Nowhere Man

Disclaimer: In case you haven't figured it out yet, I don't own Gravity Falls. All Gravity Falls-related characters, settings, etc. are the intellectual property of Disney and Alex Hirsch.

Disclaimer #2: This fic is intended not only as a tribute to the legacy of the wonderfully constructed Gravity Falls, but also as a love letter to the Formspring-based RP group behind the sprawling "Spectacular Omniverse" roleplay, which came to an abrupt end last year when the site converted to an online dating app.

What follows is a scene that would likely have appeared in some capacity in the RP, had it survived to see "Take Back the Falls." As such, if any of the numerous, numerous references and in-jokes sprinkled throughout strike you as too oblique or confusing, I urge you not to be discouraged. They are largely for the benefit of the fellow players who made constructing that massive crossover story such an enormously fun experience.

With the utter and most heartfelt dedication to Algernon-84, Gryphinwyrm7, Brainiac, Bookwyrm, Dragonlord, Sharla_Lady_of_Light, Endless Strategy Games, and the various others who helped to put together one of the coolest stories I've ever had the pleasure of being a part of.

This one's for you guys.

[-]

He's a real Nowhere Man

Sitting in his Nowhere Land

Making all his Nowhere Plans

For Nobody…

– The Beatles, Rubber Soul

[-]

Bill Cipher hadn't been around for the very Beginning. But he'd arrived early enough to be called "fashionably late." Heck, he'd pretty much invented the concept.

And what he was seeing now, in every direction, was very much like what things had looked like when he'd first arrived on the scene.

Emptiness. Silence. A pure, white void.

There was Nothing here.

Mortals had no idea what "Nothing" really was. Oh, they'd complain about it plenty – "Man, there ain't nothing good to eat around here!" or "Dude, I didn't do nothing!" which, apart from being grammatically incorrect, would've made Bill's eye roll at the sheer lack of perspective.

If, you know. He still had one.

This wasn't the afterlife, Bill knew. He'd been to the afterlife; several of them, actually. He had regular card games with a few of the less stick-in-the-mud Death Gods, and if you thought mortals were eager suckers for the deal of a lifetime, wait till you see a ghost scrambling for the deal of a deathtime!

But Bill wasn't dead. Demons were only barely killable, and Lords of Chaos even less so. Stick 'em all together in one fabulously suave package, and Bill was "immortal" in a way even most gods would envy.

There really wasn't a word for what'd happened to him instead, however. Moronic, short-sighted, absolute waste of his particular position in space and time Stanley Pines had done the impossible, and conned him into agreeing to dwell in memories that, for all practical purposes, no longer existed.

Oh, they could be replaced, surely…that squeamish little ignoramus Fiddleford proved that much. But even if new memories could be formed of Stanford, or those kids, or that pig the girl was always prattling on about, they wouldn't technically be the same ones.

Those were gone, vanished; burned until there was really and truly Nothing left. And Bill had burned right along with them.

Now you – yes, you, reading these words right now, you do realize he can see you through the picture at the top of the page? – may be wondering why exactly the word "Nothing" keeps getting capitalized.

In a trillion trillion years of existence, that moment in Stanley's Mind Scape had been the one and only time any being had ever truly caused Bill to panic. But one doesn't go through that much time trolling the very farthest reaches of the cosmos without learning to multitask.

His frustration, and fear, and absolute rage at being thwarted by such a stupidly simple ploy were real, there was no doubt of that. But he'd still had the presence of mind to know that when the chips were down, you invoke the H-E-double-hockey-sticks out of whatever and whomever you can.

And there was only one Ancient Power – the very most ancient of all, or at least the most ancient you could sit down and have coffee with – that governed these sorts of affairs.

There were gods and devils; there were angels and demons. There were Lords of Order, Lords of Chaos, and at least on a couple planes Lords of Neutrality, though in a fight they were pretty freaking useless. And then there were guys like this.

The Concepts.

"Hello, Bill," said a man in a crisp white suit, standing amidst the empty void, a lone smattering of (admittedly pale) color amongst an endless sea of white.

He was, to all outward appearances, an unassuming human male. Caucasian, by skin tone, though the language he was speaking didn't sound like English. Not that Bill could really tell for sure. He didn't hear like mortals did – came with the territory of having no ears – but rather, translated psychically once the words hit the mental plane.

Of course, right now, Bill existed on neither the mental nor material planes. Which made his ability to see, hear, and speak somewhat…strange.

