---
Carla held back a groan when she saw Miz waiting by her locker again. At least this time it was the end of the day. Miz glanced up at her and sighed. "Do you have time to talk?" Carla almost wanted to say no and leave right then and there, but she noticed the somber look on the 'alien' girl's face and sighed before nodding. "Come on." Carla turned to find another empty classroom.
Once they were there, Miz sat down at a desk and slumped over. "Uuuugh… why're humans so complicated?" she complained. Carla raised an eyebrow. Miz turned her head to the side to lay on the table. "You know, I don't have any issue with the science project being broken. What I had a problem with was one of the twins being thrown out into the streets because of it," she said simply.
Carla rolled her eyes. "That's just a stupid rumor that isn't true, and you know it. They're staying with you and those two old guys." Was this girl really trying to play stupid mindgames with her? --To hell with that. She wasn't falling for it. She knew better than to let anyone get away with that, with her, now.
"They're only staying with us because we're here. They would have been alone otherwise. You know, in an alternative timeline, it was Stan who got disowned for Ford's broken project," Miz said next, making Carla frown.
"Right," said Carla, because apparently somebody had to get 'disowned' for whatever thing this girl wanted to talk about next. Sure. "So, what," Carla said, "Is this some kind of infinite branching timelines making new universes thing? That's just out of some dumb comic book," she brushed off.
"It isn't," Miz told her. "It's actually why we came here. Stan's grand-niece and -nephew went back in time to try and stop this whole thing. Well, it didn't stop the project from breaking but we did change who got kicked out." Miz sighed. "And even if he's an asshole, Sixer wouldn't have survived a week out on the streets by himself." She scowled. "Not that he would have been alone. Lee would have gladly dropped out of school just to take care of his brother."
"Yeah, well, Stan's an idiot. That sounds like something he might do, in your little imaginary 'what if' scenario you've got going on here." Stan's heart was in the right place, even if his head wasn't. Carla knew that. It was both admirable and stupid, not the least of which because Stanford would have never done the same thing for him. It was one of the most frustrating things about the whole mess. (Carla didn't even bother addressing the rest of the girl's made-up fantasy thing, there. In her experience, if she just let some stuff with other girls go without comment, they'd stop trying to mess with her after awhile.)
"It's not right that Stan has to get hurt because he loves his brother." Miz sighed.
Yeah, it wasn't right. But there wasn't anything Carla could do about it.
"Look," Carla said. "Let's say that that's actually a thing, yeah? It's not my problem," she told her.
Miz still looked pretty upset. Well, that wasn't Carla's problem either.
"Because whatever happened with Stanford's project doesn't matter there," Carla told her. "In your little scenario here, either Stanford said or did something stupid that had him deserving to get thrown out of the house, or he didn't; fine, sure, whatever. --That's not on anybody but him and his family. It's his screwed-up family that would be choosing to disown him for whatever stupid reason. That decision doesn't have to do with anybody else, and it isn't anybody else's callout," Carla told her. "And on top of that," Carla added, "You're saying that, what, either of them was gonna get thrown out, no matter what? --That's definitely on their parents, then, and not on anybody else." Carla looked at her. "So why are you standing here talking to me about it?"
"I needed to vent to someone. I can't vent to my brother because he'd probably kill little Ford for making me upset about this whole thing," Miz said. "Also, Stan doesn't think you're stupid, in fact he got mad when Ford said you were. Though the older Ford said it was dumb of you for breaking up with Lee--. I'm sorry, I'm rambling, I probably shouldn't meddle. I'm just sad that the older Stan had to go through what he did. I'm sad that he got blamed for breaking his Ford's project. I'm sad about a lot of stuff. I'm sad that you and Stan had to suffer because of a stupid misunderstanding..."
Carla rolled her eyes. "That's not my problem." Whether someone would want to 'kill' someone because this new girl vented to family; whatever made-up stuff happened that this girl seemed stuck on for some reason; none of it. Stanley hadn't gotten blamed for Stanford's project breaking; Stanford had gotten exposed for the liar that he was… and to call what had happened between her and the Pines twins just a misunderstanding hardly covered it! But… what had happened, had happened; Carla felt she'd learned from it, and wasn't going to make the same stupid mistakes ever again. She was tired of even thinking much about it anymore; she was done with this, and done with them. She just wanted to move forward, move on from it, leave this stupid town behind her as she moved on to bigger and better things, and let everything just stay in the past where it belonged.
As far as Carla was concerned, she'd gotten her revenge: Stanford had been shown up by her (whether he realized it or not) and exposed (which he did), and Stanley… she'd told him what a blind, horrible boyfriend he had been in no uncertain terms, even if she'd left out the specifics that would have made her look like a fool (and the two of them looking like insensitive creeps that some people might even have suspected had deliberately… well, they hadn't; if she'd talked more, asked more, been more straightforward in what she wanted and didn't want, she would have realized so very much sooner what was going on, and… she'd learned better, now). She'd gotten her revenge on them both; they'd deserved it; she was done, and it was enough. That was enough for her.
Miz let out a short bitter laugh. "Right, sorry. Well, thanks for listening. Good luck with college. I'm sorry you had to go through what you did. I was a little mad that you hurt Stan, but whatever, you did what you thought you had to. I'm not mad anymore, just sad." Miz rambled, sighing against the desk.
Carla was about to leave, but she paused at the door. "You heard Stanford tell his brother why he thinks I'm stupid? And Stanley defended me?" Carla couldn't believe that Stanley would get mad at Stanford for saying what he thought of everything; she had a pretty good idea of what Stanford would say to him, given what Stanford had said to her. And if Stanford told him that...
"Well, not really," Miz admitted. "But he did call you stupid and said you were unobservant, though he didn't go into specifics, and Stanley… didn't agree with him, but I guess he didn't say it out loud, and I didn't catch everything that went through his head at that moment so I don't know how he fully feels." (Right, apparently the 'aliens' were supposed to be mindreaders now, on top of some kind of 'illusionists'. Carla mentally rolled her eyes, but she didn't quite relax at this. Stanley had shoved her boyfriend's van off a cliff for him dating her -- she knew it'd been him. He could be vindictive if he wanted to be. And she had no idea how angry he might get at her for having confused him with his twin, or for thinking she'd been dating the both of them for awhile there. Because given Stanford's reaction to it...)
"Sixer called me stupid too, and maybe I am for still wanting to somehow help the two of them." Miz blinked away tears. "We were supposed to leave last week. But the older Stan wanted to stay and take care of the twins so they wouldn't be homeless, like he had been. He even had me forge the papers needed to have him listed as their guardian…" Miz held out a hand and materialized a copy of said papers before floating them over to Carla (who was staring, wide-eyed). "And I was all for helping those kids, but the longer I'm around Sixer, the more I want to just throw him in the ocean."
"Well, I wouldn't lose any sleep over it. Stanford's the idiot of the pair, no matter how smart he seems." Carla said as she blinked at the papers. Stanley Pines? Same name? She'd heard that they were relatives from out of town, but… She reached out to touch them, wondering how the girl was doing this, but yelped and pulled her hand back quickly when the papers seemed to crumple into dust when she finished her first read-through of them.
"--Seriously, what do you want?!" Carla demanded from her -- because she was sick of being messed with, with-- with stupid magic tricks!!
Miz slowly sat up. "What I want is a happy ending." (Carla frowned, not trusting what Miz might mean by that.) "But that's not going to happen. And it's not like I blame you or anything. I just wanted someone I could vent to. And as both thanks and an apology for upsetting you, here."
And Miz got up, walked over, lifted one of Carla's hands and handed Carla a small glowing orb the size of a fingernail. "One wish, pre-paid for already by you for listening to me vent. It's not a very strong wish, can't alter Reality with it, and it reads your intent rather than your words so… I dunno. Do what you want with it." Miz said. "So it works by…"
Carla wasn't listening. She had already been looking down at the orb that Miz had just placed on her hand without warning and frowning about it. She'd tried to drop it, then give it back when that hadn't worked, but without warning it seemed to shimmer and vanish into her hand. "--What the heck?" she said, cutting Miz off, then glaring at her. "Look, would you just stop with all this crazy stuff!" (She had science class on a different day than the Pines twins this year; she was in the alternate advanced section, so all she really knew about them so far was what she'd seen in the hallway, seen in her math class with them, and what she'd heard about them as 'alien' rumors that she just didn't believe.)
"Look, all I want is for you and those crazy Pines brothers to stop bothering me!" Carla told her. "Stop talking to me, or about me behind my back, and just-- just leave me alone!" she demanded of Miz. (Because, at this point, she felt like she could handle the twins on her own if she had to, but this girl was ins--)
Miz felt the wish take hold and found herself teleported away from the room, reappearing beside Lee and Sixer as they walked back to the boat with Bill. Lee jumped.
"--Holy hell!" Lee gasped. "Don't DO that! --What the heck!?" He'd wondered where she'd run off to, but… hey, if she wasn't near Sixer, then she couldn't get more mad at him for things he couldn't be doing to her. Right?
Bill was giving Miz an annoyed look. "...What did you do?" Bill asked of her slowly, and rather suspiciously. Because he recognized that that had been a magic-based teleportation; no-one but he and she could do that sort of thing here (he'd checked for that already with his Eye, when he'd first been looking for Pine Tree and Shooting Star). And the fact that she seemed a little startled by it herself meant that… she hadn't meant for that to happen. SUSPICIOUS. (Did he need to do something to--?)
