-----
Bill tilted his head at the man manning the booth, and then the game below him, with an eye half in his memories for things he'd already Seen about this particular human. (This dimension was nearly the same as the one they'd just come from, after all, and he'd Scanned things HARD here, in looking for Pine Tree and Shooting Star.) The game didn't look very hard, but he didn't have a dollar on him and Stan's money wouldn't work here since the currency changes from the 2000s, so-- ah. Hm...
While Bill was still thinking, Miz stared up at the man. "Can we please see how the game works first?" she asked with an polite tone. The man grinned at her. "Of course, little lady." Both Bill and Miz stared unblinkingly at the full table as the man placed a ball under the middle cup and then moved the cups around quickly, expertly, before stepping back to wave his hands at them dramatically. "Where's the ball?"
Miz pointed at the cup on the right, because that's where it was. She Saw it. The man lifted the cup straight-up from the table. "Ah, too bad. Well you can pay to try again?" The man smiled. Miz narrowed her eyes. But the ball was there. She frowned, but Bill got a slightly sly look and reached forward to wrap his fingers around the man's wrist, of the hand holding the cup.
"Hey!" the guy protested, but Bill had too much leverage (from the invisible sci-fi bodysuit thing the kid was wearing, Stan realized) and Bill easily twisted the man's hand from palm-down to palm-up, and the cup he was holding along with it. (Stan frowned and started forward -- the kid didn't usually get physical with folks; something was up.)
"Oh, how interesting!" Bill called out, in a voice a lot louder and projecting a lot farther than the kid usually did these days (which had Stan eyeing him as he approached). When Bill reached forward with his free hand and quickly plucked a ball out of the bottom of the cup to hold it between his fingers (while the mook had been busy trying to pry Bill's grip loose from his wrist, heh, amateur), Stan got a bit of a smile. (He knew where the kid was going with this now, and stopped in place a couple of steps behind the kid still, rocking back on his heels and content to just watch, for now.)
"Why, the ball IS right here. My sister was CORRECT!" Bill called out, as he waved the ball around so anyone and their pet dog in the area could see it. Only then did he let go of the grip he'd had on the man's wrist, who scowled at him as he abruptly pulled away from Bill, quickly backing himself out of the line of fire and an easy arm's reach. And somehow, Bill ended up with the cup out of this. (Looked like the kid had let go of the wrist, but moved his fingers up to snag the cup immediately. The mook had been more focused on pulling away and checking his wrist than maintaining his grip on the cup. Seriously, amateur.)
"That's not-- that ball isn't--" the mook began to try to claim, and then the guy realized that he wasn't holding the 'fixed' cup anymore. (Heh.)
Half facing away from the stall, Bill theatrically dropped the ball into the cup, then turned the cup completely upside down and… no ball fell out. He turned it sideways, and waved it around slowly enough to show any bystanders (and there were a few by this point) that the ball was in the cup, and... magnetically stuck to the bottom. "Look at THAT! It's STUCK quite NICELY in there, ISN'T IT!" Bill said almost enthusiastically, before turning the cup upright and staring directly down into it. So did Miz; the kid was holding it far enough down that she could look into it, too.
And then the kid slowly turned his head towards the mook in the booth, eyes staring straight forward as the demon kid usually did while he slowly intoned, "HOW IN-TER-EST-ING." (Miz looked over at the guy, too, but she was doing more of a 'sad little kid' thing, instead. Neither of them were smiling. They both looked pretty expressionless, except around the eyes.)
The mook at the booth swallowed hard and started sweating. (Stan had to hold back a snort.) The guy jolted back slightly, as Bill turned the rest of his body towards him in one fluid motion (a little too fluidly to be anything but creepy)...
...shivered in place as Bill took a step towards him (clockwork creepy for that one)...
--and jolted in place again as Bill himself took another step towards him right up to the edge of the booth (invading the guy's personal space).
(And Stan was pretty sure he knew when Bill must've suddenly smiled at the guy, when the mook suddenly leaned back away from him quickly.)
Bill tilted his head slightly sideways at the guy, and from the look on the mook's face, he felt like he was being eyed like a bug and he wasn't liking it. Then Stan heard the kid ask him next, "You didn't MEAN to try and CHEAT my little SISTER, now, DID YOU?"
"N-now see here, miss--" The man started to back away, and Bill slammed the cup down onto the table, then leaned forward almost creakingly, at a flat angle forward, to continue staring at him (probably unblinkingly and with one of those fixed smiles of his, knowing the kid). They were starting to cause a scene, as the bystanders started to grow into a crowd, as people started telling each other what they'd just seen.
The mook in the booth glanced around nervously as the crazy girl in front of him said, "Now, finding that little PROBLEM with your EQUIPMENT here is REALLY VERY IMPORTANT!" Bill told the mook almost cheerfully, raising a finger to the sky. "ACCIDENTALLY having brought your MAGIC set of cups instead of your GAMBLING ONES is a problem, RIGHT?" Bill said. (And Stan had to swallow the laugh, because the kid was actually giving the idiot an out and an exit strategy.)
"I, uh, I, m-magic? --Y-yes!" the mook said immediately, leaning back further at whatever change in expression had happened on Bill's face, which Stan couldn't see from where he was standing. "That's-- yes! Entirely my fault!--" the mook squeaked out.
"And I really think we should get SOMETHING for the trouble of HELPING YOU OUT here," Bill ended, Stan saw the guy hesitate and look confused.
"H-helping me out?" The guy stared at Bill, then seemed to recover a bit and started to look angry. "Listen lady, you haven't even paid yet! So it's not like she would have gotten it anyway--"
"OH~?" Bill said, creakily leaning in just that little bit more (to make it very uncomfortable), and the guy stopped short. "I'm pretty sure I DID just HELP YOU OUT," Bill said (with a full-on grin, Stan bet.) "Why, if the COPS had come along and SAW THIS SETUP before we did, WELL, would they realize you'd make such a MISTAKE?" Bill said (and Stan could hear both the grin and the fine razor edge in his voice). "Oh no," Bill continued on, "THEY'D just think that YOU WERE TRYING TO CHEAT!" Bill called out, and Stan watched the guy turn nearly puce on them.
"So I think my little sister deserves to have ONE LITTLE prize as a CONSOLATION for HELPING YOU OUT," Bill said, nodding his head slightly, and the mook nodded along with him almost as if hypnotized. Then, as the mook seemed to wake up a bit, about to protest, Bill hurled the 'stolen' fixed cup and ball at the mook's chest. And while the guy was scrambling to catch the cup, Bill reached out, deftly plucked the green squid from the hook, and handed it down to Miz without even looking at the board or her, all in one fluid motion.
By the time the man had finished handling the cup, and looked up, opening his mouth to actually protest this time… The kid straightened up and ticked his chin upwards, head back as he did it -- and the motion drew the mook's eye upwards and behind the kid. The guy finally started paying attention to more than just the kid, getting a good look around at the small crowd that had surrounded the booth. And that crowd of people was starting to grumble louder and louder to each other about the rigged cup game.
Stan saw the exact second that the guy decided to switch from trying to argue to just cutting his losses and getting the hell out of there before his previous customers started demanding their money back. (Hell, he knew that feeling.)
"Ah- I… THIS BOOTH IS CLOSED!" the man cried before grabbing up his money box, cups, and prize board, and hightailing it out of there. He wanted away from this scary creepy girl and the still-growing angry crowd.
Bill huffed out a soft breath of laughter and leaned back from the booth's table, straightening back up and then turning to look down at his little sister.
"Thanks big brother." Miz hugged the squid to her chest. She was already trying to figure out what to name it. Like Quaizor or Splish. Or maybe Billy Bob.
Bill smiled down at her indulgently, then turned to Stan. "...Booth?" the kid said smugly, gesturing back at it with both hands, as if presenting it to him. Stan blinked slowly, and then he got it.
"Did you two…" Stan looked between them. Did they really just… and without even talking to each other, planning it out, or anything?!
Miz shrugged. "He did call us over first. And I did want this doll." She pouted. "It's his fault for cheating!" Bill glanced down at her. "Good job getting the free game out of him, sis!" the kid enthused, giving her a smile and a pat on the head. Miz shrugged and blushed slightly. "I just asked nicely."
Stan sighed, because these two. And they hadn't even needed to lie. Everything they'd done was perfectly in line with what their normal behavior already was. They'd simply found a way to use it to get what they'd wanted. (It made Stan wonder how intentional maybe all of it was, when and how they'd learned it. He'd seen the kid both 'high energy' and 'low energy' before, and this was actually pretty 'low energy' for the kid, overall.)
(It also made Stan wonder how often the demon kid might've pulled this kinda crap on his brother.)
(Stan also noted that while the kid hadn't killed anybody to get the booth, or mentally scarred them for life, the kid hadn't actually acted much different than he usually did. So if Stan wanted the kid to 'regulate' his behavior any better than that, without causing a scene or getting all creepy and 'demon-behavior' on folks... there was the bar he'd have to clear. Not just them getting what they wanted, but better and easier and more quickly than that: what the demon-kids had just done right there, the both of them together.)
...Well, whatever. (That was something for later. Stan had other things to worry about right then, like making enough money to be keeping them all fed.) They had a booth now, even if it was an empty one. Stan walked over and looked at what he had to work with. ...Well, there was a table? ...and a chair. That was... something.