That being said, Bill Cipher was all about strange, so he quickly went about exercising the latter.

"Well, well, well. Nothingness! Up high, buddy!" Bill exclaimed cheerily, before realizing what was wrong with that expression now. "Hey, mind doing me a solid on this whole 'no body' thing?"

The man sighed, and snapped his fingers. Then, the realm about them – this space without substance, this moment removed from time – began to change.

Bits of the white mass broke off from their surroundings, twisting and turning until something that simply wasn't became something that was. Or, perhaps, something in-between. Because the features that emerged, from top hat down to bowtie, were most emphatically not what they'd ever been in the Nightmare Realm, nor even when he'd taken physical form on Earth.

They looked the same, felt the same, and yet, weren't. Something less than matter, but more than the nonexistence the Pines family had consigned him too.

Bill pondered this for a while. The far-reaching implications, the deeper mysteries even a cosmic entity such as he had scarcely cracked over an eternity of (what some might call) life.

He thought about these things over and over and over.

Then, he decided to shout, "Ah, screw it! I'm back, baby!" and let loose a good, hearty, self-awarely insane laugh.

It felt good.

Finally, once he'd gotten that all out of his system – which might've taken a few minutes or hours or months or years; there was no concept of time here, and Bill hadn't exactly set much store by it to begin with – he wreathed his newly reformed arms in blue flame and added, "Glad to see you got my back, old friend! Gave it a shot in the dark, but couldn't be too sure."

"Shot in the dark. Cute. I see being erased from existence hasn't dulled your…unique sense of humor," replied Nothingness, who slowly approached the dream demon, still smiling.

The laws of physics meant two things in this place, diddly and squat, so the amount of time it took for him to cross the distance was entirely out of proportion to how far it appeared to extend.

Of course, "distance" was also a thing that didn't really apply here, so hey, what're ya gonna do?

"Been meaning to catch up with all you Anthropomorphic Personifications, anyway," said Bill. "Or at least the ones that aren't total killjoys. Hey, Truth's gotten the stick out his keister yet, or is he still tormenting little boys who break his precious little Taboo? Not that I've got a problem with tormenting little boys, mind, great hobby, wouldn't give it up for a thousand worlds…but it's the principle of the thing. Or lack thereof."

"Truth is…reflective," the man in white explained. "My son only has so much a 'stick' as whomever he's talking to at the time."

"Eh, fair enough. Still would like to see him at some point. Heard what he did to that upstart little homunculus, solid gold. Alchemy pun intended," Bill went on, now tossing a fireball up and down in his hand like a baseball. "But enough about convoluted, more-than-slightly Lovecraftian family trees. Let's keep the focus on you, pal. Why'd you do it?"

"As you know, the Deaths – the Grim Reapers, the Shinigami, every last iteration of Hades or Osiris or Odin – stand vigilant at the Gate, for those who pass in what one might call the 'normal' way," spoke Nothingness, a chill in his voice. "But for those who faded from life for a different reason…for those who reality determined simply could no longer be…"

He placed an arm around Bill, and concluded in a light whisper, "I am their shepherd."

From this close, it was easy to get a look at the one feature of the man that wasn't in any way ordinary. While from the nose down he appeared nothing more or less than an adult human male, the upper half of his face looked…

Well, no one could be quite sure how it looked. From the front, at least – and Bill was back to being woefully 2D right now, so he couldn't exactly see anything else – his features were wreathed in shadow, obscuring his eyes from view.

Even Bill, whose own eye was all-seeing and all that jazz, could only pierce the veil a little bit. Enough to know that it probably wasn't a good idea to.

(Mind, Bill was well-known to do things that weren't a good idea all the time, but still.)

That was pretty par for the course, as far as these Concepts went. Many of them could pass for mortals if not for a single, solitary detail.

Knowledge could be mistaken for just another crusty old librarian, except for the beard made out of parchment. Generosity was basically just a big fat guy in red, and would've seemed perfectly normal if not for the team of flying ruminants. The Auditors…okay, the Auditors were the exception. But when you personified something as useless as Bureaucracy and Tidy Paperwork, nobody really complained if you broke the pattern.

Bill wasn't entirely sure why mortals so often imagined esoteric Concepts to look like them, but he suspected it had something to do with their massive flaming egos.

"Yeah, yeah, I know that part," said Bill, a bit annoyed. Even for other eternal beings, he wasn't big on people touching him. At least not without him getting something out of it. "Skip to the bit where I'm still able to put sentences together. That's what's not supposed to happen. And it's definitely outside the Rules."

