"This is just super anticlimactic." Allison's wariness seemed to dissipate under the pressure of irritated disappointment as she looked around the aggressively ordinary Boson pub. And she appeared to be heading in the direction of holding Stiles personally responsible for the whole situation, which didn't seem particularly fair.

"Well… that troll by the door was kind of cool, right?" He tried weakly. "I mean he wasn't even wearing glamour or anything!"

Allie sniffed disdainfully. "Please. That was barely even a troll. Some sort of midget, maybe." She squinted at Stiles, suddenly. "Did you bring me to some sort of Massachusetts Tijuana, you pervert?"

"…what?"

"I am just saying if they bring out any fairy donkeys to join their midget troll show, I'm out of here. And I am totally telling Dad on you."

Stiles was still kind of reeling from the levels upon levels of that unprovoked attack when Allison demonstratively turned her back on him to unleash the full force of her smile on the bartender. "Hi."

The willowy brunette behind the bar did not appear to be overly impressed. "What'll you have?"

The elbow in his side intimated that it was his turn and Stiles sighed heavily, reaching for his wallet and assessing its contents with gloomy foreboding. "We are mostly looking for some information, ma'am."

He determinedly ignored Allie's eye roll. The "ma'am" thing was basically an automatic reflex now after years of dealing with the Boss and the Captain. Plus, it worked shockingly often.

The pale arm snaked out with shocking speed, and the short-haired bartender was suddenly perusing the depressing state of Stiles's finances all by herself. "With this budget you can maybe afford directions to the nearest bus stop, kid. Fuck, this is just sad."

Gathering up the shattered remnants of his dignity Stiles beckoned for his wallet. "I'm an intern, ma'am. Sad is basically where I live. Can I please have that back now?"

The bartender ignored him, as she found his ID and frowned, looking at the name. "Wow."

He could practically feel Allie bristling on his behalf and furtively assessed the surroundings, in case the barroom fisticuffs became imminent. Thankfully the pub appeared to be mostly empty except for a few quiet drunks and a gangly, bespectacled Jewish kid occupied with a book in the corner booth. Allie's hand found Stiles's again and she smiled sweetly, "Y'know, with the name like Molly Shenanigans, I really wouldn't."

Molly stared back and then shrugged, flinging his wallet back into Stiles's hurriedly awkward catch. "Fair. So what do you two want?"

Honesty. Honesty is always best

"I'mreallysorryIknowyouareretiredbutwetinktheworldisabottoendandweneedyourhelp. Please?"

Gauging by the disturbingly total silence that descended on the room that was not the optimal ice-breaker. Allie's grip on his fingers tightened and Stiles desperately regretted passing up on the alcohol.

Molly smiled at him thinly, the soft light from the lamps making her teeth appear unnaturally sharp. At least Stiles hoped it was the light.

Fuck, honesty was just the worst.

"Well. About fucking time. I guess we better sit down."

"What the fuck did you do?"

Rigby backed up, his hand cupped protectively over his crotch. Whether that was a Freudian manifestation of his usual mental trajectory, or a very valid extrapolation of Stanley's typical approach to fighting when in one his moods was hard to tell. "What? Why is it always me? I didn't do anything!"

"It IS always you!" Shannon glared at him from behind Dreyfus's massive frame. "Because you are God's fucking mistake! What did you do to the van?"

"Harsh." Cameron muttered softly from where he was peering under the hood with a faintly puzzled air.

Rigby seized the moment. "See! Cameron believes me! I didn't do shit! Stan was the one fucking around with his voodoo!"

Dreyfus's face purpled. "What did you just fucking say to me, you watery shitstain?"

Rigby's face registered instant understanding of his tactical blunder. Or possibly panicked realization that his back was literally against the wall and he was about to be (also literally) crushed by an enraged Samoan Jew. Even Shannon suddenly looked vaguely concerned.