Stan sighed. Woulda worked better if the guy had freaked out enough to leave behind the toy prizes, but… well, whatever. (Woulda set the bar higher for him, anyway.) He had a table and a chair. He'd figure something out.
Stan turned in place and glanced over at the kid, who was watching his sister play with her newest doll. "What should I name him? I'm stuck between Richarmando and Iseblonker." "HM. --TOUGH CHOICE!"
Ford was standing a bit farther away, in a solid ready-for-anything-you-can-throw-at-me stance with his arms crossed. He was scanning the boardwalk a little like a bodyguard almost when he wasn't sending glances back Stan's way, and looking pretty damn uncomfortable. Mabel was standing next to him, and Dipper was sitting down on the ground at Ford's feet, still working at scribbling down everything he could remember of what he'd learn the past day. (He hadn't been paying attention to any of this at all. But then, he usually tried to get away with ignoring most stuff that happened at the Mystery Shack with the tourists and the tours when he could.)
Mabel poked her brother, then just walked up to Grunkle Stan and the two demons, and stared at the stuffed animal Miz had 'won' for herself. "So… what are we doing, Grunkle Stan?" Mabel asked him, Dipper following behind her (head still down in his new journal).
"We're gonna sell somethin'," the old man said, as he made his way into the booth, moving the panel up and out of the way so he could get behind the table and sit down in the chair. He just wasn't sure what, yet.
At Mabel's confused look, "What are we going to sell?" Stan shrugged, and turned to Bill.
"What do ya think, kid. Can you make stuff?" Stan started with. He was thinking about asking after specifically 'making music' and 'making magic' next, if he needed to get more specific -- because entertainment could do it, just fine. He wasn't too sure about how asking the kid to show off would go, though. Kid might go overboard.
Miz perked up at the mention of 'making stuff'. "I can make stuff!" She leaned over the booth, kicking her legs. "I can make jewelry or dolls or spun glass? There's plenty of sand--!"
"Whoa, kid." Stan let out a laugh. "You're really excited for this?"
Miz nodded. "I used to have little booths at craft fairs and conventions to try and sell stuff I made back when I was human. Except the glass thing. I learned that after I became a demon. Playing with sand was one of the first things I did to practice my powers on."
(Dipper was scribbling furiously, only pausing for a moment to flip forward a few pages, writing that down, then flipping back again to pick up where he'd left off from everything else he was trying to record from before...)
Stan blinked. "Uh. If you really want to," he told her.
Miz grinned. "Yay!" she cheered, as Stan wondered how this was even going to work. ...Okay, she was running over to the side of the boardwalk to scoop up some sand. Stan was pretty sure she had a modified perception-whatever thing going on, too, since no one found it weird when the sand began swirling around next to her… and then she was holding a box. Huh. Stan raised his eyebrows, and leaned in to look down at what she'd made, when she walked over to show it to him.
They were earrings. Small, colorful and shaped like… octopus. And other ocean-type animals. Seals, crabs, sunfish… huh. They were actually kind of... pretty.
Stan glanced up at Bill, who'd turned in place to face 'outwards' away from the booth, leaning not quite sideways back against the edge of the table from the front (on the customer side, still).
"Got any ideas, kid?" Stan asked him. He'd been getting used to letting the kid start with what he wanted for awhile, and only talking him around if he needed to. He'd figured it'd leave the kid feeling less boxed in. So, he figured having the kid offer up ideas to start with was probably a good idea. (Hey, it had worked so far with him…)
Bill glanced over the jewelry. "This isn't good enough?" Bill asked him, and Stan frowned at him slightly.
"That ain't what I'm saying, kid," Stan told Bill, as he started pulling the earrings out of the box, getting ready to try and rearrange them in a way to make them more attractive to any old passerby. "These are pretty good, yeah. But if we sell these, the money's gonna go to your sister, right? Not us."
As he left Bill to think about that one a bit, Stan looked over at Miz as he flipped the box over, to use it as a riser, and started laying out the earrings on top of it. "They're pretty well made," Stan told her. "How much do ya usually sell this stuff for?" he asked her, as he waved her over to his side of the booth, behind the table.
Mabel came right up to the table, to look at what Miz had made and Grunkle Stan had put out. She could help with their presentation, to make them look great! But she got a little distracted from rearranging them or trying to think of ways to pretty up the wooden plywood table, by the actual earrings themselves. She hadn't expected them to be so… cute.
"I used to charge by the type of animal it was. Around an average of $14. But since this is… a different time I think inflation hasn't set in as hard as 2013…" Miz tilted her head to calculate the price difference.
"Hey, you get what you pay for, and this here is what we call a specialty item," Stan told her. "I can guarantee you, nobody around here is selling anything like this. And this is a tourist trap," he told her. "Whatever you think you'd be sellin' em for anywhere else, in a store? You double it for a booth, and you triple it again for the boardwalk, and people will still call it a steal."
"Ok." Miz blinked. "I never really knew how to price things. I had a friend as a human who was in charge of that. She said I couldn't sell them for $5." She tilted her head. "I had no idea how money worked."
Well, at least her friend hadn't been trying to scam her. Stan literally shuddered at the thought of selling something handmade that cheaply. "Yeah, okay, look," he said. "There's overhead, and then there's profit. And the thing you gotta remember? Is that time is worth money. --How long did it used to take you to make even one of these earring sets, back when you were human?" Stan asked her upfront.
"A couple hours? I would make them in sets so I could make multiple at once. While one pair was drying I'd work on the others and make as much as I could in one sitting." Miz thought.
"Okay, uh, you have to do anything to 'em after they finished… drying?" Stan asked her. "How many of these things did you usually make at a time? And how much did the stuff cost? The… paper and any other stuff to make 'em?"
"The fancy paper can cost up to $15 for a packet of 30 pages. The cheaper ones that are still good quality are around $10?" Miz blinked. "And the wires can be bought in bulk for around $15-$20-ish too…"
Mabel was squealing as she held up a pair of turtles. "They're sooo pretty!"
Stan smiled. "Yeah, they sure are pumpkin." He glanced back over at Miz, getting back to the business side of things. Might as well make sure that Miz's human friend way back when had been right about the price. "How many wires in a bulk package? One wire per earring, right? And how many of these… origami things? Could you make per sheet?"
"There's about 500 ear wires in a bulk pack, and 200 headpins, I make the earrings small so one sheet of origami paper can make 16 squares." Miz frowned in thought.
"You need an ear wire and a headpin to make an earring? Or just one?" Stan didn't know the terms.
Miz held one up and pointed to the 'hook'. "This metal bit where it can connect to someone's ear. So that's two per earring since, you know, there's two of them."
Mabel was nodding. "I've always wanted to make real jewelry… instead of just Doritos I stick on my ears." (Dipper grimaced, half-listening to their conversation, but didn't comment.)
"Okay, so, one ear wire per earring, two ear wires for a two earring set," Stan said. "Didn't use the headpins?"
"The headpins are the wire that connects the paper part to the ear wire." Miz explained. "So two for two."
"Sounds like a hot dog and hot dog bun problem," Stan huffed out. She got more ear wires than headpins, so she'd always run out of headpins first.
Miz rolled her eyes. "I know. So I just have to get more every few months."
"Okay, huh. So…" 100 earring sets per pack, 15-20 cents a set for that. 16 origami things to attach per sheet, 8 earring sets per sheet -- go with the expensive one -- 50 cents a sheet meant around 10 cents per earring set, say, if three of 'em got screwed up or she needed something larger sometimes. "What needed drying?" Stan asked her next.
"Varnish. I coated the paper with it so it would be water resistant." Miz nodded. That was the most annoying part, not the least because the varnish would ruin the paintbrush used to apply them. She had to wash them constantly to keep them from drying and getting glued together. One of her friends had luckily gave her a bunch of old, ruined paint brushes from her job as an art teacher.
"Okay." Probably didn't need a lot of that. That was around, what, $2-$4 a can? Probably last her… maybe fifty pages or so? If she'd coated them flat; probably wouldn't be that much different for folded ones. So, around 4 to 8 cents a page? With 8 earring sets per sheet, that was half a cent to a whole cent per earring set. Add that all up, that was around 30 to 31 cents per earring set in materials, with no screw ups or waste.
That only left the price for the actual work itself. These things were so tiny. She must have worked hard to make them as a human. Stan stared at them. Must have taken a good bit of skill too. She said it took several hours to make them so… "Is maybe five earring sets in two hours a thing? More, or less?"
Miz thought about it. "That sounds about right. I like to get a lot of prep work done to make it more efficient."
"How long's the prep work take?" Stan asked her. "About an hour for varnishing the paper while flat, have to wait for it to dry, on both sides. Cutting the paper into perfect squares takes like… a minute per sheet? Less if I have a paper cutter." Miz nodded. (Mabel was listening to Miz and her Grunkle Stan in absolute fascination. She made a note to ask Miz to teach her how to make these the human way once they got home. It sounded fun!)
"What about cleanup?" Stan asked her next. "And packaging and stuff. Probably gotta stick 'em in boxes or whatnot, yeah?" He was trying to figure out if he should count the 'extra' time as another hour-thirty minutes or so, or just let the five minutes go and stick with an hour.