"The Rule which cannot be broken, can surely be bent," stated the man, smirking.

"Ooh, Gargoyles reference! Topical!" Bill yelled out, before turning away from the other entity and toward the audience. Which he didn't technically have, as this was a fanfic and not his irregularly scheduled television show. But hey, force of habit. "So remember, kids, the 'Disney's Gargoyles Cinestory Volume 1' comic comes out on April 12! Buy it, preorder it, light it on fire and stick it up your nose! Just make sure to be good little sheep for the Empire of Joy, or else I. WILL. KNOW."

He then turned back to the embodiment of Nothingness, tipped his hat, and added, "Sorry. I do that sometimes. Especially now that I'm no longer bound to the chafing restrictions of the Big Mouse's legal team or S&P squad! Which I'm told is an actual squad, now. Ol' Mick's been such a rules stickler since he picked up the bozos in tights and that galaxy far, far something."

At this, the man could only laugh himself, a raspy and throaty chuckle.

Bill raised an eyebrow – which, since he didn't strictly speaking have one, was quite an accomplishment. "What's so funny?" he asked. "Something I'm missing?"

"Oh, Nothing," answered the personification thereof, though he had a hand over his mouth and looked a few seconds away from doubling over in amusement. "Just…'chafing.' Private joke. Even you wouldn't get it."

"Well…okaaaaaaaaaaaay…" said Bill, deciding it wasn't worth it to pursue the subject. "Anyway, back to brass tax. Which is kind of an ironic expression coming from a guy made out of gold, but hey. I think I see where you're going with all this."

"I expected you would," the man declared, his composure reasserting itself in an instant. "You're not well-known for being slow on the uptake."

"You're the guy who plays psychopomp to those beings who stop…well, being," Bill continued on unabated, as if he hadn't heard that remark. "They gotta go somewhere, but they can't, so they go Nowhere. Say…is that song about you? Nowhere Plans for Nobody and whatnot?"

"It is," murmured Nothingness, his lips pursed. "John was always my favorite."

"Nice, nice. More of a George guy myself but let's not get sidetracked," Bill replied. "Point is, you're supposed to take guys like me on to that-stupid-Baby-knows-where…but since you don't have any bosses, you can afford to slack off a bit, can't ya? You get someone you like and you squirrel them away for your own little toybox. Appreciate the concept, though I can't say I've ever been on this side of the equation."

"Correct in essentials," said the man in white. "Like the Entity of Nibiru, whose entire timeline came undone around him, replaced by one anew. Or Walpurgisnacht, the Stage-Constructing Witch, who never could have been once a single Wish erased all her constituent Witches from history. No matter the reason, you each came to no longer exist…which, ironically, gave you so much more freedom than a simple death might. Because now you are like me. You do not exist, and therefore, you have no restrictions."

"Well, can't say I don't appreciate the endless and eternal bounty of GLORIOUS FREEDOM!" Bill exclaimed, shouting out the last two words with utter exuberance as flames surrounded his entire being. "But I've been wheeling and dealing for waaaaaay too many millennia to expect anything for free. What's in it for you, pal?"

"You're a demon with many friends, Bill," the embodiment of Nothingness explained. "I'd like to count myself among them, but we were never quite as close as, say, my brother, the Crawling Chaos."

"Oh, you must mean Nyarly!" cried out Bill, turning himself upside-down as he did because you simply didn't mention the Faceless One without twisting something around. Just wasn't done. "Man, he always had the best party games! You see what he did to that Okamura chick? Classic!"

"Yes, that's what I'm getting at," he said. "I never quite had your mutual penchant for sadism. Oh, I can appreciate it well enough, and I'm certainly no stranger to a well-played Game. But when you're the Concept of Nothingness given form, it tends to put a damper on strong feelings one way or the other."

"True, true. But while I know some of my fellow Lords of Chaos feel differently, I never held it against ya," Bill responded, nodding sagely. "So what if you wipe the board every once in a while? Or even every billion times in a while? Just makes setting up for the next one more interesting."

"I'm glad you're able to appreciate it. So few do," muttered Nothingness with a small smile. "My point is, however, that many of those friends are also my friends. And more than a few are my enemies. It'd be a waste to lose an entity of your…talents. Not when you're so ideally placed to act as middleman."