Miz sighed. "Well, Carla wants nothing more to do with us. And I think that's fair, she's really stressed out." Miz wasn't too worried about Carla's Wish. Like she'd told Carla, it was minor, and reacted to Carla's intent. And Miz could feel how it had enacted itself from where she was standing now; it would just passively work to make it so that Carla wouldn't cross paths with Lee or Sixer outside of the classes they shared unless she wanted to. And--
Miz blinked as she realized that she herself was included on that list, too. It wasn't just the twins. Well, fair. Miz wasn't going to hold that against the other girl. ...Though it did seem a little like overkill for the 'not talking about her' part. Miz had actually felt a little pressure working against her as she'd spoken about Carla just now; it had been a tad uncomfortable. But she wasn't saying anything that Carla wasn't okay with her telling people. (Carla had wanted Miz to leave her alone more strongly than not to not talk about her behind her back, so letting people know that she wanted to be left alone was allowed under the parameters of this particular Wish.)
("Carla?" Lee asked, glancing between the two demons, looking confused and worried at what Miz had said, while Sixer didn't seem to care either way. But both of the twins were ignored for the moment.)
"The teleportation was a one-time thing?" Bill asked her. At Miz's nod, Bill gave Miz a long look, but let that part of it go for the moment, in terms of being on-guard to potential problems as a matter of his little sister's safety and wellness-of-being. (He would check his suit's readings later, to try and determine EXACTLY what had happened and why, though.) Miz seemed fine, and hadn't been hurt by the physical displacement, so… he would wait until the end of the day to address that, instead of dropping everything to address the issue right then. (It would take him some time to decode the information; that part of his suit's sensors and such were still rather experimental in nature, so he was going to have to do a lot of the brute-force analysis work himself… Paying attention to their surroundings was likely a better use of his time at that point, for the moment.)
"Did you do any magic on or near anyone that anyone else could see?" Bill asked his sister next. The latter shouldn't be a problem when it came to what Stanley wanted -- not for Miz -- but that Stanford complained every time he saw something. So if he wanted to potentially have to handle someone (read: that Stanford) who might end up complaining if they heard about it… then he'd need to know what he'd need to be telling that someone that they were being all idiotic about.
Miz wondered if giving someone a Wish counted as using magic on then without asking? She wasn't using magic ON them, though. Just giving them magic to use on themselves. It was totally different. It was more like a Blessing than actual magic anyway! Miz had even made sure that whatever wish Carla made wouldn't harm anyone. And Carla could turn off the avoidance effect whenever she wanted to actually talk to any of them.
"...Did you ask before doing any magic on someone first?" Bill asked, as if picking up on Miz's uncertainty.
Miz thought about it. "I gave her a minor wish and told her she could use it whenever she wanted for whatever she wanted, within reason, with limitations so that it couldn't be used to harm anyone, least of all me, you or the Stans. So is that a yes?"
Bill thought about it for a good long minute (in silence from the rest of the group, as Lee's worry started to edge closer to panic, and he tried to exchange a glance with his angry-looking twin -- because as far as Lee was concerned, it was taking waaaay too long for the older demon to answer Miz, and…)
(--Wait, what did it mean that Miz 'gave Carla' a 'minor' wish?!?)
"Did you explain the limitations, how it would work, and then give her a chance to say she didn't want the wish? Bill asked her, finally. He was thinking of that Stanford's major complaints about their Deal as he said it: that he hadn't been fully-informed as to what it was and did, and had walked into it not knowing enough to make an 'informed choice' before making his decision.
"Well she kinda used it before I could explain everything?" Miz winced. "But she can stop the effects anytime she wants."
(Lee was glancing between the two demons even more worriedly now. He'd been trying to stay quiet most of the day, for the rest of the day, so that he'd be able to talk up exactly what-all the two demons had done wrong to Sixer that day -- writing it down on paper wasn't gonna be enough!! -- but this? This had Lee reflexively opening his mouth to ask--)
Bill frowned. "Stanley and that Stanford will not be pleased," Bill noted dourly. "Did you tell her how to stop the effects?" he asked her next. That had been something that had come up with Stanley in one of his discussions with him, after his Deals with Pine Tree and Sixer had been called off: that Sixer hadn't known how to stop the Deal himself, and that he would have wanted to know that a lot sooner than Pine Tree telling him about it, nearly thirty-one years later.
"Well I got teleported away by her wish before I could finish talking and I won't be able to go talk to her since she doesn't want me or the twins to bother her." Miz sighed. "--I didn't think she'd use it immediately!" she protested weakly. (Lee's back went up at that.)
"--What did Carla wish for?!" Lee asked Miz quickly. He'd been having trouble getting a word in edgewise, and he was starting to get really worried what his old ex- might've wished for, if she was still angry at him (or Sixer…). --Could she have wanted him to get his car smashed, the same way that he'd smashed her new boyfriend's van? ...Oh shit. What if she'd wished that the Stan O' War--
Miz glanced over at Lee. "She just said that she wanted you two and me, to stop bothering her. Stop t-talking about her behind her back and just… leave her alone," Miz sighed.
Bill thought about this (as Lee pulled in a slow breath and let it out just as slowly and carefully, feeling like he'd somehow barely just accidentally dodged a bullet that he hadn't even seen coming his way).
"...HM." Bill looked over at her, having realized, "THIS is why Stanley wants me to talk through all of these sorts of things first, from now on, isn't it. He probably thinks that I would back myself into a corner like that." Bill shook his head (silly Stanley! he was out of his old decaying dimension now, and his Deals had all worked out just fine anyway, to get him what he wanted, when it really came down to it). Bill tapped his chin, then ticked a finger towards Miz. "Humans ARE unpredictable like that, sometimes! --At least, they are when you don't do proper research into them before deciding to go off 'giving' them things, first." He gave her a halfway-amused look. "Do you want ME to talk to her for you, after you tell me what you would OTHERWISE be telling her? Or--"
"--Stay away from her," Lee said immediately, to the older demon who had attacked his brother earlier that day for not liking something he'd said. Lee wasn't about to let the demon think it was okay to just… just… --Look, he saw what had happened to Crampelter, he'd been clenching his jaw and surviving the rest of the way through the day today after what this demon had just spent most of that time saying and doing to his brother, and… Lee wasn't gonna wish this devil of a demon on anybody, least of all his ex. Just because they weren't dating anymore because he'd been a bad boyfriend didn't mean--! It wasn't-- Just...
Lee stared the demon down as Bill looked over at him for a long moment. He tried not to show exactly how nervous he really was, and--
--Bill turned back to Miz and continued with what he was saying. "Or do you want to write it down and leave the note in her locker?" Bill asked of his little sister next, as if he had never been interrupted in the first place.
Miz rubbed her arm. "Yeah, I'm gonna keep that in mind next time. I guess I could leave a note."
Bill nodded once. "Good!"
Next time?? Lee stared. "--What did you do to Carla? Details," he demanded to know. (Hey, he hadn't gotten squashed by the two of 'em yet.)
Miz blinked. "I gave her one minor wish, paid in full as an apology for what Sixer put her through, and for her listening to me rant."
Lee stared at her. Miz ranted at them all the time, and none of them got any wishes for it. That meant that... it was really 'just' an apology from Miz for what Sixer(?!) had put Carla through. (He filed that back away in the back of his brain for now.)
"What the heck is a 'minor' wish," Lee repeated dully. From his experience, and what he'd read, 'demons' or 'djinn' or 'genies' that gave wishes ended up making them like 'monkey paw' wishes -- always screwed-up somehow, or with some kind of strings attached. (So what the heck would 'stop bothering her', 'stop talking about her behind her back', and 'leaving her alone' look like to a demon like Miz who thought his twin was some kind of a burden?!?, exactly?)
"A Minor wish is a small effect that grants something simple that doesn't rewrite reality or mess with time." Miz pouted. "I even made sure that it would be a wish that worked via Carla's intentions, rather than words, to prevent it from doing something she didn't want.
...Yeah, Lee didn't exactly trust what Miz might think 'small' was; the demon-lady turned into a dragon on the daily like breathing. At Miz's words on how her gift-wish worked on 'intentions', though, Lee felt a chill go down his spine.
"That ain't right," Lee told her, "That's even worse!" When she didn't seem to get it, Lee told her, "Look, if you gave me a wish when I was angry with somebody, and I was feeling all angry, I might be thinking about wanting to do something, but what if I didn't actually decide to do it, 'cause I calmed down and started thinking straight?! --That's dangerous!" Lee told her, "And really messed up! What if she wanted us to disappear, instead?" he demanded out of her. Would her wish have-- "What if you'd gotten her so angry that she wished we were never even born?!"
Miz defended herself. "There were limitations to prevent her from wishing to hurt people or alter the timeline. And she can turn it off whenever she wants."
"Great," Lee complained. "So if she'd wanted us to fall off a cliff, we would've poofed there like you just poofed here?" Because popping out of nowhere midair wouldn't kill them -- it was the fall that would. Freaking loopholes.
Miz sighed. "Carla just wants us to not bother her. You wouldn't have been hurt. The magic would shield you from damage." Miz shrugged. She didn't see what the problem was if no one got killed.
"Me and my brother wouldn't have been hurt falling to our deaths, if Carla wished us off the side of a cliff," Lee said slowly, staring at her. "This is what you are telling me."
Miz blinked. "The magic would shield you from damage," she repeated.
