold his hand this time," she joked.
"Hey, that'd be less uncomfortable than this!" Robbie complained, which had Ford blinking at him in confusion (not that Robbie noticed, since he was turned in completely the wrong direction away from him in order to talk at Wendy).
Miz looked around. "Is everyone here?" she asked. A chorus of "Yeah,"s and "Yes,"es were the result. She looked over at the screen. "Can everyone see the screen?" she asked next. There was another series of affirmatives -- though Ford didn't say anything, not really caring if he could see what was on said screen or not. This was just some cartoon. A frivolous waste of time. He could be working on something much more important right now! (--For instance, what he'd been right in the middle of working on, when Stan had forcibly dragged him upstairs…)
Once Miz felt satisfied with the placement of the screen and size of the subtitles, she flicked her fingers, still not quite a snap but close, and the show began playing on the screen.
"Soos, hit the lights," Stan complained, and the handyman did just that, almost from where he was sitting next to Melody in the back row of 'seating'.
And on that screen was a dark, odd looking place that… almost reminded Bill of the Nightmare Realm. (It would have been almost exactly like it, except for the remnants of trees in the background and the lack of his portal-bubbles… hmmm…) Bill had to remind himself to blink, as he watched some sort of battle going on between an odd shadowy figure and several strange otherworldly creatures… interspersed with a cutaway of a red-numbered counter rising in scale...
A few people were looking at the screen, confused as to what was happening. The counter rose. 95%, 96%... 100%. A strange noise of warning sounded, and the shadowy figure glowed white. The figure let out a blast that seemed to vaporize everything around it, and the screen went black with the title of the show in large red letters. Mob Psycho 100.
The kids blinked. ...Okay?
The voice of a narrator came on to introduce the setting, and from the subtitles, they were talking about how in this world, there were people with psychic powers...
Stan's eyebrow raised when the first actual character showed up. A man named Reigan who was… a conman. A very obvious conman. Stan glanced down at Miz but she was staring at the screen. Okay… what was this all about?
---
(A few episodes later…)
Okay. Stan frowned. Now he was certain that Miz had chosen this show specifically for a reason. The show was about a little boy with powerful psychic powers (and not very good control of them), whose powers would go out of control if he lost his temper or got stressed out enough (with a counter rising up to 100), and end up destroying or hurting the things and the people around him. The boy was awkward and didn't have good social skills, but he very much wanted to fit in and make friends. The conman was… his mentor, kind of. And despite being a liar and very much using the boy and his powers for profit… said conman-mentor was helping the boy, teaching him life lessons and junk, and mostly giving him the support and advice he needed to...
...Yeah. No way in hell was this show picked out 'just for fun'. Miz was deliberately showing this to them to… what? Send him a message? Say what she wanted to say without having to say it straight-out, right to his face? Hell, this dragon-lady. --At least the kid actually told him stuff directly. Unlike the dragon-lady here...
Stan was gonna call her out on this, later.
...Weirdly, Bill seemed to be enjoying (or at least not hating) the show. He was sitting pretty calmly next to his sister, in the same beanbag chair as her, the whole time, and had passed off a plate of snacks to her that he'd been holding when Stan had walked in with Ford -- for her to be able to munch on, apparently.
Stan noticed that Ford was finally paying attention to the story, with a frown on his face.
Stan sighed. ...Yeah, guess 'later' had better be 'sooner', before Ford freaked out over whatever-it-was that the dragon-lady was trying to hit them all with this time.
"Miz, hold up after this one ends, before you start the next episode, wouldja? Need a bathroom and snack and stretch break, here," Stan told her. He'd been keeping track of the time, and how antsy some of them were all getting.
There was a short bathroom break for everyone after that episode, just as Stan requested. A few of the kids were chatting excitedly about the story. Grenda said the show was "SUPER COOL AND RELATABLE!"
As people filed out, ("Don't go too far, Ford!") and after Stan watched Bill walk out as well, Stan turned to Miz. "Okay. What's this about, dragon lady?" he asked. Miz wiggled. "It's a good show. I identify with the characters, and I thought it was relevant..."
Stan eyed her. "'Relevant', huh? You mind tellin' me how?" he asked her firmly. Because if the dragon lady was wanting to say something… "Either say what you want to say to me to my face, or it ain't worth sayin'," he told her.
"You're not Reigan." Miz responded just as firmly. "But you're still a good man. And you're..." She sighed. "You're helping. You're…" She seemed to struggle to put her feelings in words.
"'I'm not that guy, but I'm still a good man'," Stan repeated in gravely tones, with emphasis. He didn't like the sound of this, not one bit. "You tellin' me you think I should be takin' advantage of your brother?" he said to her, eyeing her.
"No." Miz said. "It's not about whether you're using us or not." And Stan had to stifle a shiver at the look in her eyes, putting on his best conman face. (Ford was also tense where he was sitting, listening in on this.) "You're teaching us things that we need to learn, you're picking up on the problems and you're addressing them." She closed her eyes and sighed. "And that's something that… I know I need. And perhaps brother too." She opened her eyes and… didn't say anything else. Deliberately, with the way she was looking at him. ...And Stan just knew that she knew that Stan hadn't meant it when he'd said that he 'wanted' the kid. --Not in the way that she thought he should've wanted her brother, anyway. Not in the way that the kid might have wanted him to mean it, maybe, from the way she was looking at him. (Yeah, right. As if the dragon-lady knew the kid better than he did.)