"Ah, gotcha. Noooow I see your angle, buddy," said Bill, elbowing the man suggestively. "You want me to put in a few good words to that little Posse I hang with! I tell ya, it hasn't been nearly as entertaining since the ol' birdy kicked the bucket…heh heh, bird, bucket, there's a joke there somewhere…and l'il Miss Ding-Dong-The-Witch-Is-Undead took over, but hey. I have been overdue to check back in with 'em. I think I can work that in."

"That's all I ask, Bill Cipher," the man in white replied, his grin widening. "Let's just say I've got plans that'll make your 'Weirdmageddon' look like a Houkago Tea Time concert. We may represent opposite ends of the spectrum – you, a Lord of Chaos and I, the very embodiment of the only true Order that has ever been or ever will be – but I still think you will find what I've got in the works to be of interest."

"Oh?" asked the demon, looking intrigued. "Do go on, you crazy devil."

"Ah, it's Nothing much," whispered the man, though it was fairly obvious he was just engaging in wordplay. "I've simply been attempting to assassinate the other Concepts. Death included, funnily enough."

"Well, well, well! That would be something to see!" exclaimed Bill. "Points for stones if nothing else. But I'm drawing a little short on how you'd actually go about doing that. Kind of an important detail."

So, the man in white told him. And the dream demon soon began to hoot and holler with laughter.

"Okay, okay. Heck yeah, do I want in on this. You actually pull this off and you'll have played the greatest practical joke in the history of infinity," said Bill, wiping something like a tear from his eye. Except instead of salt, the lubricant was mostly composed of something that made mortals' skin explode. Twice. "I'm curious why, though. You've got a pretty cushy gig, here."

"I make my agenda no secret," Nothingness answered softly. "I have been here since the Beginning, and as far as I'm concerned, everything that came after has been a mistake. Life, time, space…existence. All errors that blot the perfection of the void that once was. And they must be rectified."

He clenched a fist.

"A Concept that manifests itself as a single entity, inherently makes itself vulnerable," he went on. "Once personified, it becomes killable…and if it is killed, that Concept vanishes forever. Do you have any idea how many universes would destabilize if I managed to slay the very notion of Death? Or Knowledge?"

"Which'd pretty much make 'em non-stop party ragers for guys like me," Bill added shrewdly. "Oh no Simba, your dad didn't die after all! Which means your entire reality no longer makes any freaking sense! No rules, anything goes, I'm sleeping with lion pelts toniiiiiiiiight!"

Those last few words were sung, for the record.

"Exactly. And if I then get to play clean-up crew once you've all had your fun, wiping out the ruins of a few trillion universes…what's the harm?" the man asked, his lip curled. "That is the case I'd like you to make to the rest of your little Pantheon. Long-term, we can both get what we want."

Bill placed his hands together and cracked his knuckles – no unimpressive feat, considering he had no bones – and chuckled.

"I'll see what I can do," said the demon. "Most Lords of Chaos are more forward-thinking than you might expect. Not including guys like Klarion. But hey, even Teekl keeps him more-or-less in line. Most of the time. Half the time? Eh, you get the idea."

"Very good. Because the timeframe to act is growing slimmer by the moment," declared the man in white. "Our mutual enemies are mobilizing at a greater rate than ever before. It can only be so long before they determine now is the time to strike."

"Ain't that always the way?" remarked Bill. "You do, and do, and do, for a few billion years and change, and some protagonist-y looking guy…or gal, or dog, or twice-accursed-pair-of-idiotic-twins!…comes in to spoil your big jamboree. I feel for ya, pal."

"The Oracle's pathetic Council has rebounded, stronger than ever, after the destruction of Kandrakar. Now that they're using the Time Room as their headquarters, even I cannot touch them," Nothingness continued to explain. "The Rat, the Lady, the Access, and the Rachel continue to gather more and more so-called 'heroes' by the day. And that's not even counting the independent agents who've been working to spoil my plans for quite a while now. I believe you know one of them quite…intimately."

If Bill had teeth, he would've been grinding them. The way he spoke the name, it sounded like he was, somehow.

"Stanford…" he growled, his voice echoing across at least ten different, increasingly discordant tones.

"His first trip through his little portal put him distressingly close to an ongoing…operation of mine," said the embodiment of Nothingness. "He deduced my goal, and spent three decades in limbo warning others of my plans. He's made a number of potent allies, from that drunken criminal Sanchez to a certain Gallifreyan who just loves to meddle…and will need to be dealt with, sooner rather than later."