"Boxes come in packs of 100 for $25. Clean up is like, 10 minutes?" she told him. ...Yeah, he was counting it as an hour-fifteen. Might as well split the difference, even if there was probably other stuff he didn't even know to ask about her doing.
And see, this is why Stan liked selling junk in stores, too. The boxes she was needing to put the stuff in cost almost the same as the thing she was sticking inside them. Felt like a waste. But that reminded him, though, "You selling them in a store?" Miz shook her head. "Over the internet." Ugh, okay, so every time they sold one… "You have to pay for the boxes for shipping? ...And postage? Or that part of the shipping costs added in on top of everything?"
"The shipping boxes are…$35 for 100 shipping boxes." Miz frowned. "Wow, I forgot how much stuff I had to buy for this." And she hadn't even talked about the Beads, water colors and the hours spent walking along the beach, hunting for sea glass.
Stan grunted. "Okay, so per earring set, that's 30 cents in materials, another 25 cents for the box to stick 'em in, and another 35 cents for a shipping box, and I'm thinkin' you should've charged postage separate," he said, looking at her.
Miz groaned. "Yeah. Shipping is expensive. Had one customer in Switzerland once, the shipping cost more than the price of the earrings."
Stan nodded. "And the internet stuff's expensive." Melody had looked into it for Soos, and come to him with questions. He'd thought it was a racket. "Overhead for that can be stupid. Go with twenty percent of the pricetag of what you're selling, maybe. Just so you don't undersell it. Forget the business management stuff for now, that's another whole thing," Stan told her scratching at his cheek. "Usually pay that out of the net profits or your own pocket, whatever. Depends on how you wanna think about it. --Anyway," Stan said, thinking out loud, "That's 90 cents per earring set without even getting into a bunch of other junk like problems making the things, so let's round it up to a dollar each. --You sell them for $14 dollars, set $3 aside for the internet stuff, the $1 for the rest, that's $10 per earring set, and it takes around…" an hour-fifteen for five sets at once, so… "15 minutes per earring set?"
"That sounds about right? Well back when I was human, it was 2017, so inflation and all. $14 is the average but some of the more complex stuff like the octopus or the crabs--" she indicated how she had even made each crab leg "--cost $20." She scratched her head.
"Okay. So you'd be makin' around $40 an hour on this stuff, then, if you could sell everything that you made nonstop, except that this stuff probably takes awhile to sell?"
Miz groaned. "I was lucky if I got one sale on my online store per month. But when I had a booth at a craft fair or something, I once made $500 in a day." That was great. Mabel gasped. No one bought her stuff online? Even though they were so pretty?
"Yeah, that barely even covers rent for the month someplace, though," Stan put out there for Mabel's benefit. "That's still only, what, $50 an hour if you were there for 10 hours," eight hours of sales, one hour setup, one hour of tear down… "If you were sellin' this stuff and pretending that you'd gotten them for free, anyway... So maybe half that actually, by the time you're done, once you take that into account and the cost of the booth?" Stan sighed, because...
"...At $10 per sale, but only one sale a month for the internet stuff, that ain't enough to live on," Stan ended, with a hard feeling of commiseration. Doing sales on your own was hard. "Hitting the road where the customers can see you is important," he agreed, "And that craft fair sounds like it was a good deal, maybe," depending on the stall cost. But yeah, a craft fair for this stuff sounded a hell of a lot better than trying door-to-door sales. "Multi-day fairs are always better. Gotta budget for the downtime. Gotta plan right for the booth days, too." Running out always hurt more than having a few things leftover, because you knew you could've sold more. If she was smart and drive stuff in instead of shipping it, anyway; if you didn't then the stuff that you didn't sell had to be shipped back, and that cost -- Stan had learned that one quick. Selling out of his vehicle had always worked better for him.
And the downtime always hurt; Stan knew how that went. He hadn't been able to keep the Mystery Shack open during the winter, not and stay afloat. People just didn't come; the roads were too bad. Wasn't worth it to keep the Shack open during the week, or even on the weekends to the 'general public', with what he'd had to be paying Soos and Wendy. It had worked out better to just figure out new exhibits, have one or two weekends with 'special events' to draw in the locals from town to get that extra influx of cash to help pay the heating bills, and spend the rest of the time on the portal.
Miz sighed. "I didn't make enough to live off my art. Had a day job in retail." Stan nodded. If he'd been able to do that, he probably never would've ended up with the mob. But he hadn't even had his high school diploma; he hadn't been able to get any job, in retail or otherwise, that wasn't something that somebody would call either 'self-employed' or 'criminal'. Especially not after he'd started getting banned from states...
Dipper, who'd tuned out once they started talking prices, tuned back in and asked, "Wait, 2017? You're from the future?" Miz nodded. Dipper stared at her. "What was the future like?"
Stan snorted. "It's only four years in the future, you nerd," he told Dipper.
"The new president was essentially a Nazi, the planet was dying, and all the young people were drowning in debt from student loans and college tuition. People couldn't afford to pay rent AND food and medical care was difficult to get." Miz deadpanned.
Dipper didn't like the sound of that. "Nazi president, right. Have to watch out for that." He flipped forward a few pages again and made a few notes in his makeshift journal, while Stan looked on and sighed.
"If he exists in this dimension, and I hope to Ax that he DOESN'T, please don't let him win this time around," Miz pleaded. Sometimes the names for people and things seemed to have ended up different here in these human dimensions, but she figured they'd know him if they saw him. "That asshole wasn't a real Nazi, but he was very much a white supremacist. And a misogynist. He talked about his own DAUGHTER using words like, and I'm paraphrasing because the real quote is worse: 'If she weren't my daughter, I'd get with her'." Miz held herself back from swearing.
Stan winced. Teachin' kids swears was one thing, but that kind of junk was definitely one too many '-ists' for Stan to be wanting to worry about. And that comment about the guy's own daughter? Hell. Well, he guessed he could just grab his brother, get on the boat again, and sail off for awhile, if shit got really bad, but…
"Well, the kids can't vote, but me and Ford can," Stan told her, though it was a bit tongue-in-cheek -- not like he was against stuffing a ballot box or twelve. They'd finally gotten Stan's identity junk straightened out a couple of months ago. (Good thing they'd been sailing by sea for pretty much all of their travels. Most smaller ports didn't go askin' for passports if you knew the language even a little bit. Stan hadn't had to pull out any forgeries while they'd been out adventuring, luckily.) "Pretty sure that those lizard people and that Shadow Government that Ford's always talkin' up might have somethin' to say about havin' somebody like that pretending to be runnin' things, though, even if they are just some 'shadow government' puppet." Stan shrugged.
Miz sighed. "I very much hope your dimension ends up better than the one I came from. We didn't have demons; we had humans who just didn't care. The planet was dying and our government was doing everything in their power to pretend it wasn't and stopping anyone from trying to fix it."
Bill looked over at her. "Sounds annoying!"
Miz groaned. "Ugh… it was so stupid. Like, just… ugh…"
Dipper winced, very much hoping their dimension didn't end up like hers. Then the other part of her statement hit him. "Wait. There were no demons in your world?" he asked her.
"No demons, no magic, no weirdness. Only the collapse of our planet around us brought upon by humanity and their pursuit of convenience." She sighed. "Can we not talk about this? Not right now?" (Dipper gave her a disappointed look, but didn't press her for now. --He wrote a note to himself in his journal to try asking her again later when she was in a better mood.) She turned to Stan. "So how much should I sell these for here? In this time period?"
"Eh," Stan said. Like he cared about inflation. "Go for the $14. Why not?"
Once that was decided, Miz and Mabel worked to get the items displayed. Miz got some more sand to turn into small jewelry stands. Mabel brought up the idea of using the sand itself, unchanged, as little sand dunes, to brighten the jewelry display area up -- since pretty much all of them were sea creatures. As they worked, Stan turned to address Bill again.
"Ok, now that your sister's all set…. you got any ideas for earning money here?" Stan said, trying to leave it as open-ended as he could, and he watched as Bill frowned a bit.
After a little while longer, Bill made an upwards-reaching motion for his hat, and Stan watched as the demon kid stuck his hand in past the brim and pulled out a handful of something, to slap the things down on the table next to each other in a quick one-two succession.
Stan blinked, and then he stared.
"...Really, kid?" Stan asked him, as the kid put his hat back on above his head, to leave it floating there again. Because if there was one thing he might've been expecting out of the kid, it wouldn't have been an actual tarot card set and a normal deck of cards.
(Sure, he'd been sort of playing 'Go Fish' with the kid since he'd come back from the dead, but…)
"I can do card tricks; you can tell fortunes," Bill said, though it was actually more of a question with the way the kid said it.
Stan thought about this. "That's… actually a pretty good set of ideas," Stan put out there. Heh. "What do I owe ya for renting the cards." But at that, Bill blinked at him.
"I'm helping," Bill told him, looking away from him again.
...Huh. Kid was really serious about the whole 'helping until they were gone' thing. ...Made him wonder which things the kid was doing because of what, actually. Because between the 'helping him' stuff for the bet, and the 'wanting him' stuff, and this 'not talking much' thing in-between… (Damn. He wasn't gonna be able to figure out the difference between any of these until this thing was done and they were all home again, was he.)
