-----
It was Sixer who brought it up first, thinking about the way the older Stan and Ford had 'controlled' Bill, dealing out 'penalties' and ordering him around. (Of course, Sixer was severely misunderstanding the whole situation, but regardless, it was he who had come up with the idea after he finished his homework.)
--The older versions of himself and his brother were some kind of monster hunting, demon tamers, right? So, wouldn't it be cool to start early?
At least, that was the plan, until Miz had somehow overheard Sixer's conversation with Lee about the subject.
"You are NOT going out to hunt down the Jersey Devil… again." Miz huffed, hands on her hips at the ridiculous suggestion that Sixer had proposed after he'd finished his homework after school that day. After all, Stan had asked her to keep an eye on the boys. --Sure, he'd meant to have her make sure they didn't skip school, but she thought that keeping them out of trouble would be part of it. Also, she was older than them! So she had already mentally categorized them as 'little cousins' almost like little brothers but not quite and she was going to be a responsible 表姐 cousin/sister (and damn why wasn't there a word for this in English?) and not let them get themselves killed.
"Aww…" the boys whined. "But we could catch it and become famous monster hunters!" Sixer wheedled. Their older selves hunted cryptids, so why couldn't they just… start early?
Miz blinked at this. She tilted her head to the side in thought, and Lee crossed his fingers behind his back, please, please, please! (He was just as excited about the idea as his twin, because being famous? That could get him all the girls! --Sign him up!)
"Well… if you just want to catch something so you can call the press and make yourselves famous…" Miz started to say, making Sixer light up in excited anticipation, "... there's a cryptid right here." And then she pointed at herself.
The twins stared at her, blinking slowly before they finally caught on to what she meant.
Lee twitched. He looked over at his twin, who was looking at her even more skeptically that Lee was, but… yeah, with the look his twin was giving him, Sixer wasn't gonna be the one to say it, was he. Lee sighed.
"Uh… no offense, but you…" Lee looked her up and down; she was currently in her 'mature' form (apparently she'd wanted to play with her boobs, which was kinda hot, but Lee wasn't going to say that out loud), and dressed in a loose, long-sleeved oversized t-shirt. No pants. (Because Miz apparently didn't like to wear pants when she was in her 'relaxing' clothes.) "...you look like a human," Lee pointed out truthfully. Nobody was gonna be impressed by them 'catching' her. He could toss her over one shoulder, easy!
(...Well, okay. Maybe everybody else and their dog at his high school would be impressed, because if they were gonna 'catch' her, they'd have to survive Bill to actually get away with it first! But…)
Miz looked down at herself and shrugged. Before Lee could explain why it was a problem when she looked human (among other things…), Miz's body began to twist. Sixer's jaw dropped as Miz grew larger and larger, golden scales spreading across her skin like a rippling of sand in the wind.
The two stared, wide-eyed, when Miz stood up on all fours, large triangular head with a single eye staring down at them on the end of a long, serpentine neck.
"T-that's so COOOL!!!" Sixer squealed, already running up and reaching for her.
"--Sixer!" Lee cried as he reached out, trying to pull him back. Because holy shit it really was a DEMON DRAGON and her mouth was large enough to swallow him whole if she--!
--and she was purring loudly as Sixer pet her neck...
...and, uh, looking really happy at getting pet like that, with the way she sort of flopped over there…
Lee stared.
Miz carefully settled herself onto the deck of the boat; the older versions of them were off somewhere -- doing something, Lee didn't remember what -- so it was just them hanging out on the boat after school. (Bill was napping on top of the roof of the new 'cabin' the older twins had finished making that day, though they hadn't finished outfitting it yet. He hadn't seemed any less wiped by the end of the day; Lee had no idea what could've happened with talking with Mr. Harman to have the demon that tired afterwards, but he wasn't gonna ask the demon about it. Bill was kinda touchy about stuff sometimes.)
Miz rumbled out, "Normally, I'd be mad that you didn't ask before touching me…" (Lee tensed at her words, glancing up at the cabin.) Her head twisted around to watch Sixer as the teenager marveled over her golden brick-like scales. "But you're just so cute I'll forgive you this once." She shook her head, black tendrils wiggling around her head like a living mane. "But you should always ask for permission before laying your hands on someone in such a way." (Yeah, maybe they could just get away with not telling Bill that Sixer had done that without asking, then. Right?)
"Right, sorry." Sixer blushed, but seemed more interested in pulling out his notebook to begin sketching her than continuing the petting she liked. Miz rumbled, nuzzling Sixer's hair with her snout. Preening him gently. Damn these teenagers for setting off all her maternal instincts! She purred again when the teenager continued running his hand down her flank. That felt good!
Lee was slowly relaxing as he saw that Bill wasn't showing his face looking all angry, and Miz was calm and… grooming his brother's hair?! Miz was rubbing the sides of her face along Sixer's hair, combing it back.
Lee stared at the scene incredulously. Miz was relaxed on the deck of the boat, half-curled around Sixer where he was crouching as he stroked down her back. Lee bit his lip, then took a chance and walked in a little closer. (He stopped a good couple feet away, though.) "You're really big," he pointed out.
Miz purred. "My male form is even bigger," she told him. Her Xin form's full dragon body was large enough to take down spaceships after all. He was the size of a small jet.
Lee shivered. She could get even bigger?! And Sixer didn't seem at all afraid of being so close to the dragon as-is. Lee shook his head.
"So… what's the plan here?" Lee finally asked, because how were they supposed to catch her now?
Miz blinked and shook her head a little. "Well, on Friday, after we all get off school tomorrow, I'm gonna race over here! And then I'll come up out of the ocean and scare a few beach goers. Then you and Sixer will run over and 'capture' me." Miz said cheerfully. "It's Thursday now so we can do this tomorrow."
Yeah, that didn't really answer his question. And... "Why tomorrow?" Lee asked, raising an eyebrow. That seemed kinda… rushed.
Miz scoffed. "So you'll have the whole weekend to ride out your fame train before the government sends people to pick me up to bring back to their labs for study." Miz shrugged in a full body rippling motion. "After which, I will escape from the incompetent government officials while you two will be hailed as town heroes and monster hunters!" Miz sounded delighted at the idea.
Yeah… there were so many ways that could go wrong. First of which… "And what are you gonna do if you can't escape from the government?" Not even touching on what Bill was going to do when he found out his precious little sister was captured by a bunch of government mooks!
Miz managed to look offended. "I can escape just fine! And if all else fails, Bill will help." she giggled. "It'll be our first Con together!"
Lee let out a sigh. --Bill 'helping out' was exactly what he was worried about! And Miz still hadn't told them… okay, maybe he should just ask straight out? "How're we supposed to capture you anyway? You're huge!"
Miz lidded her eye at then and purred. "Well, that's something you aspiring monster hunters will have to figure out yourselves, now isn't it?" she said smugly.
Sixer grinned at the challenge and Lee laughed (a little more nervously than he wanted to, as he glanced back at the cabin on deck again). "Well then, let's prove we can rustle up a dragon!" Sixer exclaimed. Then they both squeaked when Miz picked them up, wrapping her tail around them and flying up and over the railings, to deposit them gently in the sand.
Miz grinned at them as the younger twins got their breath and bearings back. "You can practice. You're done with your homework right?" She wiggled.
"Of course!" Sixer frowned. "I always get my homework done first." Lee winced slightly and looked away, whistling innocently. Miz rolled her eye. She'd help Lee with his homework later. For now...
