Luz and Coraline froze as the man turned towards them. It felt like he was studying them, sizing them up, even though he didn't seem to have eyes. It seemed like his entire face was in shadow, but no matter which way he moved, the shadow never got darker or lifted. At first Coraline and Luz had just assumed that only half his face was gone, but when he turned around to completely face them, there was just nothing there.

He stood up to face them, and when he did, he towered over the two of them, staring out at them with none existent eyes. The shadow on his face, and the shadow he was casting over them, seemed far too dark for the cloudy day it was.

Luz and Coraline took a step back.

After a few moments, he spoke, or something like that. He didn't have a mouth. "Do you three need anything?"

Coraline and Luz glanced at each other, each wishing for the other to speak. After a second, Luz stepped forward, but she didn't get the chance to do anything before the man seemingly lost his patience.

"I'm busy," he grunted. "Do you want fish? Or deer? What?"

"We don't need anything of that, actually," Luz corrected him quickly, and Coraline winced as the man stiffened. Clearly, that was the wrong thing to say. "We just want to know how you're fishing with the forcefield!"

Unfortunately, before Luz even finished, the man had turned around, sitting down at the edge of the dock and reaching for his fishing pole. "Information costs money, and it's clearly money you don't want to spend. You're wasting your time."

"Huh?" Luz asked. "How much?"

The man stared start ahead with his fishing pole. "You will need to make it worth my while, I don't want competition, so however much chaching you have, I want twice as much as that."

Luz groaned. "By thy, though! We don't want to fish, we just want to go down there!"

"And scare away the fish? No, I think you're much better up here where you're bothering me instead of them."

"Oh, come on!" Luz complained. "We don't have any chaching! Where are we supposed to find any?!"

The man still didn't turn. "I don't care. Leave and give up, so I can get back to my job."

"Aw," Luz sighed, and Coraline frowned at her.

"What the heck is chaching supposed to be?" she asked Luz, who shrugged.

"Uh... Six explained it to me once," Luz told her. "...But I don't remember a lot of it. It's pretty complicated. It's this world's money system, but that's like, the catch all for it. There's chaching X, where if you have like... one chaching X and a number two chaching X, then they multiply together to create two chaching X. Then there's chaching /, chaching -, chaching +-."

"What the heck?!" Coraline cried. Luz shrugged.

"Yeah... Six didn't sound like she understood it either, to be honest," Luz said, dropping her voice to a whisper and covering her mouth with her hand. Still, Six, who was still wrapped around Luz's neck, obviously heard it anyway, and she glared at the two of them.

"I'm right here," she muttered but both girls ignored her.

"Have you ever used... 'chaching', ever?" Coraline asked, and Luz waved her hand in a 'sort-of' motion.

"Ish? You can't get change here, you have to pay the exact amount, so me and Six just changed the money so we had what they needed with magic." Luz explained. Coraline blinked.

"Isn't that illegal?" Coraline asked, and Luz shrugged.

"Ehhh..." Luz trailed off before changing the subject. "Anyway, as long as we get any chaching would should be good. I can just put the correct number on it."

Luz dropped her voice when she said the last part, even though she didn't bother doing that for the actual admittance of the crime, which Coraline was certain the man had overheard.

"That's... nice, but we don't need to do that," Coraline told her, and Luz's eyes widened.

"We don't?" she repeated, looking confused for a second before realization suddenly sunk in, and she facepalmed. "Ah. Right. I forgot about that."

Coraline did, too, until Luz explained the chaching X, but she didn't mention it, instead turning towards the man. To her surprise, he wasn't acting calm anymore. He had turned around, and was staring at them intently. Coraline blinked awkwardly, but she didn't turn away.

"Uh... we have your money!" Coraline called to him, and he seemed to glare back at her.

"Do you now?" he sneered. "You said you didn't have any money, and you didn't go to get any either... how are you trying to trick me?"

"No, we seriously have the money," Coraline deadpanned, or at least she tried to. Some nervousness still leaked into her voice.

"We don't have any money, and you asked for twice as much money," Luz explained. "Two times zero is still zero, unfortunately."

"What!?" the man cried. "You can't-you don't..."

