-Get distracted by jingling keys-(Part 1)

---

"Wait," Sixer said, pulling back a bit, as Miz not quite dragged him and his brother by the hands out the entrance to the front of the school. "There's something I want to do first, before we go to the beach."

Miz blinked back at him and stopped in place, as the tugging of his hand got a bit more insistent, and he actually pulled his hand away from her own.

"Sure, what's up?" Miz asked, stopping to let Sixer talk. She wasn't in a rush, more time meant a larger crowd anyway. And what's a performance without an audience?

"I want to retrieve my science fair project from the gymnasium," Sixer said. He'd been putting it off because, quite frankly, between everything else going on -- and the open house for the 'fair lasting through the week to (supposedly) let the rest of the community see what they'd all worked on (not that anyone ever seemed interested in this sort of thing in their town)...

Sixer hadn't really had a chance to grab it yet, since the exhibits were supposed to stay as they were for evaluation for grading by the teachers, and then general viewing. (He also somewhat hadn't wanted to -- and still almost didn't want to -- retrieve it to determine exactly what had gone wrong, given how the thing not working had just about ruined his life, turning everything completely upside down. Because what if the demon was lying? If it hadn't really been sabotage at all, then that would mean that pa--)

Really, the last week had just been so full of craziness, that he'd hardly had a chance to think, between the older versions of them and the demons and the boat, but… he'd been observing the two demons carefully, and the demon-dragon one who called him-and-her-self Miz sometimes didn't seem like much of a liar at all. In fact, he'd not heard her utter anything that seemed to be a lie, not a single solitary time, not even once.

And at the beginning of everything, she had said that someone had sabotaged his project.

He hadn't quite been able to think straight about it at first; not the first night, when things had been so rough that he'd nearly cried himself to sleep, and not the next morning when things hadn't quite seemed anything like real to him yet at all.

But that had been Tuesday night, and Wednesday morning. Thursday had been strange, what with the second demon (consistently 'Bill') going from acting larger-than-life the previous day at school, to nearly dead-with-fatigue and all-but-sleeping through every single class instead.

But today wasn't the first day, or the second. Today was Friday. He'd had nearly three whole days to get used to things now. The new state of things, and the new status quo. He'd even gotten a decent amount of rest the previous night, for the first time since he'd been kicked out of the house and out of 'the family' for good, though apparently that didn't mean Lee treating him like some sort of leper as well.

Sixer was feeling pretty secure in his current situation now, and now? Now he wanted to know who had done it. --He wanted to know who had dared to sabotage him and his efforts at scientific achievement.

"Sixer, we've got until Monday," Lee told him, as Bill and the older-Ford (who had been following at a few paces behind) came to a stop, up next to him and the dragon-demon lady who was still holding his hand. "We shouldn't be too late gettin' to the beach, just in case. Miz might get bored with waiting-- uh, no offense," Lee said, turning to her. "I mean, keepin' a girl waitin' is just bad manners, Sixer," Stan told his brother, frowning at him.

"No," said Sixer. "I don't want to wait to retrieve it. It won't take but a few minutes," Sixer said, turning around on his heel and marching back down the hallway towards the gymnasium. "--And it will give me something to focus on over the weekend," he informed his brother, over his shoulder, as he walked off, and the distance between them grew.

"But we're gonna be doing the stand thing the old me talked about, this weekend," Lee called after him, feeling a little wrong-footed. He'd thought Sixer was going to help with that. (He wasn't so sure about running it all himself… that kind of felt wrong.)

Bill glanced after Sixer, then turned and started following after him as well.

"Bill," Ford called out, pushing himself into half-a-jog to catch up to him. "Don't try and stop him from--"

"HA. --Who's STOPPING anybody?" said Bill, who merely caught up to Sixer, following at his side. "NOT ME!!!" Bill enthused out. "--Miz, Lee, you two coming or not?" the demon simply tilted his head back and called out, not even turning any part of himself back the slightest bit towards the two others.

Ford frowned as he caught up to Bill, and strode down the hallway alongside them both, now three-abreast: Ford, Bill at his right, and his younger counterpart at Bill's right.

....He noticed as they went how Bill was watching his younger self sidelong, almost carefully. And Ford wasn't entirely certain if Bill was watching something, or watching for something. ...But the dream demon was most certainly paying attention, and that was enough to make the hairs on the back of Ford's neck stand up a bit in worry and warning. (Because in Ford's experience, whatever Bill paid attention to for too long, whenever he decided to pay attention to something, whether it be a person, event, or thing…)

---

Sixer was staring at the table in disbelief.

Everything was gone. His project. His display. --Everything!

"What the heck?" he heard Lee say as if at a distance, despite the fact that he was standing at his left shoulder. "--Hey, what's goin' on?"

Sixer managed to tear his eyes away from the empty table to see Lee marching right up to the nearest student and--

Carla McCorkle, holding a clipboard, turned around to face them. Ford noticed Miz frowning and deliberately looking away; Bill, meanwhile, was looking around the gymnasium with no small interest. (The dream demon didn't look surprised, though.) It left Ford frowning.

"Carla, what the heck is going on?" Lee demanded. He'd noticed that a bunch of the displays were gone, not just Sixer's -- his was missing too, for a start. "This stuff's supposed to be up until Monday, right?" he asked her. She was obviously in charge here, what with the clipboard and all, so she should know! (And it wasn't like they weren't on speaking terms at all after their breakup. He'd just been… well, not avoiding her mostly, not exactly, just--)

(It'd been easier not to talk with her so much anymore after dumping him like that the way she had, after what she'd said about him being a total loser, is all. He hadn't needed that noise. But now he had a reason to talk to her, so he was. Wasn't nothing complicated about it.)

"The dance committee wanted to get a head start on the dance, before after school on Monday; it's coming up in only two weeks, you know," Carla told him primly.

Lee frowned. "Carla, you are the dance committee." She was the one who always took point and worked on that stuff for their class. "What the heck? --Did you tell anybody about this first, before throwing people's stuff out?" he asked her. "Give people a chance to grab their stuff?" Because he knew a couple people besides Sixer who'd have a real problem with this.

"It was approved by the science teachers and the principal," she told him simply. "It's not like the open house was being extended into this weekend, too," she said with a shrug. "And it's not like we're throwing out any project that doesn't have a bad grade on it. The rest, we're going to be sticking in one of the supply closets for the weekend."

"Okay, then where's the supply closet?" Lee said, letting out a breath in relief. Because hey, for a second he'd been worried there.

Carla blinked at him. "Stan, we started by trashing the bad ones first. All the others left here are going to go on one of the A/V carts," she told him.

Lee saw Sixer go still next to him, and Lee glared at her. "If you're only throwin' out stuff with a bad grade," Lee said slowly, as his hands slowly clenched into fists at his side, "Then where's Sixer's and mine?"

Carla looked down at her clipboard and flipped a page. "Well, it was probably tossed out with the rest of the trash. You both got bad grades on yours."

"I got an A+ on my project!" Sixer exclaimed angrily at Lee's side, as Carla looked on coolly. Lee glanced between them.

"Well, I have the grades listing right here, and it says that you received a D-," Carla said. "Probably because the teachers evaluating the projects realized that you shouldn't have gotten so high a grade in the first place for lying." Carla flipped the pages back, and then let her hands fall, to hold the clipboard two-handed, down against her legs casually. "I suppose it's a good thing that those college-board people showed up and let them know exactly what was wrong with it when they did."

Sixer was breathing heavily. "My work… was sabotaged--"

"Really, Stanford," Carla said in chiding tones, lifting the clipboard again, "Is that what you're going with? Really?" She tilted her head and gave him a half-lidded look. "Do you really think that they didn't just go ahead and revise your grade based solely on the poster board display after that? I can't see Mr. Harman being anything other than fair. The physical part of the project was only a quarter of the grade, you know." She had a slight smile on her face, and--

--Sixer stepped forward and snatched the clipboard from her hands. (She let him.) "I don't believe you!" he snapped out at her as he did so, but he was already looking pale. And when he paged through it and saw for himself what his newly-revised grade was, he went absolutely dead white.