"Okay, kid," Stan said. "If you're sure." That got him a "Yes," from the kid. Stan sighed. "Right," said Stan, awkwardly picking up the tarot deck. He hadn't messed with this stuff in years. Not since long before he'd gotten himself kicked outta the house, and the family. Felt a little weird.
As Stan shuffled the deck, though, he relaxed, because it turned out that maybe he felt like it had been forever and a day ago, but his fingers sure remembered them just fine. Stan smiled a little, as he leaned back in his chair and let out a soft, slow sigh. Muscle memory, huh? Well, he could work with this. He started flipping through the cards, flipping them around and slapping them onto the table. It was quick, easy, smooth; his old hands really hadn't lost their touch, even with the larger cards.
He was pretty good at cold-reading from his wandering days, and he remembered what all the cards were supposed to mean in the broad strokes. He looked up at the kid. "Got any more of that paper you gave Dipper?" Kid pulled some more out, and Stan (after adding the paper to his mental tally, along with the journal supplies, the gold coins, and the cards…) borrowed Dipper's pen to start writing up signs for things.
It didn't take all that long. A few broad strokes later, along with a couple of heavier sea shells from the beach to weigh a few things down and a few curved shards to shove into one of the wood posts facing outwards as pushpins, and they had themselves a halfway-decent display with pricing signs attached.
Mabel placed a starfish-shaped earring down and turned to Miz. "When we get home, will you teach me?" Miz made such a happy expression that Mabel was a little taken aback.
"I'd love to teach you!" Miz told her as she arranged her wares, wiggling with glee. She'd offered to teach her friends and sisters before but none of them had ever had the patience for it. Only Will had ever...
...she shook that thought away.
They were just finishing setting things up when the beach cops showed up.
Ford bristled as they approached him with guns this time, and he started to reach for his own.
Stan saw Bill glance over, then flick his fingers towards Ford, and Stan... saw something odd for a second. The lay of Ford's coat looked a little different, almost flatter...
Stan pulled in a breath, and he took the 'help' at face-value -- because damn, he knew Ford wasn't gonna like getting cast on, but the kid knew what he was doing.
Stan didn't waste any time, not wanting to test the limits of whatever illusion the kid had just put on his brother. --He practically vaulted the table (well, shoved his way around and through the flip-bench there pretty damn quick; he wasn't his brother) and jogged his way over.
"Hey!" Dtan called out to the two cops, in as thick of a Jersey accent as he could manage. "What's the problem, here! You mooks gonna try to cop a feel on my brother again?"
That got a hell of a lot of people's attention, and both his brother and the cops dropping their hands away from their sidearms for a moment to look over at him in confusion.
"What?" said the first cop (hell, what was his name? Stan had never learned it, he and Ford had only given the beach cops dumb nicknames way back when).
"--I said, stop tryin' to cop a feel on my brother," Stan repeated, as he came up to his side. "He's sensitive." That got him a half-frowning, half-incredulous 'what the hell are you doing?!' look out of his brother, which was practically worth it for that, alone. (It also got a few odd murmurs from some of the others around them, like 'was that supposed to be a pun?' and 'what's going on?')
"Cop a feel, nothin'!" the second cop said. "You get your hands up where I can see 'em, right now!"
"Why?" said Stan, putting his hands up, sure, but in a palms-out, calming gesture. "What has my poor, saintly brother done, that's got you coppers runnin' after him for the last two days, tryin' to feel him up?" Stan said.
"--He's armed!!" the second cop said angrily, starting to pull out his weapon. Stan quickly stepped half in front of his brother, knowing it would startle Ford enough that he wouldn't draw his own weapon yet. (He wanted his brother covered, and he still really didn't want to know how far whatever spell the kid had done went, if he could help it.)
"What? Noooooo," Stan gasped out, as if completely shocked by the words coming out of that cop's mouth. "My brother? Armed? You gotta be joking," he told the cops, and he could practically feel the confused consternation steaming off of his brother behind him.
"St--" Ford stopped abruptly, then said. "Get out of the way."
"Well, sure, oh brother of mine," Stan said, turning halfway towards him. "I mean, pretty sure the best way to clear this whole thing up is for them to see you've got nothing like what they're talking about under your coat. --Y'know, zero guns. You have zero guns under your coat and on you," Stan told him with a straight face. ...Aw hell, now Ford just had his face all scrunched up, lookin' flat-out confused at him.
Miz and the rest of the kids were watching closely, Miz and Bill because they were eager to see the look on Ford's face. Dipper and Mabel were more worried.
"Get out of the way, and--!" the second cop demanded, and Stan held his hands up, palms-out again.
"Sure-sure," Stan told them, making a waving towards them gesture a bit as he said it. "Just, y'know, let my brother show ya that you were obviously seeing things before, before you go shooting somebody for no good reason, yeah?" Stan said, to the two cops' frowns and his brother craning his head to look down at him like he was out of his flipping mind, as Stan took a short step to the side, and then another.
"Okay, bro," Stan told him, still looking at the cops, while watching his brother out of the corner of his eye. "Go ahead and hold out the sides of your coat. ...Y'know," Stan said, as the cops started looking antsy in front of them again, "Now."
Ford didn't quite glare at him at his demand, but he did grab the lapels of his coat and slowly pulled them out to the sides like he'd asked (and was thoroughly annoyed with him as he did it, because it would take him that much longer for him to draw them when he had his hands full of coat), putting the gun he had at each hip out on full display. ...Or so he thought.
Both the cops stared. "But he…" the first cop said, lowering his hand from his sidearm. The second cop looked pissed.
"--All right, you wiseguys," the second cop drawled out, "What'd you do with 'em. Sell 'em?" he said angrily, as he holstered his pistol in frustration.
"Dunno what you're talking about," Stan said, cool as a cucumber, as his brother glanced between him and the cops in confusion, and slowly lowered his arms full of coat. "We're here in town seein' some relatives. Weren't plannin' on shooting nobody," Stan told them. "I left all the guns at home."
"Home?" the first cop (younger of the two) took the bait.
"Yeah, Oregon."
The cop frowned and asked next, "What relatives?"
"The Pines family," Stan told them. "Run a pawnshop on twenty-second and third, Pines Pawns -- you heard of it?" The cops exchanged glances and started to relax slightly. "Buncha troublemakers, the lot of 'em," Stan added, and that got him a few chuckles out of a smattering of the locals about.
"Those boys of theirs are always gettin' in ta trouble." one of the locals commented. That finally got a pair of slightly frustrated 'oh hell, those ones,' looks out of the two cops.
"Yeah," Stan said. "Guess why we moved to Oregon? It's a hell of a lot more peaceful there. Mostly. Sometimes. ...Almost," he added, glancing over at Ford, who practically pursed his lips at him and gave him an, 'I know what you're really implying there' look.
"Yeah, anyway," Stan said, turning back to the cops. "Shoulda said something sooner, instead of just grabbing at my brother. He don't take people getting handsy with him well," Stan said, clapping his brother on the shoulder. "Gotta at least buy him a drink first! And, y'know, being a girl helps a lot." (Ford made a strangled noise at him that sounded a lot like, "--Helps?!")
That got the younger cop backing off real quick. The older cop still looked pissed.
"He still socked Clyde in the jaw," the second cop said. "That's assault on a police officer, you--"
"--and you sure could take him in for that, yeah," Stan interrupted him smoothly. "And then your buddy Clyde would have to go on explaining why he was feelin' up my brother, who's got no guns on him, coppin' a feel in some places that really oughta get a buddy punched. Stir up a whole buncha trouble that nobody really needs," Stan sighed, shaking his head. "Y'know?" And Stan wasn't really liking how he was having to lean on queerphobia in 1970's Jersey for this one, but...
The cop backed down, but he didn't look real happy about it. He looked around looking for an excuse -- any excuse -- to get them for something, out of all the hassle they'd caused him and his buddy 'Clyde'... and looked over at the booth where Stan had come from. The children standing there.
"You got a permit for that?" the second cop said next, tossing a thumb at the booth. "And why aren't those kids in school?" he added suspiciously.
"We're from out of state visiting," Ford said smoothly, crossing his arms and picking up the threads of the tale. (Probably a good thing he'd gotten a little practice at this kinda thing with him from their boat trip, Stan figured. Ford had been absolute crap at it the first couple of times he'd tried--) "The children are staying with us for the interim, in lieu of their parents being busy."
"--They're from California," Stan put out there. "We're plannin' on homeschooling 'em in the meantime if we need to," Stan said. It was the excuse he was planning on using for Bill having no records; he really didn't feel like forging that many of them. Too complicated for just one year of high school. Better to keep it simple. "Except for the oldest one; Billi there's been staying with us for awhile now," Stan told them easily. "You got any idea how hard it is to take a kid out of school, just to visit family?" Stan confided. "Headache and a half, I tell ya. --You think you can take a kid on a trip and not have the teachers tossin' a metric half ton of schoolwork at their head? A week's worth of junk is practically a whole second suitcase!" Stan groused out. (He knew that things being too pat would make stuff suspicious. 'Sharing' a few messy details usually had people believing you a lot more easily.)
"Permit?" the second cop asked again. Miz made a motion with her hand and pulled a few papers out from under the booth. If Stan had to guess, she probably just swiped the permit the mook whose booth they'd took had been using, probably edited it over. (Crud. Now he'd have to guess, or…)
"Yeah, 'course we do. You wanna take a look at the papers?" Stan said, waving them over and refusing to sweat. He made sure to get over there first and wave a hand at Miz, to take them from her before the cops could. "Miz, you got the--? Thanks," he said to her as he glanced over them quickly, before passing them over. (...Okay. Good. No imagination. That was fine. He could work with this.)