The man seemed to pause, thinking, before he sighed reluctantly. "Dammit, you're right. I fell right into my own trap."

"Trap?" Coraline repeated, taken aback. "You were the one trying to trick us?"

"Hmf," the man huffed. "If that's what you want to call it. I don't have to explain myself to you."

Despite saying that, the man then went out of his way to explain himself. "I was certain if you went to the town, you would discover there was no money there, and give up. Our entire town is run on trade, and you lot don't have much to trade. We used to have money, before they took it all away."

'Why are you telling us all this?' Coraline wondered, but outside, she only shook her head.

"Well, did we pass you test? Or riddle thing? Will you help us now?" she asked, and the man seemed to scowl.

"I... suppose you gave me what I asked," the man grunted, and he stood up and turned around. Coraline and Luz couldn't stop themselves from stepping back from him again, because even if they didn't have a reason to fear him anymore, he was still intimidating. When he moved past them, they quickly scrambled out of his way.

They watched him closely as he moved down the dock to a boat, taking the rope tied to it and unhooking the boat.

"In here," he told them gruffly. He reached into a bucket by his side (there were a million of them around, Coraline suddenly noticed, and when she knelt down to one, it was filled with fish and smelled awful. Coraline stood up quickly) and pulled out a fish, tossing it to Luz. "Here, give this to them."

"Oh, thanks-," Luz started to say, but she cut herself off with a cry when the fish started moving. "Gah! It's still alive!"

"Give them that fish," the man told them. "At the underwater waterfall. Don't worry about finding it, it'll find you."

"The... the waterfall will?" Coraline questioned uncertainly. "The underwater waterfall, you mean?"

"Can we get another fish?" Luz asked, struggling with her own. The man chuckled.

"That one will be good enough for you," the man told her. "It's my best. Get in now, quickly."

The man ushered them in quickly, and kept the boat steady while they climbed in. Six cast a distasteful look at the water and the boat lightly rocked beneath them.

"Thank you," Luz said as she settled in. She was petting Six lightly as she sat, Coraline noticed; the two have probably done this before. She smiled up at the man, though Coraline wasn't sure why. A little bit earlier, he'd been trying to trick them!

"Hm," the man said in replied. "You can repay this favour to me by not scaring the fish. It's all this town has."

"What do you mean 'favour'?" Coraline huffed at the same time Luz said: "Of course!"

The man's gaze shifted between them, and he seemed to be on the edge of saying something, before he just shook his head. He took the back of the boat, then pushed them out to sea. Luz waved as they went.

"Bye!" she cried, still waving, and after a minute, the man waved back.

"Be careful with yourselves," the man told them lowly, and Luz's hand fell, her smile lowering. Somehow, the way the man spoke wiped away any bit of positive energy around them. "Keep that fish alive, you'll need it. And watch out, they're hungry."

The man's warning sent shivers down Coraline's spine, and she shuddered. When she glanced at Luz, she realized that Luz seemed to have felt the same chills.

"Wha..." Coraline turned around quickly, towards the man who had already turned away from them. He was gathering his fishing equipment up, getting ready to leave. Coraline glared at his back. "Wait! Hey! What do you mean 'them'?!"

The man didn't even pause. As he turned his back to them and stated down the pier, Coraline had the horrible sense that he was an executioner who had just sentenced them to death. She shivered, and the fear creeping up her back made her lean forward off the boat more, and made her shout louder, even more desperately.

"HEY!" she all but screamed. "WHAT DOES THAT MEAN?!"

"Enough, you idiot! You're shaking the boat!" Six suddenly yelled at her, startling Coraline into climbing back into the boat, wide-eyed. Six seethed at her, and Coraline blinked, taken aback.

She hadn't... expected that. She'd never heard Six speak in anything but an aloof voice, even when talking about the death of someone she'd supposedly known. The genuine anger in Six's voice had scarred Coraline, and even Luz was staring at her, wide-eyed.

No one moved for a good long moment, at least until Six settled back, and whatever expression she'd had before settled into something much more familiar. Once again, Six was looking down her nose at them, and Coraline felt like she could breath again.