"Rawr~" she said playfully, wagging her tail back and forth like a whip in excitement behind her as she faced them, then stopped for a moment. "Oh. Rules! No binding circles and no grabbing my wrists," she stated.
"...This is okay, right?" Lee asked glancing back up at the boat and the cabin atop it yet again. "You're not gonna bite us or nothing, either, right? And your brother's gonna be fine with this?"
"Of course!" Miz said, so matter-of-factly that Lee decided to stop worrying about it, right there and then. "--Ready?"
The twins glanced at each other, then nodded…
--and Lee immediately dashed forward and jumped onto her back, attempting to pull her down despite her size. Miz giggled and stomped around in the sand with him hanging off her back. She growled playfully and bucked, trying to dislodge the teenager.
"Whoa!" Lee laughed as he held on, grinning. This was like a rodeo, right? He whooped as Miz jumped and thrashed along the sand, giggling. Sixer laughed as he watched them... play(?).
Lee slid down her back a bit, but then got a better hold on Miz's tail away, grunting as his muscles flexed and he pulled at it, trying to pull her down. "Whoa!" he cried as he was lifted up into the air. Lee held onto her tail as she dangled him above the sand. "Uhhhh… heh," he said, grinning and blushing slightly as she brought her head around to look at him where he dangled. Yeah, if she'd wanted to eat him, he'd be toast right now. --Must mean she liked him, since she didn't!
"Hm, maybe you guys should use a net? Or try some sort of other method for taking me down?" Miz wondered. Lee was about to say something when Miz suddenly squeaked and crumpled to the ground, purring.
The tail dropped (-- "Woah!" --) and so did Lee. Lee stumbled to his feet and turned around to see... Sixer scratching along Miz's belly. (Yeah, his twin had looked at him like he'd had a plan that needed him doing some distracting for him, but Lee had thought that that had meant… well, guess not.) The dragon was laying on her side, purring and twitching, and Sixer was grinning up a storm. "Looks like I've caught you," he said triumphantly.
Miz purred and whined "Nnnnno faaaaair!!!" Her legs kicked. Sixer laughed as Miz rolled onto her back, kicking her legs in the air and writhing in the sand.
The two were laughing as Lee stared. "Well... I guess we caught a dragon," he said awkwardly as he watched the two tumble around in the sand. It was almost… cute? So, wait, were demon dragons just giant cats or somethin', then? This was kinda like how their ma's cat acted, only, y'know, bigger…
Lee was watching this all kinda critically, when he nearly jumped out of his skin at the "WHAT ARE YOU DOING?!" that the old-Ford was yelling out at them frantically.
Ford and Stan were making their way across the beach to them at a pretty fast clip. Ford had his hand down by his gun, twitching as he saw just how close the younger him was to those sharp claws and teeth, and he went pale. The man-eater was huge, easily large enough to snap up anyone in her jaws. (He hadn't been able to see her before, the first time she'd changed into a large 'dragon', only in her smaller form on the deck with Mabel -- and if he had seen this sooner...) Stan's hand at his elbow was the only thing stopping him from outright shooting her now.
That, and how Miz was giggling with her mouth closed where she was lying in the sand next to his younger self. Her belly was exposed and seemingly-vulnerable, but the instant she heard Ford's voice, she stiffened and rolled back to her feet, backing up, crouching down a bit, and… putting Sixer bodily between Ford and herself? Her pupil had shrunken from its wide openness back to a thin slit as she stared at him. (Ford's own eyes narrowed as well, as he took in the scene a little more fully, along with Lee's almost-guilty look.)
"Yeesh. What's with all the yelling..." they all heard muttered out from up on the deck, and they all stopped and looked up as Bill poked his head out over the side of the deck cabin above them. To Ford, it looked like the triangle demon was lying flat on his belly up there, and from the way he was blinking down at them from his (rather well-situated) vantage point (because of course Bill would always opt for the highest of high ground, of course he would...), the triangle demon had clearly only just woken up and was still trying to get his bearings.
"Go back to sleep, kid," Stan called up to him. "I got this. It's fine." This led to another grumble and the head disappearing from view. Stan let out a sigh. "Ford, you maybe want to…?" Stan gestured up at the deck.
Ford grimaced -- he didn't really want to 'babysit' Bill for his brother, but Stan clearly would be the one to do better managing this mess down in the sand. He still didn't trust the other demon with his brother, but Stan did seem far better at 'handling' her -- at least while she still seemed to be actually inclined to continue 'playing along' with Stan for the moment.
So Ford stiffly walked past Miz and climbed his way up the side of the boat and back up onto the deck, as requested. They saw him scale the ladder up to the top of the cabin up on deck next, and a few low grumbles back and forth that none of the other humans down in the sand could quite catch.
Stan sighed. He hoped that Ford could get the demon to go back to sleep without issue. Kid had been wiped before after the whole thing with the teach, even with the nap; waking up now probably hadn't made anything better, they hadn't been away all that long. (...Hell, maybe the demon could convince his brother to fall asleep up there, while he was at it. Not that that was real likely at this point, even though Ford could probably use the nap himself. The longer 'day' had obviously been getting to him, with the way he'd been baging things out with that hammer and wood earlier that day...)
"So, what's happenin' here?" Stan asked, turning away from the boat and looking at the rest of them with a raised eyebrow.
Sixer blushed a little. "We-well, um…" he stuttered. Lee didn't look any more likely to talk, neither. Stan frowned at the two of 'em both. --So, the two of 'em had been doin' somethin' that the both of them knew they really shouldn't be doin', huh.
Miz raised her head and scoffed. "The kids wanted to capture a cryptid so they could kickstart their careers as professional monster hunters. So I thought it would be fun to let them pretend to catch me, get a bunch of fame and possibly money as they become known town heroes, then escape after the government sends people to try and take me back to their labs!" She grinned, revealing rows and rows of needle sharp teeth. "A con that doesn't hurt anyone!"
"Uh huh." Stan deadpanned. There were so many things wrong with that one… but hey, he was gonna start with the first things first, same way as he did with the kid. "So what was with all that wrestlin' in the sand that was goin' on there?" Stan asked her wryly, crossing his arms.
Dragon-Miz ducked her head. "I used to play with my children like that back when they were young," she admitted. Heck, the twins had loved pulling on her arms and legs. They'd never set off her fear response while they'd been playing, probably because she trusted them wholeheartedly and couldn't even conceive of them being a threat. Hard to fear someone that you've raised from birth after all.
Stan sighed. Children, right. He didn't really respond to this; this had come up in bits and pieces when he'd been talkin' with the dragon-lady before. (He wondered if Ford was hearing this one, though. His brother hadn't really said anything when Miz had said she'd had a daughter with the whole PTSD thing, but…)
Lee and Sixer stared as well. "You're a mother?" Lee asked incredulously, because, yeah, he knew she was like a bazillion years old or whatever, but she acted like a kid most of the time! He just couldn't see her as a… parent?
Miz giggled. "What? I don't look like I've raised four kids? Well, only one of them was actually mine; I co-parented with 'Ronica for her twins and I adopted Quackers."
...Yeah. If Ford was hearin' this, he was probably having some kind of silent apoplectic fit up there now, Stan figured. Because Miz wasn't just talkin' adoption or stealing, here. --Not if one of them was 'actually hers'. Hadn't Ford said that demons just couldn't have kids of their own?
