-I'm gonna drink it like a person-(Part 2)

"Get out of my way, the teacher demanded, "I need to finish this NOW!"

Ford's mouth dropped open as the teacher raised his hands (...fists?...) to-- But Ford couldn't-- he didn't know what to say to-- he NEVER knew what to say, to-- oh, this was going to get violent, he was going to have to hit him, knock him out, and then-- and then Bill would-- once he was unconscious, he'd--

"Why?" Ford heard behind him, and he not quite froze in place as he felt his brother's hand at his shoulder, pushing slightly…

...he froze at the look of confusion he saw fall across Mr. Harman's face…

"Why?" Mr. Harman echoed, and he looked a little lost, tossed for a loop a bit.

"Why do you have to finish that junk--" Stan began.

"--IT'S NOT JUNK!!!" the teacher roared out, and Ford had to let go of both sides of the doorframe to grab onto the teacher and drag him back, away from his brother. "IT'S--"

"Important science stuff, right, I gotcha," said Stan. "--You eat dinner yet?"

Ford blinked at his brother, as did Mr. Harman, at the entirely foreign question that was, at the very essence of it, very difficult to parse in that moment.

"Dinner?" Mr. Harman said, looking absolutely lost and confused (and… no longer combative anymore. What… How had Stan…?).

"Yeah," said Stan. "It's way past time for that." (No it wasn't, it was barely past 4pm; school had been out for less than an hour and a half. Dinner was usually at 5pm, or 6 o'clock; Stan knew that.) "It's why we came looking for the kid -- to see what was takin' so long with the detention and all, yeah?" Stan said next, almost immediately redirecting the teacher's initial restless worry (that they were going to take Bill away from him) before the thought could even fully form. "You should go get some food, yeah?" Stan continued on. "Can't go workin' on stuff on an empty stomach. Ya won't get anywhere." And Ford stared at his brother, because--

"--I can't!" Mr. Harman said. "I can't just STOP and-- I'm almost there! I can FEEL it--" the man said not quite desperately, almost as if… he was asking Stan for permission?. Ford blinked down at his ex-high school teacher in pure disbelief. (What--)

"Sure you can," Stan said easily. "My brother's right, y'know," Stan said next, "You gotta stop. Get some food, get some sleep." Stan was peering at him, where Ford was almost clutching the man to his chest now. "You look like hell. You can't get nothin' done like this. --You feel tired, dont'cha?" Stan said, as Mr. Harman struggled in Ford's arms, about to protest. "--How do you feel right now? Huh?" Stan challenged him quickly.

"I'm fine, I'm fine," the man stressed, trying to shove himself away from Ford's grasp. "I'm-- I'm..." He stopped for a moment, then pulled in a breath, shook his head, and tried to wrench himself away from Ford grip again. "I'll feel better when I'm finished--" the man said next, sounding a little differently than he had before. (Was he… did he sound a little more awake now? Except that wasn't quite… --What was Stan doing?)

"Hell, no. You feel like crap right now, and you won't finish until you get some sleep first," Stan said, sounding terribly authoritative all of a sudden -- so suddenly it nearly left Ford's head spinning. "You already lost the thread, didn't you?" Stan said next, almost consolingly, and Ford felt the man still completely in his arms, then let out something of a wail. Ford winced as the teacher began to clutch at his head, starting to pull at his hair in despair; he didn't have enough hands to be able to both hold him back from re-entering the room and--

"Hey, hey now, none of that," Stan said, reaching out to grab up the man's hands at the wrists, pulling them down away from his head. He sounded almost soothing, like… he was talking to an animal, or perhaps a small unhappy child. "You got it once, right? You thought it before, you can think it again." (Ford felt a chill go down his spine at this, because no, no, the whole point of this was that he was not going to--) "Just gotta get a little sleep in you first, maybe some food. --Kid," (Ford felt another chill go down his spine because, no, no, what was Stan doing--?!) "This guy's smart enough to get it, right? The thing you two were working on here. Got it before, didn't he?"

"...Almost," Ford heard Bill say, as he slowly made his way over, across the room, over to the door. And Bill sounded almost a bit wary, himself.

"But you think he can get it if he works at it a little more, yeah?" Stan said so leadingly, Ford wondered at how far the teacher really was gone, because when Bill said...

"...Yes?"

...at Stan's very heavy prompting (also, oddly and scarily, not a lie), the teacher didn't seem to pick up on it. He merely relaxed completely in Ford's arms, so much so, and so abruptly, that Ford nearly dropped him to the linoleum floor.

"See? There ya go, even the kid thinks you'll get it later," Stan chuckled wryly, and Ford didn't miss the stress Stan put on that last word.

"...Yes," Bill said again, except... "He's been doing very well for a human," Ford heard Bill add next, unprompted, and Ford flinched hard.

"Uh huh," Stan said to that, a little more neutrally. Then he got a bit of a smile. "Hey, y'know, I've seen this big ol' brainiac nerd--" Stan nudged his brother, as he moved out the doorway and past him "--get stuck on his work, no joke, and get just about nowhere, all kinds of frustrated, until he's gotten a good meal in him, and a few hours of shut eye." (No, actually, Stan hadn't. But the man was buying everything Stan was saying, and staying largely sedate, nonviolent, and suggestible as apparently part-and-parcel of that, so Ford kept his mouth shut on all of it.) "You ain't the only one. It's like that for everybody. Even the kid gets it; he stops when he needs to eat and sleep, too." (Ford carefully did not look Bill's way as Stan made this pronouncement.)

And then Stan reached out and practically plucked Mr. Harman out of Ford's hold like he was some kind of… baby bird, looking and sounding perfectly genial all the while. "Trust me, it's much easier to get those things all figured out and finished once you take a break." Stan told him, giving a shrug as he recentered the man back onto his feet, got a shoulder under him, and... started helping him walk down the hallway? "It'll all be there for you, later. Just gonna get you to the teacher's lounge for a bit, just have you lie down for awhile, yeah?" Stan said, looking back over his shoulder.

Ford stiffened in place slightly at the look Stan gave him, that was damn near murderous in its glare. (And Ford heard Bill let out a 'tch' sound, and then a quiet "Fine," as the demon leaned up against the doorway, crossing his arms.)

"And hey," Ford heard Stan add, as they kept making their slowly way down the corridor, the teacher both tired and confused (but not fighting Stan as they went), "Worst-case, the kid's here tomorrow, and you can ask him anything you want again, then," Stan said at the last, almost sing-song. (No, no Bill wouldn't -- not if he had anything to say about it. And Ford was going to have a talk with his brother about--)

Stan turned the corner with the teacher, and Ford realized that he had just been left alone in the hallway with Bill.

Just outside the room full of research and math equations filling the entire room.

Oh, no.

Ford slowly turned his head to look at Bill.

Bill was giving him a long glare.

And then Bill said, "Just because Stanley wants me to 'behave' with you, doesn't mean I'm not going to attack back if you try something stupid with me right now," and it left Ford blinking.

...And it was about that point that Ford realized that he hadn't been the only one that Stan had been glaring at, there.

Ford stomped into the room, past Bill, nearly shoving him out of the doorway in the process.

"Hey!" Bill protested, not moving much to keep from either getting mowed down (or having Ford run into him and go nowhere because of his suit)--

--but Bill had moved enough for what Ford had needed, and Ford felt no small (angry, and self-righteous, and fully-justified) satisfaction as he grabbed the door and slammed it in Bill's face behind him. Ford then locked the door for good measure.

Which left Ford fully and completely alone in the room with--

Ford tried desperately hard not to look at any of it, as he grabbed up the nearest eraser, and started doing what he absolutely needed to do next.

---

Stan didn't really know what the heck had just happened there, with the teach and Ford and the kid, exactly. But he managed to get Mr. Harman out and away from all that geeky math stuff, and settled into the teacher's lounge, where the man almost immediately passed out on the couch. --Seriously, what the heck was going on? Stan remembered the man being as straight-laced as they come, with a wife and young kid at home, and…

Stan shook his head. He really didn't get it. The guy he'd known didn't even drink, as far as he or any of the students knew -- or had known -- but this guy, standing there, had just looked as strung out as if he'd been on some kinda…

Stan paused in place as he was lowering the man's own coat over him as a blanket.

...He'd looked strung out. Like he'd been on some kinda drugs. The worst kind. And he hadn't wanted to stop what he'd been doing when Ford had tried to…

Stan got the man's coat covering him, and he quietly walked his way out of the teacher's lounge, flicking off the lightswitch as he went, and closing the door behind him with a soft 'click'.

...Had this been what Ford had tried to say, when he'd said he thought Bill was addictive? Had… working with the kid been like a drug, or something? ...How the hell did that even work? Stan had never had that problem with the kid, and neither had the niblings...

