Chapter Text
It took them eight months and thirteen days before they had a real incident. Eight months and thirteen days of nothing over the danger level of a long forgotten mythological beast chasing them as they sailed the oceans together. Nothing under the danger level of an angry bar tender when Stanley tried to skip out on paying for their drinks.
It took them eight months and thirteen days for something like this to happen.
It had seemed like a pretty calm morning when Stanley Pines had woken up, the ocean water barely having any waves upon its surface. The soft waves it did have rocking the boat back and forth in a now familiar and calming way. When he had come up to the main deck he had greeted the sea air with a smile on his worn face. Eight months and thirteen days and he still couldn’t believe this was actually happening.
He was actually sailing around the world, chasing down adventures.
“Morning, Stanley.”
Stan turned his attention away from the dark greens of the sea and towards the man sitting on the ship’s deck with his boot covered feet propped up on the rail.
“Morning yourself, Stanford. How are you always up before me?”
Stanford just shrugged his shoulders, going back to the book he had been enjoying the morning light.
“Well, early bird gets the worm and all that.”
“Yeah, but you were never an early bird,” Stan shot back, walking over to his twin and glancing over the words that were on the page his brother was reading in a bored fashion.
“Things change, Stanley.”
Silence hung between them after that statement. It wasn't necessarily a heavy silence, but it wasn’t a comfortable one either. Things still left unsaid hanging between the both of them but both understanding implications of what Ford was saying.
“Well, I’m hungry and you are reading a boring book,” Stanley said, finally cutting the silence between them with a quick movement of his hands so they jostled his twin’s shoulders. The action causing the book to slip out of Stanford’s loose grip and fall closed on the deck of the ship.
“Food is where it always is, Stan,” Ford grumbled, the morning of peace having seemed to die as soon as Stanley got out of bed.
“Yeah, but I don’t wanna get it.”
“You are the most childish sixty-two year-old I have ever met,” Ford grumbled, picking up his book and standing up from his chair.
“Not true,” Stan huffed, crossing his arms with a smirk on his face, “You know yourself.”
The glare that Stanford was giving his twin brother had been enough to bring many inter-dimensional beings fear for their lives, but it seemed to have no effect on Stanley F. Pines. The man just smirked at his twin brother with a look that dared him to do something. Stan could see the cogs working in his twin brother’s mind as he glared, he observed how his hands twitched by his side as if ready to pull the trigger to an imaginary gun. They were so caught in their little staring stale-mate that both of them barely recognized the one cloudless sky was suddenly becoming dark.
A sharp wave hitting the boat ended any of the teasing or brotherly bickering that may have occurred. The wave jostling the occupants standing on the ship. Stanley looking up at the sky in confusion, having sworn he had woken up to a nice clear day.
Stanford frantically pushed back his jacket's sleeve to stare at a device that he insisted wasn’t a watch. His eyes widening behind his cracked glasses at what the reading was. As if on cue, the device began to beep and a crack of blue lightning lit the too dark clouds.
“Shit!” Ford muttered under his breath, trying to hurry over to the helm.
Another wave rocked the Stan o’ War II, causing the twins to stumble. Stanford grabbing onto the wheel tightly so he didn't fall the the ground; forcing himself to stay on his feet as he tried to get the boat to turn around.
Stanley grabbed onto the railing, his eyes focused on the swirling mass that the clouds that were flashing above them. The grey was almost black, only change in color occurring when the flashes of blue broke through the mass just before a loud boom of thunder echoed off the sky.
“What the hell is that!?!” He shouted over the thunder, his voice almost carried away by the strong wind that was starting to be picked up. Around the ship the ocean water thrashed aggressively.
“It is a small wormhole!” Stanford cried over the wind, still fighting to turn the ship away from the eye of the unusual storm. “I suspected that one would be opening around here soon, but I hadn’t known it would be so close to us. My calculations said-“
“Wait, you were steering us towards a wormhole this whole time!?!” Stanley broke his eyes away from the blue lightning and stared at his brother in anger and horror. “Damn it, Ford! What is with you and punches through the fabric of the universe!?!”
Ford grit his teeth, fighting uselessly against the strong waves and current that were pulling the ship easily into the darkest parts of the storm. “I didn’t think we would be close when it opened, all the charts read that we would miss it by a good hundred miles! I merely wanted to observe the occurrence from a safe distance, not be in it!”
If Stan had shouted something back at him, Ford did not catch it. The wind and thunder that now surrounded the ship had become the dominant noises around them both. Ford let go of the wheel, finally accepting that turning the Stan o’ War II around would be no use. The better use of his hands wee to cover his ears to prevent damage from occurring because of the loud sounds.
Stanley seemed to be doing the same thing, his hands having left the railing to cover his ears. He was now seated on the deck as the ship began to rock more violently.
Ford clumsily made it over to his brother, falling down just as he got close to him. Stan taking a hand off his own ear just so he could grab Ford’s jacket and pull him over to him.
“We have to get somewhere safe.” Stan said, or at least Ford thought he probably said, as he looked over at the door that lead below deck.
Stanford nodded, admitted that below deck may at least help them stay in one piece or, if they were sucked into the hole, that they would stick together. Clumsily, Stanford took a hand off an ear and leveraged himself up with the railing of the boat. Stanley doing the same.
With one ear not muffling the noise they caught the sound of something new mixing in with the howling wind and thunder. Something, that at first, could have been mistaken for the sound of a trickling stream but such a soft sound would not be able to break through the pounding noises. The noise did grow to match the level of the wind and thunder; sounding like the falling water of Niagara Falls.
The twins shared an identical look of horror, too shocked to move from where they stood exposed on their ship's deck. The next thing that happened was so sudden that both of them doubted they would have made it if they had tried to get below deck.
The bow of the Stan o’ War II tipped first and the rest followed suit as they followed the rest of the ocean into the wormhole to who knew where. Stan and Ford clinging for dear life as they fell with the ship; one of their hands holding tightly to the rail while the other one was clinging to each other.
Rain poured outside the window of a small attic room in a peculiar looking shack; lightning streaking every so often across the sky, brightening it. A small hand pressed against the glass as its owner stared out curiously at the sudden downpour. The other free hand letting its thumb nail be bitten.
“Are you going to start watching the rain now?” A voice from one side of the room said, it sounded tired, “Because there is nothing weird about rain. Everywhere in the world rains.”
The owner of the hand that was pressed against the window sighed and turned to face the person who had spoken, the hand that had been letting its thumb be abused moved to fix the glasses back to their proper place on his nose.
“I know there is nothing strange about rain, normally,” the person said with a roll of his eyes, “But something feels different about this.”
A large crack of almost blue lightning lit up the sky and the person could have sworn that they had seen something falling into the woods in that sudden moment of clarity.
“Well, maybe it is different because it is happening at a time where normal people go to sleep.” The second voice said again, sarcasm written all over the statement.
The person by the window sighed, “Fine. I’ll go to sleep.”
“Thank God,” the voice yawned. A shuffling of blankets coming from its direction as the person who owned it got comfortable in their bed.
The first person rolled their eyes and stared out at the storm for the last time. The strange colored lightning had stopped and the rain seemed to be slowing down. Maybe the other was right and they were over thinking this.
Pulling their hand away from the glass as they moved towards the bed; leaving a six fingered hand print on the glass that seemed to shine like a beacon when the last strike of lightning cracked above the forest.