Miz made another ripple-shrug. "So," she turned back to Stan. "Can the twins capture me to present me as a scientific anomaly so they can gain fame and fortune and a cool reputation as monster hunters? It'll be useful to have a rep if little Sixer wants to be a paranormal researcher when he grows up?"
Stan raised an eyebrow. ...Right. "And how does your brother feel about you being 'captured'?" was Stan's first question to her, because he seriously didn't think that the kid would have been okay with any of what the demon dragon-lady had just said at all. She couldn't have run any of this by him yet. And speaking of 'problems'...
"--Miz, toss up a filter before you answer that for me, yeah? Just you and me hearin' this stuff for awhile," Stan said next. Once she'd done it (Miz flicked her tendrils and the air shimmered a little; the sound around them seemed a little quieter now), Miz nodded to him. Then and only then, Stan continued with, "Look, don't you have an issue with being bound an' stuff?" The whole 'wrists' and getting dragged down to the ground PTSD thing, from the binding circles she'd talked about there?
Miz's dragon form wasn't capable of most expressions but she still managed a pout. "But this isn't binding. It's playing. It's different." Stan gave her a skeptical look, so Miz clarified with, "I already told them 'no binding circle' and 'no grabbing my wrists'. So it's gonna be fine."
Stan sighed. Welp, that was already probably more than the kid would be happy with her sharing, but she'd done right in telling the younger twins. Except… "And what if they grab your wrists by accident? Or if those government soldiers you're plannin' on having coming after you to take you away, go off and they grab your wrists?" the old con man pointed out next.
Miz blinked and considered that. Then she looked down at her wrists and some sparkles of light flickered into being around them for a moment. "There. Now nothing can close around them." She wagged her tail. "So it's not a problem!"
Stan sighed again. The hardest part about dealing with Miz was how impulsive she was. She'd go off and get an idea in her head, and then go through with it right away before thinking things through, even a little. The kid, at least, seemed to plan things out to the nines, however he could; there was practically a built-in delay there, with him. But with Miz…
"And what if those government soldiers try and stuff you inside a moving vehicle?" Stan asked her next, because there was no way that they were gonna be able to move her any other way; helicopter wouldn't work, and neither would a boat. That left some kind of tractor-trailer or truck or something.
Miz blinked as she suddenly realized this. "Oh. I forgot about that…" She frowned. "I think it's just cars, the normal kind that people drive around. I don't have a problem with the larger vehicles, since they're more likely to survive a crash…" She shivered a little.
Uh huh. Right. "They'll be putting you in a cage," Stan told her. "Either inside a trailer, or out on a flatbed. ...Or on a hook-up trailer to the back of a truck," he added. "None of those are real safe. And if it's one of those last two, there'll be people rubbernecking from here to wherever. That means at least a few car crashes, probably."
Miz hung her head. "I didn't think about that…"
"Yeah, I know you didn't think of that," Stan muttered, rubbing a hand over his face. "That's the whole problem. You didn't think about nobody's safety if everything went 'right', let alone if something went wrong." Stan frowned at her. "You definitely didn't think about your own safety again, either. --And that's gonna tick off the kid, again," he told her, eyeing her and watching her wilt a bit under his gaze. "--Hell, you said that you panic and destroy things around you when you get bound." The only way he could see that 'working' was with a net, and then hog-tying her legs together, and maybe even her tail too. (...Or just chopping that tail right off.) "You really didn't think of this before thinkin' about letting the boys try to capture you?"
"No." Miz winced and looked down, the tendrils around her head drooping sadly. "I didn't think of it," she said quietly. "I'm sorry. I… usually have one of my friends there to point out when I'm being dumb…" She slumped over into the sand. "I'm not really good at… thinking things through when I'm caught in the moment of a fun-sounding idea."
...Yeah, Stan was seeing that now. He sighed. "Kid, you really gotta start thinking things through a hell of a lot more." He scratched his cheek. "Heck, how did you raise four kids when you're all not thinkin' things through like this?" Being a guardian was one thing, but a parent? "Are you tellin' me that your kids could see you freakin' out or gettin' hurt and not--" Stan cut himself off as he realized -- she'd brought up that 'Quackers' before. That had been the daughter that had jumped in and tried to help her with the binding-PTSD thing and gotten mindwiped or something, right?
Miz hung her head. "I was in my adult-mode mindset," she admitted. "And I DO still get breakdowns… but only when shit happens…"
Stan raised an eyebrow. Her what-mode mindset? The heck was this, now? "And what 'mode' are you in right now?" Stan took a wild-ass stab at.
Miz pawed at the sand sheepishly. "My child-mode?" With some parts of her Big-sister-mode coming through.
"Define 'adult-mode' and 'child-mode'?" Stan tried. He hadn't heard anything like this from the kid before, or Miz, and he might as well try and figure this out now, before it became a problem later. (Because, y'know, why wouldn't it, if it had her maybe almost getting herself grabbed in a way that'd have her killing people 'by accident', saying 'yes' to things that she really shouldn't be.)
Miz slumped. "Like… if I'm letting more or less of different parts of myself to be expressed? It's a little hard to explain? I don't really switch modes so much as I slide around between them?" She tilted her head. "The form I'm in tends to affect it, which I only realized recently. My triangle form shifts mindsets the most quickly."
Miz continued, "I think it was a sort of an unconscious thing at first, where when I'm trying to be a responsible adult I worry more about stuff. I get stressed but I'm more careful. Child-mode is more relaxed, I just focus on wanting to have fun or be pampered and don't let myself worry as much about life in general." She sighed. "It's easier to just… shift mindsets instead of getting stressed out." Miz frowned. "But you're right. I should have thought about their safety first. I'm sorry." She bowed her head at him.
"Yeah. Might want to think about what 'mode' you're in when you're makin' decisions about stuff that means somebody's gonna be physically touching you or anything, from now on, before you say anything to anybody who's not me, yeah?" Stan told her. Miz nodded once, and Stan figured that was the best he was gonna get out of her on this for the moment. So he told her to take the filter down, waving a hand at it, and she did.
Stan sighed. ...Well. This was a thing, huh. --Guess it made more sense that she could maybe be 'more responsible' sometimes, if she'd had to raise her younger sisters way back when, though. Stan sighed as he thought things through just a little bit more.
"Look, before you do whatever fun thing you think of, stop and think about any safety precautions you should set up first, too," he grumbled out at her. Might as well make it more general for the 'fun' stuff that Ford always complained to him about -- because apparently 'demon fun' was different than regular fun, right.
Miz nodded. She glanced down at herself and mumbled something to make more little sparkles dance along her skin before fading. Without prompting, she told Stan, "A shield against bullets, tranq darts, tasers and other such things that might be used to try and hurt or subdue me. As well as a barrier to block impacts, if they DO put me in a car, having that layer of protection helps with my peace of mind." Then she nuzzled Sixer and Lee and they sparkled for a second as well. "Protection from any harm from me," she said simply.
Stan sighed. Well, at least she was thinking some of the 'safety' things now, especially for the 'goes right' stuff. But... "Miz," Stan said in grumpy tones, giving her a look, "You gotta remember to ask first before you do spells, yeah?"
Miz blinked. "Oh, right. Forgot…" Stan was more than a little worried that Miz had forgotten this; the kid didn't forget things. So what did that mean about anything that he told her? But, more importantly for right now...
"What do you mean, 'protection from any harm from you'?" Stan asked her. Because that was broad as hell. So broad it didn't mean anything to him.