And the guy had been really not all there to begin with, there, too. Stan really couldn't see the kid having a hell of a lot of patience with somebody who wasn't bringing their A-game to whatever math-stuff he was interested in, and… the man had looked shot. And school hadn't even been out that long; wrestling and boxing practice were on hold for the next week or so, if Stan remembered correctly, which was why Lee had been back at the boat with Sixer and Miz pretty much right away after school. And the kid had only been doing stuff with the teach for… what, maybe an hour?

Bill couldn't have done this to Mr. Harman in less than an hour, right?

...If he had, then what did that mean for Ford? The dream demon had literally been inside Ford's head when he'd been...

Hell, did that make things better? Or worse?

The kid had been acting normal, though. ...Well, for the kid. He'd even seemed kinda low-energy, there. The kid hadn't been all excited, all bouncing around, all grating and shit. He hadn't been...

Stan frowned.

The kid had been talking a little bit like the sponge-edged way he had been before, with the magic act and stuff. Not quite, but almost. And Stan hadn't exactly missed the 'did very well for a human' that the kid had tossed out there at the end, thinking that he was being helpful. Stan ran a hand over his face. ...Hell, if that was usually what passed for a compliment for the kid, to anybody who wasn't his little sister, then…

Stan stomped his way back down the hallway, towards the not the detention room, the room where they'd found the teacher and the kid.

...He was gonna have to ask Ford what he'd meant about the whole 'contagious virus' thing next, wasn't he. And maybe even the kid himself, too. Hell. Stan really wasn't looking forward to that.

And the sight he was greeted to in the hallway when he got back didn't exactly put him in any better of a mood, because the kid was leaning up against the wall sulking, and his brother was nowhere in sight.

"Where's Ford," Stan asked the kid angrily, to which the kid looked up at him (arms crossed, also looking twelve kinds of pissed-off) and tossed a thumb back at the closed doorway.

"Right," Stan muttered. He stepped forward and… rattled the doorknob. Because his brother had locked the door, the idiot -- so Stan pounded on the stupid door that was barring his way next.

"Ford, damnit, open the goddamn door!" Stan called out, and he heard a rustle inside.

He was about to pound on the door again when he heard the 'click' of a lock, and the door opened up.

Ford came out, his sleeves smudged to hell and back with chalk dust. Stan blinked. "...Ford, are you--" 'okay?' he started to ask him, because his brother looked seriously… off.

Except he got a glimpse of the room before Ford flicked off the light and slammed the door closed behind him, and... Stan got a bit of a bad feeling all of a sudden, even worse than the not-so-great feeling that he'd had going since seeing the look of their old science teacher first-thing, standing there in the room with the kid.

"...You erased it," Stan said slowly, as Ford leaned back against the door he'd just closed behind him. And Ford… looked a little shell-shocked.

"Yes," Ford said a bit shakily, and then he let out a slight laugh. "I erased it all." And his brother looked about half-gone himself. ...Not in the same way as the teach, but...

"You shouldn't have done that," was what Bill piped up with in the hallway, looking and sounding irritated at him for it. "Why did you do that?!"

"--I'm saving him from YOU!!" was what Ford shouted out at the triangle-kid, rounding on him.

"'Saving him'." The kid just let out a scoffing sound. "He's going to be ANGRY with you for doing that…" (Weirdly, the kid sounded almost tired, and also that kind of irritated the kid always got when he was rehashing things for the twentieth time… so... Ford had done something like this before?)

"You shouldn't have done it!" Ford cried out at the kid, all-enraged. "Stop doing this!!" (Oh, hell. Stan could just about see the next one coming a mile away...)

The kid straightened right up abruptly and almost got in Ford's face -- except for Stan stepping between them and putting out an arm, stopping the kid from moving forward any further.

"Words," Stan said tersely, as the kid fumed at the 'stop' that Stan knew the kid wasn't gonna want to go with, and Stan needed to know exactly what the kid thought Ford had just told him to stop--

"He's interesting," the kid said, glaring up at Ford. "And fun. He wanted to KNOW something, and I told him! Enough to get him started!" The kid gritted his teeth (and Stan blinked, straightening in place himself, because had the kid just said that he'd--?). "I'm not stopping--"

"--You don't get to toy with people, to play with them until they break!" Ford all but shrieked out at the demon, hands fisted at his sides, shaking, and sounding as stressed as Stan had ever heard out of him.

And then Ford turned to him. "Stanley--!!"

"--Kid, were you tryin' to make that teacher drop from exhaustion?" Stan said, not looking away from his brother. (And his brother seemed to freeze in place at this. --C'mon, Ford, just give me a second here...)

There was a pause.

"...No," was the response he finally got from the kid.

Stan pulled in a breath, nice and slow. (Ford was staring at him, motionless now. Damn straight.) "Then whatever you're doin'," Stan told the demon, "You're screwin' it up someplace." (See, Ford? I know what I'm doin'.)

Stan turned to the demon, to see the kid not quite glaring at him.

He half-expected an argument of 'I'm doing it just fine!' outta the kid.

Instead, he got… nothin'. Just the glare. Not even a demand of '...explain'.

"Stanley, tell him to--" Ford didn't look so great. "Make him stop. You have to--!!"

Stan sent a glance back his brother's way. (He didn't really like how desperate his brother looked just then. ...He really didn't like the idea that Ford was suddenly clinging to the idea that maybe Stan might have some control over the demon, when Ford clearly had thought otherwise before. ...And Stan wasn't so sure that Ford actually, suddenly and 'magically', thought any differently now.)

"Ford," Stan said slowly, "I want Bill telling-- me things," Stan finished quickly, when he saw his brother go deathly pale. "I'm workin' on havin' the kid not go runnin' around mentally screwin' up anybody he's talkin' to, too," Stan added next, then looked back at the kid. "This whole thing? This is some kinda mental breakdown shit. Don't even know what to call it." He frowned at the kid. "What the hell were you even tryin' to do here, kid?" Stan asked him outright.

"I was helping him learn," was what Bill said, and that damn near had tha hairs on the back of Stan's neck standing on end. But before Stan could say anything, Bill added, while sending a glare Ford's way, "The better ones like to figure things out for themselves," which had Ford twitching and going even paler.

"Kid, five minutes," Stan ground out, then turned away from him. "Ford, sit down right now," he told him brother next, because he looked like he was halfway to hyperventilating. "C'mon, down. SIt down. --Yeah, right on the floor," Stan said, guiding his (still shaking) brother down to the ground, his back to the door, and… Ford put his head on his knees and curled his arms up around them. Stan sat down next to him, and put an arm around his brother's shoulders.

"Breathe, Ford," he told his brother. "Just breathe."

And for five minutes of silence? They did just that. They sat there together, and they breathed.

(And after about the first three, the kid sat down where he was and closed his eyes and just… waited himself, too.)

"...He's going to ask tomorrow," the kid said after the five minutes were up. "You can't stop him."

"Tell Bill not to answer him," Ford said, without lifting his head off of his knees.

Before Stan could reply, the kid turned his head towards them. "He'll just give me detention again. And Miz might answer him instead."

"Tell Miz not to--" Ford began next.

"--You don't want me telling him things? That's not going to stop him," the kid interjected rudely, cutting Ford off. "He's already gotten this far--"

"He'll be fine as long as you don't enter his head again while he's asleep, to reinforce--" Ford said almost breathlessly next, slowly lifting his head.

The kid looked angry at that one, and Stan answered for him, "Kid's not doing that, Ford. He ain't going inside anybody else's head."

"Tell him no," Ford said, looking at him. Hell, Ford. "If you really, truly think you can control him--" (Damn it, Ford...)

"It ain't about control," Stan told him. "It's about trust." (Hell, the stare he was getting from Ford on that one. ...Pretty sure he was getting one from the kid behind him, too.) "Kid," Stan said next, "Tell me you ain't pullin' this shit on Mabel at that spaceship of yours." (...And yeah, now Ford was silently freaking out next to him. He'd still had to ask.)

The kid tilted his head at him, looking at him curiously. "No," said the kid.

"No problems with Mabel, right?" Stan said, knowing that that had to be true. He'd been asking her… and payin' attention. So had Dipper. Nothing had come up.

"No problems, yes," Bill said next.

"Why're you doin' it differently for this guy, then?" Stan asked the kid next, because the kid had to be doin' something different for the teach for him to be ending up this way, right? (Stan couldn't imagine that this was 'just some Zodiac thing' keepin' 'em safe, or whatever, if Ford had had problems with it, too.)

At this, the kid just blinked at him and said, "Shooting Star didn't like how I tried to teach her, at first. She stopped me and told me so. So we talked, and she told me how she wanted me to teach her, instead," the kid said next. "So I've been doing that, instead." (Ford slowly raised his head up and looked over at him, staring.)

Huh. "Mabel told you how to teach her?" Hell, Stan didn't know how to answer that kinda question. (Hell, could Ford do that, even?) How did you tell somebody how you wanted to be taught?