Carla stepped forward and slowly pulled the clipboard from Sixer's hand, taking it back.

"Like I said," Carla said. "It was thrown in the trash. Just like all the others."

Sixer lifted his head abruptly at her words and stared at her, eyes blazing.

"Shame." Miz spoke up. "There were quite a few good ones there. Not trash at all." She was staring at Carla evenly. The other girl clicked her tongue.

"Well, to each their own. You're free to go through the trash looking for them, though, if you want to. We've been emptying the rolling trash cans out into the dumpster, out by the side there," Carla gestured carelessly with a hand at the double-doors. "We did move it closer to the building to make it easier on the other students helping out, and it looked pretty empty to start with, so it shouldn't be too hard to find it," Carla told them all.

Miz smiled sweetly as she gave a carefree shrug. "I wouldn't mind. I'm used to picking up things that other people abandon and discard." She was still holding Lee's hand.

"...Well, you might not have to do it yourself, because it looks like your older friend's already on it," Carla said, glancing past Miz's shoulder, as Ford was already striding off, with Bill following along behind him at an easy, almost careless pace.

"Well," Miz shrugged, taking up and squeezing Lee's hand, "One woman's trash is another woman's treasure as they say." She gently tugged the younger Stan's hand. "Come on Lee, we should probably make sure Sixer doesn't fall into the incinerator. He's not supposed to die until he's 92 or something..."

"Incinerator?" Carla said. "It's just a dumpster outside." They had no incinerator on the premises. "We aren't burning anything." What did they think this was, some kind of mortuary? "It would be nice if you all got out of the way. Just go off and do whatever you're planning on doing, okay?" Carla told them, "Unless you want to stick around and help out?" she said, gesturing at the handful of students milling about, working on doing just that, as another few students rolled in another two empty A/V carts and started carefully loading them up with the first of the remaining projects.

Lee gave Carla a long look, then put his free hand on Sixer's shoulder, turned, tugged, and started walking away. "C'mon, Sixer. Let's go get your project back," he told his twin, who was walking a lot more slowly than he was expecting.

Miz turned to stare at Carla as they walked away before finally turning back to face forward. Bitch.

Carla didn't even bother to look back at the rest of them as they left, already moving on to the newly-arrived group of students. She handed off her clipboard to one of them and began giving them directions, starting with a hands-on example of how careful to be in retrieving and moving the remaining 'good' projects onto the carts.

---

Ford didn't bother wasting time. He just strode right over to the large metal dumpster and flipped the first and then second lids over in rapid succession.

He glanced inside, let out a breath at seeing that the students had apparently tossed the majority of the projects and (torn-up) poster boards into just the one half-side of it. He calculated the best location to place his feet inside the dumpster.

And then he slapped both hands onto the rim of it and vaulted himself bodily inside. (He'd lost any compunction about this sort of thing long ago. One took what one could get, in other dimensions. He'd found some of his best materials in other alien species' equivalents of garbage heaps and junkyards on multiple occasions. And frankly, this dumpster was far cleaner by comparison, not containing any biohazardous or potentially radioactive material within it.)

He'd gotten the majority of the poster boards moved off to the side and out of the way (apparently, they'd taken care of removing all of those last), and had slowly picked his way through about a third of the pile when the man-eater and their younger selves made their way outside.

"Woah," Lee said, walking up next to Bill (who was casually leaning back up against the front of the dumpster, looking inside it and half-watching as the older Sixer went at it), and Lee gingerly put his hands against the side of the dumpster (not wanting to risk a cut against something that rusty) as he looked in himself. He hadn't expected the older Sixer to just… dive right in and start going through stuff like that. Like it was nothing. And he really seemed to know what he was doing, too. ...Huh.

The older Sixer looked up at him from where he was crouched. "Oh, here," he was told, and Lee blinked as the old man made an odd sort of sweeping-scooping motion at his side and stood up.

And then Lee blinked as his foot-bot was suddenly only being held in front of him about a foot away from his face.

...Lee raised his hands up and took it back from him.

And as he slowly lowered it a little closer to his chest, he heard the older Sixer say, "I don't know what Carla was thinking. That really shouldn't have been in here."

Lee looked down at his beat-up looking project, then stepped forward and looked down into the big metal dumpster at the old guy who'd just handed it to him, as the older Sixer just… turned away and crouched right back down again and got back to what he'd been doing before, carefully going through all the trashed stuff.

And Lee thought, '...What?'

"But it's junk," Lee said slowly. He knew that. They both knew that.

"Is it? I thought you worked rather hard on the idea for it."

Lee stared down at this older Sixer. "I mean, I guess…?"

"And you got a C+ on it, didn't you?" he heard the older Sixer say almost absently next, as he picked up and moved another piece of something out of the way, and Lee blinked.

"Well, yeah," Lee said. "But…"

"Then it shouldn't have been in here," the older Sixer said, as Sixer peered into the dumpster and pulled a bit of a face at some of the nastiness caked along the inner sides of it. "That's not a bad grade."

"Carla is a vindictive bitch." Miz muttered. If she wanted to trash Sixer's project, that's fine, but Stan's too? That was where Miz drew the line.

"Yeah, well, Carla thinks that anything below a B+ is junk," Lee said to his twin's older counterpart, just to say it -- not like he didn't know that, it was mostly just for the demon to hear, really. Lee shifted in place as he watched the older Sixer work at it, still feeling a little odd about what he'd just had said to him by him.

Then he saw a few sparks go off from the projects with both mechanical and electrical parts at the far edge of the pile, as something shifted. One of them hissed and popped, igniting some dust, which spread to the posterbocards.

"Aw shit!" Lee cursed, shoving the footbot he was holding at Bill. The demon took it from him, and Lee wasted no time in getting an arm and leg over the side and pulling himself inside the stupid thing.

Miz looked in. "Do you want me to put the fire out?" She asked. Because Ford had said she should ask first.

Ford, who was already using the edge of his (fireproof) trench coat to slap the fire out, said, "No. Do not disturb anything that is in here! --I don't want you messing with it!" He was worried about not just magical contamination, but that any spell cast could do far more than the most apparent effects.

"Okay." Miz said simply.

Lee grabbed up one of the poster boards that had caught fire and flipped it over, shoving the burning side up against the side of the metal dumpster with his foot, effectively snuffing the fire out by removing that particular side of it from the oxygen in the open air.

Ford saw this and quickly said, "--Move away." He grabbed up the entire pile with both hands, and stepped away quickly, pulling and rotating the entire pile of them away, to do the same thing in the same way as Lee had. "There. That's better."

(It also got the fire away from the rest of the other projects, as Ford then kicked a line of the junk he'd already gone through up against them, making a partial-air barrier between the burning poster board material and the rest of the pile.)

"...You're just gonna leave it like that?" Lee asked him incredulously, as Ford turned around, crouched back down, and largely ignored the small (but growing) fire at his back to continue picking through the pile.

"It's isolated now; it'll burn itself out," Ford told him. "Do you mind pitching in? It will go more quickly if you help out."

Lee stared down at him.

"...Sure," Lee said slowly. (That was weird. He would have thought that--)

"--Lee, do you even know what it looks like?!" he heard from his twin, and Lee sighed, slowly bringing his hands back up and away.

"Of course he does." Miz told Sixer simply. "Because Lee is a good brother."

"It's a delicate piece of equipment!" Sixer said to them all. "It's probably broken under all of that!"

"It's fine," Ford said, as he removed another piece from the pile, and tossed it over his shoulder. "He can just remove anything that's obviously not part of it, then. ...Correct?"