Miz raised a hand and slowly brought it down on Sixer as Stan watched; it stopped a foot above his head with a 'plink' sound as a colorful barrier shimmered into view briefly. Stan's eyebrows raised. It looked like a less powerful version of the voodoo barrier around the shack… like back when Bill had brought his fist down on it, trying to flatten the Shacktron.
"You… can protect people from yourself?" was what Stan ended up asking, instead of what he actually wanted to say. (He wasn't that stupid.)
Miz shrugged and told him, "It's not perfect. It'll eventually break. But it would provide enough for a few minutes to get away from me." ...And that was the best Stan was gonna get, huh?
"How does this protection thing work?" Stan asked Miz next. He was not gonna try to 'penalty' or 'learning-lesson' her on anything that he didn't feel pushed to have to. He wasn't sure he could get away with it, honestly, between the kid probably wanting to go down his throat for it, and Miz herself probably not being on board for any sort of thing like that. He didn't really have much sway with her; all he really had was her wanting to get along with them, for Bill, and he had no idea how far that went. --Especially not for casting something she thought was protective on the younger twins without asking; she was trying to help and Stan was pretty sure she didn't mean any harm. Penalizing her for that would send the wrong message. He would talk with her more about the whole 'asking permissions thing' later. But that could wait. Right now, getting more info out of her on this sort of thing was a lot more important, because...
Miz wagged her tail. "If my powers or I do anything that might hurt them, like trying to hit them or set them on fire, the barrier goes up," she said cheerfully.
Stan frowned a little. "And if this barrier breaks?" he asked her. (Kid had talked about 'recoil' and a few other things to watch out for before -- that the kid had bragged about how he always handled them 'properly' -- about spells going wrong or breaking; kid hadn't said a lot, but…)
Miz rolled her eye. "Setting up a Permanent protection from me isn't safe." (...for her. Yeah, Stan knew what she was getting at, there. Miz wasn't stupid. She wasn't going to give some kids the ability to do whatever they wanted to her without her being able to fight back. And she was right not to.) Miz laid down in the sand, legs tucked underneath her. "But this will give them time to get away if anything goes wrong."
Stan thought about that a bit. He briefly considered asking Miz to put that protection on the kids back home too; that might be good to have. But Ford would go ape shit at more things getting cast on the kids that he couldn't tell what it was. And with the barrier around the Shack, every time they came inside any spell-stuff would just go kaput; they'd have to recast it every time… If they were gonna do something like that, well.. Stan figured that he'd talk to Bill about it later. The kid might be able to set something up that did that whole passive-active thing, and Ford could tell if the kid was lying, even if he couldn't tell with Miz...
...except the kids would probably just get that much more reckless about junk, and they'd just ended up in this mess because of the kids going off and doing something stupid and reckless in the first place. And the kid (and Miz) might think that they'd be okay with 'lashing out' once in awhile, as long as they didn't do it bad enough to break the protection. --Yeah, no. Better to just have the kids be careful, both demon and human.
Stan looked Miz over. She seemed pretty sorry about her oversight and all, so... and Stan sighed. "Well, just make sure all the safety precautions are in place before you do stuff," Stan told her. They could talk more about it in the attic again, once they were all back home. He could, y'know, remind her again, if she needed it. Just in case. As a start. "Do you know why you didn't freak out yet this time, here? Maybe why you didn't think of it before, even with the whole 'mode' thing?" Hey, don't get him wrong, Stan was glad that she hadn't lost it on the younger twins, but...
"...It's less scary when I'm bigger than them," Miz admitted.
Stan blinked and thought about that. "...Yeah, okay," he could see how that might be a thing. So the dragon-lady felt better about the wrestling thing in her dragon form more than her little girl form. Made sense; she was large enough that she should be able to break free of anybody if they did grab her. And holding her down? Probably was next to impossible like this; dragon-lady was built like a snake.
If she got injured, though… Stan looked over her tendrils critically. That was probably the easiest thing to damage on her, and probably the most sensitive. He'd seen a lot of animals in his day -- and cryptids, too. He could see a weak spot when he saw one. Stan frowned.
"...Might be somethin' to think about, next time somebody's tryin' to... get on your case there about something," Stan told her. "Just get bigger than them." Because if that helped her be 'stronger', literally physically stronger, and feel less scared, then maybe she'd be thinking more straight, and… y'know, have more of a chance at less of an 'accident'.
Lee rubbed his arm. "Is what we were doing that dangerous?" Lee asked. (..while Sixer was absently petting Miz's serpentine neck, not looking all that worried about his own safety, not realizing how dangerous it really was.)
Stan rubbed his face. "Well, yeah," Stan told them. "You weren't thinkin' things through. --You shouldn't actually be trying to fight each other," Stan told them, glowering at all three. "Look, how about you all tell me what your plan is for this whole, dragon hunting thing. What's it all about?" He might as well tell them just how stupid their plan was. ...If they had an actual plan, he glowered at them a bit more, as they all looked at each other and didn't start talking right away. Geez.
Hell, if they were tryin' for 'monster hunting fame' and 'possibly money', like Miz had been chattering on about, the whole 'catch a cryptid' thing wasn't a bad idea, per se. But the whole 'town heroes' thing was pretty much out; Miz would have to go off destroying things for that on to be on the menu. 'Escaping the government' was maybe a hit-or-miss, depending on how things went; Stan could see it working out either way, depending on how quickly the feds got wind of it actually being a thing.
But whatever they did, they definitely needed some refining before Stan would feel anything close to comfortable with letting them try and pull this off. And as for the kid… well, Stan would work with the three of 'em now, and get them to something that maybe the kid would agree wasn't going to be too dangerous for his little sister to take a starring role in.
Heck, if the younger Ford really wanted to go into studying monsters or aliens and shit when he grew up a little more… well, this would get Lee feeling more confident and interested in doing this stuff with him, maybe. Hell, if he'd been in a good position with the boat after high school and still on speaking terms with Ford, and his brother had asked him up to Gravity Falls to 'study anomalies' with him? He just might've turned him down flat; he wouldn't have understood what his brother had actually meant. Because in weighing 'boring science stuff' against 'actual treasure hunting and beach babes'? The middle of Oregon would not have easily won out. Especially not after getting ditched by him for some college.
So, yeah. Seeing and talking about how this stuff all really went, the real versus the fake, would be good for them both. And for Lee in particular? He'd be able to get some experience with running a real con. Or parading around a 'fake' monster to earn money from gullible fools. Hell, it was almost cute. …And it was gonna be a hell of a lot safer than what he'd heard about Dipper trying to pull off that time he'd left Mabel in charge of the Shack. Real monsters as exhibits, for the love of Paul Bunyan...
He was definitely going to need to make sure Ford wasn't around for this one, though. If Ford didn't immediately start trying to shoot holes in the demon-dragon-lady for (what Stan was assuming was gonna be some pretty darn) realistic play-acting (given what they'd both already seen on the beach, and how good she was gonna be at this stuff after Stan got done giving her a few pointers...), well, his brother would probably have a stroke first.
---
There was something off about Miz.
...Well, Stan already knew this, but seeing how much Miz seemed to enjoy acting like a… hell, call it what it was, acting like a large overgrown pet, was kinda off-putting.