Stanley's reticence about his background aside, didn't take much to piece together that he was more than a bit torn over the fact that his mother's gods stubbornly refused to leave him alone. For reasons he never went into, he mostly turned his back on his Polynesian heritage and chose to live as a Jew – very much including the practice of his magic.

But gods are gods and sometimes they didn't give you a choice.

He was confident that he could track Stiles with what, to Rigby anyway, looked suspiciously like a dreidel. But Fallon kept his mouth shut. Mostly because his own assurances that Stiles's attempts to cover his trail would instantly fail under the awesome assault of Rigby's cyber prowess proved… prematurely confident.

Rigby had actually been quite looking forward to getting some quality gloating in when Stan's abracadabra also fizzled.

But it didn't. It just also didn't go entirely according to plan. As the dreidel span in ever narrowing circles over the map (a fucking paper map. Like they were in a fucking Stone Age. Jesus) spread out on the van's floor some weird fiery… thing-face-head just up and manifested in front of them, rolled it eyes at the dreidel, and crossly informed Stan to stop screwing around and head to Boston.

Granted, Rigby might slightly lost his composure at that point and threw his tablet at the devil. Or whatnot. And it might have passed through and hit the dashboard. Whatever. And the van might have picked that exact moment to shudder to a grinding halt. So what?

If anything Rigby was the victim here. That tablet was probably totally trashed now! And it was HIS fucking van, too! Sorta.

"Guys." Cameron scratched his jaw pensively. "I actually don't think it's his fault."

"THEN WHAT THE FUCK IS WRONG WITH IT?"

"Well, that's the thing." Cam said, sounding faintly disgusted. "Nothing. It's in perfect order. It should be running fine."

One of the pub's clientele caught Molly's eye and nodded. She, in turn, winked at Stiles. "Jack's bought you some time, kid. Best no waste too much of it. You do know you are being tracked, yeah?"

Stiles nodded wearily. He'd actually been doing a pretty decent job of steering his mind away from the number of people who were probably looking the by now. It was just too fucking depressing – even without taking the bad guys into account. Speaking of which…

"I guess we should have figured you'd be up to speed."

Molly didn't outright say 'No shit, Sherlock' but her silence, heavily laden with utter disdain, was difficult to misconstrue.

Allie shifted minutely next to Stiles. The feel of her thigh next to his was somewhat distracting but more reassuring as he tried to hide how uncomfortable Molly's steady regard was making him. On the balance Stiles was rather glad that Ms. Shenanigans insisted on cramming them all into the booth that had already held the kid with the kippah and glasses. He'd put the book away and was currently sitting silently next to Molly, watching Allie with intent cat-green eyes. Allie was giving back as good as she got. Some weird tension was strumming there under the silence, but Stiles had no time to figure it out. Allie would handle her end, anyhow.

"The question is," Molly's own eyes never wavered from Stile's face, ignoring the byplay next to her with queen-like nonchalance. "How much do YOU know?"

Talk about a loaded question. Stiles, incongruously, felt the weight of fear, apprehension, doubt, and a myriad other ugly little spidery scratchings at the back of his mind that have been haunting since they reached Boston and made his every terror real – fade, just melt away at the utter ridiculousness of that totally normal question.

How much did he know?

Fuck.

His lips quirked, and he didn't even bother fighting back a crooked grin.

"I was a dragon once in college," Stiles told the retired Queen of Faerie. "My sophomore year was odd as fuck, y'know?"

Allie sighed heavily, and patted his hand briefly, still never taking her eyes from the guy across her. "You gotta stop saying that, hon. It sounds like you were running a KKK chapter or something."

Stan was sitting very still, staring fixedly and morosely at the cantrip-glyph he has retraced at least a dozen times on the hood of the van. The glyph (and the van) stared back, as did the continuous and deafening lack of results.

