Lost Boys

Snow excuses

Ford landed in the middle of a pile of snow.

It took him a few seconds to register what had happened, before he sat up and spluttered, already feeling the cold slush soaking through his clothes.

Behind him he registered Stanley pulling himself up, brushing snow out of his hair and stowing his portal gun back in its holster. He staggered to his feet and took a look around.

All around them was nothing but snow and mountains. In fact, currently they were standing at the foot of a particularly craggy mountain, unfortunately on the side that was being most buffeted by the wind at the moment.

Ford drew the quick conclusion that if they didn't leave at once, they were going to freeze to death.

"We need to move to a new dimension!" he yelled over the howling wind.

"We can't!" Stan yelled back. "Vera needs to cool down for an hour after being used!"

Ford sighed. Of course it did. Wait. "...You named the gun Vera?"

"Yeah, so what?" Stan was quickly zipping up his fleece jacket, and squinting up at the mountainside; then he pointed.

"There's a cave up there! Maybe we can find shelter!"

Ford was about to remind him of the possibility of predators or other unknown beings already inhabiting it, but then his brother extracted two different guns from his belt, tossing one to Ford, and began crunching through the snow towards the possible shelter.

"You know how to use that, right?"

Ford trudged after him in irritation. "Of course I do!" Idly he noticed that "Carla" was written on the handle of the gun he was now holding, and a memory of a certain vivacious young woman with a fondness for purple hotpants flitted across his thoughts.

"Just making sure you'd been traveling long enough!"

Something about that last phrase struck Ford as a bit odd, but he didn't have time to analyze it further.

********

The cave wasn't much warmer than outside, but at least they were out of the wind. And a brief search showed it to be unoccupied and not very big; it would suit their purposes for the time being.

After taking a moment to shake off the snow covering his back and shoulders, Stan dumped his equipment on the ground, and began digging through his pack.

"Wha-wha-what are you doing?" Ford asked through chattering teeth.

"Got some stuff that can-here." He pulled out a jar filled with sparkly blue rocks; he spilled a few out onto the ground, and pulled out his lighter. As soon as he touched it to the rocks, a series of blue flames rose up.

Ford wasted no time in shuffling forward and eagerly drinking in the warmth that began to flow through his bones. "Where'd you get these?"

"I found a dimension with a lotta dwarfs in it. They specialized in working with all kinds of weird minerals. Reminded me of your nerd game."

Ford rolled his eyes. "And you probably stole them, no doubt."

Stan gave him a look. "You know, Ford, there's a saying about glass houses and stones that you oughta look up." He reached into a pocket of his vest, and extracted a sheet of paper which he unfolded and brandished.

It was one of Ford's wanted posters, he realized after a moment. Except for the small difference that somebody had scrawled a beard and mustache onto his face, and made his eyes big and googly.

Stanley looked briefly confused by his unimpressed expression, until he looked at the poster; instantly he reddened a little, and refolded the poster.

"It was like that when I found it."

Somehow Ford wasn't convinced.

"My point is," Stan said as he pulled a small book out of his vest pocket and placed the poster back inside, "you've got no right to be pointing fingers, Poindexter."

By then, though, Ford was no longer listening to him, because he was seeing what exactly that book was, and realizing what the other two books in his other vest pockets must be, and feeling like he was about to explode from an entirely new level of horrified rage.

"You brought my JOURNALS with you?!"

********

Even though he wouldn't appreciate it being described that way, it came out as a very undignified screech. Stan actually jerked back in surprise at the force of it, eyes wide. But then his jaw set, and he straightened up, shoving the journal back into his pocket.

"What did you want me to do with them? You freaked out when I tried to burn one, and like h_ll I was just gonna leave them out so the triangle freak could use some other sucker to find them! The safest place for them was with me!"

"No, the safest place for them was as far away as possible, like I asked you to do in the first place!"

"Oh yeah, because that would definitely have solved all your problems! It's not like there's a chance someone would eventually find them anyway, and the whole stupid mess woulda started up all over again! Clearly you'd spent way too long without sleeping, because for you that was an unusually STUPID solution!"

Ford snarled. "Don't you dare, Stanley! Don't you dare tell me that you know better than me how to deal with my own problems! You have no right-"

Stan had stopped listening to him. His gaze had darted to a spot over his shoulder, and he said in a warning tone, "Um, Ford-"

"Don't interrupt me! I haven't finished with-"

"Ford, shut up!"

Then Stanley grabbed him by the shoulders and forcibly spun him around, allowing him to realize, Oh.

They were no longer alone.

Three figures were standing at the mouth of the cave, watching them.

********

I'm really, really excited for the next chapter.

Unfortunately, I'll be out of town from the 10th to the 21st, and I dunno if I'll be able to bring my laptop yet.  I will try to post the next chapter as soon as I can, so please be patient, okay?  If anyone's actually reading this, that is.