Bab 135: -Don't know when- Part 1
(((((((((((((((((((((((((((Warning for mentions of child abuse.))))))))))))))))))))))))))))(but then again, if you came this far into this fic, you probably don't care lol)
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Ford glared down at Miz during dinner, not completely hostile but certainly nothing like comfortable with the way she was staring at him, either.
"What?" he said finally. That demon dragon had been sneaking glances at him all throughout dinner.
Miz took a deep breath and frowned before shaking her head. "I'm sorry. For saying mean things that hurt your feelings that first night," she blurted out. "It was really rude of me to do so, and I didn't realize you would be so upset by it. So, I'm sorry. I'm also sorry that you got upset during the DDNMD game."
"Hurt my--?!" Ford sputtered. Was the demon being serious? That was what she thought the problem was?! Miz shuffled her feet against the ground. "Yeah. I said some mean things about you and your character and also, you're not a freak. You're a flawed human being just like everyone else," she said quietly. Ford clenched his teeth. She'd called him a freak at some point?
"Oh, he is a freak," Bill said lazily, and Ford looked up and gave him a glare.
"Bill," Stan said, none too happy with the kid at the moment. Bill looked over at him. "Don't call my brother a freak," Stan told him.
"YEAH!" chimed in Mabel, while Dipper looked a little worried and tugged down on his hat. Was another argument going to start?
"Why not?" Bill asked, blinking. "He is one." It left Stan feeling frustrated and angry, because Bill wasn't saying it like he was making fun of his brother; he'd said it like he'd say, 'that's a cup of tea.' (And Stan wasn't sure how to approach this right then, because if he told Bill to define 'freak' and what the kid said was worse...)
"Actually, polydactylism isn't all that uncommon, there's like… a whole village of humans where everyone has six fingers…" Miz pointed out (to Dipper's surprise, was Miz actually trying to… help?).
"Having a fully-formed, fully-functional sixth finger is uncommon for humans in this dimension," Bill told her, with an eye roll at having to correct her. "What's your point?"
"Well, he's built different, but that doesn't make him a freak. All humans have small little mutations here and there." Miz shrugged. "Like, my pinky toenails grow sideways. I got that from my human mom, who got it from her mom…" (Stan had been about to stop this conversation, but when Miz had actually kind of defended Ford, almost properly…)
"HA!" said Bill, finally 'getting it' as far as he was concerned. "--You mean the human definition of 'freak'!" He grinned a grin that Stan really did not like, and--
"Yeah, no--" Stan was pulling the plug on this, right now. "--we're gonna stop right there," Stan said. "Don't wanna know the demon definition for that one. --Bill, Ford likes being called a 'freak' about as much as you like being called 'stupid' in any language. And I know you know that. So keep it under your hat." Bill eyed him, but he kept his mouth shut and didn't continue from where he'd left off.
(Ford was doing deep breathing and managed not to let it get to him. ...or at least not completely lose his temper.)
"Are you actually being serious right now," Ford said flatly to Miz. At this point, he felt thoroughly offended. ('Pinky toenails growing sideways.' Truly. Who was she trying to fool, or impress, here?! …Perhaps Bill, somehow?)
"Yeah, I want to apologize. I'm sorry for hurting you that first night. I don't know everything exactly that I said that hurt you. Only that most of it did, and I wanted to apologize for it." Miz looked up and huffed out a breath. "Can you explain it to me? So I can apologize better for the parts I don't get? The only part I could understand was that my existence upset you, and that I hurt your feelings when I called you stupid and ah, other things..." Miz winced.
Having a demon apologize for hurting his feelings, without even knowing what she did wrong, made Ford unsure if he wanted to scream at her or laugh hysterically. The entire concept was absurd. He glared down at her, as Miz continued to look confused (and a little frustrated). "--How can you possibly be 'sorry' if you don't even know what you did wrong?" Ford demanded out of her, continuing to scowl down at her.
Miz sighed. "I worked in retail and food service as a human, apologizing to people even when I didn't know what I did wrong was pretty much the FIRST thing I had to learn to do!" because of that 'the customer is always right' bullshit. "But more than that, I'm apologizing because you got upset. Which means I hurt you. And I feel bad that I did, and I want to avoid doing so again, but to do that I need to know what it was that I did wrong." That seemed like a perfectly reasonable thing to want to do. "I understand some stuff that upset people, but I don't always catch them all."
Ford was not feeling at all inclined to play this demon's game. He also didn't feel very happy when Stan spoke up and said, "Look, Ford don't like the idea of demons in general, yeah? Or being called names and junk. Or getting messed with. --Take your pick."
Miz grumbled quietly, "As if I CHOSE to be a demon, I didn't really get a say in that…"
"--You choose how you act!" Ford said. "And if there truly are different kinds of demons, then you certainly aren't going about trying to differentiate yourself from any of the rest of them with your constant and repetitive displays of demon-standard behavior!"
"So what? What should I behave like? What should I ACT like? You want me to be like what you thought YOUR Jessie was like instead? All 'ooh~ look at me~ I'm all holier than thou~' or something? That's not who I am!" Miz twitched in place at what little she'd managed to See about the Oracle in this world. A demon who went around acting like some divine creature? Well, to each their own, whatever. It made Miz grateful for her own Jessie.
Ford shuddered slightly at her unfair (and untrue) characterization of the Oracle, as he shoved himself to his feet in a rush and slammed a fist down into the table in his anger. "--There are more than two choices, between an actual saint and a monstrous demon!" he glared at her, and practically snarled out, "At least Stanley is trying to have Bill try to act less than horrible from moment to moment!" (Bill glanced over at him at that, blinking. He hadn't thought that Stanford had noticed that he'd been regulating his behavioral output; that Stanford certainly hadn't seemed to notice or care before, as far as Bill had been able to tell…)
"Jessie ain't a saint. And I'm not 100% a dick! I'm just… me." Miz actually sounded a little hurt.
(Mabel frowned. Miz wasn't really as bad as Bill most of the time; she was nice until Grunkle Ford said or did something to set her off. Grunkle Ford would get angry about something, and then Miz would say something worse, and then... That was the problem actually -- Grunkle Ford and Miz always managed to make each other angry, so neither of them got to see each other when they were being nice. And it was like neither of them could back down, or just didn't want to…)
(Bill was worse, absolutely, but Grunkle Stan could tell him to stop and he'd stop, now. But Miz… she was scary in different ways, and not as often as Bill. It was really hard to remember that she wasn't normal, sometimes -- even when she had a tail and stuff. Dipper was a lot better at treating her like a 'cryptid' all the time…)
Ford firmed his jaw, not caring at the demon's little play-act at 'being hurt' by his words -- the truth, really. He managed to straighten his posture a bit, pulling back his fist from the table to firmly resituate his glasses, and said rather coldly: "Yes, well, 'just you' has managed to… let's see, think that feeding on people's emotions and not doing anything about it for six hundred billion years was just fine; that verbally attacking me on a regular basis when all you know about me comes from Bill, who is an incredibly biased source and an invariant liar, is just fine; that lying repeatedly about who and what you are to everyone around you is just fine," Ford gritted out, "While nearly every third topic of conversation that comes out of your mouth is something that at least one or two of us simply cannot listen to without covering our ears--! Do I need continue?"
