My Two Dads

[Will Stanton]

She would have to be very careful not to slosh any of this over the side, but her footing was secure enough to go up, step by step.

The explosion had mostly cleared debris; there was a bit of an indentation where she could dump off some of this glop there, but she had more evil muck than the crater could hold. Quite a bit of the explosion had gone *out*, after all, rather than in. Still, a start was a start.

[Robin Stanton]

She's just kind of flying by the seam of her pants at the moment. Dumping some of it isn't really going to change much about her situation and she decides there's only one thing to do.

"I really hope Sam has gotten him to a point where this is possible..." she mumbles to herself. "Can't go wrong with trusting the Morrigan, am I right?" she tells nobody in particular and then her arms turn into large harpoons. Bracing herself against the cliff-side she fires the spears across the chasm and driving them into the rock with the strength of her stubborn determination. And then she pulls. Every last bit of focus she isn't putting into the feel-good raincoat goes into trying to literally move mountains. She let's out a primal scream and trusting in the sheer mental clout that Samantha is bringing to the table and lending her to let her manifest here in the the first place she begins reeling the shattered mindscape together!

[Narrator]

For a tenth of a second, it looked like something was happening -- a rumble, a shake, as Robin drove herself into the other cliff face. But no, Mohammed could not move the mountain, and they stayed separated, far apart.

What they were now, however, was connected. Robin was a physical bridge between one side and the other, and the two sides which, up to this point, had been separate now had a link between one another. Robin felt a tingling from both ends, as messages and signals that normally would have traveled normally across Will's mind started zipping back and forth -- months' worth, all at once. Every decision either Will had made, every choice they had to debate, every possible path that they could have taken, zipped across her mind, quickly, piling on top of one another. Each one then received another opinion from the other side -- no, don't do that, it was embarassing; yes, go for it, what are you waiting for, and so on and so forth.

She would find that she could focus on one or two decisions at a time, and choose whether to pass along the message or not. What good that did, ex-post-facto, was unclear. What was clear is that the Jerkass and the Pushover were, in normal operation, constantly at odds with one another, with the missing middle man normally being the one responsible for casting the tiebreaking vote. With Sam still getting him up to speed; Robin was currently awkwardly shoved into that role.

So, to recap. Not only was Robin currently holding a great deal of Will's self loathing; she also was responsible for directing and sending messages back and forth. She was an aquaduct and a telephone wire, which would be great if she was planning to stay. This was probably not a viable long-term solution for either, but hey -- she was in communication, now. Maybe she could figure something out.

[Robin Stanton]

Clutching a solution! Hurray! Of course it doesn't actually solve the issue she was trying to fix, which is the giant bucket of Bad weighing her down, but it's something! And if the two are talking she might be able to help them deal with this baggage and reduce it just a little. She tries to latch on to the thoughts and decisions zipping through her outstretched arms that pertain to the kind of shifting and shenanigans that contributed to all this self-loathing to begin with.

"You are so gonna owe me after this..."

[Narrator]

Being two shifters, there was quite a long backlog of shifting-related decisions zipping back and forth, natch. Many of them were normal -- or as normal as the Stanton household ever got, at least. Even the benign ones were mostly getting shot down from Jerkass Will -- anything that wasn't to serve an immediate an important purpose was pretty much right out. Certainly nothing for fun.

Then again, there were plenty of decisions coming from PushoverWill that might give people pause, and had gone unchallenged thanks to the JerkassWill splitup. Lots of sitting in janitorial closets, taking on or seeking out degrading roles, and generally allowing himself to get kicked around -- actively searching it out, in fact, and sabotaging people's efforts to get him to cheer up. That wasn't very cash money of him.

And then there were some ideas that Robin would rather have not had flitting across her mind, thankyewverymuch. I suppose nothing could have blasted her worse than the effects of the mushroomy spores, and she still had to do something with all that gunk, but her father's libido was not something she particularly had a great desire to deal with.

Oh! And then there were the FORCED calls. Null forcing Will to shift into a printer, into fruit in Tereza's fruit basket, into the package to be mailed home safely. Nailah shifting him into Owill, much like Robin had once had a keyword to play pretty dressup princess with her dad. Those were somewhat out of the ordinary.

[Robin Stanton]

"Urgh, why... Could you keep those to yourself till we're done here, kaythanksbye!"

Pushing away the not-so-wholesome signals Robin focuses on sorting the remaining ones into categories, mainly 'Harmless Fun' for getting the go ahead and 'Not A Tool' for the aimless sitting in closets and being forced into things like a chump.