"I had to ask questions; it took awhile," Bill said, sounding a little irritated.

"I hear ya," Stan said, though… "I am definitely gonna have a couple questions for the two of you on that later, once we're all back home again," Stan told the kid. But in the meantime… "Why didn't you do that for Mr. Harman, here?" Stan asked him.

And the last thing he'd expected to hear outta the kid for that one was, "I did."

Stan gave him a long look.

"He told you he wanted to work until he dropped of exhaustion," Stan said next, very skeptically.

"...No," the kid said slowly.

"Yeah," said Stan, "I'll just bet he didn't." He frowned and slowly stood up, back aching. "We are talkin' about this," he told the kid. "Later. --I don't want you pullin' this whole thing on anybody yourself again, not until we've got this all worked out. --You got some pressin' need, or whatever? You bring me in on it," the same as the whole 'writing to the trio' thing. "You're doin' it wrong, and you don't know why. Yeah?" he pressed the kid, who looked away from him, frowning and not saying anything. "Yeah. ...We'll work it out," he told the kid, then turned away from him to look down at Ford. His brother didn't look particularly pleased with him, but...

"C'mon," Stan told the two of them. "Let's get back to the boat."

"Tomorrow, he's going to ask me," the kid said again, as he stood up. (Ford seemed to be taking a little longer, for some reason.) "I don't want to lose the bet with you because this single teacher doesn't like me, because of this--"

"I'll come into school with you tomorrow morning," Stan said. "And I'll have a talk with him before classes, first thing. All right?" Silence from the kid. "Alright. We'll finish getting this whole mess of a thing straightened out then," Stan told them both. "It'll be fine."

...Neither Ford or the kid looked particularly happy with him, or trusting in the idea of him being able to pull this thing off at all, not even a little, but then what else was new.

"Kid, eat your crackers," Stan told the kid next. "You're gettin' testy. And you're probably tired, too," Stan told him next. "I bet you wore yourself out there, too; same as he did."

"I know how to pace myself better," was what Stan got out of the kid for his trouble.

"Uh huh," was what Stan said neutrally to this. But the kid did pull a cracker box out of his hat and start munching on the contents. ...Well, good. At least somethin' was goin' right that afternoon-towards-evening.

"Say, kid," Stan asked Bill next, as Ford stayed quiet (well, whatever; Stan wasn't complaining). "Why the hell did you want detention in the first place, anyway?" because Stan really didn't get that one. He'd specifically kept it off the 'fail' list -- except for the whole 'getting caught fightin' thing -- because he knew how goddamn easy it was to get a detention slip in this place (especially when a teach woke up on the wrong side of the bed that morning), but... that didn't really explain Bill wanting one right from the start. Because if he'd understood his younger self right earlier, the kid had wanted one, even before he'd been talking to Mr. Harman.

"--Well!" the kid said, with the start of a smile.

And with that as a start, the kid was off and running his mouth off, telling Stan every last detail of his first day in school, as they all walked their way out of the school, heading back for the boat.

Ford winced more than a few times during Bill's telling, but Stan couldn't help but chuckle once or twice himself -- and hey, props to the kid for the whole 'getting away with looking like he murdered the top-of-the heap bully' bit. Stan wouldn't have known about the retractable 'mild neurotoxin spikes' that the suit had in the knuckles -- that apparently paralyzed a body's muscles all floppy and junk so you could kick 'em all over the place, and broke down into some kinda alcohol-like something-or-another that caused hangovers in people afterwards, all untraceable-like -- if he wasn't hearing about it from the kid having used it on the jerk, now. (And Stan knew that Ford wasn't just ignoring the kid on this stuff, either. Which was good.) The thing about the kid's 'sketching' sounded kinda interesting, too; he was gonna sic Mabel on him after they got back, on that one.

By the time they all got back to the boat, the kid had finished about twice the number of crackers that he usually did, and Ford was not so pale anymore, and breathing almost normally. (And not looking like he wanted to dig himself only halfway to China, pulling the dirt back over him as he went.) So, yeah. That was a thing.

Stan figured that they really could all figure out all the rest tomorrow, one way or another. Wasn't like the kid was fighting him on this stuff. (That was… a first. Kinda. He could get used to this… but Stan knew that'd just be askin' for trouble. He'd have to just pay that much more attention, to make sure he wasn't backing himself into a corner, steamrolling over the kid when the kid wasn't talking to him on something. No takin' shortcuts on this shit; he'd work at it all, and figure it out. It just might take some time… Hopefully, Ford could just keep on holdin' out until then. Really wasn't helpin' that Ford couldn't really just up and run off for however-long as he wanted, gettin' away from all of 'em, though -- not like he could've at home with Fiddlenerd in the mansion, or just literally leavin' town for awhile because he'd have the money for it.)

(Because as long as Stan didn't have things settled out completely here, Ford might feel kinda stuck. ...And he'd need to stay near enough nearby still, to not worry about maybe bein' left behind. So there was that, too. Not that Stan would ever do that to him, but Ford sometimes, still...)

---

When Stan got the kid and his brother back to the boat, it was to find the younger twins sitting up on the deck with a stranger who could only be Miz as a male… something-or-another with a tail. Whatever. (It was pretty clear to Stan who it was, considering that Bill had just walked right on over and sat down next to him like nothing was wrong, instead of complaining LOUDLY to everyone within earshot about stupid and unwanted unexpected interlopers -- like the kid had used to do, really early on, about all the tourists that kept visiting the Mystery Shack, on the other side of the wall from the rest of the living space.)

Stan barely paused before shrugging it off and going to grab some cooking supplies to make himself and Ford some dinner.

Ford, on the other hand, took a moment to stop and stare at Miz. "What--"

The young man turned and waved. "Hey~ I got tired of being a girl, so I'm a guy for now. I'll change back when we go to school tomorrow."

'Don't,' Ford thought to himself. 'Don't change back.' He at least realized what would likely happen if he said such out loud, though -- given why Bill had supposedly turned into a 'female' in the first place -- and thus wisely remained silent on the issue (he thought). Rather than commenting on the situation out loud, Ford grimaced, shook his head, and opted to follow his brother down into the hold in the more pressing pursuit of dinner supplies, instead. (As it was, he didn't particularly want to be around Bill right then; as far as Ford was concerned, this was just another reason to leave the deck.)

"Could just put on a perception filter instead, if you want to stay comfortable and not tired, little sis," Bill put out there (as Ford disappeared into the hold after his brother, and) as he himself settled in place at her(/his?) side.

The young man blinked at Bill, then grinned. "Right! I forgot I could do that!" He looked down at himself and laughed. "I think we're the same height now." That seemed to please him greatly.

Bill blinked at him. "You like being taller?" What was it about height (and hierarchy) that got humans (and shapes) so worked up? --His little sister could float. Height shouldn't matter! (...Should it?)

Miz(?) nodded. "I can reach things now!" ("You could just float," Bill put out there matter-of-factly, which had his now-male sibling letting out a laugh.) His tail wagged slowly; the younger Ford was staring at it in fascination.

Sixer was starting a sketch of Bill's demonic sister(?) in their current form, for his own records. He knew these two were demons, but aside from their magic and Bill's eyes, this was far more substantial proof of their non-humanity. He'd asked Miz earlier and they had explained that they were a dragon-demon, who was originally a triangle-demon, who used to be a triangle. Lee had been quite confused, while Sixer had wanted to know more about what that really meant.

Meanwhile, Xin figured he could still go by Miz, just to make things easier for the people around him. He figured that Stanford was gonna be confused enough with him switching sex on them. He pressed his shoulder lightly into Bill's side before standing up and moving off to continue building…something on the deck of the boat. "So how did detention go? Was it really that fun?"

"Mmmm…" Bill hummed. "--It was! Fun that is." Bill grinned. But then he slowly lost the grin. "But that Stanford tried to RUIN it." Bill sighed and slid down to lie flat on the deck. "He used to appreciate my brilliance, you know," Bill said, not quite pouting outright, and Xin laughed.

"Well, I'm sure we can find you something else to do for fun at school." Xin wiggled his fingers, assembling the machinery in front of him and tilted his head as he looked at it from different angles. "Okay~ and done! One washing machine! It's solar powered and the battery is waaay better than anything humans would be able to come up with for… like… 80 years from now. This should help with your clothing situation." Xin patted the washing machine.

"Water input works on seawater?" Bill asked, slowly sitting upright.

Xin nodded. "Works with both fresh and seawater. There's a hose they can pull out and connect to the ocean."

"Mm." Bill pulled a knee up to his chest and lazily dropped an arm to dangle across it. "Might want to make a separate water filter that works on seawater, too. For drinkable water. And repair parts for the machines you are making?" Stanley would want something like that, wouldn't he? Or at least find it useful? Spare parts in case something broke down was something that had had Stanley cursing the most, when it had come to repairing the portal. And not having to have so many barrels of water on-deck for water-stores would likely be considered helpful, too, Bill thought.