Lee glanced over at the older Sixer and… realized he was serious. And looking at him like he thought he could actually do it, instead of just being a bother and a complete screw-up.

"...Sure," Lee repeated, to a nod from the older Sixer and...

...the old guy didn't even explain what he thought 'obviously not it' meant. He just got right back to what he was doing like he thought Lee could figure that one out on his own.

It left Lee blinking, feeling even more weird in his chest again, and almost kinda… uncertain?

But then Lee blew out a breath (then grimaced at the smell a bit as he breathed back in), and he stood up a bit more, looking at some of the stuff a little bit higher up in the pile, instead of just along the side-slope of it.

He was a lot more careful with how close he was to the bottom of the dumpster, but after awhile he started pulling junk loose out of the pile, and then chucking it up against the far right side of the dumpster... just like the older Sixer was doing; he followed the older Sixer's example. (Well, maybe not tossing it nearly as hard; he did it kinda more underhanded, while trying not to pay attention to how Sixer was carefully looking over what all he tossed up against there, like a hawk.)

And this felt… really weird. He hadn't worked side-by-side together with his twin brother since...

"Are you sure you're my brother?" Lee muttered to himself, as he tossed another weird-looking thing over his shoulder that definitely wasn't any part of Sixer's perpetual motion machine.

Ford faltered a little. "What do you mean?" His heart was racing, as his own wordless doubts rose up in a wave and that persistent and slowly-growing feeling of wrongness reared its head yet again, stronger than ever. "I... am a Stanford Pines, older twin to a Stanley Pines, from another dimension." He didn't know how to explain...

"He spent thirty years struggling to survive while lost in the multiverse," Miz pointed out helpfully.

"Shit; what?" Lee said, startled, looking over at the older Sixer. "Seriously?" He saw the older Sixer hesitate for a moment without looking over at him, then nod once. "--Struggling? Really?" He got another hesitation another terse nod. ...Damn.

Lee frowned and turned away from him, looking back to the pile, frowning further as he thought about this. Because that was weird. The older him had seemed… oh. Huh. "How long did it take that old-man me to get good enough at everything to take care of ya, then?" Lee asked, as he gave the next thing he was thinking of removing a careful look-over, slowly pulling it out, because it looked like it might be caught on something...

"Stan spent the thirty years building a machine to find him and bring him home." Miz shifted from foot to foot. (Bill shot her a warning look.)

"So, what," Lee said, not really believing what he was hearing there, because, "He thought getting home was more important than making sure you were eating," Lee said almost sarcastically because, yeah right. "Or--" Then Lee hesitated. Because, "...wait. Find you?" He stopped to look over and down at the older Sixer in worry.

Ford closed his eyes briefly, and let out a quiet sigh, realizing what Stan's younger counterpart must have been thinking at first. "Stan wasn't with me. He was there, living in my house, back in our home dimension, while I..." Ford grimaced. "I... fell through a portal to another dimension, because of Bill," he ended tersely, not particularly feeling like hashing out the details of the entire issue there, as to what had occurred.

"They were separated." Miz clarified, as Bill straightened away from the dumpster and began walking towards her. "And brother made you build the portal, but he hadn't wanted you to--" Bill came to a stop next to her and placed a hand over her mouth.

"One," Bill said, "I did NOT 'make' that Stanford do anything. He WANTED that portal; I gave him the concept, explained all of the hardest parts of it to him, and helped him with the design and the make of it." He sent Miz a long look. "Two, he wanted the Deal we made, too." (Ford barely kept his mouth shut at that one; he only managed it because he knew starting a verbal fight with Bill on that subject without Stan there was asking for far more than just trouble, especially with the second demon right there to back Bill up.) "Three, what I wanted is NOT up for discussion here," Bill ended on. Bill then slowly removed his hand from her mouth. "You're risking confusing them all over again, little sis. --What you said just now was incorrect, and in the strictest sense untrue, if technically not a lie." Because she hadn't been lying, just telling the truth as she understood it. At least, Bill thought that was what she'd been trying to do.

Miz pouted. "Sorry." She looked down at her feet. "I'm not very good at this, huh?"

"Explaining me to other people? HA!" He gave her a bit of an almost-amused look. "No, you are not. --So maybe you should leave the explaining-of-me to the expert on me, here! Yes?" he said leadingly, placing a dramatic hand against his own chest.

"I'd rather not make the attempt, thank you; you tend to defy any sort of rational explanation," they all heard Ford say dryly from inside the dumpster, and Bill's smiling expression dropped into something a bit more annoyed.

"I was TALKING about ME," Bill said, turning towards the dumpster.

"Oh, were you?" Ford said lightly, with a running undercurrent of dry sarcasm beneath. "What a surprise. You hardly ever do that."

Bill sent him a steady glare over his shoulder.

He didn't reply to that bait, though, and silence largely reigned for the next few minutes, as both Ford and Lee worked away at the pile.

...And it was only a good ten minutes later that they'd shifted nearly the entire pile from one side of the dumpster to the other, and finally found the pieces of Sixer's perpetual motion machine at the very, very bottom of it.

Ford frowned at this, as Lee unshouldered one strap of his bookbag and unzipped it open. He'd found Lee's foot-bot farther away; that had to have been in one of the last few garbage cans emptied into the dumpster, by the placement. But, by the looks of where his counterpart's project had been found, that had to have been one of the first, if not the very first, to go in.

...Though Ford supposed that meant that it would have potentially had to have been on the very top (or very near the top) of the first garbage can full of 'bad' projects.

Had they simply gone through and removed the projects by lowest-grade to highest? That wouldn't have been very efficient, though. It would have been easier to simply go row-by-row and remove those that were on the 'bad' list one by one… wouldn't it?

Carla had seemed to have been carrying the only list though. She could have just been reading off names, with people running off and then coming back with the given 'bad grade'ed project...

...but proceeding in an alphabetical order with a particular grade cutoff would still make more sense under those circumstances, though. That still would have had his and his brother's projects next to each other in the dumpster.

...unless perhaps they'd started with a different cutoff, realized they wouldn't have enough space in the supply closet, and then raised the bar (from perhaps a C to a B) for a second-pass of 'throw away' removals. Ford's frown deepened as he tried to make sense of this, as he carefully loaded the pieces of the broken project into Lee's backpack.

Miz made a face. "Of course she dumped yours first. Seriously, what did you do to make her so mad at you?" she asked Sixer (as Lee checked how Ford had packed the pieces in and zipped up his backpack again). Because she still didn't fully understand why.

Sixer frowned at her, crossing his arms. "I don't know." He shorted. "I don't presume to know what might go through any unobservant little moron's head at any given moment."

Miz paused (and Lee froze in place for a moment, himself). "Did you call her that to her face?" Miz asked quietly, as Lee carefully shouldered his backpack again, and slowly stood up.

Sixer rolled his eyes. (Ford looked over at him, openly staring.)

"Sixer," Lee said slowly, "Did you call my girlfriend that to her face?"

"No," Sixer said.

"Sixer," Lee said. Because-- "Did you ever call her that." Ex- or otherwise.

"No, I did not ever call her that," Sixer repeated. Then he added, "It's true, though. She's rather stupid." (Lee frowned at him.)

Miz scowled. "Huh, well, I think I finally understand why this happened." Because she had not been privy to people's thoughts when she Saw them while looking up events, but this? Well, even if Sixer hadn't said it aloud, Carla was a smart girl; she'd almost certainly picked up on it.

Lee gave his twin a long look.

"...Yeah, okay," Lee said, as he pushed himself up on the edge of the dumpster, and then kicked one, then the other, leg over the edge and fell the short distance feet-first back to the concrete below. He wasn't gonna argue with his own twin over an ex; that would be even more stupid than that.