"Carla's wish would've kept us from getting hurt. That is what you are tellin' me," Lee said, crossing his arms. "Really." He was pretty sure that 'not hurting them' was not real high on Carla's list, given how she'd hurt him in dumping him like that already. (Maybe not kill them, if she was actually deciding it, but if this wish thing was supposed to work on some kinda foofy not-really-all-that-thought-out feelings of 'intent'...)
Miz rolled her eyes. "Not Carla's part of the wish, my limitations built into the spell. I didn't want any wish she made to be able to hurt anyone, so it wouldn't."
"So, what, you gave her a 'smart' wish-spell?" Lee said. "How much magic do these wishes got in 'em? Sounds like more than one wish there, to me." He didn't like this at all. --Was the old-man him okay with her pullin' this stuff? He bet the other Sixer wouldn't be! This counted as tossing magic at people without asking, right?
Miz blinked. "Preset programs have automatic functions. And I WAS going to explain how it worked to her, I just didn't think she'd use it without even hearing me out first." She shuffled her feet.
"You gave her a thing that works on 'intent'," Lee complained to her. "Don't that mean that whatever she most wanted right then would set it off, right away, even if it was a really small thing?" he pointed out with ruthless logic.
Miz whined. "I didn't think of that right then. I was just feeling upset and…"
"Yeah?" Lee just bet she hadn't been thinking. "Then maybe you shouldn't be giving out wishes that can maybe hurt people if you didn't think of whatever first, when you're feelin' upset!" Lee was feeling all out of sorts at this, almost as much as he was about his twin losing his voice -- except this could've maybe killed them, without Miz even trying. "--And how does us not being able to talk about her not make stuff different, anyway? Wouldn't that 'alter the timeline' too?" he asked her next. (And heck, weren't they all talking about Carla behind her back right then? Lee thought with a frown. How exactly was this thing supposed to actually work?) "What's gonna happen to us for not following this wish-thing you gave her?" Lee asked out of her next. Were they gonna get hit with bad luck, now, for not following Carla's wishes here, that they hadn't even known about? Or something even worse?
"Well, it feels more like Carla just doesn't want us talking about her to other people." Miz shrugged. "And from what I can feel, it's only supposed to make it more difficult to talk, like your mouth stutters through the words or something, rather than something more intense." Miz sighed. "And I already know I messed up so you don't have to say it." Miz folded her arms. "So what should I do now?"
"Howabout you maybe listen to that older Sixer more," Lee said, frowning at her and feeling all off-put that she was even asking him. She hadn't exactly been all that helpful before, when Bill had attacked his twin -- she'd just piled on on top of everything else instead. "He said no magicking people without asking, right?" (Then Lee looked over at Bill and flinched when he saw the sharp glare that the demon was giving him now.) Lee was starting to get an idea here of why the older Sixer had such a problem with the demon-dragon, and not just the older demon, too.
"I wasn't magicking her. I just… wanted to help… but I messed up. I ALWAYS mess up… I can't help anyone…" Miz said miserably.
Bill's glare got worse, and Lee winced, starting to sweat. Great. "--That's not… You said--" it was a spell, and... Ugh, this was so messed up. He wasn't cut out for this. She was the one who'd screwed up, not him! He just didn't want to be the one dying if she did something like this again!
Okay. Okay. She was a girl, right? So just take a deep breath and treat her like a girl…
"Okay, so this was some other, not-magic thing. So wishes aren't magic? --Do either of the older us'es know that?" Lee complained. "Because… I mean…"
(...And Bill went from glaring at Lee to frowning at him instead. Lee let out a breath. ...Yeah, he was definitely gonna get the old-man him to add 'no neurotoxin'ing people' to Bill's list of 'don't do that' too, for sure -- Bill had to have one, 'cause killing people was apparently definitely on that list for the older devil-demon one of the pair -- along with 'no treating his twin like crap or worse'. None of this stuff was okay!)
"Probably not." Miz sighed. "Wishes for me are more of a Weirdness-Blessing thing than Magic. It's similar, and most people would consider it magic, but in terms of the underlying energy type and function it's different. Blessings are like a Curse but with different effects, and it's still something I'm working on, only realized I could give Blessings a few centuries ago…"
"Yeah, I'm thinking you should maybe add 'get an okay first for anything kinda-magic-y-looking' to the list of stuff, if maybe they haven't yet," Lee said, scratching at the back of his head and feeling really uncomfortable as he said this. Because if something like that wasn't on whatever no-go list his old-man self had going with them already, then… how long had these demons actually been staying with their older selves, if he'd run into this with them in less than a week?
"Can you do weird-blessing wishes, too?" Lee asked Bill, glancing over at him again. At the look that Bill gave him, Lee tried not to flinch and very uncomfortably turned back to Miz pretty quickly. "Yeah, uh-- you should probably at least ask 'em if they even knew you could do wishes in the first place," Lee told the demon-dragon. Heck, he had thought demons were more into a 'deal-making' thing, himself; djinn and genies and stuff were supposed to be for wishes, right? And if their older selves didn't know that...
"...I haven't used much 'weirdness' myself since I've been back, for reasons; Stanley is not used to saying 'no weirdness' to me," Bill admitted after a long moment, glancing over at Miz. "He… may not have thought of it." Bill looked away. "That Stanford--" Bill's expression got complicated, then smoothed away, and he said, "He's never met anyone else, demon or human, who uses 'weirdness' like I do. He probably thinks that everything you do is either magic or innate," Bill told Miz, the realization only coming to him then.
Miz sighed. "Well, it wasn't straight Weirdness, it was a Blessing; it's mildly different. I'm still learning how different it is from straight Weirdness or Curses. And I've given Mabel a minor Wish before. She asked for a bouncy house." That was fun.
"Anything magic-looking, you gotta ask first," Lee repeated. None of this was gonna help if they kept making up new names for stuff to try and get out of whatever.
Miz nodded, while Bill glared at Lee. "--Don't order my little sister around," was Bill's contribution to the discussion at that. Lee flinched, but tried to hold his ground -- not wanting to back down -- while Miz herself sighed.
"I really should tell Stan though," Miz noted. "If this still technically counts as magic-ish. I shouldn't hide it from him."
"Of course we're going to talk to Stanley about it," Bill said. "You shouldn't have to hide who or what you are; Stanley agrees. --But DON'T talk to him when I'm not there!" Bill added, so he could intervene if Stanley asked for something unreasonable -- especially if that Stanford tried to get involved. (That got him eyed by both Lee and Sixer, though they had very different expressions on their faces as they did it.)
Miz agreed as their group slowed down, as they neared, then began to approach the side of the boat. She wilted a little. "Might as well get this over with," she muttered before floating up. She spotted Stan and Ford on the deck, building… something to add onto the boat. Miz cleared her throat.
"Stan, I tried to help someone and I messed up. I kinda used magic-ish stuff on them without asking and explaining it all to them beforehand. They set off the effect before I could. But it was still my fault for not thinking ahead," Miz said loudly before she bowed her head. "I'm sorry. I will accept my penalty."
"You what?!" Ford said immediately, setting down the tool he was holding a bit roughly. "What did you--!"
Bill finishing quickly clambering up onto the deck, looking annoyed that she'd gone up that quickly without him. (He was trying to keep the magic to a minimum still, especially with Miz's latest potential 'transgression'. --That meant not levitating upwards using his suit and climbing his way up instead, since that Stanford would label it levitation magic, and derail the argument -- if not make it even worse.)
"Ford..." Stan said warningly as Bill got himself up onto deck, a stormy expression on the kid's face as he turned around and tossed the rope ladder over the side, while keeping his eyes on Ford. Ford grimaced and stopped at his bequest, and Stan waited for that before turning back to Miz. "Anybody get hurt or die?" was the first question Stan asked of her (which had Ford stiffening in place), while the younger twins finishing climbing up onto the deck themselves.
"No. I set a Rule that no one would get hurt or killed from this Wish effect." Miz answered.
Stan blinked. "Uh. Well." At least there was that. He set down his hammer and turned to give Miz his full attention. He figured he'd need to, for this. He wasn't all that sure he'd gotten what she was trying to say here, yet. And how the hell did you not completely ask something beforehand? "Who did you use this Wish thing on, and what were you trying to do?" Stan asked her next.
"Well I…" Miz struggled a little to speak, because between Bill's spell from earlier now being in stronger force (now that she realized it was related, since it worked on the speaker's own knowledge), and with Carla's Wish now acting on top of that... "Spoke? To… her. Wanted to know… what happened, her side of--" Miz bit her lip. "I felt bad for her, what I… she was… I thought it would help…" (Stan frowned at this. He didn't get why the dragon-lady was suddenly having trouble speaking to him.)
"You felt bad for her," Sixer said rather disparagingly. Stan glanced over at him with a frown. So did Lee, but in surprise instead. He hadn't known his twin had cared that much about it. (Bill clenched his jaw. And Ford glanced between his younger self and Bill.)
"You... hurt her." Miz glared at Sixer. "And she cried for days--" One of Miz's eyes was twitching and she seemed to jerk slightly in place, as--
"--STOP," Bill said abruptly to Miz. She immediately shut her mouth and seemed to slump in place. Bill took in a slow breath next, looking annoyed.
Stan frowned at this. Ford was glancing between them all.
"...I didn't mean to hurt her," Lee muttered, taking what Miz had said the wrong way, and looking away from them all as he stuffed his hands in his pockets and hunched his shoulders.