'Y'all realize he stopped blinking like half an hour ago?" Sometime during the same period Shannon managed to work through her original rage-spiral, into mortified embarrassment as she realized that she had thrown a totally misdirected hissy-fit at Fallon, and then an a whole new and previously undiscovered level of humiliation when Stan actually apologized to that pervert forcing her to do the same.

After that came boredom, since the three of them became pretty much entirely useless once it turned out that the van was Hogwartsed by somebody. Now she was just worried. About Stiles. About Stanley. About the Boss, back home…

Cam, who – apart from the periodically predatory prowls around their impromptu campsite to "secure the perimeter" - was handling the whole thing with his usual frankly infuriatingly inexhaustible patience, shrugged. "Stan's got his process. He'll get it done."

Fallon snorted skeptically, "Yeah, right. Because he's just a picture of…"

Shannon could actually feel the vein on her temple twitch. There was just no way was that a good thing. But between Fallon being Fallon and the now permanently etched memory of his smirk as she fucking APOLOGIZED TO HIM-. Therapy bills were looming significantly in her future. She could just tell.

She suddenly realized that Rigby never finished whatever dumbass thing he was about to say and was just looking at her with a somewhat concerned expression. She frowned back at him, absently massaging her temple. "What?"

Fallon glanced sideways and she could have sworn Cam's head moved minutely in a silent warning. Like she was the problem here! What the fuck?! These misogynistic pricks were about to say something about her temper and then she would have no choice to make a double homicide look like an accident. She massaged her temple a little more aggressively and pinned Rigby with the stare she learned from Nan, waiting for an excuse.

Fallon smiled sickly and stood up, somehow managing to put couple of yards between himself and Shannon in the process. "Uhh… I have an idea, actually. Lemme go run it by Stan real quick."

She noted grimly that he didn't turn his back on her until he was entirely out of lunging distance and transferred her stare to Cam. He gazed back with Buddha-like serenity. Shannon massaged harder.

"THE POWER OF VIN DIESEL COMPELS YOU!"

Even Cameron's impenetrable calm was somewhat impacted by Fallon's shriek. Shannon closed her eyes and with deliberate grace put her hands in her lap, interlocking her fingers and squeezing them together until she could feel the knuckles turning white. Why her? It just wasn't fair. She was a good person. Why…

"Huh." Cam said. "They got it started."

Shannon opened her eyes slowly, looked up into the clear blue Massachusetts sky, and screamed.

"Once upon a time,' Stiles measured out the traditional beginning of the story, the cadence framing the foundation of the maybe the oldest magic that the human tribe ever learned. To tell a story was to define the universe and bend it to your will, no matter how briefly. To tell a story was to create a world. To tell a story was to trespass in the domain of Gods. Molly smiled knowingly; her eyes, wild and wise, intent. Allie settled closer to him, her palm against his back and Stiles let the story's rhythm find him.

"A long time ago. So long ago in fact, that even the Time itself was still but a dream within a dream, there was the First Firmament. Who created it or why. Whether it was created or simply dreamt itself into existence none know anymore. It was. Not a world, not a universe. It was the plane of existence that obeyed no laws but its own whim, stretching forever, marveling at its own intricate beauty.

Eons passed. The Firmament grew for - as all living things do - even it was driven by the simple instinct to live. And to live is to grow. To stop is to start dying. The Firmament expanded, and in doing so it grew older, wiser, and larger. In every sense that we can understand and more that we cannot even begin to guess at.

Did it also grow bored? Lonely? Scared? Could it even experience any emotion petty enough with which we can empathize? In the end, perhaps why does not matter so much. The Firmament outgrew itself. It set apart of itself apart. It changed. And since the Firmament was everything – when it changed, so did all.

One dawn it was no longer one but many. The first race now walked the universe.

For now there was a universe, since the first race – as removed as it was… or is from us, we are still their reflection. And they dreamt stories. And limited their progenitor, shackling it without meaning to. Defining the Firmament into concepts they could understood. And so the Celestials bestrode the Creation, and the Time began. And, in the fullness of time, so did the war."