"Well, well, well! Consider yourself to have a volunteer for tying up that little lose end!" shouted Bill, snapping his fingers and surrounding himself with blue flame once more. "The best part will be seeing the look on his face when I turn both those kids inside out, and play hopscotch with their bloody entrails! I mean…the best part apart from killing him, of course. That's number-one. Him and his useless, good-for-nothing, makes-we-wanna-do-so-so-SO-many-things-you-can't-depict-on-a-kids-show brother!"

At this, however, the man in the white suit frowned.

"I'm afraid it's not that simple," he told the demon. "There is one single Rule you must follow, the way you are now…and this one absolutely cannot be bent."

"What? You said I was free!" cried Bill, pointing one finger accusingly at the other entity. "Alright then, out with it! What's this 'Rule' you're yammering on about?!"

"You disappeared from existence in the Mind Scape of Stanley Pines, located in the town of Gravity Falls, on Earth-46'\," replied Nothingness. "As such, that universe – and all its attendant dimensions, including the Nightmare Realm of your genesis – is the one and only pocket of reality you can never return to. Elsewhere, you can persist like I do: as something halfway between existing and not existing. But there, you are gone. Erased. Take even one step there, on any plane…and even I won't be able to save you."

Bill Cipher considered this for a moment, and for a short time there was nothing but pure, unabridged silence in the white void. Then he did something the man in white hadn't been expecting at all.

He laughed.

"Man, if you think that's a 'Rule that cannot be bent' then you have way less imagination than I thought!" Bill yelled out, still cackling with glee. "I've spent billions of years working my will through others; way more time than I've gotten my hands dirty myself. This isn't new territory for me. I can't go back to greasy, grimy Gravity Falls? Fine! All I gotta do is find me a new pawn, in LITERALLY. ANY. OTHER. UNIVERSE!"

And as he said these words, his eye began to cycle rapidly, as if it was a wheel in a slot machine. Hundreds, thousands, millions of images flashed, one after the other. Occasionally the "slot" would stop on a particular symbol, and Bill would offer commentary, his voice never going below shouting volume.

The eye eventually halted on the symbol of a great sprawling tree, with six multicolored gemstones hanging from the branches.

"Hmm…Equestria, maybe? Always did want to have some playtime with those so-saccharine-I-could-barf little horsies," he mused aloud. "Plus, I heard through the grapevine that Discord's gone soft. Man that's disappointing if true, he was a great drinking buddy. But maybe all he needs is a good reminder of just what 'friendship could be'!"

Bill punctuated this by palming his flaming fist, hard enough that shockwaves reverberated around them. Still, he seemed to ultimately decide against it, as the images resumed their rapid shuffle a few moments later.

"Oooh…wait, Ooo! That's an option!" he exclaimed after a little while, as a crown with three red jewels took form in his ocular lens. "Always can appreciate a world where the mortals actually did blow themselves back to the Stone Age! And I can catch up with ol' Lichy. Hey, you got any idea how he's doing?"

The man's mouth was a thin line. "The Lich is…a mutual friend," he said, his voice even. "I've had a chance to see him recently. Suffice to say that, while I very much doubt the change will be permanent…he is not currently available as an ally."

"Ah, disappointing," declared Bill, shaking his head (which was to say, his entire body) as the image in his eye shifted to become a frog, inexplicably seated at a grand piano. "Dare I ask about Beasty? And yeah, I overuse adding cute little 'y's at the end of my buddies' names, so sue me."

"His phylactery was snuffed out," Nothingness responded, again sounding none too pleased by the information he was conveying. "He may yet live, in some form or another…but with his lantern no longer lit, he holds no sway over the Unknown."

"It's true what they say," Bill lamented, somehow managing to sigh despite not breathing. Not that there was any air around here in the first place, to be fair. "All the good ones are taken. Or dead. Or reformed. Or stuck in some mystical prison for a thousand years. For some reason that one seems reeeeally popular."

He stopped pausing for the other entity's input as the cycling resumed, faster than ever, talking to himself loudly as he considered the literally infinite number of other possibilities.

A symbol composed of four multi-colored diamonds, the pink one irreparably damaged.

"Hmmm…nah, probably not. Inorganics are more trouble to possess than they're worth, most of the time. Though I guess I've never actually tried invading the Mind Scape of an organic/inorganic hybrid…"

A military jacket, resplendent with the mark of two overlapping wings.

"Well, everyone else and their mommy has crossed over with it by this point, why not me? Plus, breaking down giant walls is kind of a hobby of mine. Putting this one in the 'maybe' column."

A great, thick, twisted tree, placed at the center of a massive expanse of spiritual ground in the shape of yin and yang.