"This is stupid," Bill said flatly. "Stop talking about the--"
"--Perhaps we should talk about it," Ford cut in abruptly, focused on Bill.
Bill crossed his arms and gave that Stanford a long, hard look straight-on. "Oh yes," he told 'his Sixer', as he turned towards him. "Let's talk about all sorts of relationship problems. You certainly like doing that, DON'T YOU?" Bill said with a bit of a nasty smirk, taking a step towards him, like he was gearing up for something. "Like--"
"--Okay, no," Stan said quickly, getting to his feet, and physically getting between them. "You stop right there, kid." (Luckily, the kid quieted at this.) And Stan, having read between the lines, wasn't just talking about wanting the demon to stop getting ready to tear Ford a new one. Stan realized now exactly who this 'she' they were all talking about was, because he remembered the whole 'Carla thought he was Ford' thing now, that Miz seemed to think was a thing…
"Okay. Okay." Stan let out a soft, tired groan and rubbed a hand across his face. ...Yeah, if this was really a thing, then... Miz jumping in and talking to… Carla?... about stuff, was… Hell. She'd said she felt bad for her and wanted to help. So the dragon-lady must've decided for whatever reason that she wanted to make things better somehow, he bet, and then thought she could do it, except... (Well, that had never ended well for her, yet. Dragon-lady had a track record loss of 0 to… what, 4 now? 5? More?)
"--We're stopping right here," Stan said next. The dragon lady jumping into things had probably just made things worse, from the way she was actin' right now. Probably messed things up again, not knowing what to do, and not talking about any of it to him first. Hell.
Ford sent his brother a look, but Stan just shook his head in reply. 'Let it go, Ford.' He really didn't want to get into this with either his younger or his… less younger twin, here. (Freaking roll-back time dimensions. Seriously. Ten years younger, he swore.) He didn't want Ford getting caught up in feeling who knew what about this stuff, let alone Sixer. And this junk was all way too fresh for Lee, too. ...And, truth be told, Stan didn't want to have to find out whether Miz was actually right about any of it. Because if she was… hell.
"Dragging this stuff up now ain't gonna help anybody," Stan said to all of them. "Miz, for Pete's sake, stay out of it. You two, stay away from Carla. I shouldn't need to say this," Stan said to the younger twins. Ford, he'd already basically told to let it go by that look he'd given him. Stan didn't bother giving any instructions to Bill on it; it was pretty damn clear where the demon-kid fell on this one.
Miz hung her head. "Sorry…"
"She's a freaking ex. You don't go bugging exes who don't want anything to do with you anymore -- and you sure as hell don't go bugging them about their breakups, either, hell," Stan said, directing the last at Miz. Stan shook his head, completely at a loss here.
"I wasn't," Lee muttered. Sixer just let out a huff of breath, and it was pretty clear that he was mentally shrugging it off, not particularly interested in rehashing any of it himself. (The kid folded his arms in a way that would've made Stan want to laugh on any other day, because he almost looked like Ford, doing it. And Ford didn't even seem to notice this.)
Miz looked incredibly guilty. "I just wanted to hear her side of the story, because I wanted to understand what happened fully. Not just what I Saw--"
"--No," Stan said, cutting her off. "I told you I didn't want to get into it before. That doesn't mean you go behind my back, bothering her about it instead." She'd used to be human; she should have known this stuff. "--Hell, if you couldn't figure it out with your Eye thing," Stan glanced over at Bill, "Or by asking your brother about it--" and at the look Miz got on her face when Stan looked back at her, Stan stopped talking. And then he clenched his jaw for a moment. "...You didn't freaking ask the demon who thinks he knows everything about all this stuff to explain it to you, first," Stan said flatly.
"Bill isn't a reliable source--" Ford began harshly.
"--Not the point," Stan said, not looking away from Miz. "Miz. Did you even think about talking to your brother about this stuff first, before bothering Carla about any of it. Yes or no."
Miz flinched. "...um…" She looked pretty flustered. And embarrassed. Freaking dammit. Stan let out a breath and closed his eyes, rubbing a hand across his face, then stopping again to breathe deeply. Right. Okay, then. Fine. Fine.
"Stan, you are about to set a very bad precedent here," Ford said warningly, having an idea of what his brother was about to say.
"'Precedent', nothing," Stan said, dropping his hand. "The demons should be talking to each other about all of their stuff; I've already been trying to get them to do that as much as possible." Hell, that was half the point of having them be siblings to each other. "The kid's at least smart enough to know when something doesn't fit real well," Stan told him. "They talk, they either get it, or they don't. They don't get it? --They come to me. It ain't portal science, Ford," Stan complained at his brother.
"Stan--" Ford began with no small dread, feeling very worried and increasingly anxious and frustrated about this whole situation with his brother and what he was doing with the two demons… (because if Bill learned to lie effectively again from the other demon, so that he couldn't tell when Bill was lying to him again anymore…)
"--You want to argue about this? We can do it below deck," Stan told his brother next. "But right now--" Stan turned back to Miz. "There a reason you went off doing magic-y wish-y things when we've been telling both you and your brother not to do that to people without gettin' them to say yes and be okay with it, first?" Stan said to her, giving her a grumpy old-man stare.
"I was going to explain it all to her, she just set it off before I could." Miz responded, able to speak more freely now that it wasn't directly about Carla and Stan's relationship. "But it was my fault for handing it to her before I finished explaining, so I know I messed up. So…" she shuffled in place. "I will take the penalty for it."
Stan glowered at her. "Yeah, you'll take a penalty for it, if you need one," Stan said, even though he saw Bill bristling, "And the kid will help me do it." That left the kid twitching still. "--But that ain't what I asked you. I asked you for a reason, and that ain't a reason I'm hearing here," Stan told her, "Just an excuse. --So, what," Stan said. "You're tellin' me Carla said 'yes' to you before you explained?" That didn't sound right; Carla was a pretty down-to-earth gal. Why would she go in for taking up some wish? "Or 'no'? Or anything?" (Lee rubbed the side of his arm, feeling uncomfortable at all this.)
"Well it was a Wish that would grant her intended wants. She… Um…" Miz looked uncomfortable as well. "She wanted me to stop bothering her… and the twins too."
"Did she know you were giving her a wish that worked like that?" Stan asked her, frowning. "Did she say 'yes' to this wish thing before you explained?" Stan repeated. Wasn't like he hadn't noticed that she still hadn't actually answered his question
"--Miz said that she did not get a 'yes' from Carla first," Bill interjected, stepping forward and coming up next to her side. He was more used to the way Stanley did his questioning. Things repeated were going to be repeated until they were answered, or start a much larger and longer (generally unwelcome) discussion if not. "Wishes are closer to weirdness than magic for her," Bill said next, as he carefully lay a hand on her shoulder. "And she will write a note to leave in Carla's locker explaining how to stop the wish if she wants to--"
"--It's still active?" Ford cut in, looking absolutely horrified.
Stan sighed. "Can't you just stop whatever this wish thing is from here, without it bein' a problem for anybody?" Stan asked Miz next.
"Well, her wish was that she doesn't want me to bother her. So…" Miz shrugged. "I can break through it if I pushed, but I don't know if I should." ("Should?!" Ford repeated, looked incensed.) She paused. "It might have consequences if I tried to break it, when the Wish directly wants me to not bother her. I wanted to ask you first, since obviously, I don't know how to do things like this correctly."
"...Well, at least you're askin' me now," Stan said, though from his tone of voice it was pretty clear that she should've done that a hell of a lot sooner. Or, y'know, dropped it in the first place like he'd told her that he'd wanted her to. He shouldn't have had to hammer it into her that she should leave Carla alone, either. He was pretty sure he'd made that clear before, not just that she shouldn't talk to Ford about it. (...And what was she bringing up right in front of the two Ford's here, now? Hell.) --Did he really need to explain to her why what she'd done without asking was just a big damn problem? (...Hell, maybe he did. If she hadn't been doing the 'ask the dead little sister first if that's a good idea' thing, then maybe he should...)
"Look," Stan said. "You can't just go shovin' things on random people that maybe they don't want, and didn't even ask for. That never goes well." Stan frowned, trying to think of… yeah, okay. "When Sixer tried to yank a scale off'a you, that wasn't okay, right? 'cause he was trying to take something from you without permission. --This is kinda the same thing," Stan told her. "You go off shoving something on somebody without them even knowing how to say 'no', or if they even can say no to you, or get rid of it on their own without you tellin' 'em how? That's a problem. You can ask your brother here for even more examples of that one." Stan sent a quick glance over at the kid because, yeah, that whole Deal thing had been a mess and a half, Ford hadn't know how to get rid of that on his own until Dipper had stepped in.
Stan wasn't just gonna stop there, though. "But here's one for ya right now: if somebody had stuck a bunch of scales or horns to you instead, and you couldn't just shake 'em off, that'd be pretty messed up and not okay too, yeah? --And that's kind of what you just did to Carla," Stan told the younger demon, "Almost exactly the same thing. You shoved something on her without asking, that she doesn't know how to shake off, that she's all stuck with right now, that she probably don't even know she can say no to or get rid of. --So yeah, you should get rid of it," he told her, "Either you, or your big brother," Stan said next. "If it's gonna be easier for him to do it. And if he can do it for you without gettin' on Carla's case or anything about it."
