He appeared to the twins in a fierce frenzy of hot, orange flame.
Bill Cipher was the most powerful being those two had ever laid eyes on. So why, he mulled, why were they not scared? Most people over the course of Cipher's centuries and centuries of human interaction would have large eyes and shaking terribly of a sort right about now.
But the twins' brown eyes looked at him dully, their mouths neither smiling nor frowning. They observed him respectfully and quietly.
And it was then Bill knew that Dipper and Mabel Gleeful were different - well, maybe not so much different, as there will always be the occasionals who slip outside the norm. But Bill Cipher found himself quite shocked for a demon who had seen the fall of Rome itself.
"AH, DIPPER AND MABEL GLEEFUL," he started. Then he paused.
Both twins lifted an eyebrow. "Well...?" they asked in union.
Metaphorically, Bill Cipher began to sweat. He actually had not planned the encounter out this far. Usually, when he began with peoples' personal names they would fly into a frenzy shouting questions with useless answers like, "How do you know my name?" or "Who are you?" or, Bill Cipher's personal favorite, they would skip the haphazard introductions all together and fall on their knees, praying desperately to some deity who could not help them.
"WELL," he continued, still off-put by the Gleefuls' attitude. "I'M HERE TO MAKE YOUR LIVES BETTER. THAT'S RIGHT, I KNOW ALL ABOUT HOW YOUR PARENTS ABANDONED YOU WITH YOUR NEGLECTFUL GREAT-UNCLE. THEY THOUGHT YOU WERE A BURDEN! HE THINKS YOU'RE A BURDEN!"
And it could have been the demons' imagination, but if his one eye was not going bad, he would have sworn that the children's eyes widened as they glanced over to each other and shifted uncomfortably on the wooden floor.
Bill Cipher calmed himself down. It was all going okay now, maybe the kids had been a bit freakish in the beginning, but they would soon squeal in terror before the demon.
"So," the girl began. "You're like our fairy godmother?"
"WHAT? NO. I LEAVE THE PRETTY PINK BALLGOWNS TO MY SISTER.IDO THE REALMAGIC." And with that, he popped a rabbit into existence. A dead rabbit. It fell on the floor with a pathetic shloomp. "HAHA. ROADKILL!"
The twins inspected the cadaver. If Bill Cipher had a mouth, he would have smiled with satisfaction. In any second now, their screams of terror would fill the attic bedroom with sweet, sweet cacophony. He closed his eye and waited.
…..Any moment now.
He opened his eye angrily. Their lungs should be sore by now! Did they not see - OH. The two children had gathered around the corpse and seemed to be morbidly interested in it, poking its bloodied stomach with their bare fingers and - eugh - tasting the blood.
The girl, Mabel Gleeful, poked two of her fingers into the decaying eyes and scooped them out. Bill could see the gore embedded under fingernails.
"I ADMIRE YOUR ENTHUSIASM, KIDS. BUT DON'T YOU WANNA HEAR MY PROPOSAL?"
"Shhh!" the girl scolded. She whipped her head of brown hair to scowl at the demon. "Can't you see we're busy?" And with that, she flicked the eyeballs skewered on her fingers in Bill's general direction.
Bill Cipher wiped the gore off his frontal facet. "L-LISTEN! IF YOU DON'T PAY ATTENTION I-I'M GOING TO LEAVERIGHT NOW!"
Dipper lolled his head over to face the demon. "Alright, fine." He plunged his hand into the rabbit's exposed stomach.
Bill Cipher cleared his nonexistent throat. Alright. Okay. He could still do this. He was a demon, after all, and these were only silly little human children. "HOW ABOUT I GET RID OF YOUR STUPID UNCLE AND LOATHSOME PARENTS FOR THE SMALL PRICE OF NOTHING! I'LL EVEN REPLACE YOUR CARETAKERS WITH SOMEONE RESPONSIBLE JUST BECAUSE I'M SUCH A NICE GUY!"
The twins looked at each other, musing over the proposition. Twin telepathy, Bill Cipher assumed. Anyone could have telepathical powers with anyone else, but only if they were extraordinarily close. Twins seemed to have it more often than others simply because they were usually so close. And it looked like it was even stronger in the Gleeful twins - they had nobody else besides each other. Bill had watched over them for some while and their situation seemed desperate; their parents wanted nothing to do with them, their uncle only kept them for child support, and from what the demon could tell, they had no other friends, either.
They were miserable and he knew it. They would obviously take his deal for a better life and revenge on the family that had neglected them and he would give them a new caretaker - himself. It was simple really; once he had the twins' permission he would become their new guardian - and them his slaves.
"Actually," Dipper started. "We'd like to make a deal with you."