"Already got those too." Xin tapped on a panel and it slid open to reveal several spares. "It also empties out the waste water from each cycle back into the filter, and the resulting fresh water can be used for another wash for clothes, or a shower if they need to bathe themselves." Xin opened another panel. "And this filter is for making drinking water. For whenever they want to take this ship out to sea."

Bill smiled. --His little sister was so considerate! "Stanley will like that," he confirmed to her. "Good job!"

But Lee frowned a little bit, seeing what was missing. "Uh, that's great and all," Lee began, not super-enthused at the moment because he wasn't really sure he'd even be able to use it correctly. "But… the dryer?" Lee asked.

Xin blinked slowly. "You don't want to hang your clothes up to dry?"

Lee groaned. "I don't like the idea of parading my underwear for the whole beach to see. And saltwater spray gets in the air! It'll be so humid, it'll take forever to dry anything out on deck!" That was one of the reasons he was planning on building a little cabin up on deck, too -- not just to have a living space up on deck itself with a workroom and kitchen -- it'd leave a space on top of it (accessible by ladder) that was up high enough that water couldn't really get up there unless it was raining, so laundry and other things could be hung up to dry once they were out sailing. But if Miz was gonna be makin' all this stuff anyway...

Xin wanted to tell him that there was a Perception Filter over the whole boat, but thought better of it (and saw his point about the spray) and just built a clothes dryer as well out of more sand (and glass; he'd been grabbing glass out of the beach all afternoon). Might as well add a heating function so it could act as a mini furnace to keep the above deck warm when the weather turned cold. "You'll need to buy the soap and other stuff yourself. And take the lint out to throw in the trash." He looked around. "Would you need an ironing board? Is that safe to have on a boat?"

"Well, the oil lamps are fine below decks, as long as we're careful," Lee put out there, as Sixer stayed out of the conversation (engrossed in his sketching). "Don't see why an iron would be any worse. Unless water got into the electric-whatever," Lee said, then grimaced. "Not that I'm planning on having any real electric-whatever onboard. Maybe a two-way radio with a crank-up battery or somethin'," Lee said with a frown. He'd planned on this being a sailboat.

Adding an electric generator for a motor, or anything else, was not something he'd planned on doing to the Stan O' War. Those things ran on gas, and gas was expensive enough that it would break his budget as-is; the generator itself would cost even more to buy, let alone put in. Really, he'd planned on a lot of fishing, a lot of 'water stealing' (unless he'd gotten Sixer interested enough to pitch in on that part -- though he guessed the dragon-demon had done that for him instead), and some decent-enough luck at treasure hunting to make 'em both rich. He hadn't really thought of washing their clothing out at sea; just on-shore. They had coin laundromats practically everywhere, didn't they?

"Not sure what stuff we'd need to be ironin' out here, though," Lee told her next, shrugging. Wasn't like he was gonna be some big muckety-muck businessman, running around in a suit and tie.

Xin nodded and proceeded to explain to Lee how the machines worked. "Put dirty clothes in here and dump in one scoop of detergent--" He even had the instructions printed on the sides to explain what the buttons did. "--this button to run the wash, there's heavy, light and so on. Might add more stuff to the dryer, well I can leave that for later, once you've got more of the deck built." He was more interested in showing off his work.

The washer was built to send the dirty water into a filter in the back, which would deposit the contaminants over the side of the boat, leaving clean water behind. And by filter, Xin made it break things apart much like his stomach did, because recycling in that way so much more efficient~

As well as helping it self-generate energy in emergencies.

And if that caused the battery to store some extra energy from the recycling process? Bonus! Xin didn't even need to give the dryer a solar panel. It hooked into the battery from the washer. Xin hugged the dryer as he explained this (to Lee's bemusement). Hm… what else could Xin build to fix up the boat and make it super awesome? Well, he DID need to ask the kids first. Nodding to himself, Xin looked over at Lee and asked, "Do you guys want anything else?" just as Stan climbed back up the ladder and out onto the deck.

"'Anything else?'" Stan echoed, then frowned at the kid's kid sister. Was Miz just… giving them stuff? For free? ...Though 'what had they been asking her for?' was maybe the bigger question (and problem) there, Stan knew. He glowered a bit at them all.

Noticing his look, Xin explained. "I'm helping in exchange for them allowing me to tutor them. And I wanted the washing machine anyway." Xin could justify it for himself in various ways so that his powers didn't act up. He'd been getting better at finding his OWN loopholes. Would be useful for later. Especially if he wanted to try and do good with his powers for people more often.

(Maybe if Xin could figure this out, he could REALLY try to do some good in his own dimensional set…)

"You wanted-- Wait." Stan blinked. "Allowing you to tutor them?" If she was making 'tutoring' -- really, any kind of learning -- into something that the person giving it had to pay for… Hell. That was gonna cause him no end of problems with the kid. (Hell, did the kid believe this himself?) And to top it all off, 'using it as an excuse to get something they wanted' was… something that sounded almost exactly like every last problem Ford had had with the triangle demon since forever.

--Yeah, no. Stan was cutting this one off right at the pass. Right now. Before things got any worse. (The very last thing Stan needed was Bill learning all the wrong stuff, let alone having it reinforced by his sister.)

"Miz, that ain't right--" Stan started to say.

Xin shook his head. "They could just ignore me when I try to help or teach them something, like everyone else does, but this way, they'll actually pay attention." He grinned. Sixer shrugged, he didn't mind, in fact he rather liked having the demon teach him stuff. They were more interesting than the things he was learning in school. Lee, on the other hand, just groaned out, "She made me do MATH!"

"Miz--" Stan started again, starting to walk across the deck and over to her, as Ford finally ascended the ladder. (Ford, for some reason, had decided to carry up most of the junk himself. He'd been moving things between decks...)

Xin huffed. "I KNOW you can do much better in school if you bothered to apply yourself. You're not stupid. You're just unmotivated…" He glanced around the boat. "So I'll have to give you motivation! And this here--" He slapped the washing machine with a hollow 'thunk', "--is one such motivation!"

Stan slapped a hand down on the washing machine himself, leaning forward in front of Xin, to look him in the eyes. "Miz. Hold up. We gotta talk about this. This ain't right."

Xin blinked. "What's wrong?"

Stan let out a sigh and straightened up a bit, now that he finally had her attention. "Everything, kid." He rubbed a hand across his face. "'Tutoring' doesn't mean you 'pay' them; usually, it means it the other way around, if anybody is gettin' paid for it -- and those two don't need tutoring, anyway. They don't need that kinda help at learning, to start with," Stan said, starting with the most basic of basic things first.

Xin nodded to show he understood what Stan was saying. His brow was a little creased.

"And if you are tutoring them, especially if you want to do it for… free," Stan said, "-- which is different than just teaching them stuff outright, yeah?" Stan added, for good measure. "Then they should be listening to you in the first place, and not wastin' your time for bein' nice enough to do it, to help 'em out."

Xin pressed his lips together. "I'm used to people shunning my attempts to teach them stuff. Some people listen but most do the opposite of what I try to teach them." Like some scientists who went through with adding certain chemicals together in labs even though he TOLD them it would create a toxic gas that would melt their flesh from their bones… and they had the GALL to get mad at him afterward when their flesh melted off their bones!

(Stan very carefully did not bring up what had just happened with the kid at the school, upon hearing that from Miz. The dragon-lady didn't seem to have the same 'drug-addictive' 'virus-contagious' problem as the kid apparently did, so… Stan didn't want her learning all the wrong things from the kid.)

"Yeah, well, like I told the kid," Stan said (instead, keeping it as general as he could), "Maybe a bunch of other stupid junk happens in those other stupid dimensions." Stan leaned down in front of her again, "But it don't happen here. --Get used to it," he told her almost threateningly, straightening back up. (He could practically hear the eyeroll he was almost definitely getting from the kid behind his back. --And yeah, he'd told the kid just about the same thing, on a hell of a lot of other stuff before. He'd gotten a hell of a lot of arguments and back-talk from the kid on that one before, too. So Stan figured it was probably gonna be a toss-up on whether the dragon-lady was gonna argue with him on it -- like the kid did -- or not.)

Xin nodded. "Okay…" Well, humans DID seem more receptive to his attempts at enlightening them with various things. The Egyptians and Mesopotamians had certainly appreciated his help. Though he HAD made sure to hide his form from most of them.

Stan let out another sigh. These demon-kids, he swore. "And you two," Stan said to the younger twin set. "Don't go tryin' to take advantage of the demons. Y'hear me?" He frowned. "Can't believe either of you two would think of ignoring Miz when you're askin' her to tutor you on your schoolwork and stuff to begin with." It didn't really make sense to him; heck, why would Sixer even think he'd need a tutor in the first place?