"Because I'm stupid!" Miz not-quite wailed out at him. "I get mad and I can't think and I'm d-dumb and just because I can See things doesn't mean I can UNDERSTAND them! And pretending to be something else is the only way I can get away from having to be BILL CIPHER all the time and--" her voice cracked as she shook. "--and I don't know how else to be! No one's ever told me how I'm supposed to be!" (The younger twins glanced at each other, while Bill clenched his jaw at hearing this. With a forced casualness, Bill flicked the ebook he'd had open on his phone closed, and slowly put the phone down and away into a pocket.) "Ax just told me I had to be his opposite but I don't even know what I'm supposed to do! And so WHAT if I pretend to be something else?! It's the only way I can actually go around and not be HATED just for BEING A TRIANGLE! I TRIED to be good! I did! It never worked! Like I would see some people who were starving because their harvest weren't growing, so I made their crops grow, and they claimed I had CURSED their lands! Then I pretended to be a dragon and did the EXACT SAME thing to make their crops grow and they started WORSHIPING me as their god!" Miz was breathing heavily, trying to hold back tears. "And that wasn't a one time thing! So what the heck am I supposed to take away from that?!"
Miz's words just made Ford even angrier than before, because to him, stupidity was hardly the issue here, and (as far as he was concerned) neither was her being a triangle. "Being good, doing the right thing, and acting humanely should not be predicated on what you think people think of you, how other people treat you, or what they say!" Ford said angrily to Miz. (Knowing her, Ford assumed that the "exact same thing" had likely been anything but... assuming she wasn't just lying about that outright. And why would a Bill Cipher of any stripe feel compelled to be the opposite of the Axolotl, simply because the Axolotl told them to do so. Knowing Bill, he would likely do rather the opposite of that! Which could only mean that this demon was, of course, lying about it.)
"Did you or did you not used to be human?!?" Ford demanded out of her next. "Because one would think that you ought to have some appropriate metric of common decency from that time in your life!"
"What little I can remember from my human life is just…" Miz looked down in frustration. How did one explain that they learned what they knew about interacting with people was learned through media and anime and the few close friends and siblings she had? And even then she never knew-- "I didn't know how to be even back then… not unless people told me!" she admitted. Because even as a human she had been… weird. Wrong in some way. And she could never properly articulate why. (Stan glanced over at her; from some of the stuff she'd said before, he wasn't surprised. Dipper and Mabel exchanged a look.) "I just had a behavioral therapist when I was in elementary school telling me what I was supposed to be like but that was so long ago and--"
"--You are not stupid," Bill told his little sister. "And no-one SHOULD tell you how you're 'supposed' to be," Bill said slowly as he addressed the earlier problem as-orated by her, flicking his eyes over to Ford. (Ford stared back at him firmly. That had Dipper and Mabel exchanging another look.) "You can act however you like! And if Stanford here is wanting you to conform to 'humane human behavior'," Bill said almost ponderously, "Then he should be VERY CAREFUL what he wishes for," Bill ended with some weight. He tilted his head at Ford. "There are more than a few human 'civilizations' that practice bloodsport and torture on a regular basis--"
"--Not anymore!" Ford protested strongly.
"--and slavery NOW, and eating dead people NOW, and committing mass genocide NOW, and--"
"--That isn't considered normal behavior anywhere, Bill!" Ford protested, cutting Bill off.
"It is in some places!" Bill countered. "And it is HUMAN behavior," Bill shot back quite pointedly. "'Normal' is a human delusion!"
"I did not say she needed to conform to anything in the range of 'normal human behavior', however you wish to define it," Ford snapped back. "I was talking about common decency--" of which, as far as Ford was concerned, the greater part of humanity was an example--
"--'Decency' isn't common," Bill began, looking annoyed, "It's relative at best--"
("Didn't Miz say that the president was a Nazi, back when she was human?" Mabel asked Dipper under her breath. The boy twitched. If the president from her dimension had been a Nazi-- then… what kind of people lived in her country? What had it been like there? Maybe 'decency' really wasn't common where she came from…)
"Ford -- Bill -- stop!" Stan snapped out (not about to let those two try to get into what might pass for a moral debate between them -- there was no way in hell Ford was gonna win one of those with the kid right now, and the kid not being able to convince Ford to his own way of screwed-up thinking would just piss the demon off), and -- thank somebody -- they both quieted down for the moment, even if they were still glaring daggers at each other.
Miz rubbed at her face. "Eve-even as a human, I would keep upsetting people and I apologized all the time but I wouldn't know why they were upset until they TOLD me… sometimes I understood and sometimes I just couldn't!" She didn't like hurting people's feelings by accident, or on purpose most of the time either, but she couldn't FIX this until she knew what was wrong! Seeing that Ford wasn't going to explain what she did wrong so she would be able to apologize and avoid doing that thing that hurt him again in the future, Miz instead suggested, quietly, meekly, "Would hitting me make you feel better?" Ford stared at her as if she was out of her mind.
Bill reached over and ruffled Miz's hair roughly. "--No," he said firmly.
She whined, "I wasn't gonna let him hit me hard-- I have shields-- it wouldn't hurt either of us-- I just wanted to know if that would make him feel better…"
Bill grimaced (and got to his feet for more leverage) and ruffled her hair harder, his tone becoming more scolding. "NO. --You DO NOT ask people if attempting to hurt you will make them 'feel better'. YOU DO NOT INVITE ATTACKS UPON YOUR PERSON. EVER"
Miz whined while Ford wondered what in the Axolotl's name this little play was supposed to accomplish. Who did she think she was fooling, here? (As far as he was concerned, she'd just gotten done contradicting herself there. First, she'd said she wanted to be punished for making him 'feel bad' so that he would 'feel better', then offered to let him hit her to make him feel better, then said that she would use her shield so she would not let him hit her even if that would make him feel better. Therefore, she didn't actually care how he felt, and wouldn't go along with any punishment she thought might be devised to do such a thing. Q.E.D.)
(...Except Bill himself seemed to be falling for it somehow. What could that possibly--? And then Ford went pale. ...And then shook himself. No, this demon-girl was not one of those 'master manipulators' Stan was worried about getting their hands on Bill. That was ludicrous. --Bill wouldn't fall for it anyway. This was just some sort of demonic play at sympathy from the both of them, clearly, with his brother and the niblings as their audience…)
Stan, for his part, groaned. Damn dragon kid just really didn't get it. Hell, even the kid got it. (Well, of course the triangle demon got it…)
"But isn't that what he wants? Him and Dipper?" Miz asked her brother. "They don't think we're being punished enough for hurting Ford, and for everything I did to them? So if he gets to hit me, he'll feel like I've been punished and would feel better?" She sounded confused.