Bill Cipher, the omniscient, omnipresent, and omnipotent demon stared. WHY. In the name of all things unholy, why were these kids being so difficult? Had they never watched a horror movie? Never read a religious text? Didn't they know that demonic encounters had to be handled a certain way? This was just stupid. Maybe it was because they were so young - they looked seven, eight, or nine at the most. Yeah. Little kids were stupid.
"OKAY," he said. "WHAT'S THE OFFER?"
Dipper whispered something to his sister, who nodded. The girl ran off to the old beat-up dresser, searching for something. She rummaged through the contents before giving up and looking under the bed instead. When that did not produce fruit, she finally reached her hand under a patched mattress before pulling out something small, cupped in her petite hand.
"HAHA KIDS, WHAT HAVE YOU GOT THERE?"
Mabel wordlessly presented the object to the demon, smirking. It was a blue stone set in a black bolo tie.
"WOAH!" Bill exclaimed, flipping over. "H-HOW DID YOU MANAGE TO COME ACROSS THAT?"
"We don't have to tell you."
The demon squinted his one eye. The Mystic Amulet? How do two kids who haven't even gone through puberty get ahold of something like that? "…WHAT ARE YOU PLAYING AT, KIDS?"
Dipper shrugged. "Nothing. We just want to make a deal. Isn't that why you came here in the first place? To make a deal?"
Bill Cipher leaned back. "I'M LISTENING."
The boy looked at his twin, who nodded approvingly, before turning back to Bill, saying, "We want a second one. There are two of us and one amulet."
"THAT'S…THAT'S QUITE A LOT OF POWER, KIDS, ARE YOU SURE YOU DON'T WANT A NEW HOUSE OR SOMETHING? REVENGE ON YOUR UNCLE? I COULD EASILY GIVE HIM A THIRD EYE!"
"Um, no," Mabel Gleeful said, annoyed. "We want a second stone."
"AND WHAT DO I GET OUT OF IT?"
The girl shrugged. "What do you want?"
"HMMM. WHAT A QUESTION! ARE YOU WILLING TO BIND YOURSELF TO ME FOR ALL ETERNITY?"
The twins looked at each other once more before whispering in union, "Yes."
Bill Cipher twirled his triangular body with glee. Humans sure do stupid things for power! "GREAT! HERE YOU GO, KID!" He pulled a twin amulet out of the air and flipped it at the twins - Mabel caught it and, realizing it was not a bolo tie like the other, but a headband, cautiously put it behind her ears.
The young girl smiled to herself. The headband was a bit big, yes, but she would grow into it. But right now, she could feel the power radiating off of it and that was all that mattered.
Bill Cipher glowered. "NOW, MY CHILDREN."
"Woah, woah, hold up, Billy," Dipper smirked, approaching the demon with confidence. "We're not your children - it is true that we are bound to you, but you are also bound tous."
Mabel added, "It's like…You're our demon. Our pretty little pet demon."
With a twin on either side of him, Bill began to feel slightly uncomfortable. "O-OKAY, GUYS, I WAS JOKING ABOUT THE I'M-BOUND-TO-YOU-FOR-ETERNITY THING!"
Mabel giggled childishly. Her amulet began to glow.
"H-HEY, STOP THAT!" Bill scolded. He could feel its magic taking ahold of him. "YOU'RE AMULET MAY BE POWERFUL, BUT IT'S NOT AS POWERFUL AS ME!"
The girl started, rolling her eyes, "Individually, no…"
Dipper grinned. The bolo tie clutched in his hand also began to glow an ethereal blue. "But together…"
Bill Cipher could not fathom what was happening. He had never been overpowered by humans before! Much less, two little children! But the magic produced by the twins gripped the demon as if the space around him had begun to collapse on itself. "S-STOP!" he once-powerful being shrieked.
The amulets stopped glowing and Bill Cipher would have been gasping for breath, had he had any lungs."
"We can't kill you, so don't worry about that," Dipper explained.
"But we can put you in a world of misery and pain," Mabel added happily.
"So I'd think it would be a lot easier for us all if you would be so kind to cooperate."
Bill Cipher stared at the floor.
The twins turned around, conversing among themselves in loud enough voices that Bill could hear them.
"It will be nice to have our own personal demon around," Dipper mused.
"Yes. Think of all the pranks we could pull!"
"And - " The boy's foot fell upon the dead rabbit, rancid and rotting. Both twins stopped to stare. And like little children who had found a new toy, they began playing with its empty eye sockets and odoriferous organs once again, ignoring the pathetic demon in the background.
Bill Cipher sniffled and shuddered at his defeat. Defeated! By a couple of eight year olds! He faded quietly back into the mindscape, knowing that whatever peace he may find there would soon be abolished, as he was now bound to the Gleeful twins.
Four years later, the Tent of Telepathy made its debut in Gravity Falls and the Gleeful twins that ran the show did a lot more than just pranks.