Ford vaulted the edge, and took the time to close both halves of the lid on the still-smoldering fire behind them. He gave his younger counterpart a very long look as he did so. Because that hadn't been… well. It hadn't been the impression that he'd ever gotten from Stan's high-school flame at all.

"...I suppose she can't have been very smart to have dumped you," Ford finally said to Lee, after a long moment of thought. (Lee looked over at him and blinked, a little shocked.) Ford supposed it might be possible that, with how bitter this other self might be at having been kicked out of the house at age seventeen, that he might be projecting his anger onto those undeserved a little bit. He likely hadn't meant what he'd said, in as thorough a manner as he'd said it… He himself would not have; at least, Ford thought he wouldn't have. (It was a very tentative thought, though.)

Then Ford realized that, with this Carla having been in charge of throwing out his science fair project like it was junk, and being anything but conciliatory or the least bit sorry about it… some of the anger this younger him might be feeling at her at present could be directly related to that. (After all, he himself had latched on to blaming Stan immediately for his own project breaking, and… yes, he'd been right about at least some of it certainly -- Stan had admitted to some part in whatever had happened, whatever 'an accident' truly meant -- but he'd had no real proof that Stan had broken it, just a single empty candy-bag lying on the floor nearby. So this younger version of himself might likely blame Carla for having taken at least some small part in what was adding insult to injury, really.

...Not to mention being the bearer of bad news on the revision of his grade significantly downwards, Ford suspected. They'd both ended up with a D- at the end of things, but Mr. Harman had been the one to both softly tell and then gently explain it to him, which had significantly softened what had been a rather terrible blow.

But that had been back in his own timeline. --Here? Mr. Harman hadn't gotten the chance. (Not least of which because Bill-- ...Wait. Had Bill done what he'd done to him deliberately? Ford glanced over at the dream demon suspiciously.)

Lee let out a breathy laugh, surprised. "Hell, Ford," he told the older man. "Carla broke up with me because I'm stupid. Remember?"

Ford looked over at him, and he opened his mouth to say something--

--but Sixer cut in, taking the footbot from Bill's easy hold and shoving it into Lee's chest, with a, "Lee, you get lower grades than she does. Of course you're more stupid than she is." (Ford pulled in a breath at this.)

Miz was glaring out right now. "I can't believe you're more of a jerk than that Stanford," she said, as if being worse than Ford was a shocking achievement. Then she seemed to slump in place. "Well, whatever. I don't really feel like caring about this right now," she mumbled. "But Stan's not stupid."

"You three should probably head over to the beach, now," Bill said, as Lee handled his own project far less carefully than his twin's, simply contenting himself to tying up the cord around one of the backpack straps, to dangle down at his side. "Stanley will be wondering where you all are! --Better LATE than NEVER. HA!"

"We can hand off your backpack to him once we get there, for safekeeping," Sixer said, nodding once as he moved off.

Miz frowned, but followed behind.

And as Lee turned to follow them, Ford reached out a hand and grabbed his elbow, stopping him. He turned back to look at him, a tense, frowning sort of look on his face (his shoulders hunching up slightly), and...

"Look... Lee, you--" Ford struggled with how to put this, but…

Lee watched as the older Sixer pulled in a breath, then seemed to steel himself and say, under his breath almost, with a terrible urgent intensity, "Lee, you are not stupid. And grades are not everything. --Don't let anyone tell you otherwise."

Lee stared up at the old guy in front of him in literal shock at his words.

"You're just smart in a different way!" Miz called back over her shoulder to Lee from a bit farther away, as she turned to walk backward to keep Lee in sight. "I mean it! You're a great guy and don't let anyone make you feel bad about yourself." She waved her arms at him but it didn't look like Lee saw her, his eyes locked onto the older version of his brother standing in front of him.

"Lee?" the older Sixer(??) said to him, looking a little concerned almost, "Did you hear me?" and… "I said--"

"...Okay, sure," Lee said, getting the feeling that he'd better agree with him, that the guy wouldn't let go of him until he did. "Yeah," Lee said, a little more weakly than he meant to. The older Sixer looked into his eyes for a long moment, then nodded at him once and slowly let go of him, and…

It left Lee feeling almost a little faint, as he backed up a step, and and another, and then turned away and started walking after his twin, a little more and more hurriedly as he went, hands fisted tensely around his bookbag straps as he caught up to Miz and his twin, because... a Sixer who didn't think their grades at school were the most important thing in the history of everything? --Had the world ended at some point, and he just hadn't noticed?

Ford stared after Stan's younger counterpart as he watched the three of them go.

...And then he sighed tiredly as he heard a soft 'hmmmm'ing sound behind him, and turned around to see Bill stretching a bit in place leisurely.

Ford really wasn't looking forward to spending the afternoon with the triangle demon. Watching him and that other demon interacting with the whole of humanity at the school that day, while being within the same room as the two demons, while also waiting for the next (three-megaton nuclear bomb of a) 'shoe' to fall, had been nerve-wracking enough. He couldn't imagine that Bill would be on anything but his worst behavior, after barely managing to maintain a halfway-working repore with the various people he had encountered throughout the course of the school day.

And now, he had a choice between trying to somehow coax Bill into spending the time in a highly-public place (where Bill could play games with and hurt others), or try and take him off to someplace secluded with no-one else around (and no witnesses to whatever Bill would then decide to do to him). Neither of those situations (or outcomes) were particularly palatable, but if Ford had to choose, then he would pick…

Ford startled as he realized that Bill was halfway across the schoolyard from him already, and quickly dashed after him--

...to slow down to a walk as Bill kept up his half-sedate pace without speeding it up.

Ford frowned as he kept pace with him, walking two steps behind the demon for a good hundred feet or so, then frowning and coming up to walk apace with him, as they hit the sidewalk.

"Bill, where are you going," Ford asked him, as Bill didn't stop walking.

"The Harman's house," Bill told him, without much expression to his face. "He shouldn't have taken today off from teaching at the school. Stanley wanted him to balance his teaching and work and his home life properly, yes?"

"...Yes," Ford noted.

Bill tossed a look up at him as he walked, before turning back to face-forward again.

"...You want to go check up on him for Stanley," Ford said slowly.

"Yes," said Bill.

"That isn't a good idea," Ford told him roughly, as they both continued walking along.

"If there's something out of whack, then Stanley's going to want to know about it sooner than Monday, Sixer," he was told, as they both came to a stop at the first streetlight along the way, waiting for the crosswalk light to change. "I can assess him without 'inspiring him' any more than I already have," Bill told him.

Ford frowned.

But when the 'walk' sign lit up again, and Bill started making his way across the street, Ford didn't try to stop him.

Ford followed him, instead.

---

Lee finally caught up to Sixer and the demon-dragon, and jogged up to slow down to a walk at Miz's left side. He huffed a bit for breath, recovering quickly, and then turned to Miz, because…

"Did you know there would be a fire?" Lee asked, remembering Miz's comment about an incinerator.

Miz shook her head. "I didn't know. But there was a huge possibility of a fire starting since there were a lot of electrical things in there that weren't properly taken apart when they got dumped."

Lee grumbled. "Could have told us." He could've grabbed a fire extinguisher from inside or something, if he'd known. He looked over at his brother and frowned. Sixer was scribbling in his notebook as per usual.

Lee wanted to say something, wanted to ask his brother what happened between him and Carla. Something must've. Because his ex had just treated his twin like… he'd never seen a girl act like that when there wasn't something else going on that they were angry about before, and that stuff Sixer had said just then? Calling her a 'moron' like that, and just leaving it at that? --If that had been something new from just then, Sixer would've vented about it, right then. But he hadn't. Which meant…

Lee sighed and looked away. He wasn't gonna tackle this right now. Not right now. (Later, definitely. But...) They had other stuff to do right now.