"--Miz, stop," Stan said, as Bill began to look even more irritated in the extreme. Miz immediately closed her mouth at hearing Stan tell her to stop. Stan rubbed a hand across his face.
"Kid, physical violence don't do a damn thing to fix anything like this," Stan told her, and they all knew it. Even... "Listen to your 'big brother' on this one, yeah? Don't ever go asking anyone to hit you, for any reason." (Ford could not believe that his brother was actually humoring her.) And as far as Stan was concerned, Miz was lucky she was asking them and not that little shit Gideon. Damn, that would be a disaster and a half…
"I do penalties," Stan told her. "You learn from your mistakes -- why you shouldn't do stupid junk -- and maybe get some practice in at not doing it again. Annoying, maybe. But no hitting, and no hurting. Period." Stan told her. He'd put up with enough of that crap for a lifetime himself; it had never stopped him, only made him want to break shit, or just get angry at the person who did it to him. Stan didn't even bother to try and touch upon how Bill had said he wanted to take on her penalties for her; that would just be like waving a red flag in front of his brother.
"I can do penalties… if that would…" Miz trailed off meekly. Bill did not look happy at her pronouncement. He ruffled her hair again, angry that she seemed to blame herself for that idiot Stanford breaking HIMSELF.
"It isn't you," Bill told her. "It is a stupid thing inside that idiot Stanford's head. --Pine Tree and Shooting Star and Stanley don't have a problem with 'you existing' or being who and what you are!" Bill told her. "Other people DECIDING to get upset does not mean it is 'your fault' or something YOU should fix!" Bill sounded very pissed off at the very idea of her thinking that the contrary might be true.
"I can clean the Shack?" Miz offered. Bill ruffled her hair again ("Nya!"). Stan really needed to talk to everyone about this. The kids, the demon kids, and his brother. "I don't mind cleaning?" Miz was whining as she tried raised her hands to try and protect her hair from any more mussing. "It would be fine to do some chores? It wouldn't be difficult!"
"I just told you, kid. That ain't the point of a penalty. Just doing chores or cleaning stuff around the Shack has nothing to do with you learning better how not to do what happened between you and my brother, again." Stan sighed.
Ford gave Stan a long look. Ford felt a little upset that this display was… still ongoing. It was disturbing to watch Bill attempt to interact with the smaller demon in a way that was almost… familial. Watching the better liar of the two whine and try to fix her hair as Bill ruffled it was distinctly off-putting as well. Ford still didn't understand what her game was, or why Bill would be falling for it. (Bill wasn't that good a liar; Ford could (still) tell when he was trying to lie. And so, Ford was fairly certain that what it seemed Bill was doing, was what Bill was actually doing.)
Miz looked over with a frustrated frown, "Ford wants me dead just for existing as who and what I am. I think hitting would be a better alternative in terms of possible solutions for-- eep!" she squeaked when Bill ruffled her hair in a penalizing way again.
"STOP TALKING ABOUT THE HITTING," Bill demanded, doubling-down on the penalizing hair-mussing. "HOW MANY TIMES DO I HAVE TO SAY IT?!" Miz whined in surrender, her hair in disarray.
Dipper was frowning at Miz. "...Do you want to be hit?" Dipper asked her. He still wasn't sure how Bill felt about pain and bruises; Bill had seemed delighted by it back when he had been puppeting Dipper's body, but he didn't seem to go out of his way to chase after or inflict pain on himself when his own human-ish body got hurt nowadays. But that didn't mean Miz was the same way. She hadn't seemed to try to hurt herself before, but did she enjoy pain? Or was it something else?
Said dragon-demon looked down. "I don't WANT to be hit, but he's mad and I don't know how to make him not mad. And generally if I did something bad, I get hit, that settles things and all is forgiven…" (Bill clenched his jaw again, because why was the hitting talk not stopping?!)
"But Bill doesn't hit you… does he?" Mabel said, looking over at him. Bill looked absolutely taken aback at the notion, eyes going wide enough that the whites of his eyes were showing as he rocked back on his heels and abruptly pulled his hands back away from her head and hair. (Ford stared. He'd never seen Bill react to anything that way before, let alone the idea of hurting someone, demon or otherwise...)
"Of course brother doesn't hit me!" Miz defended him. "Ford asked for human things! I'm talking about human things! Back when I was a human child, whenever I did something bad, I got hit. And--"
"--Stop," Stan said immediately, leaning forward, but Dipper and Mabel already looked ill.
They were all staring at her. (Bill was straight up white as a sheet. ...Partially because he was internally equating 'her being hit so long ago' with what would have happened if that had happened to a young triangle from his own decaying dimension so long ago -- sudden and immediate death.) Stan took a deep breath. Really. The more he learned about this dragon-lady's past…
"There ain't gonna be any hitting," Stan repeated. (Bill's hands were twitching.)
"But Ford and I are not part of the agreement, he said so himself, so…" Miz sounded legitimately confused. Ford stared at her."That doesn't matter. Don't argue with me on this," said Stan, as Bill began to look irritated all over again, his torso shifting side-to-side in that sort of fluid-looking floating-bobbing motion.
Miz shivered and nodded, looking down at her feet. "I--" she started to say quietly, then let out an 'eep--'
--as Bill began to muss up Miz's hair AGAIN. "WHY ISN'T THIS WORKING!!" Bill said with a level of desperate frustration that Stan recognized, as Bill kept mussing up Miz's hair. "She keeps doing the thing!" Bill said in shrill (hell, almost panicked) tones. Miz whined as she tried to protect her poor hair from the mussing.
Right. Stan took that as his cue. "Kid," Stan said, and he knew he was going out on a limb on this one, but the kid was getting that desperate-- "You want me to step in, here?"
"Ye--" The kid's face went through several quick expressions, then, "--es, maybe, what are you wanting to do," the kid ended on, with something like a great deal more suspicion and reserve.
It didn't escape Stan's notice that the kid had almost written him a blank check, there. Stan took a deep breath (even as Ford stared incredulously, having noticed the same thing). "Give her a penalty -- or something like it," he added without stopping. "--She needs to learn not to do that. Yeah?"
The kid's expressions shifted a few more times as Stan watched. It settled on frustrated and grim. "I get a veto. She gets to stop whenever she wants. --You don't enforce it, she does," the kid said, revising it at the end.
Stan eyed him. "Idea first, then we'll talk enforcement." The kid paused, then gave him a nod, and Stan turned to the kid's younger sister and thought for a moment, as she looked on at him, wide-eyed and blinking. He needed something that she'd want to avoid as a consequence, so she'd 'stop doing the thing'. Like putting nasty-tasting stuff on a toddler's thumb, to get them to stop sucking it. And… heh. Yeah, okay. That would probably work.