Ford set the items down and frowned at the conversation. What was happening now?

Lee'd eyes went wide. He shook his head and held up his hands, in surrender almost, as Sixer winced. "I wasn't asking specifically for that," Sixer noted, stopping his observational study and lowering his pen for the moment. "I just wanted to know how to go about actually building the machines she was talking about, like that communications device she keeps playing with, something about an internet? But Lee wasn't all that interested and Miz didn't like how he ignored her…"

"Hey, I wasn't ignoring her! --Uh, him. Them. Whatever!" Lee protested. "The dragon-demon lady was showin' me how to use a washer just now!" He hadn't even been sure about how to use the one at home; he'd been listening! "--And I didn't ask her for help with my schoolwork," he complained next. "Neither did Sixer. She was just, kinda..." And at that point, Lee lowered his hands, feeling a little confused, because he wasn't really sure how to explain what had happened with their schoolwork and junk, other than… "She's pushy. He. --Seriously, what do I call you?" Lee asked Miz next, feeling a little aggrieved, because she kept making faces when he said 'she' now, but sh-- he(?) hadn't actually explained what he was doin' wrong!

Xin thought about it. "I'm fine with 'he' when I'm male, but I wouldn't be upset if you called me 'she' either."

"You keep makin' faces at me when I say 'she', though-- see!" Lee pointed at her quickly, when he saw him make the (slight) face at him again.

Xin pouted. "Okay it's a little weird. I'm just…" he frowned. "Well, in the language I'm more used to, the distinction between the two words sounds nicer."

Stan let out another heavy sigh. "Kid, just say what you want us to call you when you look like this, yeah? Even if it's in another language. Ain't no big deal for any of us."

Xin wiggled. "I… gave each of my forms a different name. So… this," he gestured to himself "-is named Xin. Like how the female humanoid-looking one is Miz." He suddenly shifted quickly through his other forms, Jan and William appeared for a few seconds before he was Xin once more. "I'm used to switching between my personas. But single-formed people get confused when I switch names on them so I thought it would be easier for you all to just keep referring to me however you wanted." (Yeah, that didn't sound so hard to Stan, not as long as the dragon lady looked different enough to go with it.)

"Which one do you call 'Bill'," was Ford's terse contribution to the discussion, before Stan could even open his mouth.

Xin glanced at him briefly. "My triangle form," he said simply. He had made sure to NOT turn into that form, not anywhere near that Stanford.

Ford frowned. "Which one was that." None of those forms had looked particularly triangular to him.

"Ford…" Stan said, not sure where his brother was going with this.

Xin looked down at his lap. "Turning into my triangle form would upset you. So I'm not gonna use that one."

Ford narrowed his eyes at 'Xin'. "Oh, don't go not looking like the triangle demon that you say you are and want to be, on my account," Ford said next (already and still in a rather bad mood from not too long before).

"Ford," Stan said quellingly. "--He's lying," Ford said next, glaring at his brother.

Xin looked a little confused. So… was he supposed to turn into his triangle form? He glanced at Stan. "Um… should I?"

Stan glanced over at her. "...Do you want to?" Stan said, in a way that was about as neutral as a human could get.

Xin thought about it. "My triangle form is most comfortable. Miz is second most comfortable." Was what he responded with.

"If you want to be comfortable, be comfortable," Bill said, propping his chin up on a fist. He had both his knees pulled up to his chest now. (He'd been listening and paying attention, just not joining in on the discussion.) "You were uncomfortable before; why not relax and be comfortable now?"

Xin looked back and forth between everyone. Sixer, for his part, seemed very interested in this so-called triangle form. What did that actually mean? (Lee had no idea what the hell they were all talking about really.) Finally, a little warily, Xin's form glowed and reshaped into a very familiar shape, to at least some of those present.

Bill blinked his eye open, feeling himself relax fully for the first time in this dimensional set. His bricks glowed softly, thrumming with energy in a way that felt less itchy than his fleshier forms. And then he looked over at that Stanford, preparing himself for the worst.

Ford straightened up immediately in place, frowning, and going unconsciously tense.

...But Ford's hands hung at his sides, rather than going for his weaponry. And he kept on frowning as he looked over this Miz-who-was-Bill from where he stood firm.

Ford didn't quite glare at Miz-Bill as s(t)/he(/y) hovered in the air, over near his brother's shoulder almost.

And after awhile, he turned away and crouched down to continue what he'd been doing with the two crates he'd moved up onto deck only a little while before.

"You're not fooling anyone, you know," Ford said, not quite casually and not quite under his breath at Miz-Bill, without looking the 'triangle demon's way. He rummaged through the crate and pulled out one can of beans, and then another. (The color was off, just a bit. Hell, the demon wasn't even getting Bill's signature hum right -- who did they think they were fooling with this horrible charade…)

Bill (of that Stanford) did not look surprised at this reaction at all. He just smiled a bit (thinly) instead.

Bill (MizBill) sighed. Well, denial was probably better than hostility? He floated down to sit on the washing machine, a soft metallic thump sounding out as he did.

Sixer was staring with wide eyes as he immediately opened his notebook again to start sketching Miz (also Bill? She'd named this triangle form after her brother?) "Amazing!" he gasped. (At that reaction, Ford gave a hard flinch, though he did not turn around.) MizBill's large eye widened and his bricks faded into a faint orange tint before going back to yellow.

"If he starts calling you a muse, run for it," (Blue)Bill told his little sister not quite sarcastically, leaning back and then relaxing his legs and arms until he was lying flat on the deck again.

MizBill blinked. "Um, ok." He moved his eye back to the younger Ford. "So… you're not… disgusted? By me?" He asked almost timidly.

Sixer blinked at MizBill. "Why would I be disgusted by you? You're fascinating!"

MizBill slumped. "Most people are. Um…"

Sixer blinked at her and adjusted his glasses, feeling a little off-put. "Ah… did you want me to be…?" he asked of the demon next, pausing in his writing (because he was a bit worried that perhaps it might be just that important, to require his full attention).

MizBill twiddled his little fingers. "No. I actually created my other forms originally because I was tired of people being disgusted by me…"

"Oh," said Sixer, unconsciously curling his littlest fingers under and cringing a bit. "That's…" And Sixer went quiet.

"Insane," was Ford's next contribution to the conversation. "And almost certainly not true. --Don't listen to them."

MizBill sighed. "Well, I'm glad you don't think I'm horrifying to look at, or whatever. It's nice."

That had Ford twisting his head around to look over his shoulder at her with a frown. "What?" Horrifying to look at? --How utterly shallow did the demon think he was?!

Lee kept quiet about the fact that he thought the way that giant eye swirled around to look at things was a little off-putting. Stan just leaned up against the washer a bit and crossed his arms, watching them all. (Especially his brother.)

When Ford saw Stan giving him a long look, Ford grimaced -- looking a bit angry almost -- and turned away.

"'Horrifying to look at' is not in that Stanford's vocabulary, little sis," (Blue)Bill said lazily from his prone position on the deck, eyes closed. (--To which Ford spat out the appropriate single-word descriptor for that concept in Intergalactic Trade at Bill, almost spitefully.)

MizBill watched Sixer as the teenager got up to walk around them, examining their form from all sides. "Is that a good thing?" Sixer asked. "Not being horrifying? Or horrified?" Sixer was too busy sketching this wonderful alien creature to really think about how what he was saying might sound. (--They were nearly flat! How did that even work? Where were its organs? Its brain?)

MizBill shrugged. "Being feared is sometimes a good thing, when I'm trying to scare people, or intimidate them so they wouldn't try to mess with me…"

"Fear and respect are the currency of the interdimensional market-space, for any being who wants to get something DONE!" BlueBill said easily, crossing his arms behind his head. (Ford flicked his eyes over to Bill for a moment at the use of the descriptor 'being', rather than 'demon'.)

"--Speaking of getting things 'done'," Stan cut in. "What do you want us to call you in which 'forms', and what things are you wantin' here besides the washer?" Stan frowned at the floating triangle demon. "You don't have to go makin' up excuses to get what you want with me, y'know. Just ask the kid."

MizBill raised one noodle hand and wiggled it. "This form is Bill, but brother is also Bill, so MizBill is fine. Miz you already know. The male form you saw earlier is Xin. My four-armed form is Jan and the Cyclops one is William." He thought about it. "As for stuff I want, a proper kitchen and pantry would be nice."

Stan nodded almost absently. "We're workin' on the cabin on-deck next. Figure we'll put that all together in there." He glanced over at his younger self. "That was the plan, anyway. --Shouldn't take more than a day or two," Stan told MizBill next. Then Stan reached up a hand of his own and not quite poked at the noodle-hand. "MizBill, huh. ...Pronouns?" he asked of MizBill next. Wasn't like he didn't know that was a thing with the demon-kid, especially with all the 'faces' Miz had kept making as Xin at all the 'she' pronouns.