...and Stan also realized that Miz wasn't going to tell her brother any of what she thought about this. She was going to keep quiet about it, keep Bill 'in the dark' over it. Because she thought that Stan was 'good' for her brother. ...Good enough for him that what he was doing was maybe outweighing the rest of it, whatever things she apparently didn't like about all of it. That she thought having Stan being around to teach Bill stuff was worth more than what he wasn't giving the kid.
She'd keep quiet for now, because she thought...
Stan held back a shiver, his poker face holding true. And he began to wonder whether he'd been right, or wrong, about suggesting the whole 'little sister' thing to the kid, here. Because if she was gonna hold back talking to her brother about something like this, when she thought her brother might end up getting used by somebody else… just because she thought the tradeoff was worth it, then...
(...Then again, she had thought working with her Time Baby was worth it, even if she didn't like him -- that it had been worth it for keeping her friends 'safe' with those 'get out of jail free' cards, and maybe still thought it was, as some kind of 'fallback' measure, from what they'd talked about up in the attic more than a week ago -- so… maybe it wasn't all that intentional. Because this wasn't just something she was thinking about for the kid; this was something that she thought when it came to herself, too. So she might not actually get what was so wrong about what she was doing, at all -- why it was such a problem…)
(Hell, he was gonna have to explain this to her, too, wasn't he? Damnit. ...First things first, though.)
"Yeah," Stan said simply. "You do need it. And I hear ya," he told her, crossing his arms across his chest. "I get what you're trying to tell me, here."
Because Stan did know damn well what she meant by, "You're not Reigan." Because the way the show she'd been showing them sold it, the conman in the show actually cared about the boy he was using. He may have been lying and tricking the boy into working for him, but that man actually cared about and liked and 'wanted' his apprentice -- and not just for the money he could make.
And Stan stood there and watched as Miz wandered over to get some more food, and then went over and sat herself back down. And he waited for the kid to reenter the room.
It didn't take but a moment of Bill walking in and glancing over at Stan's stance upon entry to ask him, "What's wrong."
"Just had an 'interesting' conversation with your sister, kid," Stan told the demon-kid. "You want to know what it was about?"
Bill tilted his head at him. "Right now?" the kid asked.
"If you want," Stan shrugged noncommittally, letting his arms fall back to his sides.
Bill glanced to him, then to his sister, then to him again. "Do you want me to ask about it right now?" Bill asked him next, sounding almost curious.
"Might be a good idea," Stan told him. "Melody, you mind having Miz sit over by you for awhile?" Stan asked, as she and Soos walked their way back into the room. "Gotta talk to the kid for a sec-- couple minutes," Stan corrected with a grimace. Didn't want the kid getting the wrong idea. Kid's timesense on his own was bad enough, some days.
"I don't mind." Melody shrugged.
"Yeah, thanks," Stan told her. "Miz?" he said, ticking his head towards Melody. "So Ford doesn't lose his mind over whatever with you bein' too nearby and me and your brother not being around for a little bit, yeah?" And with that, Stan walked through the open doorway and into the hallway, Bill following behind.
Miz made her way over, stepping around the beanbags with her plate of sandwiches. She settled beside Melody and after a little bit, Melody raised a hand and began running her fingers lightly and gently through, and over, Miz's hair. (She'd realized a few days ago that the younger demon really enjoyed the sensation; it calmed her, very quickly. The demon was already purring softly.)
Ford watched and listened to all of this.
And when it suddenly occurred to Ford just what his brother was about to do…
Ford immediately got up and marched his way right out of the room after him, post-haste.
---
Outside of the converted 'theater' room, out in the kitchen, Stan turned to Bill and leaned back against one of the counters.
"Kid, I think we might have a terminology problem here," Stan began, "So we'd better get it straight now before--"
"--Don't do it, Stan," Ford cut in, rounding the corner. He looked a little pale, and worried as anything. "Don't--"
"Don't WHAT" Bill not quite thundered out at him, and Ford--
Ford cut himself off when he saw the way Bill was looking at him, arms crossed.
"...What term do you think is the problem?" Bill said after a beat, turning back to Stanley.
"Stan--" Ford began again, warningly, stepping forward.
"--It's gotta do with your expectations for this whole 'me wanting you' thing, and all the rest of it," Stan told him, because he'd be damned if he'd let that other demon freaking blackmail him over anything, let alone this. --Hell, no.
Both of the kid's eyebrows went up at this.
"You want to talk about this now?" the kid asked him. "This could take a while, to come to a full-and-complete accord on," the demon-kid said. "You'll miss all of the rest of the episodes!" he added, his torso bobbing from side to side slightly, and Stan let out a sigh.
"Yeah, kinda thought that was it," Stan said ruefully, shaking his head. He looked up at the kid, with half-a-smile going. "This is gonna take longer to work out than the agreement, ain't it."