"Can't you just... take all this gunk and put it where it belongs? Feel bad about getting abused, not for enjoying yourself."

[Narrator]

That got BOTH sides yelling at her.

JerkassDad apparently considered almost anything that happened while shifting abuse. That time Tereza took a shower with him? Abuse. Miriam wearing a necklace? Definitley abuse. Natalie poking around inside his computer brain? Oh, you betcha that's an abuse. Anything that you wouldn't do to Will in human form that you WOULD do in a shifted form was degrading and humiliating and needed to stop. Now.

PushoverDad apparently considered nearly anything enjoyable, as long as you had the right mindset going in to it and trusted the people involved. So, yes, while he hadn't intended to be shipped to Ireland, it was an opportunity to see how this Sam lived! Yeah, he hadn't meant to be a printer for Null, but that just meant he helped get publicity for the fight, which his team won! Jez and Katarina had had a great night, in part because he was there! Even Black Air, even the US Military, even Melpomene could be enjoyed, if you just trusted in people to do the right thing at the end.

[Robin Stanton]

"Fantastic, you're both idiots..."

[Narrator]

Umbrage from both sides. Their point of view was right, dang it.

...Was this the kind of shit the X-Man, or Macha, had to deal with on a regular basis? Man, that was not a fun job. Why did Dad have to leave her with all the NOT fun jobs?


In the midst of all this, a permission request came for making a more permanent connection between the two sides.

[Robin Stanton]

"God, yes, please! Wait..." Before approving the request she has the wherewithal to check if it's trying to form it's own connection and not just trying to incorporate her.

[Narrator]

Nope, it was the latter. The designs were impressive -- a fancy bridge, built over and around where she currently was, but she seemed to be quite the load-bearing feature in the design.

[Robin Stanton]

"Hell no! Build your own dang support structure!"

[Narrator]

And, perhaps unsurprisingly, both sides hated that idea, and refused.

It was like dealing with toddlers.

[Robin Stanton]

"Are you kidding me? How am I the reasonable one? This is terribly off-brand for me and I'm blaming both of you!"

[Narrator]

There are, of course, degrees of responsibility. Up until now, Robin's mostly been listening. She could, of course, try to take a more active role. After all, her Dad's pretty uptight at the moment, right? Maybe he just needed a few patented Stanton kicks in the rear to get back up to normal. In for a penny, yes?

[Robin Stanton]

"Just for the record, you're the one who's supposed to be setting an example for me, not the other way around."

That said she starts sorting the various occurrences into categories. Sitting in the broom closet for no reason - bad. Sitting in the broom closet to take a nap - fine. Agreeing to a command word - fine. Being forced into a printer - bad. Mailing yourself somewhere - fine. Getting mailed... She makes another category, this one entitled 'Depends on the Context'.

[Narrator]

There were some protests on both sides ("look, I've got to be stored SOMEWHERE!" and "ain't noone going to be controlling ME"), but Robin could ignore those. She was in charge here, right? Well, at least, kinda?

She could feel a ripple as 'reality' sort of changed around her, taking these new rulings and decisions and turning them into gospel. Neat! Who needed a telepath, anyway. It was all just moldable clay, in the end, right? That's a true thing, and not just being cocky? Sure?

[Robin Stanton]

"Just gotta... set up some kinda toll booth with those rules. And a proper sewer system for all this goop. It's fine to feel bad about some of this stuff, so you don't go crazy nuts but not, like, too bad. You can hash out those details yourself, but you can have, like, a valve to put some goop in for the really bad ideas and then a sink for flushing down the slime for stuff that's not so bad." she muses as she draws up designs for a booth to sit on the bridge along with pipes and valves and such to regulate the feel-bad gunk.

[Narrator]

A ping came from the factory side, requesting that some of the goop be sent their way, for processing.

[Robin Stanton]

Robin gladly obliges, in turn requesting the factory to provide a bunch of piping for that purpose.

[Narrator]

Excellent! Literal nightmare fuel.

After a few moments, a couple workers poked their heads out of the tunnel on the Pushover!side of the cliff, hesitantly stepping out onto Robin's outstretched arms.

[Robin Stanton]

"Finally, some help! Don't just stand around there, extent the stupid tunnel!"

[Will Stanton]

That would be nice, wouldn't it?

No, instead, they went back into the tunnel and came out with some piping and tubing, walking along Robin's back as they approached the pool of black stuff she was still clinging on to. They sat down and began setting up the siphon and some pumps -- it looked like, at least, they were going to take this stuff away from her, for industrial purposes.