Like...

Lee looked up when he heard the screams as they got closer to the beach. "...So… you're in two places at once?" Lee asked her. "Kinda?" He hadn't really understood the whole conversation she and Bill and the old-man him had gotten into the night before; mostly, he'd just gotten out of it that, whatever she was doing, was supposed to be a lot safer for her?

Miz nodded, swinging their hands back and forth as she went. "Yes and no. I made a projection that I can control from a distance, and it'll act according to the list of actions I've given it beforehand. It's currently raiding beach picnics and scaring tourists."

More screams rang out as they began to approach the boardwalk. Lee was a little worried now. "You're, uh, this thing you did ain't hurting anyone--"

"Of COURSE not. What do you take me for? It's just growling and chasing people." Miz looked away, her eyes glazing over. "Oh. The beach cops are here." she stated nonchalantly, making Lee jolt in worry. Sixer also looked a little uneasy, now that they were actually doing this. (And it didn't exactly help that he was still more than a little bit upset from before, even after the long brisk walk back.)

Miz turned back to look at them. "Well, we should hurry along then."

----

DragonMiz was having fun stomping around, kicking sand in the air and roaring. Well, it wasn't a roar. More like the sound of a rumbling air conditioner mixed with a squeal. There were many people who ran away, some who stayed to point and stare from a distance, and the beach cops were also there, unsure of what to do. For her part, DragonMiz was playing up her act of being some sort of ocean creature that had wandered onto land, shuffling around, inspecting the beach towels and discarded snack foods that people had dropped.

She had made sure to NOT show any signs of aggression until and unless a human got within a certain distance from her. Which those beach cops were doing now. DragonMiz hissed at them and backed up a little as they approached. One cop had his gun up, pointing it at her. His partner was trying to get him to put it down. "Don't shoot, the noise will probably startle the damn thing into attacking!"

"What the fuck is that?" the cop with the gun out hissed. They'd gotten an alert of a large animal on the beach; they'd thought it was a shark or something, but this… neither of them had ever seen a creature like this. It sort of looked like a snake with legs? It had scales. --This was much worse than a shark; it could walk on land and was much larger than a shark. Twice the length of a great white and with just as many teeth. --And they both saw those teeth a lot closer than either of them would've liked when it opened its huge maw and snapped up a plate of hot dogs that some scared beach patrons had abandoned, in running away from the thing.

"I reckon it's a new species? Or maybe some freaky escaped government experiment?" the other cop muttered, watching the beast carefully. Once it had backed away from them a little it had calmed, looking more interested in nudging around the colorful beach towels than in attacking them. He took a step towards it and the beast began hissing again, rearing up slightly. The cop quickly took a step back again. "Shit, how're we gonna catch this thing?"

"I say we just shoot the thing and be done with it," the younger cop said, raising his gun. But his older partner huffed and put a hand out on top of it and pushed the barrel down towards the ground again, stopping him.

"Look," the older cop told his younger partner. "A large animal like that can take multiple shots, of a hell of a lot higher caliber ammunition than that pistol you've got there, before going down -- and in that time, those claws and teeth are probably gonna go straight into you." He was older, wiser, and had more than a little experience with hunting stuff out in the forests in the out-of-state parks a little farther south than Jersey; he'd had a few run-ins with black bears before. And deer. Plenty of deer. And if there was one thing he'd learned about wild animals, it was that they didn't want to pick a fight with humans, not unless you attacked 'em first.

"Should we call in animal control?" the younger cop asked next, doubtfully but also almost hopefully.

His older partner sighed. "We might need to..." As far as he was concerned, they needed more people with wild animal experience, not more people with guns that might just panic the damn thing and send it into a rage.

DragonMiz paused. When was the cue coming? She glanced around, flicking her tail to knock over a few umbrellas. Ugh. There was trash and litter everywhere. (Miz could see though and control this projection remotely and there was a LOT of trash here) Even with her having deliberately grabbed up every glass shard she'd encountered thus far (of which this beach was named for good reason) to use in making stuff, there was still plenty of awful shit embedded in the sand around here. Discarded bottles, shoes, plastic toys...

Well, there was a pretty big audience now; it looked like it was time to step things up a notch. DragonMiz spotted the perfect target: a broken beer bottle. She wandered over to it, making sure to look like she was just searching for more food to gulp up, and... 'stepped' on the bottle, making sure that the cops were paying attention when she did it, and saw clearly what it was that had happened. --Then she faked a shriek of pain and reared up, thrashing around on the sand.

"Fuck!" one of the cops spat out, eyes going wide as he grabbed his partner and they both dashed back another good half-dozen yards, dodging a long whip-like tail as it swung around wildly.

The people watching reacted much the same way, running away further and screaming again when the beast started thrashing around more violently, smearing black 'blood' along the sand as it howled out horribly in pain. Its tail whipped around again, and the cop with the gun yelped as the long appendage (longer than he thought it was) smacked the gun out of his hands. He tried to retrieve the weapon quickly, but jumped back (nearly losing his footing as he scrambled backwards in the sand) when the tail whipped back around the way it came, smacking his gun even farther away from him in the process. "--Shit!"

"Get back!" the older cop cried out, quickly grabbing his partner up by his arms and then pulling him farther out of the way.

The two men were left panting in the sand, well out of reach of the tail. And at this point, they weren't sure what to do. The beast was obviously in pain and distressed, which was a bad thing for any large animal to be while near humans. They knew that, and they also knew that they just weren't equipped for this.

That was about when the kids showed up. Sixer took the bookbag from Lee and handed it off to the older Stan as he walked past him in the crowd (with a muttered, "Don't break it any further," to him as he went) before looking over. He let out a breath, and then took another one in almost reflexively. Because he'd thought that the dragon would look just like Miz had before. He hadn't expected...

"What's that?" he asked eagerly, (rather easily) getting right into the act. (Not that it was completely an act for him at this point. Because this? This was… --He was really looking forward to this, now.)

Miz stayed back while the younger twins approached the cops and gasped. DragonMiz was dragging herself away to put some distance between herself and the scared cops, bleeding black blood out all over the beach, and...

"Don't worry, that's just an illusion; I'm not hurt," Miz reassured the twins from where she was standing farther back, staying by Stan for the duration. (She was using an 'aural illusion' to 'throw' her voice a bit, allowing herself to speak directly into their ears.)

When the cops realized that they'd just been approached, they both turned to quickly address the teens, worried for their safety. "--Stay back!" the older cop began, as the younger cop began to shoo them farther back towards the crowd again. "We're going to contact animal control--"

"No need, we'll capture that beast!" a snobbish voice called out, interrupting the cops. Everyone turned to see two blond twins standing nearby, apart from the crowd, with smug expressions and fancy clothes.

Lee recognized them, even after all this time, and he groaned out, "Ugh, you guys again?"

The Sibling Brothers laughed obnoxiously as they turned towards the 'injured' animal. "Well, you might have cost us the Jersey Devil," one of them said. "But we'll be the ones to claim THIS one!" said the other. With that said, the first of the twins turned to the large creature and fired his net gun. DragonMiz roared as it fell over her.

Stan, who was watching this from a distance with Miz, hid a grin behind his hand. He'd gone over this with them all as one of the 'high-probability possibles', as the kid liked to put it. (--And they hadn't even left it that much to chance, either, with the 'dragon' showing up and 'running around' for a bit before school had let out and making sure a few cops were in the area. Stan knew those annoying idiots had cops on their 'payroll' to let them know what sort of junk happened around the area, and anybody who would've been listening to the police scanner would've heard--)

It was all going just as he'd planned out with Miz and the younger twins yesterday.

Stan grinned. He knew what was gonna happen next. (--And it'd serve 'em right, too.)