"Miz," Stan said authoritatively. "If you say the word 'hitting' or 'hit' or whatever again, at all when you're with any of us," because Stan felt like that was definitely gonna be a thing; he wouldn't be able to 'remind' her of stuff anywhere else, and the kid might not be able to either… so trying to get her to enforce this on herself. Stan frowned. "No, scratch that." He needed to come at this… to say it a little differently. "Any time you're gonna say the word 'hit' or 'hitting' or anything like that..," yeah, that was better, catching it early before she actually said it, "Say the name of a food you don't like instead, and think about what it tastes or smells like for a good five seconds." Stan figured that would be a fairly bad and pretty effective 'aversion therapy' thing, since the human-demon was big on food so much.
Miz made an upset face. "Ew… like… durians? Ew…" Those were so gross and she never understood why her parents liked them so much.
"Yeah. Sure. Like those." Stan had no idea what those were. "Plus at least three or four other things you don't like the taste of, like peppers. Switch it up between them." He figured if she had to change it up sometimes, that she couldn't get used to it enough to be able to handle it, so it'd keep on being just as yuck for her. Stan glanced over at the kid. "--There any way to get her to do that even when she's not realizing she's about to say it?" he asked Bill, because Miz really seemed to be saying it without realizing it, almost. "Something automatic?"
"...She could curse herself. --Mildly. Non-permanent. Breakable." Bill said, after a beat. He didn't want her stuck in a bad situation where she had a spell on herself she couldn't remove.
Miz shuddered. "So… if I do that… is that… good?" she asked.
"It'll help you learn not to say the word I just told you you shouldn't say," Stan corrected her, letting out a breath at Bill being onboard for this; kid had said he'd take her penalties for her, and the kid didn't change his mind often. (He'd tried to make it something like halfway, to give the kid an 'out', but... this one was really inching up to one of the kid's own lines, whether the kid wanted to acknowledge it or not.) "Which you shouldn't be using, because every time that word comes outta your mouth, you're practically begging somebody to take advantage of you in a bad way." (...and really freaking out her brother, here. --And for good reason.) How the hell had she even survived this long, pulling shit like that? "--You need to learn not to do that. The kid's right about that. And the kid reminding you and mussing your hair clearly ain't enough. So you need some other kinda not-so-great reminder."
The kid eyed Stan for a long moment, thinking and assessing (yeah, of course the kid was), then the kid turned to Miz and said to his sister: "Do it."
Miz nodded slowly and raised her hand to begin weaving the Curse within the limitations of the magic-cancelling cuffs and the barrier, a mild one that could be broken at any time, this would be a Reminder, that… would this help to prove that she really WAS trying to do better? She set the parameters, the Input and Output variables and then glanced down at her hand and decided to make a physical marker for the Curse to latch onto, just so she wouldn't forget it was there, or get stuck with it by forgetting that it was there.
Ford stared at her as she raised her hand, palm-down towards the floor. (No. This wasn't… The 'human'-demon wasn't actually going to--)
A small image appeared on the back of Miz's hand, that of a mouth with an X over it. She shivered at the feeling of the Curse settling over her.
(Ford stared down at her hand, feeling cold. 'A pretty bit of theater,' he thought to himself, not believing for one second that the demon would actually do such a thing to herself for no reason.)
To test if it was working, Miz opened her mouth, let out a stunted cry of "Durian?" paused and then ran off to gag over the sink. "Uuuugh…. It's...w-working…." she shuddered, dry heaving.
"Yeah? Good," Stan said, watching this neutrally. "So don't do the thing. Got it?" Miz nodded, looking uncomfortable. Bill watched this. He did not look very happy at the moment, with Stan, Miz, or life in general.
Ford just stared incredulously. Those were real gags, as if she was about to throw up but was only holding back through sheer force of will. She even had a few tears forming in her eyes, and... this was a very elaborate trick. It had to be a trick. There was no way she would have Cursed herself just because Stanley had asked her to… or because Bill had… had… had Bill...?
Ford looked over at Bill. The demon was rocking from side to side on his feet, arms crossed and hands fisted under them, looking hugely uncomfortable. (...No. Bill hadn't somehow tricked her into doing this to herself for his own laughing amusement. No, instead he seemed...)
It was about this point that it occurred to Ford that he'd never really seen Bill acting in a non-adversarial way with another demon, in what Bill had classified as a non-adversarial relationship, before Miz. ...Frankly, Ford hadn't thought such a thing was possible between demons, an actual normal non-adversarial relationship. Because yes, Bill had his Henchmaniacs, and from what little Ford had seen during Weirdmageddon in the Fearamid (...and at other times, on the other side of the portal...), somehow Bill had managed to keep his demon crew completely in line with him, and unwilling to challenge him, but--
...but…
...and it was at that point that Ford realized that, as far as he knew, actually, none of Bill's Henchmaniacs had ever challenged Bill Cipher -- not even for the fun of it. And as far as he was aware, all of Bill's Henchmaniacs had been working for Bill for longer than anyone's living memory -- and there were galactic civilizations that had member-species within them with a lifespan of several millennia or more. That was an outlier in an otherwise very consistent data set: demons just didn't get along. Demons weren't afraid of death; they should have attacked Bill to try and kill him at some point just for the hell of it, within years of associating with him at most, not even a decade or two.
So what could be a possible explanation for such an unheard-of and completely off-the-norm occurrence?
(...Was it possible that Bill was skilled at a very particular subset of lying? A sort of lying predicated by his actions, rather than by his words? But that didn't make any sense to Ford, either. It certainly didn't explain any other demon's response to Bill, and his possible lying behavior...)
Miz grabbed a cup of juice to drink and wash out the horrid taste she just experienced. It wasn't real, it was mental, but having some sweet lemonade made her feel much better. "How long do I have to keep this active?" she asked Stan as she sipped her drink.
Stan grunted. "Until you stop doin' it."
Miz sighed, not fully understanding why (if you're bad, you get hurt, punished) but nodding anyway. Well, some people did get upset by self-harm… and this was almost, sort of self-harm? She didn't see the issue… it wasn't like she had asked any random person to hurt her. She'd just asked Ford because he'd seemed like the type who would want her or Bill to suffer in order to feel better about himself (especially since he seemed to believe that demons like them probably deserved it), and she could take a little pain if that might help him ease off the stress inside him. Besides, she wouldn't have actually let herself get hi-attacked in a way that would seriously damage her vessel, a cushioning spell would deal with that, protect her vessel while Ford still got the satisfaction of dealing out punishments, and...
...yeah okay, she could sort of see the problem with that… and Zyun-Kei probably wouldn't like it either… ah… that was the problem. Miz's eyes widened in understanding as she glanced up at Bill.
"I'm sorry," she said, finally getting why he was so upset about this. (Stan raised an eyebrow. Looked like she finally understood. He'd been watching the way her expression changed as she thought about why this was a penalty. Good to know she was able to understand once she actually stopped to think about it.)
Bill breathed in slowly before nodding. "Don't do that again," he said simply.