"I can remove it without being anywhere near her," Bill said. "But I'm going to have to spend some time discussing the specifics with Miz, first."
"Fine," Stan said. "Go down into the hold, toss up one of those filters, and do that." Seriously, he was sick and tired of this shit. "And next time you think about shoving something on somebody first without asking, you think about how much you didn't like what Sixer tried to do to you, and whether or not you really want to go off and be making somebody else feel the same way about you, instead." Miz looked guilty. " --Bill, you remind her of this one, next time you catch her at it. Yeah? We'll call that a penalty for you for now, since you keep sayin' you want to go off taking her 'penalties' on for her," Stan said, making that one clear for them all.
Bill gave him a nod, no complaints there (huh), then made his way over to the hatch. Miz hung her head in shame and walked off to the hatch as well.
Once the demons had disappeared belowdecks, Stan let out another sigh and rubbed his hand across his face again.
"Stanley--" Ford began.
"We are dropping this whole damn thing like one a' those freaking biting gnomes and we're not talking about it again," Stan said rather heavily.
The older Sixer looked like he wanted to protest, but Lee himself nodded (feeling a little relieved) and walked over to slump up against the railings, feeling like a wrung-out used old holey dirty rag. Because between what Sixer might have said to insult Carla, and whatever else he might have done to make her break up with him that she might've left out of her original tirade… Lee didn't want to talk about any of this anymore, either. (He didn't like the idea that she might've been crying about it, about him…)
"Look," Stan said to Ford, "These two are gonna be outta here after they graduate. They ain't gonna see Carla ever again. No reason to get into any of it, whatever 'it' is, when it ain't a thing, and doesn't ever need to be one. Okay? Whole point of having a girl being an ex is to just let things go. Yeah?"
Ford glanced at the hatch the demons had gone down. He clenched his fists. "Bill doesn't want Miz talking about it," he told Stanley under his breath, glancing back at him. "You had to have seen that."
Stan stared at him. "Just 'cause it's something the kid don't want, doesn't mean it's something that we should do," he told Ford lowly. He knew what Ford was thinking of doing, and he wasn't having any of it.
Ford made a frustrated sound. "But there must be a reason that he--"
"--Look, I don't care what reasons he's got. I don't want to talk about it, Lee doesn't want to talk about it, Sixer looks pissed off as hell about--" hell knew what either of the demons had said about this whole thing in front of him about it, goddamnit. Stan shook his head. "--I don't care what the kid wants here on this one; we're dropping this, now," Stan grumbled out. Hell. Why did Miz have to bring this up while Ford was here? Couldn't she have at least waited to speak with him alone about this? Yeah, she hadn't straight-up mentioned Carla's name herself, but still!
Stan let out a breath. ...Hell. What was he even thinking here. He knew that Miz was trouble with a capital D for demon. But she acted like a human half the time, and… damnit, he'd started getting used to her trying to do everything he'd wanted, and not doing the stuff he'd told her he didn't want her to do. --That was his problem, there. He'd assumed she'd keep trying to go along with things, if he told her something straight-out that he wanted, that he thought wasn't gonna be unreasonable. But from the sounds of it, Miz had gone after Carla, talking at her and all, because the dragon-lady had been curious about all the junk that he hadn't wanted to tell her. He'd been out, and she hadn't thought of asking her big brother about any of it, which meant that the only person she'd thought she could get a straight story out of had been…
...Hell. Maybe he should be counting his lucky stars that she'd gone to Carla first, instead of Ford. Damnit. ...She was as curious as one of those cats, too, wasn't she. And that meant that if he wanted to say anything like that in the future to her -- not to go asking after stuff from other people and leaving them alone when she was curious about something she didn't understand -- and have a snowball's chance in hell of her actually going along with it? He'd have to remember to explicitly tell her to go talk to her brother about it instead, maybe, and to come back to him if talking to the kid didn't cover it, no matter how much he maybe didn't want to talk about whatever himself -- not if he didn't want her running off to other people and pulling this shit, again.
...Well, whatever. Live and learn. Stan let out a sigh and rubbed the back of his neck. Eh, not like it'd turned into some huge disaster that'd ended up hurting Ford this time; he'd caught it in time this time. Sounded like the kid had even been trying to catch some of it for him, at the end of it there. ...Which was a good sign, all things considered, since it meant the kid was learning and trying to handle things for him before they became a problem for… himself, and maybe Stan too. (Yeah, he'd have to keep an eye on that, too. Not like Ford might not have a point there. He wasn't all that sure that keeping Ford from mentally losing it as part of the extended agreement for the kids stretched nearly so far as covering something like this, with how he'd react to maybe finding out something bad about Carla that had to do with them both. So did that mean...)
Stan frowned, then shook it off and turned to the younger twins. "Ya hungry?" he asked them both. Then he paused. Because he got nods out of them both, but Sixer usually spoke up at questions like that, and Sixer… hell, he hadn't said anything at all about any of this junk, this whole time. Not even a question. "Sixer, there somethin' specific you want to eat?" Stan tried next, and when Sixer opened, then closed, his mouth, and didn't actually say anything...
Lee noticed Stan's look and let a breath out slowly. Finally, they could get to fixing this next! "--Bill did something to make him stop talking," Lee reported quickly (and stepped aside quickly as Ford jolted up to his feet and strode over to check over the younger Ford anxiously). "--Because Sixer was sayin' things that made Miz mad today, and Bill got really mad for her," Lee finished explaining. And Lee felt something inside him sink a little bit, when he saw how fast the old-man him's expression just dropped. "Bill said that he was stopping Sixer from talking before he said something that would make him want to kill Sixer even if you and Miz don't want him killing people," Lee added with an angry grimace, looking the old-man straight in the eye. "He said--"
"--Hold up," Stan interrupted his younger self for a moment, then took a moment himself to breathe. Because Bill had wanted to kill-- But Sixer was clearly breathing, and Lee wasn't looking that panicked, so Bill... hadn't actually killed anybody there, then. Or brought them back after killing them, wasn't like Stan didn't remember the demons talking about that like it was some kind of a thing. "--Okay, step back a little. What happened?" Stan asked them next, trying to remain calm.
Lee rubbed his face. "Well, it started when my brother called Miz stupid…"
Stan stiffened immediately, but he didn't interrupt his younger self as Lee kept on talking. He let Lee finish talking before he considered even saying a word. And when Lee was done…
Right. Yeah. He could kinda see how and why things had just gone straight on downhill from there. Stan slowly made his way over to the nearest chair (a beach chair up on the deck, not that far away), pulled it over a little closer -- though not much -- and sat down heavily in it with a sigh. He rubbed his hands across his face, as he told himself that it could've all been a hell of a lot worse.
"...Yeah, okay. Guess the kid really is getting better," Stan said finally, as he dropped his hands and sent a long look Ford's way. "'Cause it's pretty good that Bill didn't just straight-out kill him," for calling somebody he considers to be 'himself' stupid. Hell. Stan was pretty sure the only reason he hadn't straight-up wasted Ford for it out on the porch? Was because Ford was part of his Zodiac. He'd gotten that much outta some of the kid's ranting about everything after the fact, and later. That the kid hadn't done that to somebody who the kid basically considered to be nothing to him? "That's progress." He wasn't all that happy at the kid for pulling any of that shit on this younger version of his twin, let alone whatever the hell Lee didn't want to repeat word-for-word at him there, and whatever else Lee had tried to skip over that was 'stupid about the whole thing', but...
Lee gripped his brother's hand, trying to hide his shaking, because the fear was coming back now all over again, having to think about it, not just survive it until... "Bill said the only reason he didn't outright kill him was because it would make Miz upset."
Stan stilled at that, then let out a rough sigh. "Yeah, well. I'll have a talk with Miz and the kid on all this shit later, but… you ain't seen what the kid can do when he's letting loose. We have. Believe me, it's progress that he's holdin' back on any stuff at all. The way the kid talks, I know he thinks he could do stuff like kill Sixer and maybe un-kill him later 'if he had to', and think that's all just fine and peachy." Ford stiffened at his side at that one. (...Yeah, Ford. I know.)
And Stan watched as one of the two teenagers looked at him like they thought he was joking, while the other one? Didn't. And Stan waited.
And once Sixer realized he was dead-serious, and that Lee wasn't smiling, and that the older him wasn't looking anything but downright grim either...
"Yeah," Stan told him. "You damn near got yourself killed today for insulting the wrong damn person. Congratulations, kid."
And now that he knew that he (finally) had Sixer's attention... then, and only then, did Stan go on, proceeding to explain...
---
When the demons came back up on deck, the two pairs of twins were in the cabin with the door open, and Stan was calmly making dinner. Ford was glaring silently at both of them, while Sixer was head-down, writing in a journal. Lee was watching them, too. The two demons walked over and into the cabin doorway, and stopped. Miz pulled down on the end of her shirt.
"Um… the wish is nullified," Miz said meekly.
Stan nodded. "Good." He didn't bother asking any more questions about the how of that because, frankly, he didn't care. What he did care about was… "Now when is he--" Stan nodded in the direction of Sixer "--gettin' his voice back?"
"When I feel like it," Bill said almost casually. "Also: four hours from now, until I hit him with the same neurotoxin again, and then eight hours from then, when I have to get up in the middle of the night to go down into the hold and do it again, and then--"
"--Kid," Stan said, holding up a hand, and Bill fell silent. "Think I get the gist of what you think of this whole thing, here. You maybe wanna let your sister try tellin' us all what she wants here, for a sec?"