"We aren't even done with THAT yet!" Bill said brightly, sounding as though he was in agreement… with Stan's sentiment.
"Okay," Stan said. He figured he'd just put this another way instead. "Fine. No need to rush it, yeah?" At the kid's nod, he said, "Got another question for you then." He paused, then asked, "What'd you think of the Reigan guy, and that kid?"
"From and within the context of the story I've seen here so far, today? --They haven't really worked out the parameters of their working relationship properly," the kid told him promptly. "They're very fluid. That could cause trouble later."
"Uh huh," said Stan. "What do you think about how they treat each other."
Bill just blinked at him.
"Really," said Stan. "You've got nothin'."
"I've only watched six episodes," the kid told him. "Most human shows aren't very consistent in their writing, yes? I would need to watch the entire run of the show, first. There hasn't been much to see, yet."
...Well, at least the kid wasn't lying. "Really?" Stan asked him. "How long do you usually watch somebody for, before making an opinion of them."
"Inside or outside of their heads?" was the kid's next question.
Huh. ...Okay. Guess that was a thing. Stan sighed. "Yeah, okay. Maybe we should talk about this later…" especially with Ford standin' right there, and all. Stan didn't like leaving it at that, though. "Kid, before we go back in there…" Hell, he wasn't all that sure how to put this. "Are you… wanting me to try and act like… I dunno, the way you talk about…" (Hell, he couldn't say that, not with Ford right there; the kid would have a fit. Maybe…) "The way I talk about family, sometimes?"
Bill blinked at him again. "I'm not your family."
"Yeah," said Stan with a sigh, and that answered his question right there. "Didn't think so." He'd thought he'd been right about this stuff with him. (And thank whoever for that, because--) He nodded at the kid. "C'mon, back to your sister," he told the kid. "We'll talk about this later."
Bill nodded to him easily, then turned to follow Stan back to the room.
But as the dream demon passed Ford, he flicked a look up to him.
--And Ford grabbed him by the arm and held him back.
Bill stopped in place. (Stan kept going, having already turned the corner.)
"Do not get angry with my brother, just because your wants are not the same as his," Ford said under his breath to him, feeling severe stress and worry for his brother. "Do you hear me? Do not take it out on him when he--" Ford barely stopped himself before he lost it completely.
Bill gave him a long look. "Of course our wants are not the same," he drawled out to him. "We are not the same. I don't want 'the niblings' to treat me like… 'family'," Bill told him dryly, with the beginnings of a horrible small wicked little smile.
"You know what I mean, Bill," Ford said in stressed tones under his breath, "He doesn't want to give you what you want." He wasn't going to actually want Bill, ever. And Stan wasn't going to--
Bill blinked at him almost lazily, and looked at Ford for a long moment.
And then he said, in rather slow tones, "You were never going to be my right-hand man, were you."
Ford stared at him.
And then he straightened, letting go of Bill, fully taken aback at the thought that--
Bill walked away from him, heading for the 'storage' room.
And Ford stood there, shaking slightly, as he realized what Bill had just said to him, with those words and that look, clear as day.
'You don't know me at all, do you. You never did.'
And Ford stood there for a long moment, eyes wide as he realized: he didn't know what Bill wanted. He really didn't. And he never had, not really -- not if what had been happening here thus far with his brother, and that other demon, had been any indication of that. And he still--
Ford thought over what Stan had meant when he'd said he wanted Bill, and Stan's complete and utter 'practical'-seeming regard whenever Ford had tried to bring it up to him, and in what had happened just now between him and the other demon. And Ford thought over what looked to be Bill's (truthful and guileless) complete and utter non-response to the relationships he was seeing in the show that they'd just been watching. ...And Ford's breathing picked up and became a little bit shallow as he thought over how Bill acted when it came to Deals, and Bargains, and everything else that Ford had ever seen Bill do when he was in other peoples' bodies talking to other demons--
And Ford realized…
(No. Oh, no.)
...Ford felt sick.
And he felt a terrible mixture of anxiety, terror, and a mess of other things too difficult for him to name, at what he was struggling to understand, the meaning hidden in the undertones of Bill's words. Because Bill-- he'd thought-- useful-- Bill had thought that he, in some way-- it was something about, some thing about how Bill thought he was still useful in some way--
And Ford shivered in place where he stood.
---
Dipper and Mabel were certain by this point that Miz had chosen this show in particular as some sort of dig at, or message to, all of them. They didn't comment on it out loud -- not yet -- not really wanting to get into anything with her right then. Because the last time they'd watched anime shows with her and tried to talk about stuff like that during them…
Mabel thought Miz was using Mob as some sort of metaphor for herself, and about how Miz probably didn't have as good control over her own powers as she probably should. And about how Miz, like Mob, didn't really know how to interact with people correctly all the time, but wanted to learn to do so.