Stan looked on at Sixer, who had Miz's large head in his lap, as he continued scratching around her antlers and tendrils, as the dragon purred at him for it. ...Hell, Stan had only left them alone for a bit, to let them try at coming up at an actual first plan without him, while he went up on deck to check on Ford and the kid. And when he'd looked back down at them all, Stan had seen Sixer throwing a frisbee to Miz…
...and Miz had chased it down to bring back to him, wagging her tail. And then Stan had glanced over at the kid, wondering what the hell her brother must think of all this--
--to see that the kid had looked bemused by this, himself. Not worried, not thinking it was off in terms of behavior. He'd looked amused, and been relaxed, almost like he'd thought that this might be… normal?
Stan had then turned to see his brother watching both the dragon-lady and the younger Ford warily, hand twitching near his gun in case the dragon tried to snap the teenager up as a quick meal. Lee was also watching them warily.
...Yeah, Stan could see how his brother might think that Miz wasn't being all genuine in how she was acting towards the kids, like she might be 'playing' them instead of 'playing with' them all. --Because yeah, maybe some dads played 'horsey' with their two year olds, but they didn't act like dogs or cats for their teenagers playing fetch.
Actually, now that he thought about it, Miz really was acting a lot like their ma's cat, in more ways than one. That tail-swishing wasn't really a dog-wag, and she wasn't acting all hyper like a dog with the fetch; if anything, it had looked like she'd been egging Sixer on to do it, to throw the frisbee. And the whole purring 'I own your lap' thing was definitely a cat thing. Stan remembered his Ma's cat would want to play 'cards', grabbing them up with her mouth and 'handing' them back straight to their laps after awhile, and she'd liked when they threw her dry cat food down the hall so she could chase and catch the pieces.
And when it came to the kid... okay, yeah, Stan had seen a few things with the kid that had seemed a little… well… --But he'd mostly shrugged it off before. The way the kid seemed to 'own' any chair he deigned to sit in, how he 'put up' with sharing Stan's chair with him, in that kind of 'yeah, I meant to do that, you moving my legs like that doesn't mean anything' way. How the kid fell asleep at the drop of a hat, almost. ...How the kid seemed to like sunning himself on one of the picnic tables or out on the roof, before falling asleep right there… and then pretending that he hadn't fallen asleep, that he'd meant to just lie down there unmoving for several hours with his eyes closed, to have Mabel or Stan himself go off and wake him up.
The kid had never seemed animalistic about any of it, though. Mostly, he'd just seemed some kind of human. (...And maybe that shouldn't been a warning sign. Kid wasn't human; Stan knew that. So how did he pull it off?) --But the kid sure as hell didn't go off purring at anyone over anything. The kid didn't like getting touched; he complained about it. Hell, the kid still had issues with Stan running his hands through his hair, even.
...at least when he was consciously paying attention to it. Stan had been able to calm him down a bit a time or two in the chair, when the kid had been too engrossed in that phone of his to really...
Stan frowned a little as he thought about all of this. Because so far, anything he'd seen with Miz had been mirrored, at least a little bit, with the kid. And maybe the kid didn't purr, but the kid did have his humming thing that he did sometimes.
If he thought of the kid more like a cat… he'd be some kinda spitting feral alley cat, maybe. Outdoors-y; never really spent a lot of time inside before. Maybe when they were really young once, but after getting tossed out and kicked that many times? And if you tried to adopt one of those nasty little buggers...
--Which Ford had actually read him the riot act over, once already. (Weird that Ford had brought up the 'cat' thing himself before, though. Did that really mean something then, maybe?) ...The thing about feral cats though, was that it wasn't that they didn't want you petting them; it was that they didn't trust you enough to let you do it.
And the kid had trust issues like nothing and nobody Stan had ever seen before. He expected fights; he didn't know what to do with people just giving him stuff, not really. Because it had been so long since he'd had any kind of positive reinforcement… from...
(...Yeah, Stan wasn't going there right now. He was still pretty damn mad about the whole 'being addictive to his brother' thing that he wasn't too happy that his brother seemed bound and determined to try and shove under the rug, to just let the kid get away with…)
Meanwhile, Miz was the house pet. Bright-eyed and bushy-tailed and way, way more friendly but... an abused one who'd gotten a new home, but still hadn't really recovered from half the shit she'd gone through, way back when. She sought comfort, but still got scared of being confined and restrained -- and lashed out like a whirlwind of death and claws and really sharp teeth when she got set off the wrong way, apparently. Focused on food a lot because she'd gone hungry before, maybe; she'd said something about being starved as a child, right? (...Hell, she still starved off-and-on because of that 'itching' problem that sounded like that 'suicidal cutting tearing open' thing the kid had told him about, and Miz had talked about herself. If she hadn't talked about that with the kid yet, he was bringing that list she was supposed to be writing up with the kid at dinner tonight.) She got really attached to the few people she trusted too, and... Stan didn't finish that thought, it was starting to get weird in a really bad way.
(He really needed to talk about all this with Ford in the basement, once they got back. He didn't really get the whole demon thing, and he needed to know if this whole thing was a part of that or not. He needed to know what to expect with them.)
The kid let out a huff next to him where he was lying on his side, watching his sister with the twins below, and settled a bit in place, as Stan tried running a hand through the kid's hair a little… differently... than he usually did. He watched the kid resituate himself a bit onto his belly, not really paying attention to Stan as he continued watching Miz, crossing his arms under his head and dropping his head down into the gap. Stan tried an even lighter stroking motion (kind of like what he'd done at the kid's temples before, that he always saw the kid doing to himself, but on top of his head instead), and… the kid's eyes drooped lower, and lower...
Ford looked over at him, watching him with a look Stan couldn't quite read.
...He got the gist of the feeling that went with it, though, and yeah, he knew. He knew.
Back on the sand, Sixer had Miz curled around his lap, purring away like a little motor, and Sixer was looking well-pleased with himself.
"Well, I do think I have tamed the dragon," Sixer said, grinning at how easily he'd been able to subdue the large creature. If other cryptids were this easy, he'd be a very good monster hunter when he grew up. That… was what the older version of him was, right?
Then Sixer frowned for a moment as he realized that, if that was the case, then said dragon might have already been at least partially tamed by said older version of him.
Then again, if that had been the case, that older version of him likely wouldn't keep shouting and going for his gun every time the dragon seemed to do something questionable. Which likely meant that if either of them was the monster hunter and cryptid tamer of the bunch, then it would have to be...
Well. If Lee's counterpart could do it, then surely he could be even better at it, as well! This sort of thing involved careful planning, astute observation, and plenty of forethought, after all.
Crisis of ego and intelligence averted, Sixer scratched at Miz's head (the dragon fully relaxed in his lap) and wondered what her antlers were made of. It looked like real gold. He reached out to caress the golden scales along her neck, which also looked like it might actually be gold. They didn't seem to deform quite like pure gold did, but... he was sure that if his brother was less wary of the dragon, he'd be right here next to him trying to peel off one of these scales, just so he could check it over properly, and maybe run off with it. Actually...
Sixer carefully slid a nail in between the scales and wiggled, trying to see if the brick-like scales were removable.
Miz squeaked and thrashed, and the barrier flashed around Sixer as he yelped and scrambled back.
(Ford straightened and pulled his gun, nearly aiming it at the demon, before lowering it again, frowning, as his younger counterpart backed off even further and the demon didn't attempt to pursue. He reassessed what he was seeing...)
Miz shivered. "W-what the heck?!?!" She whined. She was scratching at the area where Sixer had touched. It felt so weird. She hissed as she wiggled around, flexing to get that uncomfortable feeling out. It didn't quite… hurt, but it was...