Miz winced. "I might forget. I forget a lot of stuff. Well, I forget to remember it all the time."
"Automatic curse, prior to verbalization," Bill pointed out, literally pointing at her hand.
She rubbed her hand, over the Curse mark. "I guess I need to wear this for a while."
Bill pulled a face. "Yes." He didn't sound happy about it.
Mabel and Dipper were still a little pale from all this. Because... Miz had gotten hit as a human, enough times that she thought that was normal. --It had to be something she thought was normal for humans, because Great-Uncle Ford had told Miz to think about what she did as a human, and she'd almost seemed to think that getting hit was okay, and would 'solve' things. (Seriously, what the heck?)
Yeah, it kind of made a sick sort of sense that, if Miz really thought that, that would be why Miz might think she should ask if that meant Great-Uncle Ford should hit her. So Dipper understood why she'd asked, kind of. But it was still wrong and she shouldn't have asked, and she should have known that!
Mabel sighed. She found himself a little worried about Miz now. Miz was a demon, who had used to be human. But the more she heard about Miz's life as a human, the more it sounded like she...
...like she hadn't known how to be 'normal' even back then. Heck, she'd even said that, right? --But that should be okay! Being unique and different was okay! ...Except she'd said that she'd gone to a behavioral therapist, who'd apparently told her how she was supposed to be?! What the heck?? The Mabel train was not on-board for that one!
And then she'd ended up a triangle demon somehow with a bunch of demons for friends, which would probably screw anybody up, but she could do better now! And if she didn't remember what human behavior was supposed to be like anymore, then she could learn it all over again now! ...Kind of like how Grunkle Stan was trying to teach Bill how to not be such a jerk to everybody, maybe? But outright having someone tell her how she was supposed to be? That was just plain wrong! …Right?
...And now Mabel's thought process went somewhere else. But she didn't want to ask. Because Miz would tell her. And Mabel wasn't sure she wanted to know.
Who could have hit Miz... that could make her think getting hit was normal? And why hadn't her parents told her otherwise...
Mabel took a deep breath before shoving her chair out from the table and stepping down, to stand up. "Hey Miz, can you teach me how to fold paper animals?" she asked, trying to change the subject to something a little happier. She saw Miz brighten a little, though the edges of her expression were still a little sober. --Still, it was something!
Miz nodded, accepting this 'distraction'. "Okay. I can start you off with something easy. Like a crane. Or a narwhal!" Mabel grinned at this -- she liked sea creatures!
"...How is a narwhal supposed to be easy?" Dipper said, as he watched as Mabel took Miz's hand (which was trembling a little) and Miz stood up, to start walking off to go upstairs where most of Mabel's art supplies were. They moved off, and Bill stood up to follow, still looking uncomfortable, as Dipper stood up, too. Bill didn't hesitate in following, but Dipper glanced at his Grunkle and Great-Uncle before doing so -- not wanting to leave Mabel alone with both demons, even if he was actually pretty sure that Miz would never hurt Mabel (purposely at least) and Bill would regret it pretty much immediately if he tried (both Great-Uncle Ford and Grunkle Stan would see to that).
"--One sec, Miz," Stan called out to her. (...Because he figured he'd better damn well make sure of something pretty damn important first, after what they'd all just been talking about here. Just in case.) They all stopped right at the base of the stairs and turned back towards him, human and demon kids both.
"Miz, do you think that hitting Dipper or Mabel or Bill is an okay 'punishment' or 'penalty' for them doing something that you don't like?" Stan asked her almost leadingly.
"--No!!" was Miz's immediate and shocked response. Stan nodded.
"Good, because it isn't," said Stan. Then he told her, "It's not an okay 'penalty' or 'punishment' for you, either." He left it at that for now; he didn't feel like he needed to get into the details of that with her just yet, if at least she knew that much. "Now go-on upstairs, the lot of ya." Stan waved them and their attention off.
As soon as they were gone, the thumping of their footsteps fading away, Stan let out a breath and slumped back in his chair. He rubbed his eyes under his glasses, sighing; he should just tell Miz to stop trying to speak to Ford. It always seemed to end badly. And…
Stan dropped his hand and glanced over at his brother. "Askin' her to be human isn't the right way to do this, y'know." Asking her to remember what it was like was one thing, and asking her to remember what somebody she trusted would tell her was another thing, too, but with what she'd just said right now...
Ford frowned almost furiously at him. "You really think she was being honest about--"
"--About gettin' hit when she was human? Yeah. Maybe." There was getting hit, and there was getting hit, but... "Would explain a couple things about her." (Ford let out an angry huff. That hadn't been what he'd been about to ask.) Stan frowned. "What I don't get is why she ain't more upset about it." She hadn't sounded like she was angry at the idea of getting hit. More… sad, maybe? Stan's frown deepened a little. Actually, taking that with some of the other things she'd said… it almost sounded like maybe she thought she deserved to be hurt. (Which was even more messed up. And something he was pretty sure the kid hadn't known about before, along with the hitting.) And hey, she was suicidal. So… yeah… damn.
"--She's just playing you! Playing on your humanity!" Ford said angrily, warning him, not least of which because, "For all you know, she's lying about ever being human to begin with!"
Stan rubbed a hand across the back of his neck, then shook his head. Nah, Stan could see how Miz might be wanting to play on his (heh) 'humanity' for some sympathy, but… well, not like he had a lot of that to go around these days, for anybody who wasn't his family. Besides, even if she managed to get one past him (and Stan was pretty damn sure she hadn't yet), she didn't need to lie to get people to react to her the way she wanted them to, to get the things she wanted from them. Stan thought of how easily Miz and Bill had manipulated that con-man with the cup game: no lies, no need. They'd simply used what they already had (how they already behaved) to get what they had wanted: one of those prizes for free, and that booth.
...Then again, that was getting them things, not people, and Stan could see pretty easily where things would start going wrong with that last one with their schtick.
"Look, Ford. Even if she's 'playin' on my humanity' or whatever, she ain't lying to do it." Stan told his brother. "And it ain't like I'm all that 'oh, poor you, what a terrible sob story', anyway." (Ford couldn't help but let out a snort at this, and a half-submerged rueful smile.)
"Look, the dragon-lady might have gone about it completely the wrong way and screwed it all up, but you gotta give her credit for one thing here," Stan told him, and this was the important thing that Ford seemed to keep missing out of all of it. "She was tryin' to apologize to you for the things she said about you, that first night she stayed over here," Stan told his brother, and… yeah, Ford bristled. Of course he did.
"She--" Ford began.