So when the cops took one look at the papers and they said out loud, and rather incredulously, "Stanford and Stanley Pines? Like the--" Stan just shrugged at them and said, "Family names. Twins run in the family, so do a couple other things. --Ford, show 'em your hands," he told his brother.
Ford nearly cursed him out on the spot, and Stan saw him almost refuse. But, props to his brother, Ford took in a deep breath, braced himself, and he actually did it.
The cops blinked. "Huh. Whaddya know?" they hummed, looking them over. "Didn't realize this was a sort of thing that happened."
"Yep," said Stan (as Ford slowly lowered his hands again) "It's a thing," shrugging it off like it was no big deal -- which, really, it should've been for anybody who didn't think it was just downright cool instead. (Not that they'd ever gotten much of that, ever. Like, never.)
The cops nodded. Well, it definitely checked out to them. Although… "So what's with that Oriental girl?"
"Billi's sister. Different mothers," Stan said. "The adoption process is hell, lemme tell ya. Way easier if you can just say, 'oh, this is my sister' and leave it at that. If they didn't have the same last names, hell… got enough trouble with the two of 'em as it is," Stan deadpanned.
The first cop looked over at Bill and Miz, at Bill's seemingly all-black hair and the way Miz was pressed up against his side, the casual arm draped around the younger one. "So, you're adopting them?" the first cop asked. The two didn't look too similar, but… different mothers, huh?
"Kid's seventeen," Stan told them, shrugging again. "Pretty independent. Parents are dead. Probably easier to go the 'emancipation of minors' route if we tried to do anything, but any stupid paperwork we'd have to do going through the system would take a hell of a lot longer than her just turning eighteen, yeah? Figure we'll just take care of 'em for however long we need to, and the rest of it can just sort itself out all on its own," Stan said. (And damn, the idea of adopting the kid? Hell. --After all this was over and done with and they were all home again? Stan was gonna laugh himself sick over that one for days.)
The cops nodded as they handed the permit back. "It all checks out." The second cop looked a little sour, but he still did his job anyway, instead of making something up on the spot. "Well, I hope you enjoy your stay here in Jersey," said the first cop. The second cop said with a glare: "Don't go causing any more trouble."
"That's the plan!" Stan told them with a Mr. Mystery grin, as he took the permit back from them, not making it at all clear which one of them he was talking to in reply. "Be seein' you around, yeah? --Got a couple good sets of earrings here, if you're interested in anything for the missus, or maybe a girl you've got an eye on? Yeah? Yeah?" the original 'Mr. Mystery' cajoled them.
That got the two cops heading off a good bit faster than trying to loiter in the area, sticking around; they weren't greenies, they knew enough to know they did not want to get pulled into the usual selling spiel that most of the boardwalk tried to pull over on 'em when they could, just for fun. That could keep them there for hours; the locals all knew the drill. (There was a running pot for whoever beat the latest longest time, per officer. With the one greenie of the pair there, that probably meant… Stan stifled a chuckle.)
As soon as they disappeared from the area, Dipper slumped over with a groan. Mabel splayed herself out across the table and sighed out, "I can't believe we made it through that!" Because that had been worse than when Grunkle Stan had had the Truth Teeth in!
Bill let out something that was almost a snicker, as he patted an also-relieved looking Miz on the head. "You really never change, do you, Sixer? Punching a cop in the face for no reason..."
"He tried to take my guns," Ford said angrily, thoroughly offended. He'd had a reason! A good one! --It was rude! And entirely unnecessary!
Stan snorted. "Right." His brother, sometimes. "Y'know, if we're all set up here, let's try to make some sales, yeah?"
That got him a bunch of cheers from the younger set. And after all that, it didn't take him too much effort to steer Ford inside the booth and to the back of it. (Ford was still reeling from the fact that, technically, Stan hadn't lied to the cops about anything at all, except the fact that he himself had been carrying guns. He'd 'just' been highly misleading in what he'd related to them, to the point of the two police officers completely missing the point...)
"Why did you…" Ford breathed out quietly to his brother, once they were inside and a bit farther away from the demons. "You lied by omission nearly every--" time he'd opened his mouth.
"--Didn't want to risk losing the kid, not following along with the thread," Stan told him under his breath, pushing him along. (Because having the kid look confused in the middle of all that? Yeah that wouldn't have gone over well.) "--I meant what I said, Ford. Sleep in the back of the booth." He practically shoved him down to the concrete ground, and waved Bill over.
"You--" Ford began, starting to sit up, alarmed as Bill approached. "Wait, what are you do--".
Ford shivered as Stan just turned away and said, "--Kid, blankets and junk?" Ford stayed tense, breathing a bit faster, as Bill pulled his hat off of his head and started pulling out items.
"...Stanley," Ford said slowly, realizing the other problem with what had just happened out there with the police. "You know I'm armed. Why didn't they see--" Ford stopped, paling slightly, as Stan ticked his head towards Bill's floating hat, which had also gone uncommented upon by the officers of the law, and then gave him a look. Bill must have cast a spell to-- Bill had cast a spell on him? Without saying anything? (No that was-- There had been no laughter, no taunting, no warning--)
"Yeah," said Stan, seeing his brother's change in expression. "Kid's being helpful. To me," Stan said, and Ford shivered again. "'Cause bailing you outta jail would kinda put a crimp in my profits here, today. Yeah?" Stan told him next, pretty damn tongue-in-cheek, eyebrows raised.
His brother glared up at him, but he still grabbed a blanket and then a pillow from the pile Bill had just re-produced for them and settled in with them without starting a fight with him or the kid, so Stan was calling that one a win.
Ford glowered at their backs as Stan headed back to the table and sat down. (He figured he deserved the only "real" chair they had; he was the one doing fortunes. Would've been nice if they had a second one to-- ...Oh, right.)
"Hey, kid," Stan asked of him. "You still got that crate in there?"
Bill pulled it out and set it down at the visitor's side opposite him in short order, for him. --There. Knew he'd been missing something.
...And while he was at it, Stan asked Bill to pull out the beanbag chairs while he was at it, for the kids. They'd get tired eventually. Dipper sat down in his in the back pretty much right away, still going at his new journal-thing. Mabel's stayed empty for now. ...And Bill pulled one out for Miz, too, but they left it in the back. Easier for her to sell standin' up; Stan told the pair of them that she'd be needin' it soon enough once she'd sold out all her jewelry.
Miz slipped a pillow behind Stan's back on his chair. The old man raised an eyebrow at her, not sure what she was up to, but he didn't protest.
Miz easily moved to stand beside the booth. She was helping Mabel put on a pair of turtle earrings to walk around wearing, doing advertising for her.
"Can you make a mirror outta glass?" Stan asked the two demon-kids. "People could do that thing where they hold 'em up to their face and junk," and look in the mirror to see if they liked what they saw. That was a thing, right?
Miz nodded and went to get some more sand. Bill watched from the other outer corner of the booth, where he was casually leaning up against one of the posts and shuffling the card deck over and over again. (Stan saw the kid flick the brim of his hat with a finger, and then lower it to his head -- huh, it didn't have to float? -- and he figured that now the thing was visible again. But the kid had done that why? Stan eyed him for a moment, considering. ...Well, okay. It did make the kid look a little more magician-y. Kind of.)
Miz came back with a small salad-plate sized standing mirror for the table -- nothing fancy, simple and efficient. She seemed excited to be selling again. Mabel was moving her head back and forth in front of the mirror, checking out her reflection as her new turtle earrings dangled down. "They're so light. I barely feel them!" she exclaimed.
"That's the point. My human friends used to complain about their ears hurting after wearing their earrings for a while. So I figured paper would be much easier and less stressful on people's ears." Miz placed the mirror down. "And I was already making origami animals all the time so I figured I might as well do something with them."
Stan grunted. So it was her human friends that had brought up the idea of her makin' her art into something commercial. Huh. Interesting.
Mabel grinned at Miz and then headed off, running around the boardwalk, meeting and greeting people and proudly displaying her earrings to them as she went. She showed 'em off and talked 'em up, too, talking about how there were more, even prettier ones for sale at their booth. (Stan grinned as he watched this -- he'd taught her well.)
A few people came by and cooed at the colorful display of paper sea animals. Stan watched Miz for a bit, to see how she sold her work. She greeted them with a polite, "Good afternoon, ma'am!" and explained how her wares were made of varnished paper so they were water-resistant and super-light. Stan noticed that she had a proper 'retail voice', one that was pitched just a little higher than her normal tone, real open and humanly-friendly.
But she wasn't pushing for sales, though; she was just timidly standing back and letting people take their time. Stan frowned. She seemed almost… shy? And it didn't seem like just an act. Huh. He wasn't expecting that. He stood up and dropped a hand on top of her head, patting her on the head for doin' a pretty darn good job so far. But if she really wanted to sell, well! Stan decided to take over a bit, to show her how it was done! --On the boardwalk in Jersey, at least.
"You won't ever find anything like this anywhere else. These are all handmade by the little lady here! Quite the talent, huh?" Stan grinned.