"Hup hup hup hup hup..."

[Robin Stanton]

"Ooof course not." she sighs. At least she wouldn't have to hold on to it anymore.

[Narrator]

After about fifteen minutes -- and let me tell you, it's not necessarily fun to have someone walk along your back for 15 minutes -- the factory workers had completed their process -- a series of siphons and pumps, sticking down into the goop Robin was holding on to. With a series of thumbs up relayed along the line, they switched the machine on, and with a chugging mechanical sound, it started siphoning out all the negative feelings. Success! Robin could feel the load getting lighter and lighter as all this crap was taken away. It had to be better used that way, rather than festering underground, right?

A feeling of the load getting lighter. A feeling of pride and accomplishment. A feeling of intense suction as the siphon kept going, beginning to draw some of her OWN body up into the tubing.

...Wait, what was that last one?

[Robin Stanton]

"Wait what?" Without having to hold all the goop Robin has relaxed her grip some. Enough that when the suction hits her she loses grip of the cliff-face and gets schlorped into the siphon. "God damnit, daaaaaaaaaaaad!"

[Narrator]

Robin was sent whizzing through the tubes, just after the goop she had sent forward. She started twisting and turning through the tubes at exceptional speed; ludicrous speed, unbelievable speed, as she was whizzed through the caverns underneath the town.

The rock gave way to concrete and metal, as she went from caves to the bowels of the factory proper, where she took a 90 degree turn and was sent rocketing straight UP -- somewhere where her and the goop could do more good, perhaps?

As she whizzed past, she would catch, out of the corner of her eye, a six-pack of bonbons whizzing by in the other direction, back out the tube she had ordered the workers to build. Huh. Strange.

She continued to twist and turn, and thankfully, at the very last moment, she was shunted off in a slightly different direction than the goop. That meant, while the goop fell into a storage tank, she instead was sent to a nozzle, where she was poured out onto the floor of...

...wait, where the hell WAS this the floor of? Wills were wandering around, carefully glueing pieces of wall and furniture together. They all seemed to be made out of candy, but they were...set directing? Dad WAS an actor, after all, so maybe they were building kind of play?

A version of her mother sat in a chair at one end of the room, legs crossed, a beret on her head, as she flipped through the script.

"Finally," she haurmphed, seeing both Robin and the goop arrive.

[Robin Stanton]

Robin floomphs to the ground in a big splotch before bouncing back up and into shape with with of a wobble.

"Who to the whatzits?"

[Sara Stanton]

"Oh, pull yourself together. You must be the new actress, right? Thank goodness you arrived with the goop; we've been filming nothing but sunshine and roses for months now."

[Narrator]

A subtle *clank* could be heard from the back of the room, as a trap door opened, and Bruce Sharkman, Loyal Employee came out of the service ducts and into the room itself.

[Robin Stanton]

"Uh... what?" Robin eloquently asks. "Filming?"

[Toshiro Narumi]

"Robin! Thank God. Your dad's brain is totally scary," the big fish said with relief.

[Robin Stanton]

"Yeah. Horrifying..." she says sarcastically, looking around the room.

[Sara Stanton]

"Yes, filming.," Sara said, rolling her eyes. "Actresses these days can't read their contracts.

We film things that have not happened here, for production and distribution. Sweet dreams, nightmares, idle fantasies and speculation. We script and shoot them all right here. We are what dreams are made of!"

[Toshiro Narumi]

"He tried to bake me."

[Robin Stanton]

"Is this the wrong time to point out I might have delivered a big heaping of nightmare fuel to the dream department then?"

[Sara Stanton]

"And not a second too late. Our supply had been on backorder for months; it had entirely dried up."

[Toshiro Narumi]

"Why... uhh... would you, like, want nightmares."

[Sara Stanton]

"Ah, you're one of those people. No, no, it's alright, a lot of people don't understand us. It's always a little bit difficult.

Think of it this way -- what happens when you touch a stove? You jerk back, right? And now you know that it hurts.

When you wake up from a nightmare, you remember it. These concrete memories are easier to process than abstract fears and anxieties. Plus, a dream is something that happened, past tense. Fears are something that are happening.

It's science!" she beamed.

[Robin Stanton]

"Yup, great, psychology or something, got it. Well, you got your delivery. I'd make you sign for it but I guess I lost my clipboard. Anyway, I'm just the courier, I'll be on my way now!" Robin says, turning to move off the stage.