"--She's got no idea what she's doing wrong," Stan interrupted. That much, he was pretty damn sure of by this point. "But she just said she wants to learn what she did wrong," and he was pretty damn sure she hadn't been lying about that either, "So that she can apologize properly to you," which was the first damn step to getting her to stop doing it again later, her realizing and understanding what she'd done wrong, and listening to Ford when he told her stuff, "And you snapping at her every two seconds doesn't help!" Did his brother really not get that? "It just makes her upset and angry all over again -- and less likely to want to apologize the next time," Stan overrode his brother, as Ford started to interrupt and protest, "If all that's gonna happen is that she's just gonna get her head bitten off for it all over again. --Which is the exact wrong way we want to go with these two, and you know it." Hell, Ford. He had to know better than this. "If she learns that with you, you think she's even gonna try to apologize to the kids, for hurting you, or whatever-else?" Stan said next.
Ford grimaced and looked away from him, crossing his arms. "Stan," he said slowly. "She doesn't mean any of it when she says she's sorry. She's a demon. She's just trying to trick me into--" telling her something that she could stab a verbal knife into even harder-- Ford shook his head.
"For the love of--" Stan grumbled out. "Not every little thing outta her mouth is something meant to mess with you!" Hell, from what Stan had seen just then, that had been a sincere -- if completely screwed up and wrong -- attempt at an apology she'd been trying to make there. ...Not that the kid had been helping. "I get why you might not want to talk with her," Stan said, "And nobody's forcing you to, but--"
"--having them take meals with the family means I can't ignore them, I am not leaving them alone with the niblings -- yes, I know that you're there, but you can't be watching them every minute!" Ford insisted, feeling more than a little trapped.
Stan stared at his brother, arms crossed, and didn't point out that the demons were both alone upstairs with the niblings right now, without Stan nearby. (His brother clearly needed more sleep, and he wasn't about to get into a fight about that with him now; he sure as hell didn't want to have to try and chase his brother up the stairs when he realized…)
So instead, Stan said, "Ford, snapping at her every time she tries to talk to you ain't really helping with gettin' her to not get mad at you, and if you'd pulled half the shit you've said to her to me--"
"You aren't her!" Ford responded immediately.
"--I woulda hauled off and punched you by now, and I'm pretty sure the only reason the kid hasn't punched you in the throat too, is because you're 'his Zodiac'," Stan said next, and Ford visibly flinched and went a little pale. Yeah, Ford. Didn't think of that, now, did you? Stan didn't know why he was insisting on acting like such an idiot. He knew his brother had to know better. ...Heck, the fact that Miz hadn't up and punched Ford herself was already way more self restraint than Stan had thought she was capable of, especially with how bad her temper seemed to be sometimes.
"She doesn't care about other people!" Ford said, starting out a little shaky, and getting less so as he went. "She's a demon!" Ford insisted. "What do you not understand about this?!" Ford insisted. At that, Stan's face went blank.
"...And this here is why she's always snapping at you." Stan ground out. "This. Right here. You don't treat her like a person." Just like with the kid.
"Because she's not a--" Ford grimaced. "She's a demon!" Ford could not understand why his brother couldn't grasp this very simple concept. "We've talked about this before!"
"...Ford," Stan said slowly. "You remember what you told me about the kid maybe being a person?" And if the two of them were supposed to be the same...
And at that, his brother's shoulders slumped slightly and he looked away from him again.
"Ford, I know you're better than this," Stan said slowly. "You--"
"I can't," Ford said, still not looking at him. "I just-- You don't know, Stan." he told his brother, finally looking over at him, and...
"Yeah, Ford. I don't know," because he wouldn't tell him. "But if you're not gonna stay away from them, then you've got two choices here, far as I see it," Stan told him. "You either stop talking to them, or you keep on at it. But don't think I don't know what you're doin' here, pushing them like this," because Stan wasn't stupid. "Kid ain't stupid, either. He ain't gonna break the agreement over you getting a little mouthy; he'll just find a way to get 'creative' at you later if you piss off his sister badly enough, and she starts learning to keep her mouth shut and let him deal with it for her, instead."
"That isn't--" Ford began.
"--I ain't done," Stan said, and he was glowering at him now. Ford tensed, then slowly closed his mouth again. "I know you know better than this, because you ain't trying to shoot either of them, either -- and I know they've both pushed you a hell of a lot farther than that." And at that, Ford looked over at him warily. Yeah, he'd noticed. He'd noticed how hard it had been for his brother, too. "You're keepin' your hands off the kid, like I need you to. You're keeping your hands off of his sister, because you ain't stupid, and she's got a hell of a lot less control than he does." Stan sat back in his chair a little, thinking about how exactly he wanted to put this, then thought 'screw it'. "--This is exactly what the kid warned me about, you know. You, going off and trying to break the agreement on purpose, from the inside or out, once you knew about it. Trying to 'game' the system I'm tryin' to set up. --You really want to throw the kid for a loop? Stop doin' what he's expecting you to do, Ford."
Ford not quite flinched at that. He looked incredibly tense.
"...I'm not going to hold my tongue and stop telling them to stop when they do something wrong," Ford told him quietly. "I'm not giving up, or giving in--"
"--I ain't asking you to, Ford," Stan said, straightening in place a bit, as he finally started to get a sense of what this was really about. "All I'm telling you is, you keep going at either of them that hard -- especially her? -- and you're gonna get your head set on fire. Maybe literally. --You don't have to stop, just... hell, I don't know," Stan said. "Come at it another way. Or at least keep it level. --You get riled up, they'll just increase the level right back. Don't sound off at them any harder than you can stand them tossing shit back at you," Stan told him. "Mirrors, remember?"
"I'll keep that in mind," Ford said rather neutrally, and Stan sighed as he watched his brother get up from the table.
Stan shook his head as he did the same. Fine. So Ford was gonna be stubborn on this and dig in his heels, or whatever. As usual. ...Stan just didn't get it. --Yeah, going after the kid, he could get. But the other 'Bill Cipher'?
Stan frowned. He was gonna have to think about it a little more. Because this wasn't just a 'they're demons' thing for Ford anymore -- if it ever had been. And the kinds of stuff Ford had protested… you didn't tell 'a demon' that, right? He was pretty sure that the triangle demon would've laughed that shit off (and maybe even doubled-down on him that much harder, however he could in his own twisted-up way), if Ford had pulled that shit before...
...so what, exactly, was Ford expecting out of this, if not that?
And then it sort of hit him. Ford knew that the kid wasn't the kind of demon that he thought he was, before. Ford knew there was a difference between 'demons from the outside' and 'demons' now. And 'demons' were…
Oh. Oh, hell. Ford wasn't trying to-- Damn it. Damn.
Stan slumped in place a little as Ford left the room, and he didn't try calling out to him. He had a hell of a lot more to think about now, and... it wasn't something Stan had been expecting. Thinking over things… Ford hadn't rejected the idea of the kid maybe being some kind of person out of hand like he did with a lot of other stuff with the kid. And the stuff that hadn't been making any damn sense before, most of it had been...
Stan let out a tired sigh, as a couple more things occurred to him finally. And he suddenly felt tired and even older.
...Because Ford hadn't been the only one who hadn't been getting it, here. It had been him too.
-----
Mabel pulled Miz up to the room she and Dipper shared. She was biting her lip and couldn't keep her smile up. She felt Miz squeeze her hand gently.