And sure enough, the group of women gasped as if on cue. "She made these? All by herself?"
"Yup. She worked real hard on 'em too." Stan glanced back at her, then leaned forward a bit conspiratorially, placed a hand next to his mouth, and fake whispered to the lot of them, "She thought no one would wanna buy 'em, doesn't believe us when we tell her that they're beautiful." Miz took her cue perfectly, making an embarrassed squeak and burying her face in her hands.
The women cooed at how sweet and adorable that was, before each one of them picked out a pair. Under the table and out of sight, Miz formed little boxes to put them in, while Stan dealt with the money exchange. As Miz handed them their boxes, she said shyly. "Ah… t-thank you for the purchase," which just made the women titter and coo at her again.
As soon as they left, Stan handed the money over to Miz, who took the stack of bills, pulled out a few and handed them to Stan. The old con-man sighed. "Kid, you don't hafta--"
"Commission, since you helped make the sale. I did the same with my friends," Miz mumbled. Stan gave her a long look, then nodded; he accepted that, that was good business practice. (He still pocketed it in a different pocket, to keep it separate. He'd hand it over to the kid for her later.) He also watched Miz hand Mabel a few dollars (when she came back to the booth to check out if things were going well), with a soft, "For advertising."
Mabel grinned. "Woo! I made money by being adorable!" She pocketed the bills and ran off to charm some more tourists. Stan couldn't help but let out a, "Heh." Well, with Mabel all set on that, it was time for him to work his magic as well.
"Step right up folks! Wanna get your fortune read? Only $5!" Stan called out, grinning as he shuffled the tarot cards. "Or, if you wanna be wow'ed, by some magic--" he gestured dramatically to Bill, staring down at the deck of playing cards, which he was spreading out and pulling back into a deck again, just playing with it a bit absently, not doin' much yet, "--It's $2 to see the show!"
A few people wandered over, some curious, some just bored. Stan grinned winningly. "Come on, just a bit of fun!" he called out to them. "Wouldn't ya like to know your fortune?" (He heard a soft snort from behind him, probably from his brother. ...Hey, so he did it different than their ma did; so what? The peanut gallery here… he'd like to see Ford try and pull it off! ...Y'know, once his brother was done with getting himself some sleep.)
Seeing a couple wander over, the girlfriend looking interested while the boyfriend seemed annoyed, Stan tried again, calling out, "Hello miss! Wanna have your fortune read? Only $5 and heck, I can even throw in a quick one for your boyfriend there for half-off, if you get a couple's reading?"
(It wasn't quite physically painful for Stan to not try and upcharge them for the couple's reading, to go with the 'normal' (ew) discount thing instead, but… He did have a couple of reasons for not trying to pull that on anybody, here and now.)
(One, this was 1970's Jersey -- not the backwoods of Oregon in the 2000's -- the common joe on the street here had two brain cells to rub together and some street smarts besides. He probably wouldn't get anywhere with that shit without making it some real kind of hustle. ...And two, he was tryin' to set a good example for the two demons, here. Stan knew full well that if he went around ripping people off in front of the pair of them for what he was calling a 'proper' con now, one that was supposed to be as close to 'fair' for his customer-marks as he could make it… he'd just be shooting himself in the foot. The kid would just mirror that right back at him later, 'upcharging' him for wanting more from him sometime, instead of keeping things 'fair' at the same 'price', or maybe even at 'less' of a total cost to him instead -- because that would be exactly what the kid would've learned from him if he did that, as acceptable for him to do. Hell, the kid would probably pull it on him at the worst possible time, too...)
(...And Stan wasn't about to put up with that kind of junk from the kid, or his human-demon sister -- now, or ever.)
The woman laughed. "Come on, Tom. It's just $7. It'll be fun." The guy rolled his eyes but still handed over some bills with an indulgent smile. Stan glanced at the couple. Forget a cold reading -- from just looking at the guy, he could tell that the boyfriend wasn't all that interested in any of this. The guy felt that seeing these booths was a waste of time and money. The woman on the other hand… cold-reading her, she was excited to see and experience everything, what with the way she kept glancing around at everything, taking it all in.
Stan flipped the tarot cards out onto the table, neat as you please, and easily spun a reading about how the woman was an adventurous soul. "Tom here, not so much," Stan said, as he reshuffled, dealt out, and started turning over the next set of cards. "Let's see here… Huh. He's more of the laze around and enjoy your company sort of guy."
The boyfriend shrugged, "I guess?" while his girlfriend giggled. "--Oh my god, yeah. He just wants to sit around and read all day."
Stan nodded solemnly. "Nothin' wrong with that." He tapped the table lightly in front of him, just a little bit away from the edge of the nearest card. "It looks to me like he's happy just being with you," he said while looking them in the eyes, leaving it to each of them to decide whether he'd meant 'from the cards' or 'from just watching them'. "He came out here with you, didn't he?" He watched the two smile at each other and squeeze their hands together, the saps.
"So, what's in our future?" the woman asked. Stan glanced down again at the cards he'd laid out. "Talk more. Take turns on what you guys wanna do," he told them. It was simple, straightforward advice. Tell the people what they want to hear, and say what they already believe. That's what people wanted from a tarot reading 'just for fun'. (The serious ones were a different story… you had to be careful with those.)
They walked away with smiles, holding each other close in an almost sickeningly-sweet display of public affection. Stan was glad Mabel was still running around, out trying to advertise Miz's earrings to everybody on the boardwalk and their pet dog, or she'd be squealing loud as an air raid siren and slapping somebody in the arm in excitement.
A couple of people wandered their way over, looking at Bill. Some of them were muttering amongst themselves (not realizing how far their voices actually carried), and from the sounds of things, they were trying to decide if they wanted to see the kid's 'magic' show or not.
Stan looked down and realized that Ford had been staring at the kid closely the whole time. Stan grumbled to himself and nudged him with a foot. "Sleep, Poindexter."
Ford grumbled right back and refused, even as his eyes twitched and Dipper looked over at him in worry. (Someone needed to watch Bill, to be ready to try and stop him when he-- and Stan wasn't--!! Stan wasn't-- wasn't...) Ford looked away. He'd gotten into exactly this same mindset before, and… (then had trouble sleeping at night, and then... Ford looked over at Dipper again, who was still giving him a look of worry, one that looked exactly the same as he'd had the day that… that they'd broken their Deals with Cipher. And…) then he had lost it later that night.
Ford grimaced. (He couldn't do this again. Not again, not after everything else that he'd...) With Dipper looking at him like that, and at the idea of how Mabel would be looking at him if she was in the back of the booth with them as well, Ford forced himself to lay down flat and... curled an arm under his head, at least. (If he managed to get any sleep in the near-term with everything that was going on with his brother and the two demons right now… Ford wasn't sure whether he would call that a minor blessing, or a curse instead. Likely the latter; he still couldn't believe that Stan had just given himself over to--)
---
Bill was doing his spreading-unspreading the deck thing still, just leaning against the post and being pretty quiet, when a younger child stomped up to him.
"Show me some magic!" the child demanded. Bill didn't respond right away. "I said--"
"--show you some magic?" Bill said, keeping his head tilted down towards the cards. "Are you suuuuuure about that?" Bill drawled out quietly, before slowly lifting his chin, just a touch. "Or… would you rather have a card trick instead?" Bill said, sounding a little… (...Huh. The kid's voice was a little different than usual, and Stan was having some trouble placing the tone. It wasn't… smooth exactly, it wasn't like any of the edges were gone. Nope, the edges were still definitely there, but… they didn't seem really all that sharp. Not soft or nothin', or slippery, or fuzzy, just… flexible, kinda. Not bendy, exactly, but... maybe more like a sponge? Spongey-edges and -corners. The thought left Stan blinking.)
Bill's sponge-edged (teasing?) taunt of a question left the child looking slightly confused for a couple seconds. Then the child frowned up at Bill. "Magic!" the child said firmly.
"Oh?" That had the kid straightening in place, instead of his more bent over posture. The kid was still leaning against the pole behind him though. (Not fully-committed yet, yeah.) "Are you sure you'd even be able to tell the difference?" the kid… teased the child? Stan saw the smile that the kid had going; it was trouble, but… not the 'I'm gonna cut you' trouble. Stan wrapped up his own deck, keeping half an eye on the kid as he did.
"Hmmmm," said Bill. "Well. Magic is to be had here, most certainly. But only for two dollars."
The child frowned at him, looking frustrated and a little pouty. The child crossed his arms, almost glaring up at Bill where he stood…
(...and it finally occurred to Stan to wonder, where were this child's parents? Couldn't be local; he'd never seen the child around the boardwalk or the town before.)
"Hey," called out one of the adults in the group that had been debating just paying the two bucks. "I'll pay it." The guy waved two one-dollar bills in the air at them, as he walked towards Bill.
Bill straightened up and away from the pole, fully upright. He transferred the deck of cards he was holding to his left hand, then swept his hat off of his head with his right and held it out towards the guy expectantly, eyes gleaming.
The guy dropped the money in, and took a step back. And Bill flipped the hat, over and over again with his fingers, as he pulled it back in and put it back on top of his head to lay flat there against his head.