Dipper was worried about the 'contract' aspects of the show, between Mob and his conman 'boss'. He didn't like the idea that Miz might be expecting their Grunkle Stan to treat her like that, to be a complete jerk about everything, but actually like her underneath all of it. (--No way that was ever gonna happen between her and Grunkle Stan. Not even a little bit.) The kid was paid less than minimum wage to help his boss exorcise ghosts, but it was pretty clear to Dipper that it wasn't about the money; it was about being around a man who could help to steer Mob into the right path of how to be a better person. Reigan had told Mob that he must never use his powers on other humans. Because it would have been too easy for Mob to hurt someone. Kill them, really. --Heck, at once point, Mob had lost control and taken apart an entire school building, brick by brick, and sent it hurtling into the stratosphere. There was no way a person could survive that. The only reason the guy attacking Mob had survived was because he had been a psychic too.
The twins both glanced over as Grunkle Stan re-entered the room, then Bill a good ten seconds later. But Great-Uncle Ford...
Dipper was starting to get worried, when his great-uncle finally appeared in the doorway. ...And even in the dimmer lighting, Dipper could tell that he didn't look so good.
He walked his way over and sat down in the same beanbag chair as before (next to Robbie) without saying anything to anybody, though.
Dipper and Mabel exchanged a glance, but...
...trying to stop in the middle of everything and focus on Grunkle Ford in front of everybody right now? That would just make things worse, Mabel knew.
So she shook her head at Dipper, and just climbed up out of her beanbag chair to go over and sit snuggled up in Ford's lap with him, instead.
Grunkle Ford seemed surprised at her change in venue-seating, but he smiled at her and made room for her, so she figured it was just fine!
Dipper stayed where he was for awhile, until he felt weird sitting near the two other girls, who were still getting all giggly about things with each other, even with Mabel not right there to share the stuff with. And between them and Wendy… Dipper got up and went over to sit with Grunkle Stan, plopping himself down in front of the left armrest of his chair, like he'd used to when it had just been the three of them watching stuff together on the old TV in the living room, last summer. (Man, that felt like ages ago.)
And, after awhile, Candy and Grenda got up and dragged their pillows over, to flop them down on the floor in front of Ford, to be near Mabel again too.
Robbie grumbled at them when they got in the way of his viewing, but quieted after they'd gotten out of the way again. Mabel struck up another quiet conversation with the two of them like she had before, and Ford slowly relaxed over time. (Their presence admittedly was helping to calm him, once he realized that he wasn't expected to engage in the conversation himself.)
Bill had just sat down next to Miz where she was when he'd come back to the room -- which was in the back row, nearby Melody and Soos -- and Miz kept on putting up episode after episode, ignoring all of the minor interruptions of people getting up to get food, resituate themselves, and so forth.
And then, after awhile, they got deeper into the greater storyline where Mob (the main character)'s little brother (Ritsu) got a little more backstory development. And Ritsu was revealed to have been bitterly jealous and terrified of his brother's powers all along. How Mob had once lost control when they were children and had hurt his little brother. (Stan glanced back at this, and he could see Miz tensing a little, even in the low lighting. ...Heck, the kid was looking a little tense too, though in a different way than his sister.)
Melody (who was still stroking Miz's hair from time to time, and Stan, who was just paying attention to the demons and everybody in general, not feeling all that engaged by the story) noticed that Miz didn't untense again until the part in the story where the younger brother realized that he didn't actually hate his older brother, 'not really'. That the younger brother loved his older brother, even when he was angry at him. (...And it only took him being beat up and kidnapped to realize it, geez. And the way the story put it, apparently the whole 'I'm still gonna fight to save you, no matter what harsh things you said to me' thing was the reason Ritsu had realized that about his big brother Mob. It was all very cheesy and sappy and junk. Not at all realistic. Stan sighed.)
...So, from what he was getting here, Stan figured the dragon-lady was maybe trying to tell him that she thought that brothers always loved each other, even if sometimes they fought. Yeah. Really trying to hammer in that nail on the head there, kid. Geez.
Finally, they got to the climax of the whole thing -- the bad guys were attacking, and Mob refused to fight. Because Reigan had told him not to. Even as Mob's friends and little brother were telling him to fight, to attack the bad guys, Mob simply froze in place, terrified and unable to do it. Because he'd been told that he shouldn't use his powers on humans. And because he was so afraid of losing control and hurting anyone ever again.
And then Reigan told Mob that it was okay to run away. That if he was scared or unable to do something, it was perfectly fine to run away and let someone else help and handle things for him, instead. That Mob didn't have to do it himself. That he could run and leave it to Reigan. ...Yeah, leave the fighting to a conman who didn't have any psychic powers whatsoever, in a battle between people who could lift buildings with their minds or slice anything in half with their powers, sure. But the Reigan guy still told Mob he could run away, anyway. That he didn't have to fight. And...
...he did.
Kind of. He didn't run run, but he did decide that he didn't have to fight, and left the fight to Reigan instead. (Even though the guy had been cut down by a sword and looked dead.)
But apparently Mob had also found a workaround. He couldn't fight; he could run away. He could rely on Reigan. And so he did.
Stan stared as the explanation came on screen. That, at that moment when Mob listened to his boss and 'ran away' from the fight, the build up of energy that signified Mob losing control of his powers had hit the 100% breaking point...
...and Mob gave his powers to Reigan. And hit 1000% of his power level due to Reigan's self-assured confidence about the whole damn thing.