DragonMiz reached out and clawed right through the thick net with her claws, as if it were toilet paper. The 'injured' beast then turned towards her 'attackers' and let out a full-throated wide-mouthed screeeeeeeeeeeeech!

And the sibling brothers paled and started to scramble away, yelling, when the beast lunged for them -- clearly seeing them as a threat to be taken out.

Taking his cue with a half-acted, half-improv decision, Lee rushed forward with a loud, "WATCH OUT!" and tackle-grabbed the beast by the tail.

DragonMiz made sure to halt, acting as if Lee had managed to stop her. She turned to hiss at him instead.

"Hurry up and get outta here!" Lee yelled out, then grunted in effort as he pulled on the tail, digging his feet into the sand and holding on hard. (DragonMiz wasn't just going limp, she was actually pulling against his hold a little, needed to make it look realistic after all.)

DragonMiz stilled the rest of her body, rearing her head up on her neck with her fins fanned out, looking about ready to strike like a snake.

Lee loosened his hold on the tail at this. "Heh, good monster… easy now?" Lee grinned with 'false' bravado as he backed off just a little and patted the tail he had been holding, taking a slow step back along it, then another, hand out and down low. (The old-man Stan had drilled the two of them on their acting for this, but in facing this down… it wasn't all that hard to pretend, Lee was realizing.)

--Especially when DragonMiz snarled and turned her entire body around to go after Lee instead.

The people in the crowd back along the boardwalk (now partially-cordoned there by the cops) all screamed as they watched the sea monster make its lunge, sure that this brave foolish boy was about to get mauled.

"Woah!" Lee yelled as he ducked and dove out of the way. DragonMiz was making this look real, swiping with her claws as she twisted her long serpentine body around; Lee was forced to keep dodging.

Sixer took his cue, ducking under the one cop's arm and running forward to help his brother. He slowed down significantly as he approached the creature, then reached his arms out and crouched down and in on himself a bit, to appear small and unthreatening. "Shhh, shhh, calm down…" he said, trying to 'soothe' the creature.

The dragon didn't charge Lee again, but Lee still had to run back out of reach to get out of the way of another (stationary) claw swipe. (It was the back left leg that was injured, which simply meant its front legs were free to attack.) "I don't think that's gonna help, bro!"

DragonMiz, following Lee's movement, caught sight of Sixer out of the corner of her eye, and seemed to startle, turning her head around to face Sixer instead. She hissed and backed up again, trying to keep both teens in sight at the same time.

"It's just hurt. And that jerk attacked it," Sixer said, only barely loud enough to be heard by some of the onlookers. "I've read about what to do with injured animals! And cryptids!" It wasn't even a lie, he had read all sorts of books about strange and unusual animals.

"This ain't a cat that got beat up by the local kids!" Lee hissed out at him in a theatrical-sounding 'whisper' that carried across the beach.

But... the beast had stopped attacking, its large eye flicking back and forth at the two of them.

Sixer nodded. "Well, first off, we shouldn't spook it any more. So… back up a bit," he told his brother. Lee nodded and carefully, backed away. "And maybe…" he said to Lee, then leaned in a little closer and whispered something more lowly to his twin that the rest of the onlookers couldn't hear, and Lee nodded to him grimly, before giving him a light 'good luck' punch to the shoulder, turning, and then jogging off.

Sixer then turned back towards and continued talking to the 'injured' animal. "Hey, it's okay. You must be hurting, right? Just calm down, okay?" He stayed back, kept himself crouched low to the ground, and made sure to speak softly.

DragonMiz twitched as she stared him down for several long minutes, watching, and listening, before finally beginning to calm down.

That was when Lee came back with some hotdogs. "Hey, think these will do it?" Sixer turned his head slightly to look at Lee without really taking his eyes off of the beast.

"Yeah, generally you're not supposed to feed a hurt animal, but that's just for the ones that have internal injuries. But this one's just got a cut paw, so I think feeding it would help in this case. From the look of it, it came up on land because it was hungry." (Sixer had raised his voice a little so that the onlookers could hear him. ...He hoped he was projecting properly. He didn't want to have to explain himself all over again after the fact, just because they couldn't...)

Sixer felt his brother walking up beside him, watching DragonMiz tense and back off a little. "Most animals are just looking for food, so this thing must have been attracted to the beach because of all the food being left around." He was still speaking loudly enough that people could hear him. "So perhaps giving it something to eat will help keep it docile until animal control gets here."

Lee nodded as he carefully crouched down (emulating his brother) and shuffled a bit closer. "Hey, you hungry big guy?" Lee asked, practically crooning the words out to the creature. DragonMiz was watching the twins carefully. "Here, I got some yummy snacks for you~"

Lee carefully took one of the hotdogs and placed it down in the sand. Everyone saw how the creature's eye shot down to look at it before glancing back up at the twins.

Everyone was quiet as they watched the scene play out, holding their breath. (The Sibling Brothers glared from where they were standing -- much farther back with the crowd now -- wanting to go and try to get the unknown creature for themselves but even they knew that agitating the animal with so many onlookers watching would get them in trouble.)

Lee put the paper plate full of hotdogs down, and then he and Sixer slowly backed off, away from the pile. DragonMiz glanced up and down between them and the food. Them, and the food. And once the humans were far enough away from the pile... she slowly crept forward and sniffed at the offering.

A long black tongue reached out and wrapped around one of the snacks, pulling it into the maw of sharp teeth. DragonMiz continued eating the food, chomping down on them cautiously. She soon polished off the whole plate.

...And then that large eye blinked and the creature slumped over into the sand, breathing softly.

"Heh. Looks like those tranqs in the food worked." Lee said proudly.

Sixer nodded at his brother. "Good, now I want to get a look at it's injury, hopefully it isn't too bad." He slowly approached the large beast, who was laying on her side, breathing quietly.

Seeing their chance, the Sibling Brothers moved away from the crowd, making their way forward across the beach. They tried to approach, but even with the 'tranq's in her system, DragonMiz stirred and growled. --She wasn't asleep, just drowsy.

Lee (still standing a bit farther back as Sixer approached) noticed her bad reaction, then turned to glare back at them. "Hey, back off, you're upsettin' it again."

"We're professionals and we should take this beast off your hands--" one of the Sibling Brothers started to say--

--but a hand suddenly came down on each of their shoulders, and they craned their heads back, startled, to see a grumpy old man holding them both back where they stood.

That 'grumpy old man' was Stan, who spoke up after having made his way over after them. "--You'll scare the dang thing and get hurt, is what you'll do. Really, you shot a big stupid net at it; what makes you think it'll want you bein' anywhere near it?"

The annoying blond duo looked like they were going to protest, but the cops were right there, and had seen this all go down, along with all the onlookers. In fact, the older cop was coming forward from his self-imposed 'crowd control' duty, glaring at him. "That useless net of yours just made it more angry. I don't want you puttin' anyone here in danger by agitating it all over again. If that thing rushes the boardwalk--"

The two blondes looked around. With all the glares from the people around them, especially when the large beast started rumbling softly as Sixer, then Lee, managed to approach it and Sixer began petting it gently... the blondes realized that they weren't going to win this one. They scowled, but stayed back as the Pines twins essentially soothed the large creature with a belly rub.

The onlookers began to relax, cheering and clapping quietly as Lee cleaned and bandaged the beast's paw, while Sixer kept it busy and distracted with the petting he was doing.

Lee spoke up from where he was crouching, as he finished up his bandaging. "It's not that deep; should be healed within a few days. And then the big guy should be good to go back to wherever it came from." Said beast was continuing to purr in content at Sixer's ongoing soft petting, making the police slowly relax as well.

"Well look at that. Impressive work, boys," one of the officers praised (as Lee moved away from the beast to be able to talk with the cops in something other than a loud call out across the beach, leaving Sixer by it to continue petting it and keeping it calm). "But that was incredibly dangerous and you really shouldn't have put yourselves in danger like that."