Bill looked annoyed at this, but after about a beat, he deliberately leaned back up against the doorway, seeming far more relaxed than he had been on entry.
Miz looked over at Sixer and sighed. "I would like for Sixer to stop saying things that make brother want to kill him." (Sixer rolled his eyes.) "--Look, I'm just saying, half the stuff you said was complete bullshit, and also very mean." Miz pouted at him. "Having mild prosopagnosia doesn't mean someone's stupid. It's a cognitive disorder." She sounded a little defensive. "And aside from someone's social class or financial situation, there's also autism, ADHD, and plenty of other neurodevelopmental disorders that plenty of people go undiagnosed with! They're not stupid either! Their brains are just literally built differently and the broken education system doesn't know how to give them the care and attention they need to actually learn and succeed!" She huffed.
Stan blinked at this rant. Even Ford turned to her with a frown. "Wait, what?" Stan asked. What was she talking about? Lee hadn't brought any of this stuff up at all… whatever the hell it was. He'd talked about Sixer not meaning to call Miz stupid (hell), and then answering questions to try and make Miz not mad with him again, and differences of opinion on how anybody should treat most people that Sixer got all wrong that made Miz want to talk to him even less...
"Every human's brain works differently, Stanley," Bill said. "And some humans think that some are more different than others, but then they get all the things that actually matter WRONG, so all the groupings are completely idi--"
"--Kid," Stan cut in again. "One of you, define those things that you just said." Stan had never heard of half that stuff before.
"--Sixer thinks that just because someone is bad a school work, that means they're stupid!" Miz whined. "But that's not true! And then I got reminded that Seb has ADHD, which is a disorder that makes it hard for him to physically sit still or focus on stuff because his brain doesn't function like most human brains, and he doesn't realize he HAS it, and Seb wasn't able to sit still or focus at school and everyone called him stupid, even though he wasn't! And it just made me really upset because his Ford always called him stupid and that Ford--" she pointed at Sixer "--called his Stan stupid and everyone else--" She took a deep breath, trying to calm down. "And when I told Sixer that if he keeps being a jerk and thinkin' that everyone other than him is beneath him, that I'm not going to help him anymore, he said he would get you to order me to help him even if I didn't want to and--!"
"--Woah!" Stan said, sitting up about as straight as he could, because that had just gone from left field to 100 miles an hour in the opposite direction, backwards, faster than he could blink. "Hold up a second! What was that last thing you just said?!" There was no way in hell that he'd heard that right, had he?
Bill placed a hand on Miz's head and pet her until she calmed down, making that waterfall sound again. ...And then he kept on petting her even more, after that. He was staring at Stan rather than her the whole time though, eyes half-lidded and...
And Stan knew in that moment that no, he hadn't heard that wrong. Sixer had actually said that. (The hell? Had Sixer really--?! ...Yeah, goddamnit, he had, Stan could tell just by looking over at him, and seeing the look on his face. And Lee had left that goddamn ticking time bomb outta the equation entirely, his whole little 'sanitized' retelling of it. Stan clenched his jaw.) ...And now Stan was being tested again by the demons. (Hell, did they actually think this was even a question?)
"--I ain't ordering you around in the first place," Stan told Miz firmly, just to make that clear from the start, for both her and her brother... and everyone else. (Hell, the kid had to know that he wouldn't try something like that on his sister. Right? --Suggestions, sure. Requests, maybe. But not frigging orders; hell, he wasn't that stupid. He wasn't gonna try that with the kid, let alone her.) "You're telling me that Sixer -- that guy, over there -- actually said that he was going to ask me to make you do something that you don't want to do. This is what you are telling me," Stan said coolly.
Miz looked miserable. She nodded. Stan pulled in a sharp breath.
"Bill," Stan said firmly, "Were you there for this whole thing?" A nod. "Is that what Sixer said to her?" A nod and a dark look. Goddamnit. Goddamnit. "--Kid, I want a damn transcript of that whole thing. --Lee left a shit-ton of everything out of what he told me earlier," Stan damn near snarled out, in full grumpy old-man ire. The others stared at him for it -- Ford stunned by the request, and Lee looking straight-out alarmed -- while Bill just retrieved his eyepatch from his pocket, 'flipped' it open into his hat, pulled out a stack of paper, waved it while making a 'tsk'ing sound at it… and handed over exactly what he'd asked for, the sheets of paper now filled with inked-out words in actually-legible readable paper-printed font.
Stan took them from him.
And asked, "Page?" got "Thirteen," and immediately flipped it to--
"Stan--" Ford began.
"I'm readin'," Stan told his brother, adjusting his glasses unconsciously. (Lee stared at this, because upon being told this? The older Sixer just shut up and let him do it.) And Stan read what he had, right in front of him. And when he read up to, and then through, what Miz had just told him about...
Stan grimaced. And he looked up at the two demons.
Because now, Stan was put in the very uncomfortable situation of being intensely grateful that Bill had not killed the younger Ford right then and there. Because, shit. What the fuck had Sixer been thinking? Hhe hadn't been, that's what. --Some things, you just didn't fucking say about people, let alone to their faces. That had clearly been a threat to begin with, and Miz wasn't his goddamn slave! The hell?!
If anybody had said something like that to him about anybody in his own family, like what Sixer had just said about Miz--
Stan looked up at the younger demon. Yeah. He'd been about to read Bill the riot act, after going through shit with him. But now...
Damn it. Where the hell was he even supposed to start with this?
"--I can't order you to do anything." Stan said to Miz simply, as he held onto those pages in front of him. "You know that, and I know that -- and we all know that we all know that, you and me and your brother and my brother, all of us," Stan added, gesturing at each of them with his handful of paper, just to cover his bases, "And you know that I won't even try. Right? --We talk, that's it." Frankly, the fact that Miz chose to listen to him was all on her, and Stan was relieved that he didn't have to lean on the kid more than he did to get her to listen to him. (Hell, mostly he just had the kid leaning on her to remember some of the stuff that she seemed to keep forgetting, that she seemed to agree with.) Stan didn't understand why she seemed to value his opinion of her, all on her own, but as long as he could use that to help keep her from hurting the people he cared about, well, he wasn't about to complain. But this, though… this was...
"You don't feel like I've been ordering you around, do ya?" Stan had to ask her next. Because he knew that the kid knew that even if he said something that the kid might think sounded like an order, it wasn't one; kid could always talk to him about it, or say no. But he hadn't had the same talk with Miz about it, start-to-finish, mostly because she'd seemed better at all the 'human stuff'. And he'd been trying to be careful from the start with how he'd been talking to them both. But if he had this wrong, and Miz thought he was ordering her around, and (in trying to help her brother out, if) she'd only been going along with pretty much everything so far because she'd thought they were orders that she'd had to follow (for her brother's sake)...
Miz shook her head. "I know you haven't. You're a good man," she said quietly.
Stan let out a breath of something like relief upon hearing that, because he could tell that she wasn't lying. (Well, relief at the first part; not so much at the second. Not that he was gonna complain about any little bit of that right now.)
Stan turned to look at Sixer. "Look, I can't order Miz around. I don't order Miz around. That ain't right ta do to anybody, and I don't know where the hell you got the idea that I was, or that I would. --I just ask her nicely, talk things out with her so she gets all the whys and wherefores of the stuff, and then she decides if she wants to do whatever the thing is that I'm asking her to do, or not. And that's it. That's all. Nobody's forcing anybody to do anything they don't want to do. And it's the same thing with the other demon-kid, too," Stan told Lee and Sixer (and hey, probably Ford along with 'em, because if Sixer wasn't getting it, then who knew if his brother might've been misunderstanding something here about the arrangement he had with the demons here maybe, too).
Bill seemed pleased by Stan's admission that he didn't/couldn't order his sister around. Miz was purring as she leaned against her brother, who was still petting her. Ford looked distinctly uncomfortable, and the teenagers…
...were staring at the older Stan. "Wait, so you…" Lee glanced between Stan and the demons. "You don't control them?" Lee asked, starting to feel a little panicky all over again.
Stan rolled his eyes "Hell no, I don't control them. They're free to do whatever the hell they want. I just explain what it really ain't a good idea for them to do, and why."
"Then why do they listen to you?" Lee asked. Sixer and Ford looked like they wanted to know the same thing.
"Because I talk to them like they're people," Stan told them flat-out. "Y'know. Because they're people," he ground out at them all. Ford twitched in place at this. (Yeah Ford, that's all it is. Heck, Stan was 100% sure that part of the reason Miz seemed to get mad at Ford all the time was because he constantly talked to her like she wasn't a person!)
Ford barely held back his almost-instinctive 'Demons aren't people!' protest, but he did hold it back. (Not least of which because Bill almost certainly wasn't… quite what he claimed himself to be. Given all that Ford had seen over the last week, what Ford knew about him now that he hadn't known because of what he hadn't seen before, Ford was starting to realize that maybe...)
...That didn't mean that Miz wasn't a demon, or that Bill would listen to anyone other than himself and his own desires, though. And Ford pulled in a harsh breath at the thought.