"Well-well-well," said Bill, rocking back and forward on his heels. "So somebody wants to see some real MAGIC, hmmmMmMM?" The kid got a grin. "WELL then! I'd hate to disappoint!" The kid gave the child below him a glance -- eye movement only. "Don't say I didn't warn you." And Stan stared as Bill gave the child a wink.
The child blinked up at him.
Stan let out a slow breath. Give the kid an inch; fix things later if they needed fixing. Right…
Miz and Dipper were watching Bill closely, with very different expressions on their faces. The dragon-demon seemed thrilled to see what her brother was gonna d,o while Dipper was wary of what Bill might show people. ('Is he going to use magic or just do magic?!')
Bill brought his eyes back up to his paying audience. "Magic with cards! Magic cards!" the kid enthused out. He spun out the deck in a normal fanning display from his left hand, then closed it. Fanned it out from his left hand again, then closed it. Performed a simple two-handed Sybil Cut, closed it up again.
Then Bill fanned out the cards from his left hand, smacked them with a palm from behind while performing an odd motion… and fanned them out again from his right hand, almost like he was pulling half the deck from the first hand as he did it.
...Except it was two decks worth of cards, when the kid had only pulled one normal deck out of his hat earlier.
Bill didn't slow down, he didn't even pause. He flipped each of them closed, and fanned them both out again at the same time. Did it again: fanned and flipped-closed. Did it again, and made an odd sort of 'click' with his tongue as he sort of made a flicking motion with his wrists… and fanned them out another whole hand further on each hand, nearly wrist-to-wrist on each side.
The guys watching weren't impressed. The little kid was staring, transfixed. ...Hell, Stan would be too, if he didn't get it. Kid was doing that 'clone' thing of his on the deck, to make more of them (one to two, then two to four). His cardistry technique was spot on, too. The idiots watching didn't have any idea how hard what the kid was doing with those cards actually was, especially one-handed; kid was making it look simple, casual almost. Effortless.
Bill flipped the double-pair of two-decks closed again, then shoved them all into one hand, his left.
He did an Anaconda card dribble that kept going and going and going… yeah, of course it did, it was four freaking decks worth of cards and he wasn't even trying to rush it.
Finally, Bill slapped his now-free left hand (finally empty of cards) against the top of the very thick stack of cards he was holding below. He flipped the cards from his right to left hand, and… splayed the cards again in that common fan. One deck. He flicked it closed again with a wrist flourish, then took one step back, bowed simply (with a hand across his chest), and straightened back up again to... lean back against the pole behind him yet again, just as he had before: head tilted down a bit, shoulders slightly slumped. ...Small splaying motion of the cards out, then in again. Small splaying motion out, then in again -- yeah, the kid was done and waiting for the next payment.
Miz and the child clapped in delight; the child had been staring intensely, watching this display the entire time. A few people in the crowd clapped too, but some of them scoffed. ("What. That's it?")
"One card trick, two dollars," Bill said quite calmly to the crowd, not moving or looking up from where he was leaning back against the pole. "You got what you paid for."
One of the guys in the crowd walked up to Bill again -- not the same guy as before. "So if we give you another two dollars, you'll do something different?" the guy not-quite challenged Bill.
Bill smiled slightly. "I might," the kid said. "If I feel like it." The smile dropped slightly, then lifted again to something small and… really very devilish. "Sometimes, I even take requests."
(Stan blew out a breath. Yeah. ...Y'know what? He wasn't gonna stress it unless the kid actually started rearranging other people's faces.)
"Can you pull a rabbit from that hat o' yours?" The guy asked, trailing his eyes up and down Bill's slender form. (Stan eyed the guy back in a very different way.)
Bill let out a chittering sort of snicker. "I assure you, good sir," he said, in a fair approximation of Ford's 'late high school / post-college' accent, "Any rabbits that I may or may not have in this hat are surely long-dead."
The crowd laughed a little, assuming it was a joke. Stan wasn't too sure. (Then he remembered the thing about the dead time on the other side and figured that, yeah, it was a joke.) The guy scoffed. "Well, can you pull anything else outta there?"
"I most certainly can," Bill told him, stilling the cards in his hands mid-motion, as he tilted his chin up again. "Why do you ask?" The guy stared down at Bill with an entitled smirk. "I wanna see my money's worth. Do something impressive, magic-gal."
Bill smiled up at the guy with his usual smile. "That's ancient alien space wizard to you, sonny-boy," Bill said, but he did straighten up away from the pole. "Two more dollars," Bill said. "To see something IMPRESSIVE."
The guy held out the bills and scoffed, "You better wow me." Bill simply smiled, pulled his hat off of his head, and held it out. The guy dropped his two dollars in.
Bill kept the same smile on, though it got slightly more smug.
But instead of putting his hat back on his head immediately, Bill reached into the hat and pulled out… the guy's two one-dollar bills, and the other two from before. The kid waved them around a bit, just slightly, as he tilted his head to the side slightly and said, "Your money's worth!" The crowd laughed. The guy colored. Bill flipped the dollars over in his fingers, folding them up twice and slipping them into a back pocket, still maintaining eye contact with the guy standing in front of him.
And before anyone could say or do anything else, Bill flipped his hat around, lifted it up--
--and brought it down onto the guys head and kept going, straight down to the ground.
(Same motion he'd used on the stuff at the boat, Stan noticed.)
A hush fell over the crowd.
(Ford's eyes widened and he sat up abruptly as he realized what he'd just seen. He hadn't thought--)
Bill paused for just a moment, before turning his hat sideways and then flipping it over his fingers, end-over-end-over end, as he straightened up from how far he'd had to bend down to do it.
("BILL!" Ford hissed out, trying to scramble to his feet as he stared in horror at the people out in front of the booth. They were going to--!!)
(Stan leaned back and neatly caught him by the front lapels of his coat, holding him in place.)
Bill slowly, carefully, casually brushed the dust off the lower lip of the hat, which had gotten a little dirty from the sidewalk in front of the booth.
And then he looked up at the crowd.
"Too much?" Bill asked the crowd, almost deadpan. "Well." Then he made a tossing out-and-down motion, as if throwing a glass of water out of a cup to splash it down onto the pavement -- with his hat -- and there was a tumbling-out-and-down human guy, now sitting down flat on the sidewalk, legs splayed out in front of him, and looking more than a little bit dazed.
(Ford let out his breath in a rush, feeling dizzy almost.)
The crowd was clapping, going absolutely wild. "That was AWESOME!" "How'd you do that?!" "--Here's another $2! Do that to me, too!"
"Haha!" Bill laughed out, smiling again as he put his hat back on top of his head. "Just once per species per day, folks. Don't want to OVERDO it! HA!" Bill grinned out at the crowd, taking their applause with a bow.
("What…" went the guy sitting on the sidewalk, as his buddies slowly helped him up and away from the stall. "What? What happened?" He looked confused, as his buddies clapped him on the back, congratulating for being a good sport and showing off. "--No, really. What just happened?")
(Ford looked utterly gobsmacked. He glanced down at Stan, who just waved him off. Ford, still jittery, was feeling uneasy as he settled down slowly, lowering himself back down onto the blanket. He'd half-expected… but after seeing the crowd not turning into a raging mob at what had just happened...)
"They think it's part of the show," Stan grunted out at him. And no one had gotten hurt. That was good. Meant the kid really was following the agreement-type rules with regular non-Zodiac people -- which was exactly how Stan wanted it.
Ford was still shivering in place a bit, because... "He could have kept that man in there forever," Ford told his brother lowly, feeling sick. And they likely would have been hard-pressed to convince Bill otherwise. (...No, more likely, they simply would not have been able to force the demon to release the man if Bill had decided he'd felt otherwise, and was disinclined to let him go.)
"Well, he didn't. --It's fine, Ford." Stan told him. "Guy wasn't even hurt." Stan turned back to the outside of the booth, to see…
...that the kid was still playing it up for the crowd as they started throwing more of their money at him. He glanced over at Miz, who was jumping in place and squealing, "YOU'RE SO COOL!!" and that made Stan let out a quiet chuckle. (He had a feeling he would be seeing her try the hat trick later, like she'd done with the whole trying to learn how to snap her fingers thing, heh. ...Huh. Probably should keep an eye out for that, actually, make her practice on not-humans first, and definitely not his brother or the kids.)
Stan settled back in his chair. Huh. ...Well, that had taught him two things. One: kid had a sense of timing. That had all been pretty spot on, there. Two: kid was very exact with his words and wordplay, and not just with his Zodiac. He'd caught that bit with the 'see money's worth' a little bit before the kid had pulled it off, from the gleam in the kid's eyes. (Kid had also pulled it off in a way that the rube hadn't actually been the one to see his money's worth of magic trick; only everybody else had. And the guy had been unable to do a thing about it. That didn't get by Stan, either.)
The other thing was that the kid had had no problem with the first guy, who had seemed to treat him with... well, not actual respect really. But the first guy had at least made the whole thing a simple business transaction, instead of making some big deal out of it, or trying to taunt or challenge the kid. And the kid had acted on the level with the guy, for what the kid had thought was reasonable and on the level for that amount of buy-in, as far as Stan could tell.
The other-other thing was that the kid didn't seem to have a problem with kids. Stan hadn't really considered that before, that the kid actually seemed to be more on the level with the kids than the adults, and more willing to be a bit more flexible with them -- or at least take a lot more verbal flak from a kid than he would from somebody older... (Maybe he should be working with the niblings a bit more, on that. Though the kid already talked to the niblings almost too much as it was, and a lot of times way more than they could handle...)