Lee gave the cops a shrug. "Well, I kinda reacted before I thought 'bout it."

"Well, thanks for your help boys, but we should get animal control here now." The younger beach cop told them. The other one scoffed at that, saying, "Or the government; this thing's gotta be a new species or something."

Sixer was giving the beast a belly rub, but he was also well-aware that Miz (in her humanoid form) was watching him closely. He wasn't going to mess things up with her this time, he was going to be the perfect gentleman. ...Besides, this solid light construct wasn't the same. Sixer thought about how it felt to pet the real Miz; she was warm and petting her left a pleasant tingle in his fingers -- her scales had seemed to buzz beneath his hand, and it was all so fascinating. This projection was nothing like her; it felt lifeless. Sure it felt like a real animal, but after feeling the sheer power buzzing around Miz's scales, this just didn't compare.

That was about when the reporters showed up.

---

The older Stan had stepped in at some point to help the twins spin the story, and he was doing a great job at getting them all the praise and recognition for their brave actions that they would have deserved for such a feat, if it had truly been real. (Lee was in awe at how well Stan could -- and did -- play the crowd. He and Sixer were pulled up to have their pictures taken and it was AWESOME.)

Sixer watched as Miz hung back a bit, not quite vanishing into the crowd, but being pretty careful not to be caught on camera herself. Sixer wondered if there was a reason for that, as Miz turned and moved farther off…

... oh, wait, from where she was headed (read: making a beeline for) a bit farther down the beach, Miz was just wandering off to go get some more food. Hm. Sixer still hadn't figured out why one demon liked to eat and the other one didn't… and also why one would only eat vegetables. (...Some demons could only eat vegetables? What was that about?)

Lee was out and out basking in the attention, and once Sixer got over his initial hesitancy at having so very many people looking at him, he did so as well. And it was pretty clear by the end of things, as Stan slowly handed off more and more of the question-answering to the twins, and then the reporters finally wrapped up (still looking pretty enthusiastic about the whole thing), that the twins were going to be front page news by tomorrow. Lee (feeling a bit of relief at getting past the first hard part of everything) looked around for his old-man self, and...

...The older Stan had set up a place for the tourists and locals to pay to take a photo of the beast. --Heck, Lee could see that he already must have made at least $50 in the last 10 minutes, given the number of groups of people crowding around what looked like polaroid pictures. (...Holy shit. If this was the kind of stuff the older-him did for a job then Lee could see how he was making bank! The older Sixer caught monsters and then the older Stan did the business part of it...)

With the reporters now gone, Miz made her way back over with an armful of food, and more coupons stuffed in her pocket. (She was stockpiling in preparation for something.) Miz tossed another bunch of fries in her mouth. She was preoccupied with something other than the dragon now, though.

Miz wanted to make some saffron.

Miz had never cooked with it before. It was always too expensive for her to get, back when she was human. Miz wanted to know what all the fuss was about. And if she didn't like how it tasted, well, she could always sell it. Heh. Saffron was literally worth more than gold. Fancy that. (Well, considering saffron was the stigma of a specific breed of crocus flower, and each flower only had three of them… and they had to be harvested by hand individually from each flower once it blooms… yeah, ok, she could see why it was so expensive.)

But was it worth it? ...Well, even if she didn't like the taste, creating saffron was actually easier than gold (not in terms of atomic structure, just in terms of how much she needed to get the amount needed, after all, an ounce of saffron was already worth more than an ounce of gold) and would have a higher sale price so… win/win!

...There was also another project she was working on, concerning her solid-light construct. Miz had thought of a new idea that she really, really liked, but she knew she would need to talk to Stan about it first, later, before she could know for sure if it was a good idea or not. --Essentially, she wanted to fully animate the dragon construct. Not quite 'giving life' to it, but… similar.

--Because, as Miz's thought process went, if the dragon DID escape and flee back into the ocean, it would entice more tourists and cryptid hunters into the area, and if there were more sightings, it would help to promote cryptids as a 'thing' that was real because there would be plenty of evidence of such things (by way of this particular singular thing -- those photos weren't JUST for making more money). That would lead to more support and credence for little Sixer's wishes for his future career as a 'monster hunter'. ...Of course, it would also mean that he'd have to be a little more secretive about his own research in Gravity Falls in the future in order to avoid the area getting swamped quickly by other cryptid researchers, but… eh~ that was fine too.

(Plus, with more money coming into town, they could afford to clean up the beaches, to prevent their local cryptid from hurting itself and, therefore, want to stay around the area to attract more tourists and revenue.)

The beach was packed with people again, now -- even more than there had been before. Miz watched as the police showed up to try and keep people away from the now-stirring dragon. Sixer was back to petting it again, soothing the beast and keeping it pacified so that it wouldn't spook and then lash out at people. It was all very well done; Miz was surprised at the younger twins' acting ability. ...Or, perhaps, they really were just trying to keep the people from getting too close to the construct, afraid someone would realize it wasn't actually a real living creature if they did.

Finally, the crowd died down enough that Miz (who'd grown bored long before this) headed back to the boat, humming as she used the stove in the cabin to whip up a nice dinner for them all. She made some food for the Stans (all four of them), but kind of figured they might not eat her cooking; no matter. She looked down at the salad she made for her brother as well. "I don't know if I'm using this saffron correctly," she said to herself.

Miz set the rest of the food to the side for a moment and sat down to try out her salad. She was chewing on her salad, which didn't have pepper (she just didn't like spicy, she would add peppers to Bill's salad when he got there), and making smacking sounds with her mouth as she scented out the saffron in the mix.

"Hm… it's not bad? I like basil or chives better," Miz decided at last. "Well, I'm probably not using this the way it's supposed to be," she spoke aloud to herself.

Miz wasn't all that disappointed. She could just sell the clump of saffron she'd made. Would be cool to see how much it was worth. She looked at her little bundle of carotenoids. It wasn't even difficult to make. Mostly Carbon and Hydrogen with some Oxygen. Gold was much more annoying to make from scratch, being much heavier in atomic mass. Also, she could build the saffron from just grabbing the elements from the sand and air around her, versus making gold which would require converting the sand into a different substance altogether. It used much less energy than making the heavier element, and Miz was taking this time to more closely examine how much energy it was draining from her versus how much she was self-generating.

Self-generating normally consisted of converting the emotions she absorbed from others into pure energy. Since she wasn't allowed to do that right now until she learned to fully separate the emotions from herself, she'd only been feeding on her own emotions lately. She could also gain power from Knowledge and learning something new. ...Well, she had been learning some interesting things here and that helped a lot. There were also Deals, but she hadn't made any while she was here.

...and she probably shouldn't be making Deals while she was here, either. ...Or once she and her brother and the older Stans got back.

She'd been thinking about the whole 'disconnect from the Karma system' thing and was wondering if it would work, or rather, she didn't know HOW to go about doing it. Also, a small part of her was worried that maybe dad wouldn't be happy if she went and did that without asking him first...

She was a little worried about that. She didn't want to upset dad… and she was also quite convinced that her brother would be annoyed that she still valued Ax's opinion on what she did with her life. But…

Well, she didn't have to worry about that right now, she could figure it out later.

Once Miz finished up eating, she went out onto the deck to sit and wait for the others. She didn't have to wait too long; she looked out across the beach to see Stan and the others coming back now as the sun began to set, the crowd of onlookers and tourists finally leaving for the night. Ford and Bill arrived at the beach themselves not long after that, and started making their way across the beach to the boat, too.

Miz waved as they approached, and got up to let down the rope ladder for them. Once they'd all gotten themselves to the boat and up onto the deck, close enough to hear her without her having to shout, she told them all, "I made dinner for you, if you want it? If you don't, there's still plenty of ingredients."