...which is why the conman with no powers had proceeded to kick-ass so nonchalantly (right before that crazy explanation had been given), in a way that made it was clear the man hadn't even realized what had happened for a huge portion of the fight as it happened, as he scolded the bad guys for being bad guys and essentially forced the lot of them to have some kind of an existential crisis.
Stan leaned back in his chair and covered his face with a hand. Because that was… hell, that was...
...definitely nothing like he was trying to do with the kid at all. Stan let out a tired sigh, because hell… did the dragon-lady really think he wanted to steal her brother's powers? Really?? (Like hell!)
And yeah, sure, Stan had talked to the kid about not starting fights, but this wasn't… that whole thing on screen was just stupid. --The whole point of the agreement was that they were all gonna fight together against other people if Stan couldn't get those other people to back down -- just as long as the kid didn't go off picking those fights by himself, out on his own, for no damn reason.
Then Stan scrubbed his hand across his face and reminded himself of what Miz was like. ...Which meant that, no, it couldn't be that literal, what Miz was trying to say with this thing here. The dragon-lady just wasn't as straightforward or literal as the kid was about things. Because sure, the kid liked his word games, and sometimes he liked layering them deep, but every single level of meaning was all pretty damn 'in your face' about it. And anything you didn't get, well, if you realized something was there but couldn't figure it out, and you just went off and asked the kid about it… (Hey, y'know, for a kid who liked ciphers that much, he really did want you to get it.)
Miz, on the other hand… she seemed to go more at things a little more sideways than the kid. A little sideways, and a little broader. More general. Less on the specifics, and a whole lot less direct. (So if you weren't payin' all that much attention…)
...Okay, so the message here wasn't that she thought Stan should get powers, or wanted to get them, it was that she thought that... the kid should rely on him, here? That if there was a fight, she thought that the kid really should go off and get help from him, because it wasn't wrong to accept help, or to run away from a fight he didn't want to be part of?
Stan let out a breath that was almost another sigh, as the episode ended (and hey, that Reigan guy didn't get to keep Mob's powers, it was only a temporary thing, that was good, right?), and Stan shifted and stretched in his chair. ...Hell, had the kid really not talked out anything about the agreement with her at all? Or had she just not understood any of it, when the kid had tried to tell her? (Hell. He'd have to handle this later, wouldn't he. Didn't want the dragon-lady getting the wrong idea, or thinking that the kid was actually worse off about some of this stuff than he actually was. Most of the stuff that he'd talked out with the kid, on stuff like running away and relying on other people that the kid had problems with, had really all just led back to...)
Then again, she'd seen the kid play DDNMD before, she should know that Bill knew how to handle confrontations without violence… so maybe this part of the show wasn't meant to he a dig at him and the kid after all. It wasn't like every show she happened to like would have to hit all the points after all.
Well, regardless, Stan had to admit it wasn't a bad show. He sat back and listened, as Soos, Melody and Miz chattered on happily enough about how there was a whole message about 'self improvement' in the show. About how if you're unsatisfied with who you were, of course you could work to become someone you were proud of being, rather than closing yourself off and blaming other people for your unhappiness or some shit (like how the bad guys did, hiding their own insecurities behind their psychic powers and blamed society for not accepting them, rather than trying to better themselves). ...And Stan had to admit, that part of it wasn't a bad message.
And heck, Stan had gotten the other thing that Miz might have been trying to get at, that was pretty much right on the nose, and pretty direct itself. The message, loud and clear, of: 'I don't have full control of my powers and they might hurt people, but I really don't want that to happen; please teach me how to not hurt people.'
...Yeah. Stan was gonna have to help the kid with that one with her now, wasn't he.
Well, Stan figured that, overall, this hadn't been a bad way to spend six hours, though.
The kids all began picking up any food on the ground, cleaning up after themselves -- as Bill picked up, dusted off, and moved the 'furniture' out of the way, off to the side of the room, leaving the 'dropped food' that had ended up in (and now fallen out of) the chairs to be picked up by said children. Miz herself checked for crumbs in the second pass, getting out a little dustpan to help Dipper and Mabel as they took turns sweeping up the small pieces, while Candy and Grenda finished handling grabbing up all of the larger stuff (like popcorn, and half-eaten sandwiches) to toss in a bucket for Gompers.
"Um…" Miz asked the kids, as they finished up with their cleaning. "Did you like the show?"
"IT WAS AWESOME! THE FIGHT SCENES WERE SO COOL!" Grenda bellowed out enthusiastically. "AND THE CAPTAIN OF THE BODY IMPROVEMENT CLUB WAS A HOTTIE!"
Candy just giggled with a blush, "Those muscles. I would like to touch them!"
"Eh, it was a fun time." Wendy smiled. Heck, free food and an excuse to not work? Heck yeah she'd take it.
"Thanks for inviting us," Melody said for herself and Soos, giving their thanks as well.
"Heh," Soos laughed, as he picked up the empty serving plates and bowls over at the snacks table. "Huh. Kinda funny how that Reigan dude is kinda like Mr. Pines," he pointed out rather obliviously.
"They're not similar at all," was Bill's own take on the subject.