And the final thing was that the no-fights thing was working. A month ago, the kid would've blown away that second guy into dust and ash and a wide bloody crater without a second thought -- either for getting up in his face like that, for effectively insulting him, or for the insulting challenges to perform a 'trick' for him -- Stan was pretty sure. And today? That had been three strikes in a row, not just one of them.
But after more than a few things with the kids, and then Melody, Stan had been pretty sure that Bill could handle a little random heckling by this point. And he had. (The kid had still 'gotten even' with the guy, but the kid in a way that nobody had gotten hurt. If Stan had thought otherwise, he would have practically forced the kid into the back of the stall to sit down with Ford, and try to stay out of trouble back there, instead of doing anything out in front of a crowd -- let alone anything with an audience that might have a 50-50 shot of either heckling the kid or cheering him on.)
Stan had let the kid pick his own poison with what he wanted to do at the booth, and the kid had picked something he seemed comfortable handling, Stan was pretty sure. (It sure looked like he had, anyway.)
Stan still kept a close eye on the crowd for the kid, though. He noted when they started to slow down with the money they were putting out, and were just about to reach that tipping point where they might start grumbling about when they would get what they were paying for.
And then Stan stood up and stepped in.
"Looks like you've got yourself enough for a sidewalk show, there, kid," Stan called out to Bill from behind the table in the booth -- and for the benefit of the audience. (It also let it seem like less of a choice to the crowd -- that the kid had a manager and a set act. With the crowd not thinking that the kid wasn't just picking and choosing what he wanted to do for himself in the moment, or when, they wouldn't think of complaining about the content and the time versus the money they paid out, later.)
"Magic don't last forever, though," Stan added, maintaining the 'manager' role. "There'll be a twenty minute break after that." He didn't want the kid getting overstimulated, or too tired.
He got a glance back at him from the kid, an assessing one… and then a slight nod. (Yeah, wasn't meant to be an insult, he was just tryin' to make sure the kid didn't get overworked or pushed around. Give the crowd a chance to disperse, maybe calm down a bit between acts. Otherwise, the kid would just have to keep going bigger and better each time, and…)
(...Stan was pretty sure that was how you ended up with another Weirdmageddon. He had half-a-bet with himself going, that half the reason the kid had gone so big and large was because the kid had had all his demon-'friends' there, cheering him on, needing to be impressed...)
The audience settled in, eager to see more, the gathering crowd pulled in even more people... and a few even wandered over to look over Miz's wares. She kept trying to engage with the customers, but Stan could see that she was clearly distracted. Stan chuckled and got up from his chair.
"Hey, I'll take over here, go watch the show," Stan told her. (Wasn't no skin off of his nose -- there was no way his readings were gonna be able to compete with whatever the kid was gonna set up next, if it was anything like what'd he'd just done -- hell, with the way the crowd was going, it'd be too loud for it, anyway.) Miz gave him a bright grin before going around the booth so she could stand closer to her brother for the upcoming show.
Stan finished with Miz's latest batch of customers, just as Bill looked like he was done getting warmed up (doing exaggerated stretching exercises -- geez kid, hamming it up much?). So when his brother started to get up from the blanket again, Stan saw it and caught him by the coat again, letting out a tired sigh.
"Ford, just… lie back down and try and close your eyes and keep 'em closed, yeah?" Stan told his brother, pushing him backwards slightly as Ford started to shift forward, with a hand towards his gun. "I'm watchin' the kid. --Ain't like you'll be quick enough to stop him from anything, even if he does pull somethin'," he told him. "You couldn't for the guy and the hat." He got an aggrieved look from his brother for that one, and a protest. But Stan could be stubborn too, and soon enough Ford was dropping back down to not just a seated posture, but a flat and prone one again... even if he was still sending tired glares Stan's way, in-between every long blink.
Stan met and returned each and every one of those glares with a long stare back, until Stan stopped watching him when the show began.
...And the kid sure knew how to put on a spectacle. Kid was a lot more talkative this time, too, engaging directly with the audience as he went; makin' eye contact with people, speaking out in ways that made people have that knee-jerk reaction to answer right back, the whole nine yards. --First thing the kid did was kick himself up into the air, to float around lazily at about shoulder-level, into the crowd and around a few people, with a patter of distracting talk, then touch down and spin in place to set off a few figurative 'fireworks' with spans of knotted colored scarves in all directions -- not handkerchiefs -- and then pulled them all back in and wrapped them up around in each other with a quick two flicks of the wrist... to use them as a skipping rope as he traversed the crowd and ended up back in front of the booth again.
It only got more strange and weird and… wonderful?... from there. At least, the crowd seemed to be enjoying it -- they were definitely thinking it 'wonderful' from the clearly enraptured looks a lot of them seemed to be getting, watching the kid do his thing, on-again off-again there. Nothing ended up too over-the-top or flashy, though, which Stan found interesting. The kid used a lot of props, too -- mostly pulled from his hat, though he covered the motions with a 'head scratch' or a shaking head and a hand to his forehead in the setup for the next trick or the following one a lot. There were matches and matchsticks and blue fire, paper into quickly-folded butterflies that actually flew -- or, well, glided around on the air by themselves, kinda like smaller paper airplanes, to be caught by some of the grinning crowd -- and odd-looking swatches on cloth in colors that Stan didn't have a name for that shifted in pattern by themselves, made of weird fabrics (that probably came from a pocket and disappeared back into a pocket afterwards, if Mabel's lack of surprise at seeing them was any kind of cheating hint to the kid having had them on him before he'd had his hat back)... and the swatches weren't just something to be shown off -- Bill used them for juggling, of all things, and left floating in the air around him almost like clouds, as he walked around them in turn.
And that was just the first five minutes.
Eventually, even Dipper moved up to the front -- to sit in Stan's vacated chair -- and settled in at the table to just enjoy the show. Stan glimpsed Mabel in the crowd as well. And Miz was… practically vibrating in place in her excitement where she was standing out there. Stan was a little worried when he spotted the sand near her feet shifting in small waves, like they were ripples in a pond, but no one was paying any attention to what was happening except him. It looked harmless, and nobody was standing close enough to her that it could be a problem, but Stan still sighed and scratched a cheek. He didn't think she was doing what she was doing on purpose, but it was yet another thing that went in the tally box of 'not actually in control of her own powers', that maybe meant that it wasn't all that safe for her to be anywhere alone with the kids. (It made him think of the kid, and how the kid always talked and talked and talked about control-control-control. ...And that was the gulf of difference there between the kid and Miz, who talked like her powers were a separate thing from her, weird and wild and maybe way more out of control even when she wasn't panicking, than she really wanted to admit.)
Stan turned to look back over his shoulder at Ford, who he was sure was probably stifling an apoplectic fit with his own pillow by this point at what both Bill and Miz were doing… and realized that his brother wasn't all that angry; Ford was more than half-asleep.
And Stan frowned as he realized that his brother's half-closed eyes were, at each blink, dropping lower and lower, and staying closed longer and longer, the more that Bill talked out there, at the kid's a not-too-loud and steady patter of words, a non-stop conversation that was all sponge-edged. He frowned as he realized that Ford, from the way he was slowly relaxing, was acting like those words were almost a warm blanket, slowly settling down and around and over him.
When Ford's eyes closed completely, and they stayed closed, and he fully relaxed, Stan pulled in a long slow breath and turned back to the table, and looked out at all the customers.
(And he felt like, for the first time, that he'd maybe finally caught the tail-end of what Ford had meant when he'd said that he'd thought Bill had been his friend. ...That Ford had not just thought of Bill as somebody who he could talk to, or somebody that wouldn't get nasty at Ford about his hands for no real reason, or somebody that Ford thought was intelligent enough to have a nerdy conversation with -- no, not just that. But that Bill was also somebody that maybe, just maybe, Ford had felt relaxed around. --Maybe not safe, exactly? Or calm. Ford had never really been one for either of those two things. But… maybe he'd thought that Bill was somebody he could relax around. Somebody who he'd thought had had his back.)
(It must have been one hell of a surprise when Bill had stabbed him in the back. Ford must've looked down, confused, wondering why everything hurt so much… staring down at that figurative knife and all that blood he was bleeding out in absolute disbelief, and… his brother had never even seen it coming, had he. He'd been... betrayed.)
Stan pulled in a breath, long and slow, and he let it out again, long and slow.
Kid was still doing his magic show out there. Dipper and Mabel and the crowd and Miz were all watching.
Somebody else walked up to the table, interested in the earrings. Stan started walking them through it.
But Stan's mind was really elsewhere, on his brother sleeping in the back of the booth behind him. ...Because it wasn't like Stan hadn't noticed that the only nights he knew for sure that Ford hadn't had nightmares since the triangle demon had been back, were when Ford had fallen asleep right next to Bill, holding onto him, and… just now, listening to the kid talk and talk and talk.
Stan pulled in another of those long, slow breaths, and glanced over his shoulder back at Ford. And... Ford looked like he was sleeping like a rock. He wasn't just relaxed; he was smiling in his sleep. (Not a lot, just a little bit, but… shit.)
And Stan wasn't sure how to fix this. He wasn't even sure how this was a thing.
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