Stan gave her a nod. "I hear ya." They all re-entered the cabin, and Ford frowned at her words at first. When they all got inside the cabin's galley, Ford frowned a bit more down at the food she'd made (a spinach salad with saffron and some hamburgers) that was laid out across the table, looking it over. Then Ford did a double-take and glared down at-- "Is that saffron?!"

"I was curious what it tasted like." Miz shrugged.

Ford twitched. "Where did you get it?" he asked, already knowing the answer. Neither he nor Stan had bought any of that at the store when they'd been stocking up on supplies, which meant--

Miz opened her mouth, then closed it and sighed. "You're mad and I'm annoyed…"

Ford glared. "I didn't ask you how either of us feel, at present. --Don't dodge the question."

Miz groaned. "I scanned and made it. Like a copy and paste." She frowned. "I didn't want to spend money on something I just wanted to test out. I don't know if I like it enough." And it wasn't like she was getting caviar or something. Saffron was a plant. They were strings of CHO in various shapes. A plant!

Stan could see Miz's mood dropping and interrupted. "Ford, you don't have to eat anything you don't want to," Stan reminded him, then told the younger twins, "Maybe we'll skip the salad. --What are the burgers made of?" he asked Miz.

Miz glanced away from Ford. "I made them from some of the supplies you bought…" she told Stan. "I didn't ask first, I hope that's okay?" She was giving Stan a mild worried look.

"That's fine. It's good that you're making use of the stuff I bought." Stan told her. It was good that she was relying on him more instead of making everything herself. He noted that Miz seemed relieved to know that she wasn't in trouble for cooking without asking first. Geez, this kid. "If you're hungry, you can get food, or cook food. You don't have to ask for permission." Stan reminded her, then joked, "Just don't eat everything all at once; make sure there's still some left for the rest of us, yeah?"

"Okay." Miz glanced down at the burgers. "Are you guys not going to eat those? I made them to be shared. They're not mine," she said carefully, glancing over at Bill to check if she was doing this right.

Bill took a moment to use the control unit at his wrist, checking them using his suit's sensors (just for complete thoroughness), then smiled and patted her on the head, letting her know that she was doing well. "They're not yours," Bill agreed, with a nod.

Sixer walked right over and picked up a burger, ignoring the older him's unhappy frown as he took a bite. "It's delicious," Sixer told her.

Miz blushed faintly, wiggling in place. "T-thank you…"

Bill frowned at this and glanced between them, then glared at Sixer, before ruffling Miz's hair. "We need to talk about your standards!" he huffed out at her. "AGAIN!"

Lee groaned. He nudged his brother. "Stop flirting with the demon," he muttered to him.

Sixer blinked. "I'm just letting her know that her cooking isn't bad." Frankly, Sixer was surprised how easy it was to get a reaction out of the younger demon. A compliment here and there was all it took...

...and he wondered: if he just pressed her just a little more, could he possibly get Miz to...

"--Ack!" Sixer yelped when Lee elbowed him harder. Sixer huffed and moved away to sit down and continue eating.

Miz looked confused. "Wait, that was flirting?"

Stan sighed as he went over to get some stuff out to make dinner for the rest of them. "Don't worry about it," he told Miz. He knew that Sixer hadn't actually meant it in a 'dating' way.

Ford was giving both Sixer and Miz a look that was equal parts annoyance and incredulity. Did neither of them realize that that was… even he realized that was...

Miz continued eating dinner, shooting Sixer some curious glances. Bill didn't seem all that happy about things still.

Stan sighed again. "Don't worry about it," he repeated, this time to his brother, as Ford refused to lose the look.

Damn these kids.

---

"Sis. We need to talk about your standards." Bill told his sister after they'd finished cleaning up everything from dinner. (Ford and Stan had eaten separately from the others; Sixer, and then Lee, had eaten what Miz had made, except for the saffron, while Bill had stuck to the salad again. Bill and Miz had taken cleaning duty that night.)

The plates were now washed and put away, and Miz had taken a moment to quickly build a shower unit for the boat belowdecks ("Because you're all filthy and I can't stand it!" Miz had justified), one that was 'plugged into' the holding tank for water below. The humans were off getting cleaned up, and the demons were more or less left alone to their own devices up on deck, getting ready for bed and sleep.

"My standards and my squirmy feelings are not exclusive." Miz set about arranging the blankets again, fluffing and pressing them until they felt just right. "And I'm not into little Ford that way. Or the older one. Just 'cause I like the way they look, doesn't mean I'm going to go for them." She shifted her clothes into her pajamas (which was just an oversized t-shirt and her underwear with nothing else) and flopped onto the nest. "If it were, I'd be dating already."

Miz stilled in the middle of stretching to get comfortable. "Huh. I've never dated anyone before. Are my standards too high?"

"They're not high enough," Bill shot back. "Not if that Stanford or 'Ford can get you feeling squirmy things for them, when they aren't hitting even half the points on your list." Bill had thought he'd told (read: warned) her about this before. He narrowed his eyes at her. "They're not good enough for you," he declared, "So you shouldn't be so affected by them! You need to work on that!" Because as far as Bill was concerned, her standards weren't actually standards, if they could be circumvented, or otherwise ignored in that only a few of them seemed to apply at all and they kept getting overridden for no discernable-to-him reason at all.

"...He likes my food…" Miz mumbled. "And he trusts me enough to eat it…" which made her incredibly happy inside. "Lee likes it too, but he doesn't always want my food."

"...Is that really that important to you?" Bill asked her as he thought about it.

Miz nodded. "The path of cooking is the path of life. To cook for others makes me happy. And if people enjoy my food, it makes me feel good."

"HM," said Bill. "So if they looked like they weren't enjoying it, that wouldn't become a squirmy-feelings problem for you, then," Bill determined from this. He thought for another moment, then said quite seriously, "I'll add that to the glasses, too!"

Miz pouted. "Having people not enjoy my food would probably make me upset…" She shuffled over so Bill could lie down next to her in the pillow-blanket pile and... Miz blinked in surprise. "...Why do you smell like Ford?" she asked. Her imagination was already going wild but she made sure to wait for Bill's response before jumping to conclusions.

Bill stilled for a moment, then rolled his eyes as he flicked his fingers -- casting a spell to clean himself and his bodysuit (so that he didn't need to shower, but would still be clean, and thus remove the 'Sixer smell' from him). He was trying to use less magic, in solidarity of a sort and wanting to set a good-terrible example, what with his sister needing to try to use magic less. But this was one of those exceptions, since it would be rather difficult to clean the suit without using magic . So he did this before he laid down beside his sister, taking her word for it when it came to the smells around her. He wasn't about to bother with smelling himself to determine how bad it was. (Ew, noses.) "Well...

"I probably smelled like Sixer because I spent eight hours in a small enclosed space without much ventilation with him earlier today, and because he never washes his stupid clothing properly," Bill noted, with another eye-roll. "And then, after I sat down to think for awhile, I woke up to the idiot practically SMOTHERING ME with his coat."

"Huh." Miz blinked. "That sounds like it was… something." And damn but she couldn't help but think that Stanford giving Bill his coat as a blanket was actually almost sweet?

"Yes," Bill said, sounding annoyed as he shifted in place and restlessly dropped himself down onto the blanket with a 'thump'. "It was a 'something'." Bill closed his eyes and let out a huff. "He's already warm enough for enough-warmth," Bill muttered, as he got himself situated next to Miz. "He DOESN'T NEED to do stupid coat-things like he's trying to DISAPPEAR me into a stupid journal-pocket someplace. The idiot."

Miz was sure her brother wouldn't like her interpretation of the coat thing as Ford trying to be nice, though maybe she was misunderstanding something, so she simply nodded without saying anything.

Bill fell off to sleep shortly after this, and so did Miz as well. A soft lullaby drifting through the air...

---