Stan raised an eyebrow at him. "Oh yeah?"
Bill glanced over at him. "He was completely oblivious. And stupid. The character also had very different motivations than you do," Bill ended, as he turned away from Stan to toss another errant beanbag chair onto the pile in the corner, before dusting off his hands.
...Stan wasn't exactly sure what to make of this. Kid wasn't lying, but… (Stan blinked as he realized, did the kid really not think of him as stupid?)
Miz tilted her head in thought before shrugging. "Stan is not Reigan," she said simply. "But they're both good men. And Stan is definitely not stupid." she added.
"Yes," Bill said, sending his sister something of a confused look. "Stanley is not Reigan, and Stanley is not stupid." He didn't think that anyone would think that Stanley was either of those things. So why was his sister saying this? He wasn't stupid; neither were his Zodiac… Though, "Define: 'good'?" (But Miz looked like she didn't know how to explain it.)
Stan ruffled the kid's hair a bit. "Don't worry about it, kid," Stan told him, dropping the hand. "Your sister was tryin' to make a point. --Like I said, we'll talk about it later."
Bill gave him a long look, then turned away from him. "Fine."
(Ford grimaced. Pacifica glanced between them, and made a note to ask about it later, when they were all at the mansion.)
"Well, I had fun watching the show." Dipper shrugged. "At least it had more plot and action than the last one."
"So does Mob get together with his crush?" Mabel asked Miz.
Miz shrugged. "I never got to finish reading the manga before…" she stopped herself there, before she started talking about how she'd died, back when she was a human. Stan was almost proud. (Almost.)
Miz changed the subject, looking over at Robbie. "Did you like it?" she asked him, since Robbie had been quiet for most of the marathon.
Robbie shrugged, hunched over a bit like he usually was, posture-wise. "It was okay," he said nonchalantly, not wanting to say anything either way.
"Well I for one, think the show wasn't bad." Pacifica said primly. "Thank you for the invitation." She'd learned quite a lot today.
"Thanks!" Miz beamed at her.
And that was probably about as open an 'invitation' as Pacifica figured that she was going to get. (So she'd just make one herself.) "You know, this was actually kind of… fun. And this town can get a little boring at times. If you run out of anime to watch…" Pacifica didn't quite think the standard line of 'if you need anything, anything at all, just let me know,' would be good to go with here; who knew what the demon might come up with, with something that open-ended. "...Why don't you give me a call?" Pacifica told the new demon, as she handed her a card with her cellphone number on it. "I have a pretty big collection of movies, myself," Pacifica made a mental note to tell Butler to expand her 'anime' section drastically in size once she was home, "And I know what it's like to be bored." (Pacifica had almost asked the twins to call her immediately whenever that might be the case, but… they were related to Stan Pines. If they didn't take advantage of that kind of open-ended offer for themselves, she'd give her pony up to the local orphanage for free rides for a day. Not to mention, this demon seemed a bit easier to deal with than the other one.)
Miz took the card, blinked, and then smiled. "Thanks. It was really nice getting to meet you all," she said sincerely. Pacifica paused at that. ...Ah, she understood what Mabel meant by her comment about how Miz was 'pretty nice, for a demon'. She really was. The only problem was the fact that she was a reality-warping demon. And Pacifica hadn't exactly missed how said 'pretty nice' demon had almost gone full-Nazi on them about 'dropping food on the floor' or 'wasting' food. Or how the crazy one had actually felt like he'd needed to step in to talk her down. And if the way that Miz had followed after each and every one of them, double-checking the cleanliness of the floor as they were finishing cleaning up was any indication...
It reminded Pacifica of pristine white rugs, and her parents, and that bell…
Pacifica took the time to say her goodbyes to the Pines twins, then promptly turned on her heel and left. She had a lot to think about. Also, she had to make a list of all the things she wanted to grill Dipper on, such as everything he knew about this 'little sister'. (He seemed to do better with concrete lists and paper to write his thoughts down on, oddly enough.) Mabel, she'd just text that evening for the initial 'low down' on the ever-evolving situation, as well.
---
Mabel texted Pacifica that night with… of all things, a video along with the words [u won't believe what I jiust discovrred!!! :D :D :D]
Pacifica frowned as she clicked on the video link.
And… Pacifica stared at her phone incredulously.
It was Miz. Pouncing at a laser pointer that Dipper was holding, a rather gobsmacked look on his face as he moved it around the room and Miz chased it.
...Not the pointer itself. The dot. Miz kept pouncing at the dot.
Like some kind of animal.
...Up until Bill walked up to Dipper and snatched the pointer away from him, scowling.
And Miz had patted at the wall where she'd last seen the dot, a confused expression on her face.
...At which point Bill had turned and stared at her, looking both annoyed and exasperated...
...and then seemed to sigh and...
Pacifica stared.
...she wasn't entirely sure what she was seeing here, but--
She quickly forwarded a copy of the video to Old Man McGucket.