Miz purred softly. "Because Stan is a good man, and I like him," she said simply. "He listens and helps." Ford was staring at her incredulously, before mentally shaking it all off as the very most blatant of lies. He knew well from his own experiences that there was no way a demon would just listen to someone because they thought they were a good person. --Frankly, they used that as an excuse to do the opposite, the majority of the time. And she said that she liked Stan? Why? Because he 'listened' to her and 'helped'? Helped with what? --That made even less sense. Except... that part about listening and helping though… Ford wasn't sure how to pick that one apart, other than to realize and note that it sounded similar to the 'learning' bit that Stan had with Bill as part of the four things he was 'giving' to Bill for being 'a kid'. ...Which the other demon also looked like. ...And that likely meant trouble for later, because the demon was clearly trying to play off of Stan's and Bill's own currently-going 'game'...
(And the younger demon must have some sort of ploy going on, because otherwise, her actions would make no sense for a demon. Frankly, they would be more in line with-- with-- with a child trying to learn discipline from a parent, while fumbling through the process of socialization in the very-worst of ways-- but that would be absolutely ridiculous--!!)
"Stan," Ford tried, "You cannot be taking Bill's word over--"
"--Do you think the kid's lying?" Stan cut in, and Ford went quiet, looking angry and feeling severely uncomfortable.
...Yeah, well. Not like he couldn't see where Ford was coming from. Might as well get into this right now, too. "Lee," Stan said, "Was Miz or Bill lyin', when they told me about this ordering around thing that they said that Sixer said?"
Lee grimaced. "No." He didn't want to get into it... "--But Sixer didn't get to finish talking before Bill froze his throat! He didn't get to say anything--"
"--Rate he was goin'," Stan said waving the sheets of paper at him, "Pretty sure the kid was right about not standin' to hear any more from him, without killing somebody."
Lee went quiet.
"Kid's got a temper," Stan said next. "I don't like it, but he's tryin' to find ways to not feel like he's gotta go around killin' people. --Yeah, you heard me," Stan said to Lee, "Feelin' like he's gotta. --What do you think the kid would've done if you'd all gotten back and I'd agreed with Sixer, instead?" Stan asked him. "--I wouldn't, and I won't, but I also wouldn't put up with that shit, if somebody tried to do it to my brother, either. That's some kinda slavery shit, right there," Stan said. "I don't like that the kid went with making Sixer literally unable to talk, but the kid had the right idea overall," Stan had to admit (as much as he hated doing it) "He wanted Sixer to stop talking. Kid just don't know how to do that yet without either killing whoever, or going overboard by freaking paralyzing them to make it a thing that they literally can't do, instead. --Yeah, I'll be going through more stuff with him later, that's less freaking murder-y scary. But the way I see it right now…" Stan looked down at the papers he was holding in front of him. "If I go readin' through this, am I gonna think there was an easy way to make Sixer stop that shit, even for me? Or you?" Because Lee sure hadn't stopped him before he'd gotten to that point. "--And I am gonna read through all of this," he warned Lee next, waving the transcript pages at him again. Stan didn't want his younger self to try and bullshit him over this; that'd just make him madder, and probably piss off the kid too, all in one go.
Lee went a little pale, then looked away, looking frustrated.
...Yeah, Stan got it. But Lee wasn't doing his brother any favors, trying to cover for him like this. This just wasn't gonna fly.
"Look," Stan said, leveling with his younger self -- really, all of them. "The demons are freaking dangerous. You don't go poking them, unless you have to. That's just some common damn sense. --You don't have to talk to 'em. You don't have to be near 'em. They're goin' to school with you to show that they can make it through the day without murdering other people," Stan reminded them, "And to make sure you ain't skipping right now, yeah. But you can just let 'em watch you from across the room. You don't gotta interact with them--"
"--They can't even make it through a single day without acting like they're not human!" Lee pointed out. "They've been to detention, they've been called down to the office. --You had to come in to bail them outta stuff!" Lee pointed out. "You've gotta know that they lost that bet thing with you already!" he tried, grasping at just about anything that he could right now, because he was seriously worried about his brother's safety in school, now. (ANd he tried to ignore the long sharp look that the devil Bill was giving him right now…)
Stan frowned at him. "That ain't the bet," Stan said. "The bet's that the kid can make it a week without ending up suspended or expelled, really, and the teachers not hating him for something he pulled. I don't care if he acts 'human' or not, whatever the hell that means anyway," Stan waved off. "And that time I had to come in was pretty much all on Ford and Sixer, there." At least, that was what he'd gotten out of the kid and Ford both later. Damn if he hadn't been surprised to hear about the kid shoving all that stuff outta the way and smashing the device; Miz would've been fine, just shredded her 'vessel' and had to make a new one, and the kid probably could've rode it out inside that suit of his, but the rest of the kids…
All Stan could think was that maybe the kid had felt responsible because Ford was 'his'. (Hell, Stan was pretty sure that the kid might've actually been playing along, however roughly, with Ford's 'lecture' that day. ...Not that he was gonna try and tell Ford that, anytime soon.)
"They're screwing up our reputation at school!" Lee complained.
"We're moving you outside the normal social ladder, to make your position unassailable, while leaving you able to interact with anyone else without consequence -- you're welcome," was Bill's laconic contribution to that.
Stan saw Lee whip his head around to look over at him, wide-eyed and confused, and Stan sighed heavily. "Lee," Stan said, "Nobody's gonna care what you were and weren't in high school, even a year from now. And if you ain't learned that bein' yourself is the best thing you can do by now, other than putting on a face and being more yourself…" like he did with his Mr. Mystery act... "The point of this whole thing for them ain't that they need to learn how to 'fit in' and act like everyone else. I'm pretty sure the two of 'em could put on a liar's mask and do that, if they really wanted to,' Stan admitted, sending a silent apology Ford's way as he watched his brother stiffen again in place. "But that's the kinda acting-thing that'll just make people explode, sooner or later -- and the demons a hell of a lot sooner and in pretty damn bad ways that nobody and their dog is gonna like. It don't feel good." Like lying constantly to family, pretending to be somebody he wasn't, year after year after decade, after Ford had… "Nobody should have to do that and then worry about it; not you, not Sixer, not the demons -- not anybody."
"--And don't get me started about 'worrying about what everybody else is gonna think'," Stan told Lee heavily, when he tried to interrupt. "'Everybody else' don't matter, unless you're tryin' to make a buck off of them, and if you're havin' problems with that, then you can just pick up and move," Stan told him. "You've got the boat. And your car. --They don't gotta play nice with anyone, they choose to, or don't. Same as you," Stan said, poking him in the chest lightly with the papers he was holding. "Just don't go attacking or insulting the demons, and you'll be fine. Hell," Stan said, tossing his arms out expansively, "Pretty sure that even if you insult 'em, on accident, that they'll leave ya be if you just apologize-- really," he said next at Lee's wince, then ran a hand down his face. "For fuck's sake…" Stan muttered. "Sixer..."
"He said sorry," Lee muttered out.
"And he didn't mean it," Bill said yet again, like it was a bell toll of death. Even Ford winced at that.
"Ford, you wanna take over at the stove here," Stan said in descending tones, while giving Lee the eye. "I'm thinkin' I'd better read this whole damn thing now, rather than later," he said, flapping the transcript pages out in front of him again.
Lee winced, and Ford didn't respond, other than to eye the 'transcript' like it was a poisonous snake, as he simply walked over to the stove, and took up Stan's position at it, as Stan moved aside and then sat down at the galley table.
As Ford stirred at the food to keep it from burning, Stan read through the transcript, frown lines getting deeper and deeper as he made his way through all the -- yeah, they'd called it what it was -- bullshit that Sixer had said to the demons. And the debate that Miz had tried to hold and-- Stan paused at the part when Miz revealed that Lee had gotten perfect scores on his homework. And stared down at the page...
While the adults were busy, the demons and the kids sat down on the wooden floor. Sixer was still scribbling his notebook, wondering with a miserable sort of anger why everyone was so very against him on this.
Lee himself was hunched up, knees pulled up to his chest, and feeling half-petulant about life and everything in it. Because… how the hell was sticking up for his twin supposed to be a bad thing, anyway? The fact that this old-man him seemed to think that it was, was just…!? --He didn't like the way the two older themselves fought with each other practically all of the time, either! Yelling and acting like-- It-- it just wasn't-- wasn't--
Lee hunched his shoulders in further.
Miz turned to Lee with a complicated expression. "I like you Lee, but, I don't like your brother. I don't hate him. I don't even really dislike him. I just don't like him," she said. (Lee hunched in on himself a little bit further.) "Which is a shame, I wanted to like him. I think he's very cute. But it's painful to like someone who'll never like me back and doesn't care about my feelings." She looked a little sad about that. "I've already liked too many people who didn't care about my feelings." ('Please, please stop talking to me,' Lee thought, half-angrily, half-desperately to himself. He was trying to follow the old-man him's advice at this point, about not engaging the demons if he didn't have to, not wanting to make anything worse.)
Miz turned to Stan. "Can you teach Sixer how to be better too? Like you're doing with me?" she asked.
Stan blinked and looked up at her. He frowned, figuring there was a story there, but… yeah, he was in the middle of reading through all the junk they'd all been saying, so if 'the story' wasn't there... then hey, it probably wasn't all that important right then. "Not like Sixer ain't listening to me so far on most of this stuff," Stan told her. "I ain't gonna force him to do anything, though. Same as you." Stan stated as he looked back down at the transcript in front of him and turned to the next page. Hell. This was… a lot to take in.
Miz raised an eyebrow. "You could explain why he should listen to you. Same as me, too."