MizBill brightened (literally, their bricks glowing as they spoke) "Well I'm actually both as a triangle. So either she or he is fine. I'm going with 'he' right now."

Stan nodded. "Yeah, okay." Good to know.

MizBill tilted to look up at Stan from where he was sitting. "Oh right, I got a bunch of coupons from restaurants around the neighborhood since I won some food challenges." He flicked his wrist and a small stack of papers appeared. "I figured these could help the kids save money if they eat out." MizBill handed the papers to Stan to look over. The old man hummed.

"...Food challenges?" Stan echoed. He turned his gaze on the younger twins.

Lee shuddered. "Where did he fit it all?" ("It all goes to my thighs when I'm in a flesh form!" MizBill said cheerfully.) "He won the Pizza challenge, the hot dog challenge, the burger challenge…" Lee frowned. "He refused to do the hot wings challenge though."

"I don't like spicy food." MizBill shrugged. Lee looked at him incredulously, because THAT was the limit on what he would eat?!

Stan flipped through the coupons. "Heh. You win those and your meal's free? Nice." He'd realized pretty much right away that MizBill had probably gotten all of these coupons so that the twins would be able to save money on food and meals. Stan didn't quite frown as he tapped the coupons against his palm. MizBill was trying to help, in his own way. ...Roundabout, indirect. (Just like the kid, most days ...when the kid wasn't too busy playing 'who can be the biggest jerk?' with Ford, anyway.) Was there a reason for that? Stan made a note to ask them both later.

Stan walked over, squatted down in front of his younger twin self, and slapped the coupons into Lee's chest with a grunted, "Hold onto these for me, willya." He sighed as he mentally tallied up the list of junk he needed to talk to the demons about, still. It was a pretty long list at this point.

"Speaking of food. I need to make dinner for myself and my brother." Stan straightened up again with another grunt, and walked over to his brother, to get started on that. (He didn't really trust Ford with the cooking for a second; he'd learned that one the hard way on their boat trip.)

MizBill floated over. "Can I help or would that make Ford uncomfortable?" Sixer squealed in the background ("How does the levitation work?")

Ford just eyed MizBill from where he was crouching, having finished setting up the campstove. "'Demons' don't help. Ever."

"Help with what?" was Stan's own question.

MizBill placed his hands on the sides of his 'face' and wiggled (which looked a bit weird in mid-air). "Cooking! I love cooking!"

"Uh," Stan began. "--No!" Ford said immediately, shooting to his feet and looking alarmed. (And Stan sighed, remembering how Ford had reacted to accidentally eating some of those pancakes the kid had made… hell, had it been that many days ago?)

Lee raised an eyebrow. "Why? Miz--Bill's cooking is great! He, uh, well, she at the time? She made lunch today at school! And--"

"--Food is important," was what (Blue)Bill said rather colorlessly, cutting Lee off. Bill was still lying on deck, staring up at the sky. "He can't check it right now; he left all of his dimension-hopping gear at home."

Ford pulled in a breath, looking incredibly angry and about to read Bill the riot act… but then Ford closed his mouth and let out a hard breath through his nose, instead. He was glaring at Bill, though, as he did it.

Stan rolled his eyes at what he knew his brother would say next.

"...Tell me you didn't eat it," was what Ford said to Lee, finally, next. (...Yeah, he'd called it. Stan turned back to the campstove, and the cans of beans Ford had pulled out, and started getting down to it. No point in waiting; he knew his brother wasn't gonna budge on this one.)

Lee tilted his head. The hell? "Uh, yeah? Of course I did." He glanced between them all, wondering what was up. "I don't see the problem." Sixer spoke up, "It was safe for human consumption. And it tasted normal."

"And who told you this?" Ford said next, rather acerbically. "That it was safe to eat?"

Sixer adjusted his glasses, a little worried now, "Bill? But Miz ate the food too." was the older him worried about MizBill creating alien food? For his part, MizBill kept quiet. Anything they said would be used against them anyway.

Ford looked pale. Stan gave him a pat on the shoulder. "Oi, it's fine Poindexter. MizBill likes human food."

"But Bill doesn't," Ford said slowly, looking over at him. That demon could've done anything to that food. At least… at least he knew what to expect from Bill. But this demon...

"You knew that that demon made it, and you ate it anyway..." Ford said to the twins, with a terrible sinking feeling.

"I checked it," Bill said, sitting up slowly, to look over at Ford. "It was fine."

Ford pulled in a sharp breath. Bill wasn't lying, but… (wait. They'd said before, that…)

"You actually ate something. That… your 'sister'," Ford struggled to choke out, "made."

Bill nodded. "Yes."

"You ate--"

"--I checked it first, Sixer." Bill rolled his eyes and lay back down again. "I'm not an idiot." (And this… did not make Ford feel any better. ...If anything, it made him even more wary -- and leery -- of this 'MizBill' than before.)

MizBill floated away, sighing. It wasn't worth arguing over. "Nevermind then. I can do something else if he doesn't trust my cooking."

"Yeah, well, he don't trust your big brother's cooking, either," Stan told her, as he turned up the heat on the campstove, to set the pot of beans to start slowly bubbling away. "So don't take it personal. --Why I didn't want ya' makin' breakfast for everybody before, yeah? He's about as twitchy about demon-made food as… heh, Bill is about human-food, I guess," Stan not quite shrugged off. He sent both Ford and Bill a look. "If you want to cook for yourself, you can," he told MizBill. "Bet you're hungry after all that stuff-making again?" It wasn't quite a question.

MizBill tilted. "I'm actually pretty good." He thumped a hand against his bricks. "This form holds energy better. And I can self-generate energy more quickly as a triangle." His bricks hummed faintly.

"What?" said… Bill, who sat up quickly. then he seemed to shake himself mentally. "Generate energy from what?" Bill asked next, palms flat against the deck.

MizBill blinked. "My emotions, my own knowledge, my own thoughts, and a small bit of solar radiation absorption if I have to."

Bill looked about to protest and question, until the 'solar radiation absorption' bit. Then he seemed to settle a little. "Amplitude and resonance are different than self-generation, little sis," Bill said a little churlishly.

MizBill shrugged. "Emotion to energy is the easiest. The other stuff are supplementary." He tilted. "I've been pretty calm."

Bill opened his mouth, then closed it again. He looked a little like a deer caught in a pair of headlights (at least to Stan, heh). Then he looked more than a little annoyed. He pulled his knees up to his chest again, wrapped his arms around them, and said, "Emotional energy doesn't come from nowhere." He sounded annoyed, and maybe a little… suspicious? (What was up with the kid now?)

MizBill shrugged. "I can feel emotions. If I convert some of it into energy, I can just self generate by feeling something.

Bill was looking at her without much expression on his face. "You said you get tired if you're angry for too long," he said, slowly and neutrally. "Yes?"

MizBill nodded. "It… happens…"

"'Getting tired' means an energy drop," Bill said next. "You felt an emotion, and you had a noticeable energy drop."

MizBill lowered and sat down. "It's kinda paradoxical. I feel tired as in mentally tired, but my actual storage is fine."

"That's not--" Bill looked frustrated as he cut himself off. He glanced over at the younger twins, then the older ones, then looked away. Then he looked almost belligerent as he curled his arms around his knees a little more tightly and said, "'Mentally tired' is still an energy drop, when you're a being of pure energy. 'Storage' is what you pull from to replenish, after."

MizBill shrugged. "I think I feel things differently from you? Or store them differently?"

"...Or you've never had to think about how much energy you have to work with, to consider the total energy you are having to work with -- including yourself -- separate from everything and everyone else around you," Bill not quite muttered out, looking like he was getting a headache. (And at that, Ford glanced over at Bill.)

MizBill considered that. "Maybe… I didn't really think about it." Heck, most of his powers ran on autopilot nowadays.

"Maybe," said Bill. He wasn't entirely sure at this point, though, if his sister was or wasn't actually running on different principles than he did? Maybe she was. Maybe. --He had NEVER tried messing with emotion that way before, but… he'd thought it would be a dead-end. (Emotion didn't come from NOTHING; it was fueled and spiked internally! Maintaining it through resonance and the right set of screaming-singing hums was ONE thing, but the initial-generation step?) Bill shook his head quickly from side to side.

(Closed-systems weren't closed systems, yes -- but they could be if you MADE them that way, Bill knew. And he'd had to be very careful in what he did and didn't try to take in -- with what his boundaries were and how he'd defined them -- back in his old decaying dimension, destabilized as it was. Anything outside of him wasn't and hadn't been 'stable' unless he'd been actively making it stable, and expending the energy to do so; he hadn't been able to just… go up and 'press' against things and use the 'natural' pressure differentials to his advantage, like he could now, now that he was out, or eat whatever free-floating energy he wanted that was not-quite-magically 'just THERE' for him to eat.)