"I'm sorry. I didn't mean to upset everyone." Miz said softly. All she'd wanted to do was finally apologize for that first night, and that time in the forest, though she still wasn't sure how to apologize for making Ford break himself.
"You and Bill do that a lot," Dipper noted, opening the door and going inside. Miz started to move forward, too, but stopped when she felt Bill's hand on her shoulder. (She looked up, confused, but he shook his head at her 'no'.)
Mabel grimaced slightly, standing at the doorway with Miz. "It was really upsetting, but I don't think this was completely your fault this time," Mabel told her truthfully. Miz probably couldn't have given a worse apology if she'd been a mean girl trying to hurt Grunkle Ford on purpose, but… she was just really bad at apologies. Really-really bad. --So they'd just have to help her out!
Mabel held Miz's hand, noticing the way the demon was trembling.
"...Are you okay?" Mabel asked carefully. She wondered if Miz was remembering something bad. She still got shaky sometimes, when she thought about Mabeland, and Miz… that hadn't been some made-up sob story. Mabel knew genuine, and that was…
Mabel pulled in a breath. That was the really upsetting part. The whole being abused as a human part. Insulting their Grunkle Ford all over again had been awful, but that had been… and thinking that Grunkle Ford would want to hit her? --Well, out of the blue when Miz wasn't trying to kill anybody? Grunkle Ford wouldn't do that unless somebody needed protecting! And he sure wouldn't feel good about it!
And what was worse was that Miz didn't even seem to think that getting hit for doing stuff wrong was-- was abuse! To her, it was just how things were, like-- some terrible kind of 'normal'. And Mabel hated to admit it, but she'd been super-relieved when Miz had seemed offended earlier, when Dipper had asked if Bill had ever hit her. (Which she knew was weird, okay? Bill had tried to kill them! They'd gotten in all sorts of fights! But the idea of him wanting to hurt somebody he treated like a little sister? That had been a whole 'nother level of...)
Mabel pulled in a breath. --At least being hit wasn't something Miz thought siblings did, and she thought hitting her and Dipper was bad, too. So other kids hitting each other was out, and especially not siblings. That made Mabel wonder who it was that had hurt her, though. Especially since Miz thought that getting hit herself was okay.
Mabel's mind raced as she thought about it, as she gently squeezed and then let go of Miz's hand (only after Miz told her quietly "I'm fine.", which was the first straight-up lie that Mabel thought Miz had told her since that first night with her glasses prank). Mabel dashed into her and Dipper's room, to race around physically and grab up all the paper she could find, too, as Dipper moved more slowly around her, and her mind raced along with her. --Who had hit Miz often enough that she thought it was normal? Because it wasn't her siblings, since she seemed horrified at the idea. And even if her siblings had hit her, Miz's parents should have put a stop to it right away! Because-- because...
Mabel almost stumbled as the realization struck her. ...Which she really already knew, but also really hadn't wanted to think of before, because...
Why would Miz's parents not tell her that someone hitting her as a punishment wasn't normal and not okay? Well, that only made sense if...
...if the ones who'd hit Miz as a punishment had been her parents.
Mabel stopped in place and breathed deeply.
And if Miz's parents had told her that, then of course Miz would believe that it was normal to be punished in that way. ...At least for her. But it wasn't. It wasn't right. Mabel breathed in and out again, trying not to cry.
"Mabel?" she heard Miz ask softly, worried. "I'm sorry. I didn't think it would upset you." Miz frowned. "I don't… really think before I speak. I keep forgetting to do that."
"It's not--" Mabel paused, then bit her lip. "It's okay for you not to be fine, sometimes. I'm not fine sometimes, too. And that's okay, too. --But we can do something fun to feel better!" Mabel told her brightly, wiping at her eyes a little bit with the sleeve of her sweater, before turning back to face her with a smile. "So, um, can we maybe change the subject?" the brown-haired girl asked her, managing a smile as she did so. "I wanna see how these narwhals are supposed to work," she told Miz brightly but firmly, as she brought the paper over to the doorway, and sat down right at the threshold, slapping the paper down on the floor just inside the hallway with a 'thwap!'
Miz frowned but nodded. She looked back up at Bill before glancing back over to Mabel. "Can we come in?" Miz asked. Mabel bit her lip, then glanced back at Dipper. (...Nope, her brother really did not want them in there with them, she could tell from the slope of his hunched shoulders from where he was sitting on his bed, head in his journal).
Mabel turned back to Miz and shook her head. "Sorry, not right now." Miz seemed to accept this and sat down outside the door without complaint. Bill turned in place and sat down quietly where he was standing in the hallway as well, just behind and to the side of Miz -- then scooted back slightly, leaning his back against the doorjamb almost (really, against the hallway corridor side of their bedroom wall). Mabel glanced back at her brother again (out of sight of both demons, with the door only half-open and in the way) before looking over at Bill too. ...Bill probably didn't know about Miz's human parents. In fact, Mabel was sure he didn't know. (He'd gone off on parents before in her hearing, when they'd been off at the spaceship. She'd had to tell him to stop. And with the way he'd talked about it then, Mabel was sure that if he'd actually known what Miz hadn't quite been saying straight-out, that he would've started right up again about--)
Mabel wasn't sure if she should tell him or not, though -- and not just because she didn't want to hear him ranting about how parents were, well… not really parents, according to him, at least. (And sure, Grunkle Stan had warned them about 'vocabulary', but that had been...)
Mabel decided that she probably shouldn't be the one to tell him. He seemed really protective of Miz. And he already hated parents. Learning that Miz used to be hit by her parents would make him even worse about all of it. So Mabel set that thought aside and pulled some construction paper out of her very tall stack of assorted craft paper.
Miz frowned. "Construction paper is terrible for folding," she pointed out. "Printer paper works best for beginners. And in general for folding stuff."
"Aw~ really? But these are prettier~" Mabel pouted. "And a lot stronger, too!"
Miz giggled (not back to her usual level of energy or cheer, but it was something). "Here…" The dragon-demon picked up one of the pieces of pink construction paper and narrowed her eyes at it. Under her hand, the paper changed and shifted in texture before Miz grinned and held it up. "Now it's like printer paper, but pink! And extra durable." Mabel's eyes lit up as she took it from her.
"Why does it need to be printer paper?" Dipper asked, looking up from his journal. He could see Mabel's back from where he was sitting, but couldn't really see the two demons. (He wanted about as much alone-time from them as he could get right now, without leaving his sister stuck alone with them.)
Miz shrugged. "It doesn't need to be printer paper, it just can't be construction paper. See--" Miz picked up one of the sheets of construction paper and held it above both Mabel's and her own head, so he could see it from where he was sitting "--this type of paper is made of large fibers, uneven and flakey with a softness that makes it difficult to make crisp folds and it doesn't hold a fold as well as paper with a finer, stiffer fiber texture." She lowered the sheet to the floor, then folded the pink printer paper expertly, and then folded a green construction paper the same way, to raise both into the air and show Dipper a direct comparison between the two types. "See the difference?"