(Ford frowned, lowering his gun even further. He'd seen that sort of behavior before, from animalistic cryptids; he knew what that implied.)
"Sorry, my fault. I should have asked first…" Sixer held up his hands.
Ford slowly relaxed, but he was no less upset by this whole situation as he holstered his gun. His younger counterpart should have known better than to do something like that to what was effectively a wild animal--
Ford blinked and shook himself mentally. No. He could not let himself fall into this trap. Looking like a cryptid did not make the demon a cryptid. It was… not necessarily an act, if the demon was bodily in a dragon-like form, but she was intelligent, and...
Miz was pouting as she shook her long body out and slithered away from Sixer, looking quite annoyed.
Sixer frowned. "I said sorry!" he called after her. But Miz "Hmph!"ed and slithered off into the ocean, leaving him out on the beach and largely alone.
Lee laughed from where he was resting against the side of the boat, only half-working on the rest of his homework, because the other half of his attention had been on his twin and the demon-dragon while doing it. "You should know that you don't touch a girl without asking, Sixer. You're lucky you didn't get slapped!" Or thwapped with that tail of hers.
Sixer sighed. "Why is she so upset? She didn't mind when I was-- petting... her...?"
Sixer trailed off as Bill's face slowly came into view, and he realized that the demon was floating upside-down from above right in front of him.
And he did NOT look pleased.
"NO," said Bill, giving him a glare of doom.
Lee eyed the demon who looked about to do something a heck of a lot worse to his twin if he didn't get the point, post-haste. "--Look, Sixer, if a girl says she don't like it, then she don't like it. Doesn't matter what else she likes, or even if she liked it before. Don't go trying to tell somebody otherwise, if they don't like something. Right?" Lee said at the end, trying to catch the older demon's attention.
"Stop means STOP. No means NO. DON'T try to tell my sister WHAT TO THINK," the older demon said next, getting right up in Sixer's face.
"Yessir," Sixer said next, not even blinking as the demon scrutinized his further with a glare.
"Kid," they heard the older Stan call out from above, "Do I need to come down there and discipline that one for ya?"
Both twins blinked.
"...No," Bill said finally, floating back an inch, then two (while still upside down). The twins breathed sighs of relief, as the demon's frown changed a little. "Not yet," the demon intoned next, which had both twins freezing in place again. "Wait for Miz to come back; see what she says and wants."
And with that, Bill floated upwards, rotating in place, slowly making his way back to the top of the cabin, where the two older twins were still.
Crisis averted (for the moment), Lee sat back and watched the dragon swim around in the ocean, trying to gauge her mood. And the next time he saw her surface, like a larger and more deadly dolphin, she leapt out from the water, a large fish clamped in her jaws…
"Don't piss off a girl, 'specially not when the girl in question can swallow you whole in one bite," Lee told his twin under his breath.
"If she doesn't chew, I would get to see how deep her stomach is…" Sixer mumbled. Lee stared at him. The hell?
"--No. Don't you even dare," Lee deadpanned. Lee watch warily as Miz dragged her kill back to shore (a bit farther away from them than she'd really needed to) and started ripping at it, biting off large chunks. There was a wet sort of chewing sound and it seemed like Miz was more irritated than they thought as she savagely tore another strip of meat off the fish. The fish was completely limp; Lee hoped it was dead (it was), it was just a fish, but watching something being eviscerated like that made him feel... Lee winced. She really was angry.
Sixer slowly approached her as she approached the end of her meal. (...And Stan made his way down off of the boat, knowing the younger version of his twin was probably going to just stick his foot in his mouth over this all over again.) "I really am sorry," Sixer said gently. "I won't do that without asking again." Miz's eye turned to glare at him before she went back to tearing the fish apart.
"Do you even know why I'm mad?" Miz asked as she chewed on a chunk of fish meat, and Stan approached Sixer's side.
Sixer thought about it. "Because I touched you in a way you didn't like?"
"Because you betrayed my trust." Miz hissed. "That hurt. You decided to jam your finger in me without asking, even after I told you I don't like having foreign objects that aren't food inside me."
Sixer winced. "I didn't put my finger in you--" (Lee made a choking sound), "--I was prying at your scales…" Sixer trailed off when Miz, Lee, and Stan gave him identical glares.
"So you were tryin' to tear off a piece of her skin?" Stan said simply. "Without askin' or warning her first. Wow. What a gentleman," Stan drawled out dryly, in pure old-man fashion, and Sixer flushed and looked down at his lap. (Even Ford was staring at his younger self like the kid was crazy. He hadn't heard his younger self, but he'd certainly heard Stan. Had he really not understood what he was doing wrong? Ford was certain that he'd been more cognizant than that in high school! He never would have-- he never...)
(He never would have done that. But this other-him had. And Stan was acting like this all was expected somehow--)
(Ford felt sick.)
Miz didn't say anything, she just went back to taking out her irritation on the fish. ...And that was also a problem -- Stan didn't want her killing an animal every time she got angry. It would set a bad precedent, and get her into bad habits. Killing fish for food was one thing, but killing them because she was mad was something Stan needed to stop right now.
(...and it also reminded Stan of his ma's cat, with one of those much-abused squeaky toys, when she'd gotten pissed off over not enough water in the water bowl. Damn.)
"Hey Miz? Can I talk to you for a sec? Without the others listening in?" Stan asked. Miz nodded as she lifted her tail and waved it around. A little shimmering appeared around them. Stan noticed by now that the shimmer was for their sake, so that they could see when she was doing her magic or weirdness or whatever it was she was doing. Stan sighed as he sat down in the sand with her.
"Kid, you okay?" Stan started out with, looking her over, because first things first. "I mean really?" He didn't want her just shrugging stuff off if she'd actually gotten hurt. By this point, he got that she didn't like rocking the boat when she realized she was doing it, and she'd said herself more than once that she wasn't used to caring all that much about getting hurt herself. Kid was still getting used to thinking of his sister; Stan didn't doubt she was still getting used to the idea of the kid not liking her hurting, either.
(It was probably better that the kid was staying up on deck, on the cabin for this one, but Stan didn't doubt that the kid just might not realize that she might have been hurt and might need him right now.)
Miz's tendrils flared out before slowly relaxing and she sighed. "Not hurt physically. Emotionally, I'm… better than I was before. Still unhappy." She clawed at the sand. "I trusted him to touch me. And then he just--"
Stan winced. "Yeah… Sixer's an idiot," he said lamely, rubbing the back of his neck. "Glad you ain't hurt physically, at least." Emotionally? He remembered the 'massage' thing she'd talked about (she'd trusted someone to touch her physically then, and they'd betrayed her then, too…). "Hate to say it, but you're probably better off with Ford tryin' to pet you than Sixer. Pretty sure he learned better at some point, y'know, later," Stan told her. Then he told her, a little more seriously, "Lee's definitely better, if you can stand the jokes," he told her with a slight smile. "Your brother's the best bet of the bunch."
Miz nodded, still looking upset, biting off another piece of the fish, violently.
Stan waited a beat, then sighed and got on to the next thing. "Kid, I know you're mad. But you shouldn't kill things while you're mad, just because you're mad," Stan told her bluntly.
Miz huffed. "You sound like dad," she almost whined.