Luz gulped audibly, and Coraline glanced at her. Apparently, she had been more freaked out than Coraline had realized.

"Uh... Six?" Luz asked, tentatively, and Six only glanced at her.

"What is it?"

"Are you... okay?"

Coraline's face grew hot. Why was Luz asking SIX that? Shouldn't she have some concern for Coraline, too?

"Now that some idiot has stopped shaking the boat, and has therefore stopped dooming us from a death by whatever horrible creature exists in this lake, yes, I am better," Six sneered, and Coraline glared at her. However, before she could defend herself, Luz did that for her.

"Six, come on," Luz scolded her friend, and Coraline's next insult died on her tongue. She stared at Luz; she hadn't expected her to do that. "Stop being mean to Coraline. Actually, stop being mean to all my friends."

Six glanced at her, but, to Coraline's annoyance, didn't even seem to really been listening. Luz frowned.

"Six... why are you being like that?" she asked. "You weren't this mean when it was just you and I together."

"There's only so many humans I can handle at once," Six sniffled, barely looking at them, and Luz shook her head, sighing.

"You think you're better than us?" Coraline asked her, and Six hummed.

"I do. I am."

Coraline glared up at her harder.

"It doesn't matter if you are or are not, that's no reason to be mean to them!" Luz argued. "Besides, I'm human, too! And Kipo's only half human, and you're still nice to her!"

Six rolled her eyes, and she almost looked like she was regretting this entire conversation. "You're doing your best to become a magic user. I find that admirable."

"Magic users aren't human?" Coraline asked, and to her surprise, it was Luz that corrected her.

"No, they're not," she told Coraline, and, as if that was a halfway decent explanation, she turned her attention back to Six. "Six, I want you to be nicer to everyone else. Even if you look down on someone, you shouldn't be mean to them! Actually, you shouldn't look down on other's no matter what... but also, don't be mean to people! Didn't your parents teach you anything?!"

For some reason, that almost seemed to startle Six, before she fixed her face to a neutral expression, turned away from them. Coraline opened her mouth, ready to demand answers, but Luz just sighed, shaking her head as if she knew what Coraline was about to do. Coraline scowled, but the look on Luz's face stopped her. She looked strangely guilty... which Coraline didn't understand at all.

Luz and Coraline waited, but Six didn't turn back to them, and after a while, Luz spoke.

"Er... Six..." Luz started. "I'm... I'm sorry about what I said, I didn't mean it-."

"That doesn't matter," Six said, turning back to them sharply. "In any case, did that strange man give you any oars to steer the boat with?"

Coraline and Luz paused, before frantically searching around the boat. Other than themselves and the fish, it was empty.

"No, there's none," Luz noted, frowning. "Then how-?"

"It probably doesn't matter," Six replied, even though she'd brought it up to begin with. "We seem to be going somewhere, anyway."

Coraline blinked, and then once again leaned over the boat, carefully this time. Six was right... some sort of current was pulling them along. It had only been a few minutes, but the dock was already a mere speck on the horizon.

"Oh, you're right," Luz noted, also peering over the side, just as carefully as Coraline. "It looks like something's pulling us, and quickly."

Coraline hummed in agreement, and watched as Luz sat back, sighing. Coraline watched her, until suddenly, she realized that Luz was... petting the fish she was holding.

"What are you doing?" Coraline asked her flatly, and Luz looked up in surprise.

"Huh? Oh, I'm calming Harry down," she answered casually, continuing to pet the-what a minute.

"Harry," Coraline repeated, hardly able to believe her ears. "You named it?"

"It's a reflex," Luz shrugged, and Coraline's frown deepened. That did sound like something Luz would do, but then...

"Okay, fine, you're still petting it, though," Coraline pointed out, and Luz nodded, glancing down at Har-the fish. She smiled down at it.

"Yeah, it seems to be calming it down."

"That's because it's dying," Six explained, and Luz looked over to her in alarm, gasping. Six surveyed the horizon. "We'd better get wherever we're going quickly, or else this fish is going to... actually..."

Six cut herself off, looking down at Luz thoughtfully. "Hm... Miss Luz, how much do you want to learn about controlling water?"