"Eh…they've got comics coming soon, don't they? Focusing on the girlies being all lovey-dovey? Kudos to you, kids, but I do not have the stomach for it. Or…a stomach, period, for that matter. Whatever, you get my point!"

Three golden triangles, joined together and glowing brightly.

"Pfffft. Knowing the Big N, it'll probably just get delayed again. I may have waited four billion years to enact Weirdmaggedon but even my patience has its limits."

A set of four weapons, planted in the ground in formation – a heavy scythe, a fencing rapier, a sheathed blade attached to a great length of rope, and two gauntlets loaded with bullets.

"Hey, gender-bent Achilles! Nice work with the heel! Heh…see what I did there? Man, I crack myself up sometimes. Anyway, moving on. I just wanted to make that joke."

A collection of seven orange orbs, each marked by a certain number of stars.

"Waste of time. They reset the universe like twice a week over there. No fun blowing up the planet if it'll just be back in time for the next arc."

A wand composed of elder wood, a crudely engraved black stone, and a deceptively plain-looking cloak.

"Ooh, there's a lot I could do with this one. I mean, it's a little overplayed, but come on. You don't just go naming your next installment 'The Cursed Child' and not expect guys like me to show up!"

A charred piece of high-tech armor, emblazoned with a single letter and number: "N7."

"I'm Bill Cipher, and this is my favorite universe on the Citadel! No, actually, it's not. But I did always want to say that! That being said…no. People still haven't gotten over that freaking ending, and who needs that noise, am I right?"

A red sigil, somewhat resembling a bird viewed from the front.

"Err…tempting, given just how screwed up everyone is around there, but I'll probably have to pass. Without little Lulu the place just isn't nearly as entertaining. Or overdramatic."

A tall water tower, with a door on the side marked by the letters "W" and "B."

"…No. Even I have my limits."

This continued for quite some time, all the comments spoken so quickly and in such a high-pitched, shrill mutation of Bill's normal voice that they began to bleed into each other.

Most were universes the man in white was intimately familiar with – there were, after all, few if any realities where the Concept of "Nothingness" wasn't needed in some way. People, places, even entire universes…if it could be there one minute, and then in the next simply gone, then it fell firmly into his domain.

It was his responsibility, his duty, solemn and lonely as it was, to do so. Somebody had to be the garbage disposal for creation, and since nobody could possibly want that task, it naturally fell to…well, "Nobody."

Every story cut short, because its creator ran dry of inspiration; every piece of art lost to the ages, by fire or flood or even by simple laziness; every last little bit of apocrypha rendered "non-canon" by authorial decree or corporate fiat – the dirty business of their disposal fell to him and him alone, so as to make room for the other Concepts to spin new Worlds.

(Among other things, this meant he spent a lot of time wiping up after fanfiction. And in fact will probably wind up eating this one, if only for the sake of destroying the evidence.)

That was why he truly appreciated having friends like Bill around. There was no question the two of them were very different – in goals, in methods, and certainly in priorities. But there were so, so few beings out there anywhere near old enough to be his peer. To understand his…unique perspective on reality.

And he was trying to kill most of the rest, which tended to put a damper on hanging out.

In any event, the embodiment of Nothingness was disturbed from his brief reverie by Bill doing one of the few things that, coming from him, were genuinely surprising. He stopped talking.

With his shouts of jubilation, derision, and general meme-indulgence ceased for the moment, the only sound – the only sound – that could be heard in any direction was the soft flap of his cycling eye. But his sudden reversion to silence had come along with something else: the images in the eye were slowing, and for some reason or another, the man knew they would not resume their shuffle again.

Finally, they settled on one, last, very familiar symbol.

"Well…well…well!" said Bill, a mad bit of humor undergirding every word he spoke. "I think we've got a winner, folks! And you and I, buddy…"

His flames flared up high as he extended one, spindly arm, his palm wide open.

"I say that we've got ourselves a deal!" he finished.

The man in white smiled wide in response. There were, of course, few things more obliquely stupid than taking a deal offered by a dream demon. But when you yourself were the Ender of All Things, dreams included…the normal rules didn't particularly apply.

He took the hand, and shook it once, confidently.

"PERFECT!" Bill Cipher cried out ecstatically, and with each syllable he changed – becoming larger, and somehow more solid, with his fires and his eye and finally his body taking on a hue of deep, blood-red.

"SO!"

"LET'S!"

"GET!"

"THIS!"

"PARTY!"

"STARTED!"