Because, in the video, Bill had seemed to flicker in place for a moment, suddenly looking like he was wearing something else entirely. He'd had something else on, underneath his normal-looking commoner-style clothing, and--
...in the video, Miz continued on with her jumping and pouncing-again spree, playing with something that Bill had seemed to have released from his back sleeve, or the back of his arm, somehow. Something smallish, and flying, and lit up with an odd washed-out blue-colored and pulsating light...
...as it flitted around the center of the room, and Miz bounced and jumped along after it.
And then Bill added another one.
And another one.
And...
Within the space of about fifteen seconds, there were about fifteen of whatever these things were, hovering and floating around the room, flittering about and pulsating with light like fireflies, almost. Miz looked delighted at all the things she could chase.
But as much as they seemed to pulsate and flicker, the lights on all of them never completely went out.
...And Bill seemed to have a look of concentration going on, taking in the entire scene where he was standing out of the way, over at the side of the room, leaning up against the wall with his arms crossed. And...
Pacifica squinted at the video. She had to back it up a bit to recheck what she was seeing, and she couldn't be too sure from the quality of it, but it looked like Bill was… tapping or moving his fingers a bit, from time to time, against his arms, as the flying things moved, and his sister kept on jumping about.
...The demon was directly controlling these things? Whatever they were?
The video ended eventually, and Pacifica sat back in bed, frowning. --Wonderful. The demon had something at his disposal that she hadn't known about. That wasn't good; it meant that they'd all been missing something. ...And who knew what else they'd also missed so far.
She didn't know what those things were that Bill had been letting his little demonic sister 'play' with, but Pacifica very much doubted that all they were meant for was floating around an indoor room and looking pretty.
...she also wondered suddenly about just what exactly a demon was. She'd heard from Susan at the Diner that a "very lovely cat!" had come in with the Pines not too long ago, and from what Pacifica had been able to figure out from the Pines' movements -- and the demon's as well -- that had been when they'd taken Bill out into the town...
So… were demons actually some kind of cat?
...or had Miz been with them there then, too? Had 'Lazy-Eye' Susan been talking about Bill, or about Miz? (She hadn't had her part-time shift at the diner that day, unfortunately, or she would have known it already, for certain, herself!)
Was that behavior something only Miz had, or did Bill exhibit it too? Wait. When Bill had claimed that beanbag as his… didn't cats do that too? Physically claim spots as theirs and then get upset when someone else took it, or got in their way? The peacocks in the yard certainly did.
That didn't make sense, though. The crazy demon didn't actually act like a cat or a peacock; it acted like a human. And it certainly hadn't acted like some sort of animal during Weirdmageddon. Something was off, here. She was missing something... something big. She could feel it.
"Dipper, you had better have some answers for me tomorrow," she muttered down at her phone.
She frowned down at it, then sent Mabel a message, saying that she had received the video, and put her phone on silent mode, setting it down.
She'd worry about all this again tomorrow. She wanted (and deserved!) her beauty sleep.
---
Damn. Pacifica scowled down at her phone. Because, REALLY?!
Mabel had texted her again this morning, along with some photos that must have been taken later on the night before. Photos of Bill and Miz sleeping together. There was a literal blanket nest. The two demons were (not quite entwined but) pressed against each other and Miz was even hugging a stuffed animal.
But then Pacifica blinked because… the skyline wasn't right. The photos had been taken outside, at night, and...
[Mabel, what did you just send me!?!] Pacifica texted back. [When or where did you take these pictures?!]
After a few minutes (and having set down her phone again), Pacifica got some replies. [when we went to another timeline and then we had a stakeout on a roof and we all slept on a roof back in the 1970s isn't that cool?? :D]
Pacifica let out a huff, and texted her back immediately. [Send all pictures you took from when you were in that other dimension, Mabel. In order!! The first ones, to the last ones. And give me the story, too!] She would have asked for captions or context instead of a story, but Mabel always took too much time ribbing her on her language when she wrote that. [silly pacifica!!1! captions are too shrt! :D] and all that.
It took a while and Pacifica was sure that Dipper must have stepped in to help at some point -- because the quality of the text explanations she was being sent improved drastically for awhile -- but over the next half-hour she received a series of photos from the twins' accidental trip into what had apparently been an alternate timeline. There were photos of two teenage boys that were clearly Mr. Pines and his brother when they were younger (huh, ok, yeah, they weren't too bad looking back then) and an actual explanation of how and why they'd gone to find their younger Grunkles to try and stop… some science project from breaking that... was apparently important for some reason.
There were photos of a booth they'd set up, with some handmade (magic made?) jewelry (of all things) that apparently Miz had made. Some more photos of the demons sleeping or cuddling together with Mabel's texts of [theyre soooooo cute!!!!] and Dipper's [Wish they could just stay that way. It would make things easier.] Many photos of Miz eating… more than her body should physically be able to hold, if the photos (and the twins) weren't lying and they really were before and after shots of what-all Miz had eaten all by herself.
Ew. She seemed to be swallowing an entire fish whole in one photo! And Dipper texted a note on how Miz seemed to like fish, having gone for fish more than any other food when given a choice.
There were also some photos of a weird-looking… snake? Wait, Dipper claimed it was [Miz in her dragon form].
--The heck? Pacifica was forced to stop for a minute and massage her temples for awhile, before she frowned for too long and developed early wrinkles.