...But now he was in a stable dimension. And Bill frowned a little, because nothing was really the same now, as before, as his baselines, and while he'd done SOME planning as to his new circumstances before… he really needed to expand his thinking further, but WITHOUT losing his sense of measurement of inner-outer and sourcing. (He didn't HAVE to be as careful with absolutely everything anymore; he hadn't really been able to 'lean' up against anything before, like he could NOW -- not without risking it tearing on him, or worse -- and he hadn't been able to just up and eat energy in a destabilized dimension without worry either, because such energy was 'naturally destabilized' itself. But now...)

Now that he was in a stable dimension, though… for Bill, the sky wasn't anywhere CLOSE to the limit. (But that didn't mean that everything he got was FOR FREE; the processes that were already in place were just something he was using to his advantage to…) And yet, Bill didn't quite feel comfortable enough in his own stupid human-ish body's skin to actually stop treating everything like it was just as dangerous as it was and had always been in the past. Before he'd gotten out. It made said-body want to shiver on him when he DID think it, in fact, the stupid thing. (And Bill didn't know why it wanted to do that, why exactly he felt that way.)

Stan grunted out, "So you're not hungry?" to MizBill. Their eye squinted in a smile.

"I can still eat a little, but I need much less than before." MizBill then frowned. "But my triangle form can't taste things like my other forms." And the triangle sounded so sad about this fact. "Which seems to be part of how my form is built. Changing my tastebuds into something more human makes it so I can't actually digest, it's too much trouble."

Bill frowned. "How close is your form right now to your form in your old dimension?" he asked him.

"Pretty close. The only difference is that this form is DURABLE." MizBill grinned.

Bill didn't have to think about this for very long. "Try layering it in? --Don't change the 'tastebuds', just add a layer inside or above them," Bill said. "Sensing layer first, to read the information; second layer, convert the information to something else, to groupings closer to the human mapping; third layer, complete the connection's transition to human tastebud sensations; then try hooking it in to the rest of your mentality. Yes? --No food conversion at that stage, by any of those layers," Bill added, "Just something the food has to pass through, across, around? Passive sensing. Does that make sense?" (Ford flicked his eyes over to Bill as Bill talked; Ford was sitting at Stan's side as he cooked their meal of mostly beans.)

Sixer watched attentively as the triangle nodded at Bill, then shimmered, colors flickering along their bricks, and that large eye seemed to blur as something seemed to materialize faintly over it. Sixer wasn't sure what exactly was happening, but when the colors faded back to yellow, MizBill blinked and suddenly that eye was now a mouth. Sixer's jaw dropped. That was… amazing!

"Test?" MizBill asked.

"Fish?" Bill asked. MizBill nodded. Bill pulled out his eyepatch, flicked it up into a hat, then reached a hand in, and whipped out a fish, tossing it over to his sister in one smooth motion. MizBill nodded (bobbing up and down) as he caught it with one hand.

"Ahhhh~" He shoved the fish into the mouth that was an eye. (Lee shuddered. Ok, yeah, he could see why other people might have thought he was gross-looking, because if anybody had seen him eat? --THAT was really disturbing!)

MizBill chewed a bit and hummed.

"Good? Bad? Aquamarine, with a pink elephant chaser?" Bill asked him, curious himself as to how his experiment with taste was going. MizBill giggled. "It tastes like fish, but also like keratin and carbon. So, a mix of my different methods of tasting."

Bill straightened in place and grinned. He dropped his knees into a cross-legged position, looking pleased. "Good job, sis!" He hummed for a moment. "You could probably increase or decrease the intensity of each of the methods, for a different mix of tasting, if you want?" Sometimes he liked mixing things up a bit, himself! "Or add a layer to block the triangle-taste-method at the input, if you really want to keep it separate," though Bill grimaced a little at the idea of even partially-blocking a sense, once again.

MizBill happily floated around, thrilled at this new sensation. (Sixer was scribbling in his notebook: He just ate a fish, but he's flat! Where does it all go?)

Ford was frowning slightly, leaning back on his hands and watching all this. He was startled out of it slightly by a shoulder-bump from his brother, and when he turned towards him, Stan handed him a plate of beans and a couple slices of bread, with a "Here."

Ford took the plate from his brother, and the spoon, but he turned back to the rest of them, watching MizBill as he ate some more fish that Bill pulled out of his hat for him, explaining in delight the various sensations he was (seemingly) reveling in, as he apparently tried modifying his new 'tastebuds' further. ("Now it tastes like marrow!")

"How long has Bill been… teaching that other demon things," Ford murmured to his brother, in-between bites of beans. He wasn't entirely sure whether it was an act or not. But Bill at least...

Ford looked over at Bill. Bill, at least, seemed sincere in what he was doing. And it left Ford with very mixed feelings on what he was seeing, here.

His brother not quite side-eyed him. "Kid's been tryin' to teach her all kinds a' stuff ever since she's gotten back, Ford," Stan told him. "Taught her how to sleep, the first time she showed up with that other demon-guy, before that, too." Ford glanced over at Stan at the tone in his voice at that one, to see his brother giving him a long look that he didn't quite like, as Stan said (slowly, and almost a bit too carefully) next, "You were in the woods with 'em, for the headband thing. Weren't they doin' it then, too?"

In the background, MizBill was nuzzling his brother. "Thanks for always being brilliant!"

Bill let out a chittering-chuckle, grinning up a storm. The kid was... patting MizBill on the head(? well, he was stroking his back and his side-face with the flat of his palm and fingers) intermittently, and Bill was just looking out-and-out pleased with his demonic kid sister. "You learned how to do it yourself! I just gave you the general concept, to get you started. And you did very well!" He paused for a moment, then said, after a long moment, in a not quite drawn out way... "I am proud of you."

Stan sat up a little internally, taking notice of that. (He didn't realize that he'd pulled in an unconscious breath at those particular words, but Ford -- who was watching him -- did.) That… sounded like something the kid had been translating; kid had paused like that before after a chittery-thing or two with him, saying things in a way that didn't really have a beat to it, every syllable and sound taking the exact same amount of time for the kid to say to him, and... it had felt like the kid was restating things -- not word-for-word, but still... (Which meant…) Damn. The kid was… and Miz was… --They both were actually trying to be supportive and affectionate with each other, and they were doing it in the way that they'd-- Shit. This was…

It made Stan want to punch somebody all over again. Maybe the kid's lizard. (Damnit. Why hadn't somebody just…)

It shouldn't have had to be him. Or them with each other, after a couple hundred of billions of years. Damnit.

Stan pulled in a breath, and looked away.

(He missed Ford's look of concern, and no small worry, on his behalf.)

But when he heard, "Stan…" the grumpy old man just looked down at his plate and said, "Eat your beans, Ford."

There was a pause.

And Stan heard his brother let out a long sigh.

"You're going to get hurt," he heard Ford say quietly, as if in warning -- hell, as if anything that came outta his brother's mouth these days wasn't one of those, when it was directed at him -- and Stan clenched his jaw and glared down at his plate.

"Like hell," Stan bit back in reply, under his breath himself.

And Stan took another bite of his beans, using his bread as a spoon.

They ate the rest of their dinnertime meal quietly, watching and listening to the kids (human and demon) as they chatted about the various and sundry stuff that they could (maybe) do with the boat. Sixer was finishing a sketch of MizBill's form. He wanted a closer look at that Eye/Mouth thing but MizBill told him that was a bad idea.

"I might get an urge to bite down, and that would end badly for you." MizBill told him gently. Sixer pouted but wrote that down. "Bite reflex, like an alligator?" he mumbled.

Ford frowned as he chewed on his last mouthful of beans, and started cleaning up after both Stan and himself. What was it with teenagers wanting to get near a demon's mouth?

"My friend Pyronica once stuck her arm in my mouth. It felt super weird and it took everything I had to not bite." MizBill reminisced. "My friends wanted to know how deep my throat was…" it was VERY deep apparently. He was a little curious himself, but too uncomfortable with the process to really try it out himself.

"How deep is it?" Sixer asked. MizBill shrugged. "Not sure. Everything I swallow gets torn apart molecule by molecule, so I don't know. Maybe it's infinite, or maybe there's a bottom. But any camera I've swallowed was destroyed within a few minutes." They STILL had the recordings from that planet he swallowed. Geez, you eat a planet once and people refuse to let you forget it.

Stan noticed that MizBill was looking a little uncomfortable when Sixer insisted once again to at least see their mouth again. "I-it's not that interesting! It's just a mouth! Which is also my eye!" MizBill glowed orange, flustered and wiggling in midair.

At that, Stan spoke up, knowing his 'twin' wouldn't stop unless being told firmly and straight-out: "Hey, no means no." ...And Lee was already smacking his twin's shoulder with an annoyed look on his face, as well.