Dipper squinted slightly, looking between them, and then nodded slowly. It was a little hard to see from across the room, but even from that far away, he could still see a bit of a difference in how the creased edges looked; the construction paper one seemed almost fuzzy. But… "You care about the paper texture that much?" he asked her.
Miz nodded. "The material affects how the origami ends up. Certain designs won't work with certain types of paper." Miz materialized two origami octopus (using her weirdness powers within the small free space under the barrier granted by her magic-cancelling cuffs once again); one was made from a softer origami paper, and the other from printer paper that had been hand-painted. The difference was even clearer to see this time. The printer paper held the curl of the fold much better than the softer textured paper.
Mabel nodded along, almost rapt as she stared at them from only a few scant inches away. "Like how you can't use certain types of yarn for some projects!" Mabel realized. She knew how important materials were.
"Exactly!" Miz looked back down at the paper and carefully folded the pink paper back and forth along the crease before ripping it along the seam to make a smaller strip of paper. She then folded one of the corners down and folded over, creasing back and forth before ripping that too, making a square of paper. "Here's your piece." She handed it to Mabel before ripping out a square for herself as well.
The two girls bent over their paper as Miz walked Mabel through the steps. "And here, you fold these sides down, make it thinner, it's gonna be the tooth so it needs to be thin. Since we're using a larger paper size, we'll need to do this multiple times to make it thin enough." Mabel had her tongue sticking out of the side of her mouth a little bit in concentration as she carefully made her folds, doing her very best work as she went…
...And when she was done, Miz praised her for her creases. "Most first time folders don't match up the sides properly and it ends up lopsided. Your folds are perfect." Miz told her.
Mabel blushed. "Well~ I have lots of artistic experience~" Mabel not quite bragged out to her.
Miz giggled. "Art experience has nothing to do with proper folding technique. I tried to teach both my sisters back when I was human, and my friends, one of whom went to art school along with me. They couldn't do this evenly and didn't have the patience to learn. I also taught a few classes and even when I told them 'fold it in half and make sure the sides match up'? They still couldn't do it." She looked a little nostalgic and also exasperated. "I mean, making the sides match up evenly shouldn't be hard; you're just using the paper itself as a guide. But so many people I have taught were simply unable to do that." Except Will… he was the only one who ever practiced with her long enough to really learn...
Miz grinned at Mabel. "But you can. And that speaks volumes about both your observation skill, manual dexterity and patience." Mabel blushed harder but laughed and tried to wave off the praise, unused to being complimented for her technical skills instead of her finished artwork. (It was weird, though. Because for her science lessons with Bill, the triangle demon had done something like that, too.)
Mabel got her head back in the game soon enough, though. --She wasn't gonna get praised for all the middle stuff, only to mess up at the end! She turned back to the paper, watching as Miz explained the final steps: "Fold the whole thing in half, reverse-fold up this end to make the tail, then you pinch the head shut so it doesn't unravel as you twist the tooth so it becomes a spiral."
Mabel twisted the paper and grinned. "Woo! What now?" she asked. The dragon pointed towards Mabel's basket of art supplies, over by her bed. "Now we add the googly eyes and we're done," because everything was better with googly eyes!
Mabel grinned and got up quickly to scramble off to her desk for some glue, and came back with several different types, along with the basket.
As the girls glued on the eyes, Dipper asked as he took down a few more notes in his journal (because it wasn't as if he hadn't been listening, he had been), "You used to teach classes on this stuff?"
Miz nodded. "My high school internship was being an assistant art teacher at an elementary school. It was fun. Taught 1st through 3rd grade kids some simple designs." She frowned. "But I messed up. I lost my temper at a few of them. I still feel really bad about that." She seemed to wilt in place. "That's when I realized I shouldn't be allowed to be a teacher," even if she'd wanted to.
Mabel and Dipper's eyes widened, and Mabel pulled in a breath as they glanced at each other.
"...Did you hit them?" Dipper asked next, and Miz shook her head quickly, looking horrified.
"What?! No! I would never do that!" Miz objected, then sighed. "They were all asking me to fold something for them. I was working as fast as I could but the second I finished one, another kid wanted something else and they kept asking me, each one wanting to have their animal first and they were all asking, demanding, all at once as they crowded around me and…" Miz dropped back, sprawling across the hallway floor to stare up at the ceiling. "...and then I snapped. I tore up the paper and told them that no one gets one," she groaned out. "A few of them cried. I felt so bad." She rolled over in place and curled up a bit into a ball. "I'm an awful person."
Mabel winced. "It sounds like you got... overwhelmed?" she tried, not sure what to say to this. It was good that she hadn't hurt anyone, but yelling at little kids was a pretty big no-no, especially for an elementary school teacher -- and especially when it wasn't recess and nobody was throwing food in a food fight or refusing to come on back inside when they needed to.
Miz groaned. "I've always had a bad temper. Becoming a demon didn't make it any better. In fact I'm quite certain I'm worse."
Dipper and Mabel glanced at each other. "Well, you do seem to upset Grunkle Ford a lot," Mabel noted, rubbing her sweater-covered arm, because now was as good a time as any, right? "Maybe you shouldn't talk to him? All you two seem to do is make each other mad." Even more than Bill and Grunkle Ford did lately -- which was really saying something.
Bill let out a snort at the understatement there. He didn't bother commenting that that Stanford started it; he didn't feel he needed to.
Miz, for her part, sighed. "He… that man--!" Miz seemed to want to say something but closed her mouth and made a frustrated sound instead. "I don't… understand."
"He's inconsistent," Bill repeated, crossing his arms over his knees where he was sitting, before laying down his head sideways on it. He looked almost amused, but mostly disgusted.
"What does that even mean?" Dipper asked, getting up from his bed and walking over, to stare out the doorway at him. "You keep calling him that?" It was something Dipper had been wondering about for a while.
PERTIMBANGAN PENCIPTA 
Mlzuum4
Mlzuum4 Don't wanna just say 'it's a Chinese thing' but that's essentially what it was. If you behaved bad or did something wrong, you had to be punished in a way that caused pain, so that the pain would remind you that you shouldn't do that bad thing again. Like when I would get my hands smacked with a ruler during Chinese school when I couldn't sit still in class. (And according to my parents, back in China they would have used a bamboo cane, but they weren't allowed to do that in America) And I didn't get [Cantaloupe]ed often. Only when I did something really bad, though, for the life of me, I can't remember what those were. I think I broke something expensive while playing once.
And essentially, I was told that if I did something bad, I had to [Peppers] myself if I didn't want someone else to do it for me. So, pinching myself, pulling/twisting my ears, slapping myself, those were all things I was told to do to punish myself whenever I misbehaved. I still get an overwhelming urge to harm myself whenever I do something wrong, which is a problem, I know. I'm still working on that.