Stan gave her a look. "Well, is he wrong?" he asked her. At the look he got from her… "Yeah, you know it's not good to do this." Which was… a thing. Her lizard dad actually talked to her, right. Which was different than the lizard here, that the kid kept complaining about to hell and back, mostly because it apparently never talked to anyone -- except maybe the kid just the one time, when the kid wanted it to talk to him more, if what Stan was picking up from all the kids complaints was to be understood.
Miz sighed, slumping in place. "I'm just… really unhappy with him," she said. "And I kinda needed to tear something apart. I know it's not good, but I'm just so mad." Though it seemed like she wasn't all that mad anymore, Stan thought she looked more weary than anything else.
"Kid, I get that," Stan said to her. "You told him 'stop' by gettin' away from him, you made it real clear that you didn't like what he did without hurting him or anybody else, and when he acted like even more of a jerk, you turned around and walked away. That was good; you did the right thing there," he told her. "It's just the last part that you've still gotta work on a little bit, right?"
Miz nodded sadly. "I know, I'm sorry. Should probably use a pillow or something…" She glanced down at her claws.
"Yeah," Stan agreed. "Like your brother, yeah?" Stan frowned a little. "Hey, talk to me, what's wrong?" Stan asked. Because it was clear that there was something else there that was bothering her.
Miz trailed a claw through the sand unhappily for a bit before she answered. "Why is he such a jerk? Why can't I find a Stanford who isn't a jerk?" she muttered. "What if MY Stanford is a jerk?"
Stan blinked. "Uh, look, my brother ain't a jerk. Not really." Not anymore. "And that younger-him... well…" Stan frowned. "Look, he just don't get people sometimes. Once he starts putting as much effort into people as he does books--"
"He's a jerk," Miz put out there bluntly. "Like, enough so that Carla doesn't feel any guilt for what she did at all. And the other Stanfords I've seen are also jerks. Like Seb's brother was willing to kill Seb, his own triplet! And he even stated that Seb getting thrown out by their father was what he deserved! Like what the heck?! Who talks like that? Like they thought their teenage sibling being thrown out into the streets was what they deserved?!"
Stan felt like he'd just been run over with the Mystery Shack golf cart. Several times. He stared at Miz, because that was a hell of a lot to unpack. Kill his triplet? (Who was this Seb guy, again? Oh right, that guy Miz was with the last time she was here-- That didn't help, really. Guy had looked nothing like them either time--) Then Stan winced at the 'deserved' thing, because that sounded almost like Ford's 'it's better this way' had on the beach, and-- "Wait, hang on, back up. What was that about Carla?" What did his old ex breaking up with him have to do with Ford?
Miz stilled. "She's not a nice girl?" Miz said slowly. "I know you liked her and all but you're too good for her. Now this isn't true in all dimensions, there are some Carlas who are actually really nice, yours just isn't one of them--"
"Don't try to distract me," Stan interrupted. "What. The hell. Does Carla breaking up with me have to do with Ford." Because that had been all about that other guy, not his brother. Hadn't it?
...and Miz looked away. "Am I allowed to talk about this..." she seemed to mutter to herself. "I mean it's not like they'd ever figure it out on their own, dang bitch trashed it to destroy the evidence…" she 'said' quietly.
Stan was confused for a long moment, because what did trashing their relationship have to do with destroying evidence? Let alone Ford? That didn't make any--
...and then Stan took a step back, trying to figure out what the hell she could possibly be talking about…
And Stan finally put it together. And his jaw dropped.
"Are you tellin' me that Carla sabotaged Ford's project?!" Because… what the actual hell?!
Miz wiggled in the sand. "Uwu…"
Stan felt almost dizzy at the thought. His ex had gotten revenge on him through… messing with his brother? But that meant--
"--they did this on purpose. To try and hurt him-- They wanted to hurt the BOTH of you.-- They already hurt Stan, hurting Ford is just them being EXTRA."
Stan groaned into his hands. Because what even? How did… why did… how did that even…
...If this was true, then it was still his fault, because Carla would have left his twin alone if he hadn't...
...hadn't what? This still didn't make one lick of sense! He'd never done anything to Carla that should've had her… plotting revenge to mess with his twin like some two-bit villain in one of those old period dramas, one of those twirling mustache types. He'd never cheated on her, never stood her up, never done anything to her, and then that hippie had come along and-- she'd made it clear that she was breaking up with him for that other guy, that she thought he was a loser by comparison. She'd been real clear about all of that; Stan could still hear her words ringing in his ears. Her 'revenge' had been dumping him for not being good enough for her, apparently.
He glanced up at Miz. He hadn't wanted to know, and the kid had said his sister was confused on things, and would just confuse things if he listened to her. Heck, the kid had wanted to see how Stan would fix this, himself, without any 'help' from his sister. And... Stan was already fixing it. He'd even told them all that finding the saboteur wasn't important.
Because it wasn't important. Because his brother's science fair project--
No. No. He wasn't getting into that right now.
"Miz," Stan said, after taking a deep breath. "What the hell am I missing, here?" He looked over at her. "Ford don't got nothing to do with Carla. And Carla never had anything to do with Ford," he told her. And he looked at her.
Miz looked meek, lying in the sand with her eye staring up at him sadly.
And Stan's jaw firmed. --Hell, no. He wasn't falling for some dumb insinuations here. His brother had not gone behind his back and tried to steal his girl. No way. --If the demon wanted to try and get away with lying to him, she could do it to his face, damnit!
"--What don't I know," Stan intoned out at her. "What am I missing here." And Stan was pretty sure that the soundproofing Miz had put up had blocked out her brother too, because the kid hadn't wanted her to talk about this earlier, and he wasn't getting all up on their case right now.
"...Carla thought you were Ford, back when you first started dating…" Miz said quietly. Stan blinked, stunned, and more than a little caught off guard. Because yeah, when he'd punched that jerk that had been bothering her by the movie theater -- which had started the whole thing off, really -- he'd been wearing his nerd glasses for once and some of his brother's clothes, but… but… oh shit.
...oh shit.
Because Stan's mind was racing about what might have happened, if Carla had thought she was dating Ford, instead of him. And…
Stan paused.
And if Carla had thought he'd been Ford, then... there were a couple things that she'd said when they were first dating that would make a hell of a lot more sense. ...It'd explain a lot of Carla's odd behavior, back when they'd first started out.
But it wouldn't explain all of it. She'd come by the house more than once, later on in, seen the two of them together, and which twin had been the one to leave with her...
...She couldn't have been confused for that long, could she? Carla had been the smartest girl he'd known in school, next to...
Stan frowned.
"...it doesn't happen in every timeline, like, in Seb's dimension, since they were triplets, people were more careful about making sure which of them they were talking to, and Carla knew that the one she was dating was Stan, in fact they stayed together, and she had his kid, though with Stan and Ford trapped behind the portal, she had to raise the kid alone but Seb fixed the portal, and I helped, so they MUST be back by now and…" Miz rambled on, but Stan wasn't really listening by that point, too busy thinking through his memories for all the times Carla had been a little… off, during their dates. How many times she'd called him 'Pines'. When she'd first started calling him 'Stan' or 'Stanley'. How, sometimes, he'd approached her at her locker at school, and she'd seemed confused for a second...
...But sometimes she'd called him 'the great Mr. Pines' with a sparkle in her eye, and sometimes she'd just called him 'Stanley'? She'd switched it up a lot, back and forth. That wasn't...