Bill frowned as he watched his sister, and that 'Ford. He got up and crouched down in front of the teenager, glaring at him. "KEEP YOUR HANDS OFF MY SISTER," Bill told 'Ford, getting right up in his face. (He did not look pleased. ...Neither did 'that Stanford', who was watching them both.)

Sixer looked disappointed, and (only a little bit) rueful as he raised both hands up a bit, palms outward in (temporary) surrender, even as Lee groaned at his (apparently) suicidal brother. Seriously, over-protective older demon here!

Bill glared at the younger Ford for a long moment, then two, then three. Then he finally stood back up and took the few steps he needed to, to sit down next to where his little sister was floating, again. "You need to be more assertive," Bill said simply, to said little sister, reaching up to gather him down into his lap, gently (and not quite caging him in with his arms). And he said it because he knew MizBill was going to get into trouble if he didn't. 'Ford would think that he could get away with things if he just pushed enough, otherwise.

MizBill seemed to pout, his large eye being quite expressive, "Like, how? I don't want to offend him."

"HA," Bill scoffed. "Who cares about offending him? --He should be caring more about not offending YOU! --You don't like what he's asking, so just say so. HE is the one in the wrong, for not stopping at no. No means no. You said no."

MizBill wiggled again. "But I want him to be my friend. So, how do I turn him down if I also don't want him to dislike me?"

Bill frowned. "If you want to be Stanley's human-definition of 'friends' with someone, and they don't listen to 'no', then that should DISQUALIFY them from the being-friends. No means no. Even if you think you maybe want to be friends with someone," Bill stressed, as Stan looked on with a bit of surprise. (He hadn't thought he'd quite gotten through to the kid all the way on that one, as of yet.)

"Well kid, you've got that one right," Stan said for his part, pretty firmly, sending a hard look over at the younger Ford, as he made sure that all the kids were hearing it. This was something pretty damn important, in Stan's book -- since it was one of the few (if only) reasons why and how Stan had managed to convince the kid not to contact his demon-friends yet in the first place. (Mainly, that the kid's idea of 'friends' had sucked and that the kid needed -- and could get -- much better friends than that.) And this had Stan a little worried, as he was beginning to get the idea that MizBill might be in even more danger of being taken advantage of by other people than he'd originally even thought that the kid might be able to be taken advantage of as-is, in the wrong hands.

As if picking up on Stan's unhappy thoughts, MizBill turned to him and pouted some more. "I know how to refuse people I don't like! But Sixer's a friend."

"Not if he's trying to get you to do things you don't want to do, when he knows you don't want to do it, he's not," Stan told her firmly, sending another glare the younger Ford's way. (His brother had been kind of bad about that junk sometimes, but he was absolutely horrible at it, pushing at people's boundaries like that; nobody had ever really put up with or fallen for his junk. ...And, y'know, clearly his brother had grown out of that stupidity in college, or later, or something. Ford never tried to pull that shit with anybody anymore, not even as a joke. Whatever had happened with the kid when he'd been a triangle demon, and that whole 'deal' thing, had clearly been a whole 'nother thing entirely; Ford clearly hadn't known what he was doing at the time.)

Lee sighed. So the demon-dragon-lady thought they were all friends? Well, he wasn't sure if he should correct her on that. He still gave Sixer an unhappy frown, because that just wasn't cool.

MizBill nodded. "Okay." He (sliding seamlessly into she, mentally) nuzzled back into her brother's chest. "I'm fine with petting along my head. I don't like foreign objects that aren't food inserted inside me," she told Sixer firmly. "That one time with Pyronica was because I was curious, but I didn't like it and I don't want to do that again."

Bill blinked as MizBill performed her shift. "...Bow not bowtie?" Bill murmured, a bit confused. (He'd caught the ever-so-slight shift in apparel -- but nothing else, since they weren't in the Mindscape or Dreamscape and he couldn't read minds as he was -- not without further magical or scientific intervention.) MizBill snuggled against him, glowing softly. "I'm in female-mode right now. I'll probably switch it around later, again."

"Mm," said Bill, registering 'girl' as her gender now. "Let me know?" Clearly he was bad at guessing -- he'd just thought she'd wanted to change clothing-accessories again! He pulled in his arms a little closer (crossed across his chest and also MizBill) and ran his fingers lightly along her lower outer sides, up and down, soothingly.

MizBill closed her eye and rumbled softly. This was nice. Brother wasn't as soft as Xanthar, but his hugs were nice too.

Bill's eyelids lowered a bit and he let out a soft breath. This… wasn't exactly like getting 'hugged' back by his brother when he'd been a triangle? But it was sort of close… (He let out another soft sigh and relaxed a little bit further. He wasn't really touching MizBill any harder than he'd have touched another shape or line just then -- a bit of pressure, but easily pushed against and released, and nothing anywhere close to being able to crumple a very fragile Flatlander.)

Lee stared before leaning over to ask Stan. "Eh, is she purring?" he whispered. Stan shrugged. Hell if he knew. (All he knew was that the kid was humming a bit, like he did sometimes when he was half-asleep in the chair and Stan rubbed his fingers against this temples instead of on top of his head.) The two demon-kids both looked pretty relaxed, though.

Stan checked the time and huffed. "Hey, you kids better get to bed now. You've all got school again tomorrow." He glanced over at the younger twins. "You've both finished all your homework an' stuff, yeah?" Stan stressed, leveling a look at the two of them, both.

Lee rolled his eyes. "Yeah. Miz made sure I finished my homework," he grumbled. "She's more pushy than Ma…"

"Yeah? Well, be glad she was the one pushin' and not me," Stan told his younger self, to a short groan from Lee. He didn't get any more backtalk from either Lee or Sixer, as they both stood up and headed down below-decks, though. He and Ford got to their own feet, and Stan sent the kid a glance. (...Yeah, okay. Kid got the message too. Good.) He headed to the hatch and down the ladder after Ford himself.

"Mm," said Bill, taking his time at the 'getting to bed'. He didn't exactly poke MizBill to get her attention, but he did stop what he was doing that was making her purr-hum along with his own humming. "Should maybe go back to one human-ish form or another for the sleeping. Easier," he told her, opening his arms up a bit (in preparation to accommodate a larger form if she did it on the spot).

MizBill blinked her eye open. "Okay." She shifted back into Miz, appearing in Bill's lap already in her pajamas (just an oversized t-shirt, with shorts).

"You want to stay female for now? Or male?" Bill asked her directly, rubbing at one eye a bit tiredly, as he looked down at her.

"Female for now, I'll be male tomorrow at school." Miz yawned.

Bill nodded. Then he glanced down and added, "Breast-resizing?" (He wasn't teasing, just asking out of what he himself would classify as an emotion of 'concern'.)

Miz pouted. "I don't mind them for short amounts of time, they're fun to touch. But having them that big all day is heavy."

"Yes," Bill agreed, "Heavy-heavy. ...You can change them back-and-forth now yourself, yes? You Saw how I did it?" he asked her quite seriously, slowly pulling away from her and getting to his feet, walking casually over to the side of the deck where the sandcastle was. (Stan had not quite banished the two demon-kids to the sandcastle the next morning, after Bill had woken up; he'd coached it as the much better option for the two of them instead of the blankets below-decks, while the rest of them had sleeping bags, though. Mostly, Stan had just not wanted to have to worry about the twins sneaking up onto deck and maybe getting into trouble with the thing, if he didn't have the two demon-kids using it and having a reason to want to lock it all down.)

Miz nodded. "Yup. I should be able to do age shifts myself based on what you've shown me, will need to practice them to get them to look right. But I can go back and forth between this--" she gestured at her current child-self, "--and the larger form easily now." Now, all the in between were another story, if she ever wanted to make herself look like she was aging normally like a human, it would be a pain to have to make each in between stage, but she knew HOW to do it now.

Bill nodded and smiled, proud that his little sister was such a fast learner! He patted her head gently as they stopped at the (enlargened) sandcastle entrance on the deck. "Good job," he told her. Miz beamed up at him, making Bill feel a little warm (...happy?) inside.

Miz crawled into the sand castle and set about building another 'nest' out of pillows and blankets. Bill crawled in shortly after her, set the 'lock' that Stanley had seemed to want, and then waited patiently for Miz to finish what she was doing.) Once Miz shuffled around and fluffed the pillows just right, she settled down and sighed. "Good night brother, I love you." She yawned as she snuggled into her nest.

"I love you, too," Bill told her with a tired smile, as he spider-crawled his way over the pillows and blankets, to settle down at her back, back-to-back again as they usually did these days.

Miz hummed quietly as she wiggled to press against Bill. She was quickly growing used to this, sleeping with her brother. Knowing he was there. Knowing she wasn't alone.

Bill relaxed completely as he felt his little sister at his back. She was there, he knew where she was; she was safe (with him), and everything was...

And Bill fell asleep just that quickly, lying there, mid-thought.

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