"What do you mean you're letting me go!?" Pentagram exclaims, his neck and cheeks are growing bright pink. He's flustered, confused, and absolutely livid.

I love it when he looks like this.

"I don't need you anymore." I say slowly, "you've done your job and I'm no longer in need of your assistance."

Pentagram narrows his eyes and glares at me. He's trying to act intimidating. He's trying to scare me. Ha, like that was gonna work.

"You said I was destined for greatness!" He exclaims desperately, "we made a deal!"
His blue eyes are beginning to spill with tears.

Weak.

Pentagram knows it's no use. I've already turned him down, but I'm not done with him just yet. I just love twisting the knife.

"The deal's off," I say calmly.

This infuriates him.

"Who's going to replace me? Who could possibly replace me?"

I look down at him and laugh. My laughter makes him feel small and insecure. While Pentagram's cast in my shadow, he feels useless. He IS useless. Though maybe he's not completely useless. After all, I have room for more pawns.

"I think you know the answer." I reply, then mockingly tip my hat to him.

"Later, kid!"

Then I disappear, leaving Pentagram drowning in his own tears of desperation.

• • •

It all started in nineteen sixty-something in Glass Shard Beach, New Jersey.

Stanford and Stanley Pines were identical twin brothers (although Stanford was born with a rare birth defect- six fingers on each hand)

"-Wait a minute, are you telling this story in third person?"

Shut your pie-hole, Ford! Anyways, where was I? Oh yeah- The two grew up to be the best of friends and did everything together, from household chores to adventures on the beach.

But when the brothers arrived in their senior years of High School, things changed.

Ford excelled in all of his classes, his grades were always above average. Stanley on the other hand tended to (what some might say) "slack off" a little-

"A little???"

I swear, if you interrupt me one last time-

"Why can't you two just hug it out already? HUG IT OUT! HUG IT OUT!"

"Shh, Mabel! I wanna hear the part about the journals!"

Would everyone just shut it? I'm tryin' to tell my life story here!

AHEM.

Aaaanyways....

One day changed everything, the day Ford was offered a scholarship to WestCoast Tech for his outstanding Science Fair project.

I had never been- I mean, Stanley had never been so proud of his brother, until he realized that he and his brother would be separated for who knows how long. Stanford would be at the best tech school in the country, and Stanley would be working at any place he could get a job.

Stanley never wanted to loose his brother.

It was the night before Ford's big presentation for his award winning project, which would determine wether or not he got the scholarship.

Stanley was eating peanut brittle and pacing the empty gym past all of the science fair projects, lost in his own thoughts.

When his eyes landed on his brother's project, something snapped.

"This is all your fault, you stupid machine!" Stan growled, punching the table in anger. His anger immediately switched to panic when he saw a screw had come loose from the machine, causing sparks and smoke to appear.

"Oh no, what do I do?" Stan gasped, quickly sticking the screw back in. The smoking and sparks instantaneously stopped, it looked fine.

Stan sighed and slowly backed away before breaking into a run out of the gym, leaving an empty bag of peanut brittle on the floor behind him.

                        .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .

"Stanley!" Ford yelled, bursting into the living room the next night, clutching an empty bag of peanut brittle.

That afternoon when he demonstrated his project, to his embarrassment, his machine completely fell apart in front of the professors.
After they turned to leave, uninterested in a failed project, Ford found an empty peanut-brittle wrapper.

"Okay, so I may or may have not been horsing around in the gym after school-" Stan began to explain, but was cut off by his very angry dad who was gripping him tightly by his shirt collar.

"You did what, knucklehead?"

                          .  .  .  .  .  .  . 

Straight afterward, Stan was tossed into the rain with nothing but an old car and a few of his belongings in a backpack.

"And don't bother coming back until you've made up the money you lost through your brothers 's scholarship!" his dad had yelled before slamming the door shut.

Stan gazed up through the rain at his last hope, who was staring back down from his bedroom window, clutching a WestCoast Tech pamphlet in his shaking hands.

"Ford- please..."

Ford bit his lip and took one last glance at Stan before drawing his curtains, shutting his brother out of his life for what was going to be ten long years.