Stan let out a chuckle at that. "Pretty sure I already had that conversation with Sixer earlier," before he'd even known about the rest of this shit, "When I was explainin' where you and your brother there fall on the 'kill you for insulting them' scale, but…" Stan shrugged. Sixer valued knowing stuff, and he listened to people who obviously knew more than he did on something, and guess who obviously knew more than Sixer did about this stuff? So… "If he tries doin' something stupid again on my watch, though, then yeah. I'll be more clear with him about it. Figure he'll probably get there eventually, even without me tellin' him, though." That said, Stan kept on reading.
Ford looked over his shoulder down at Stan, from where he was standing at the stove. "Stan--"
"--Ford, I ain't tryin' to throw shade at you, or nothin'," Stan repeated, giving him a halfway-concerned, almost amused look. "I know you figured it out eventually." ...And Ford looked away from him, and looked like he was practically biting his tongue to keep from saying something there. Uh... Huh. That was… weird. Stan frowned a little at this.
Lee shifted a little closer to his twin at his side, on the floor. "Sixer, maybe just get some quick pointers from him on girls and girl-demons, or somethin'?" he told his twin quietly. "And, uh, I can listen in, too," Lee said as half a compromise. "Not like I didn't have trouble with Carla, myself," he added, a little self-deprecatingly. Sixer sent him a sideways glance, and Lee (not really getting the look) just shrugged at him. Lee really hoped that Sixer would nod 'yes'. Because Lee could really use the help at keeping Sixer outta trouble better with other girls too, not just Miz and Bill. --He was really hoping that the old-man him could set Sixer straight on a few things, but it would be more than enough if he could just convince Sixer to apologize and mean it to the demons. ...Or, y'know, keep him from writing something that'd get him killed by an angry demon. Lee grimaced.
Stan nodded absently, as he turned another page. "Hey, I can talk about it like cryptid stuff or somethin', if you two want." He glanced over at them. "'How to talk to the alien-seeming Venus-girls…'" Stan told them with a put-up wide showman's grin, moving his palm out across and in front of him, like he was visualizing some kinda wide-open vistas in front of him for them. (Lee, for his part, blushed slightly and his mouth dropped open a bit, just at the sheer blatant hamminess of it.)
Miz giggled. "That might motivate him to want to learn." She tilted her head. "Number one, if a girl asks you how you feel about her clothes while she's trying on something new, don't answer insincerely, but be careful about how honest you are. It'll save you a lot of trouble."
"Yeah, compliments 101," Stan said, "Don't go opening your mouth and saying something, if you don't know what to say. Bein' confident is important," he told them, "But an 'I don't know' usually works out a hell of a lot better for you with a girl than just guessing. So does asking questions about stuff, like askin' what she thinks or feels about whatever, instead." He turned another page, as he looked down at it. (...Hell, some of this 'argument' they'd had going there earlier today was kinda messed up. He was surprised that the kid hadn't jumped in on any of this shit to correct any of 'em, too; kid had hardly done that at all here, really.) "It ain't that different from what you were doin' out there with the photo booth there, y'know," he told the younger version of Ford. "Most people either want somethin' you've got, want to be left alone, or want you to like 'em. First one's a selling situation, second one's easy -- just leave 'em alone -- and the third one's pretty easy, too," Stan said. "Just don't go takin' advantage of that last one in all the wrong ways. 'Like' can turn into 'don't talk to me' or 'I wanna punch you in the face' pretty quickly, if you ain't payin' attention."
"But that's like chemistry," Sixer told Sixer, as he turned another page. "And you know how to do all that stuff already, too. --You don't watch that beaker when it starts changin' colors on ya? You'd better be ready for an explosion, or to shut off the gas to that flame and dump in a bunch of 'apology' salt next to shut down the rest of it." (Ford was staring at him now. ...Whatever, kid was doing chemistry stuff with Mabel over in the spaceship these days, so the stuff was on his mind a little more, lately. Not like it wasn't easier to talk about relationships like they were chemistry, anyway.) "Shutting off the gas is not dumping more fuel on the fire." He tapped the page. "You doubled-down on the whole 'stupid' thing instead of backing off. And the 'salt' apology you used wasn't salt, it was gasoline that you'd labeled wrong on purpose, and were trying to pass off as salt. --You get me?" Stan looked over at Sixer, who was frowning over at him now right back, head out of his journal finally.
"...And girls?" Lee said slowly, glancing between the old-man him and Sixer.
"Heh," Stan said. "Girls just…" Stan sighed. What could he tell his younger self that might actually help him out? All that pick-up artist stuff wasn't exactly gonna help him; that'd just get him slapped sooner than later, and the point was to not act like a jerk, here. "There's just some stuff that they really don't like, that they'll either yell at you for, or give you the cold shoulder on instead of straight-up telling you before they get to the yelling. Almost none of 'em will just punch you in the face like most guys for whatever and then just be over it. They like talkin' and stuff, so just ask 'em what they don't like early on, and then stay away from that stuff; 'nuff said. And they like apologies, especially if you mean 'em; really not so much if you don't and they find out about it," Stan said with a wince when he saw Miz's expression drop at that.
…And at the partially glazed-over and half-bored look Sixer was already getting, Stan sighed and said, "Look, we can go over it. It's fine, really. Girls are just guys who want you to notice stuff on your own a little better. It's only the crazy ones who expect you to read their minds, sometimes. And it's not like you wanna be around those," Stan told them with a shrug. "Most girls might get mad if they're not looking so great and you ask 'em what's wrong; they might even tell you to figure it out yourself. But some of 'em will actually tell you straight out, if you're pretty clear about being sorry about makin' 'em mad or sad and actually wanting to know, 'cause you want to not screw up the thing that you screwed up again, by not knowin' what it was you did that they don't like. Not like most girls are tryin' to be a mystery to guys," Stan told them.
"Don't lie to me when you apologize next time." Miz pouted. "It just makes me upset. And other people would feel like that too." She looked down at her feet. "I know I'm not always the best at knowing when I hurt others, but I do feel bad when I realize it. So, when you actually feel sorry for hurting my feelings, I'll forgive you." (Ford eyed her for that one. Given his own interactions with said demon, he didn't believe any of it for a second.)
Stan looked over at Sixer's reaction to being told this, and…let out a tired sigh. Yeah, Stan was gonna have to have a talk with this younger Ford, wasn't he. Hell, maybe have Ford talk to him, too. Because Ford obviously knew better now; shouldn't he be able to explain stuff to his younger self better than he could? (And hey, if his brother was able to learn to not be as much of an oblivious ass that much sooner…)
---
Dinner was a quiet affair, not least of which because one of them couldn't talk (Sixer), and another one was trying not to in order to not rile up his twin or instigate the demons (Lee). Miz kept giving Sixer glances, looking almost guilty for his predicament. Bill didn't care one way or another as to his 'predicament'; he was fully planning on continuing to give him the 'silent treatment' as long as they were there -- in other words, the 'treatment' to continue keeping him 'silent'.
When the twins went down below deck for bed after that, Stan and Ford followed after them for their talk. Sixer's voice had come back by then (and Miz had requested for her brother to hold off on freezing his voice until after he'd had a talk with Stan, and maybe even holding off until the next morning; Bill wasn't thrilled at this, but he 'put up' with the request) and Sixer didn't seem all that angry about his voice having been sealed. He was mostly just annoyed. Very, very annoyed.
Up on deck, Miz was going back into the sandcastle. She'd gotten tired of moving all the blankets and pillows into and out of the castle every time, and part of her wanted a little more distance from the humans. Bill crawled in after her and sighed as he laid down. Miz snuggled up beside him and Bill pressed closer, appreciating her warmth.
"So when do you think Stan will want to go home?" Miz asked quietly. She'd been all for staying around here to watch over the younger set of twins, but now… especially after today... she kinda wanted to just leave and...
...well, not go home. She DID want to go home, she missed her friends dearly. But she didn't want to leave her brother behind either. She could spend hundreds of years away from her friends and be just fine, distracted with all sorts of things as she explored and learned in the vast infinite multiverse. But here, where every day seemed to crawl by and she had long moments to just think to herself… she found herself missing home.
She missed nibbling on Xanthar's soft, sweet emotions. She missed bantering with Teeth and Pyronica. She missed embarrassing Kryptos and watching him get flustered. She missed the quiet nights with Hectorgon or PaciFire where they'd just sit together and talk about their day. She missed Ammy's endless questions about the world. She missed 8-Ball's silly faces when he tried to cheer her up after a bad day. She missed performing a private concert with Keyhole and teaching him some songs too.
She didn't want to feel like this, like she was ungrateful for having only her brother here. She didn't want to think she was being even more selfish than usual. So she pushed it out of her mind and just basked in her brother's cool temperature. He felt cool, but being around him made her feel warm inside. She tucked her head into the space between his arm and his chest. He moved, shifting slightly, to accommodate her.
"I don't know how long Stanley will want to stay," Bill admitted. "But if I had to make an 'educated guess'... more than the week for our bet to be over, but less than their date of graduation." Stanley had been putting too many things in place for the twins to be fine if they left abruptly, for him to be planning on staying much longer than… "Maybe two weeks at most. Stanley hasn't said." Bill blinked sleepily. "Do you want to leave now?" he asked her directly.
Miz relaxed against her brother. "Sixer's difficult. Once he stopped being in shock about being disowned, he's just been..." She closed her eyes. "Was Stan's brother, his real brother, like this too?"
Bill blinked, not quite understanding the question.