"Look, it was her fault for mistaking the two of you, you did nothing wrong! She realized it after a while, but--" Miz told Stan vehemently. "--but Sixer's not the best with people so when she went to him, thinking he was you and that they were together and I'm not sure what he did to her, I don't really get it but when I asked Sixer he said he didn't know either…" Miz continued rambling.
Stan held up a hand. "Stop." And Miz went quiet, laying down low in the sand with a soft whine.
Okay. Okay. This was… seriously messed up. This had happened years ago, with him, and… he...
...How had he not noticed this when it had been happening? Hell, had he really been so head-over-heels for her that he'd just been completely blind to--
...Okay, yeah. Yeah, he had been that blind. He'd been head over heels for her, and he'd known it. But if she'd just said something--
It still didn't make sense to him. He wasn't even sure if he wanted to think about it.
...But he might have to, with the twins here. If she'd broken up with him, and that hadn't been enough, and she'd ruined Sixer's chances at a good college and gotten him kicked out of the house, and...
...she hadn't done anything else to him or Ford, because Ford had gotten into a fancy college still and gotten to do what he wanted with all that grant money, and he'd been out on his ear and out of town. That had been enough, if Miz was right -- which Stan wasn't all that sure about still.
But the twins here weren't completely broke and starving and separated. And if separate and separated was what she'd been going for--
...Sixer had been the one kicked outta the house this time. And all things being equal, if Stan hadn't shown up that night and banged the table with Ford's project on it… Ford would've been the one getting kicked out, too.
Carla couldn't have known that Ford would've been the one kicked out, if she'd really gone and sabotaged his project somehow… could she?
Stan shook his head. --Hell. None of this mattered. Carla's fault or not, Stan still would have taken the fall for Ford if anyone had asked him. Maybe Carla had sabotaged the project, and maybe she hadn't; maybe it was still Stan's fault a bit, and maybe it wasn't, but the one thing Stan did know was that--
"--We are not bringing this up with Ford. Ever. You hear me?" Stan told her. The very last thing he needed right now was Ford feeling… hell, Stan didn't even know what Ford would do anymore. Ford wasn't acting like his usual self, anymore, and after last night...
...Ford hadn't really talked to Stan about anything that had happened with him and Bill, but he'd… seemed to not need to right then. He'd been quiet, but… he'd seemed... kind of okay. But Ford had actually let Stan hug him. Again. --And not some dumb one-armed stuff, neither. This had been some actual, y'know, just sit next to each other and breathe and be there and...
This hadn't been like in the kitchen when Ford had broken down crying while he'd been trying to warn him about Bill, or any single one of those times that Mabel had been in the middle of things and 'prescribing' them hugs for Stan to use as a ready excuse.
This time, Ford hadn't been feeling bad, or guilty, when he'd done it. When he'd hugged him. --When Ford had hugged him. Not Stan trying to get away with it. The other way around.
It wasn't like they'd been sitting there, watching those old reel tapes of home movies, with Ford tryin' to help Stan get his memories back. It wasn't like Stan tossing an arm over his shoulder 'in camaraderie' right after they'd both finished punching a sea monster in the face, and Ford doing it back, not thinking anything of it, while Stan was basically sneaking it in there as a half-a-hug while his brother wasn't really paying attention or any the wiser...
Ford had started shrugging him off in high school. He'd only ever let him hug him anymore when he was feeling absolutely awful. And this time, Ford had hugged him, without anybody pushing him. And at the time, Stan had thought… (Well. How stupid was he, huh.) So what that really meant was…
--Stan didn't want to risk his brother feeling even worse about what was going on. Not now. Not ever. Stan wasn't all that mad about it anymore, not really. Not anymore, not now, not after he'd had a chance to think about it all over again, without the whole mess feeling like it wanted to split his heart and his chest wide open on him again...
Stan shook his head. "I mean it. Don't tell Ford about this. Ever. Okay? --You hear me," he said, as he stared the dragon-lady down until she nodded, her large singular eye looking a little sheepish.
"I probably shouldn't have told you, but I really wanted to get it off my chest…" she admitted quietly.
Yeah, Stan was getting the feeling that Miz liked to share information that she knew. …Especially when it was gonna be a problem for the person who was hearing it. Stan pinched the bridge of his nose, then rubbed his fingers, because he swore, these demons...
Miz twitched. "Isn't it better to know the truth? Than to be ignorant, though?" she asked him quietly.
"Kid. That ain't the problem," he told her harshly. "Did I really need to know this right now," he said next, dropping his hand and giving her a long stare.
Miz's tendrils drooped. "I never know what a good time is for telling people things." She sounded rather upset at herself for that.
...and the kid's thing here and now was all about the difference between sharing and not-sharing info. So that made two of 'em. Stan looked away. He really shouldn't be surprised. He'd been askin' after a lot of other stuff, too. Not like this demon seemed to differentiate between what she told to anybody about anything. Didn't seem to understand boundaries...
"Yeah, well, I ain't got the best track record for timing, either, I guess," Stan admitted, feeling lousy, as he thought of how Mabel and Dipper had nearly hit that button. How Mabel had started crying over-- They'd nearly shut down the portal, all because he couldn't have talked to them two minutes sooner about stuff earlier on Family Day. Before those stupid agents had arrested him, ugh.
Stan shook himself, then looked down at Miz. "I feel better knowing, than not." Screw the kid's 'you're not an actor' shit -- not knowing shit had always bit him worse than knowing it, almost every single time. And yeah, sometimes it sure made things a hell of a lot harder in the meantime. (Like working with somebody who you knew was planning on killing you after the job was done, but still trying to go on smiling and laughing and cracking jokes just like you always did…) But he'd still rather know than not. (Because the times when he hadn't known that, and when, he'd needed to cut and run, had been--) "--Just make sure you, y'know, filter that shit away from everybody else. Not like everyone can handle that stuff; we've talked about that," about Ford, and about the kids...
Miz nodded slowly. "Ok, I'm still figuring out what's right or wrong to talk about…" ...most of the stuff seemed perfectly FINE to her. "So… learn what's bad to talk about… and don't kill things when I get mad?" Miz asked.
Stan nodded. "If you get mad, just try screaming into a pillow or something. Or clawing and biting at that, if you really need to. The kid does that."
Miz wiggled. "I'll try. But I think Sixer needs a talk about boundaries too!"
Yeah… that was a problem. Stan sighed and nodded. At least his brother had outgrown this problem once he'd gotten older. He sure didn't have that problem, now. But this teenaged Ford was still… "I'll have a talk with him." Stan promised Miz. She nodded.
Well, now that this whole mess was mostly settled… kind of…
Stan gestured at the filter barrier again, and… "Okay, so, you all have your plan for tomorrow set up?" Stan turned around and asked the younger twins, even as Miz flicked her tail and the that shimmer in the air appeared around them again before dissipating, signaling the end of her 'silence' effect.
"Well, they've got nets here on the boat." Miz sat up. "With my own protections, I won't feel the weight of them, so I wouldn't freak out if I was trapped by one." She looked over at the kids. "And if you have any other ideas we're open to them."
Stan eyed her. "Well, I ain't so sure about not feeling the weight of something being a good idea," like Lee or Sixer, if they tried to tackle her, because that sounded like a recipe for somebody accidentally getting launched into the stratosphere, or otherwise flicked into the sea, "But if you're askin', I do, in fact, have a few ideas for ya…"
He glanced around at the three of them with a smile.
"Why don't you tell me what this plan of yours is, that you actually came up with this time, first," Stan began, settling in for the long haul.
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