She resumed her text message dive after a bit, deciding that it probably made sense that a reality-altering demon that could screw up people's faces, could mess with their own body, too. She made it through another few pictures, and then there was… another video, this time of Bill being surrounded by a crowd at that booth, and...
Pacifica clicked on it, and blinked as she watched the first thirty seconds of the 'magic act' Bill performed for the crowd, almost mesmerized. --Then she shook herself out of it, paused the video, took the time to forward that to Old Man McGucket too, and got up to sit down at her desk and open her laptop. In the space of mere moments (McGucket's custom-made laptops really were far superior to anything else out on the market), she was able to click open her favorite editing program to a new 'page' for her to jot down her observations in.
She propped up her phone on a stand, started the magic video over again from the beginning, and began taking notes.
(And she absently wondered as she worked, if Dipper had done the exact same thing, jotting down his own observations in that old musty 'journal' of his.)
She was interrupted at one point by a new incoming photo of Miz passed out on a beanbag chair with Dipper's explanation of [Miz reacts to chocolate like alcohol. Luckily she's a sleepy drunk.]
Pacifica, feeling exasperated in general at this point, made a quick note of this new potential weakness, then forwarded the 'magic' video to her laptop so that incoming messages wouldn't drop the messaging program back down to the newest message in the middle of her viewing it (maybe she should ask for a new phone from Old Man McGucket, too...). Once the file finished transferring, she picked up where she'd left off, and resumed watching it there.
There was… a lot to be learned here. She went through the video four times, just to be sure that she hadn't missed anything. Once, for initial observations on what the demon could do; a second time, for how he reacted to people and handled the crowd, and how the crowd reacted to him in general, in return; a third time, to make sure that she hadn't missed anything; and a fourth time, just to take in the entire performance, to get a feel for the actual overall events as they'd occurred.
And finally, she went back to look at her phone's message log again, and stared when Mabel finally delivered the goods with a photo of the thing that Bill was apparently wearing under his clothes. It was… some kind of futuristic-looking suit? She forwarded that to McGucket as well, then sat back in her chair and stared up at the ceiling, groaning. --Why didn't the twins tell her these things without her having to explicitly ask (demand of) them what was going on? Did they just not think it was important?
She didn't know what to make of this all right now. It was a lot to take in all at once. But she was going to ask Mabel to get more photos of anything at all out of the ordinary with the two demons. [What is Bill wearing?] she sent over.
[Some cyber suit that lets him use science when he can't do magic under the unicorn barrier] Dipper texted back.
...Pacifica let out a frustrated scream at her phone. "That would have been nice to know to begin with!"
[WHAT UNICORN BARRIER] she typed back to Dipper (sent to Mabel's phone) in a fit.
[the one around the shack. Remember? Its how we were able to fight Bill with the Shactron? We never took it down, so we still have it.]
Pacifica took in a deep breath, then let it out slowly.
[Does OMM know about this?] she typed back to the twins.
[yes!! he has one up around the mansion alreedy dont worry!! :D] she got back from Mabel.
"Oh I'm not worried. I'm furious," Pacifica said, as she stared down at this. Why hadn't he told her about the barrier that he'd apparently put up?
[Don't you think that a good number of people in this town might have liked to know that information, to put up protective barriers around their own houses against the demon!] Pacifica typed back at them. "Myself included!" she exclaimed at her phone out loud.
[...Wouldn't do any good,] was what she got back, presumably from Dipper. [You need unicorn hair which is hard to come by, and the stupid dorito can just walk right past it now. He could just tear the hair to take it down now if he wanted to, and he could cast stuff outside it to break stuff inside it too. He broke the barrier on the Shacktron with one of the legs during Weirdmageddon.]
Before Pacifica could respond, another message popped up, [bit the unicorn barrier keeps out Miz. She needs tk wear antimagic cuffs to get into the shack! XD]
[Well, that sounds like an excellent reason for me and my parents to have one of those barriers, then!] Pacifica typed back to them. She was still more than a little anxious about what had happened to her father the last time, when...
Pacifica shook her head. Her parents were awful people, but… she loved them, and they hadn't deserved... that. Not getting their faces rearranged, or getting turned into stone.
[miz wpuldbt do aby thing to you or your parents. she aactually likes humans. snd you haven't done anything to make her mad.] Mabel typed back. [she says she only messes with people if thwy mess w her first.]
Pacifica wanted to scream in frustration. "You said she loves her brother, and we're trying to kill him.</>" She took a deep breath, and tried again with, [If the barrier's really useless to you, then it can't hurt to just tell me how to put up one myself, correct?]
There was a few minutes of silence and then a literal recipe list came up. But not instructions.
Pacifica frowned at this, until the next message came in, which read: [I don't believe this is the best method to communicate all of the information that you're requesting. Would you like to meet and discuss this in-person?]
And then Pacifica frowned even more.
[Meet me at McGucket's place at 1pm.] she wrote after glancing at the clock, then, [Don't be late.]
She shoved her chair away from her desk, packed up her laptop, and called out for her, "Butler! I have ingredients for you to fetch for me!"
---