Chapter Text
Jimmy Snakes had disappeared after the end of Weirdmageddon. The evidence that he was still alive was the bike tire tracks that what was left of his old biker gang said was definitely his.
Ford and Stan and the kids refused to think much more about it other than that.
Soon the kids were back in California, Ford and Stan got their boating gear together, and right then, Jimmy Snakes was the least of Ford’s concerns.
Especially considering that right then he was trying to save his brother from the jellyfish merman thing that had swam up to their boat.
Ford had been in the cabin where they did Ford’s research and slept, and he had come out onto the deck to ask Stan a question, only to drop what he had been holding and rush to the edge of the boat.
The creature had Stan wrapped up in its thin tentacles. Stan’s eyes were glossed over, seemingly in some kind of trance, and the eyes of the sea creature were glowing.
“Put him down!”
The creature turned its head towards him, eyes still glowing, and Ford averted his eyes. He pulled out the electromagnetic gun he had on him and held it up.
“I’m warning you! Put him down now!”
“Pero mi bocadillo es muy adorable,” the creature said.
Ford had absolutely no idea what any of that meant, but it did suggest that perhaps the creature had no idea what he was saying. But surely he understood what a gun being pointed at you meant. Right?
“No! No bocadillo! Put man back on ship!” Ford said, speaking slowly.
The creature’s eyes stopped glowing, and the merman gave him a look that clearly told him the creature knew it was being treated like it couldn’t understand.
It slid its tentacle thing underneath Stan’s shirt, making it ride up his chest.
Ford couldn’t tell from there if it was causing Stan pain, but his facial expression indicated nothing other than the fact that he was under some kind of spell. And that he was being tricked into feeling dazed and happy-like.
The tentacle slid further up Stan’s body, clearing the collar of Stan’s shirt and caressing the edge of Stan’s jaw.
Ford set the gun to a setting that would stun the creature but not hurt Stan (too much) and aimed again.
“Last warning! Put him down or else!”
Ford’s eyes got distracted by movement, and he saw one of the creature’s slippery body parts slip past Stan’s belt, moving against both skin and fabric.
“Jimmy,” Stan sighed, and Ford pulled the trigger.
The sea creature screeched in pain, and Stan yelled along with it a few seconds later.
The creature dropped Stan, and Stan landed onto the ship with a thud. His body continued to twitch as the sea creature went back over the edge of the boat and back into the water.
Ford ran to the edge of the boat and looked over, and he couldn’t see it anymore. But that didn’t mean it wasn’t there.
He knelt by Stan, putting his hand on his shoulder.
“Are you all right!?”
Stan shook his head, his body still twitching.
“I - I dunno, I - I feel really funny,” Stan said.
“Can you walk?”
Stan managed to get to his feet just fine, but Ford very soon realized he needed to help him to the cabin.
After getting Stan to take his shirt off and pull his pants and underwear down just enough so that Ford could see the damage, he concluded that Stan was being slowly administered a poison that would make him easier to eat by the sea creature (he’d need to think of a good name for it - jellyman? no that was stupid) and the hypnosis that was being administered was used to keep him still enough so that he could supply the poison without killing him too soon.
Ford held back on mentioning that the sea creature seemed to be getting off on the fact that it was manipulating Stan’s ability to consent. Ford wasn’t sure he was ready to have another conversation with Stan like that. It was hard enough hearing his brother already had a history with sexual abuse.
“Do you remember what was happening while he was hypnotizing you?” Ford asked. “Or what he was making you see?”
He had the journal out now that he had administered an antidote for jellyfish poisoning (which Ford could only hope was close enough to the creature’s poison to work), and he had a pen prepared to take notes.
Stan was red in the face as he pulled his pants back up.
“I … I could see and hear things that weren’t actually there, but I didn’t know they weren’t there at the time…. I got duped well enough that I couldn’t reason my way out of why it couldn’t be happening or why it shouldn’t happen…. If that means anything to ya….”
Ford wrote down what that communicated to him, but his eyes moved to watch Stan for a moment.
He was staring off to the side at the wall, frowning deeply.
“Stanley?”
“I think the antidote’s working,” Stan said.
“We should give it more time. No sleep for us tonight, I don’t think. I’ll put on some coffee.”
Ford couldn’t stop himself from thinking about how Stan had said Jimmy’s name.
He knew what the creature had made Stan see and think, knew what it had made Stan think was happening. His hands tightened on the coffee grounds container.
He was going to hunt that monster down and kill it himself. He didn’t care what it really was or how dangerous it was.
Ford came back after he put the coffee on.
“It’ll be ready in a few minutes,” Ford said.
Stan nodded in acknowledgement.
“The creature was speaking a different human language. It also used a word I think is the word adorable in English, but pronounced it a-dor-ah-bley instead.”
“What, like in Spanish?”
“Uh, yes? Is that how it’s said in Spanish?”
“What’d he say?”
Ford repeated what the creature had said the best he could. Stan made a face.
“‘But my snack is very cute.’ That’s what he was saying.”
Stan was pouting greatly.
“Wait, how do you know Spanish?”
“You pick up a few things while in Colombian prison.”
“Oh.”
That was one thing Stan and he hadn’t talked about at all. He knew nothing about Stan’s time in prison.
The coffee machine finished making the coffee, and Ford went to pour them mugs full of it.