"Oh, but you should be!"
With a simple click of his fingers, he had bent and warped the minds of his targets, disconnecting them from the reality they could comprehend. Their minds were overwhelmed and eventually overpowered, rendering them incapable of combatting his influence. It hardly cost him any energy to pry their consciousness from their bodies, before teleporting them to some other incomprehensible plain of nonexistence.
To those onlooking this grim fate, their friends were left in a vegetative state, slowly ascending into the air as their bodies limply hung in his invisible grasps. Their flesh glowed an ominous red, though the source of this light could not be perceived from the witnesses' view. By extension, their eyes began to resemble his own eye, possible his narcissistic intent to claim his victory and dominance over them.
"You know..." his booming voice called from his lack of a vocal source, "This castle could really use some decorations!" He clenched what could only be assumed were hiss interpretation of fists. Within an instant, the physical mass of all of their friends had been removed from existence, leaving no trace of their previous presence.
Moments later, behind his enormous, biologically integrated top hat, a series of cloth banners began descending from the entrance, rolling open to expose their contents. Their friends and everything they had ever been since their initial construction had been reduced to artistic depictions of screaming faces. Gideon, Wendy, Fiddleford, all of the allies they had needed in order to end this monster's reign of chaos one and for all.
All except for one.
From where they stood, the four walls of a large, anomalous pyramid began enclosing around them, trapping them within an inescapable jail. The elder brothers Stanford and Stanley found themselves helpless, sitting alongside their nephew and niece, Mabel and Dipper. However, contrasting the current position of her newly made friends and their elder caretakers, the sole free individual found herself the centre of attention from this anomalous being.
She stepped back as his eye shone upon her, a sinister chuckle escaping his lack of lips. "What the?" she began as she examined herself with confusion, "Why am I still here?" From this question, Bill rolled his eye and answered "What difference could you possibly make, Llama?" Immediately outraged from this insulting response, she folded her arms and glared up towards his infinite glory.
"What?! Are you saying I'm not important?!" she snarled with displeasure, "Am I not good enough to be victimised by you?!" Bill immediately burst out laughing at the absurdity of this question, answering "I'm pretty sure nobody in human history has ever said that before". But eventually, the laughter stopped and Bill adopted a much more serious tone in his voice.
"You see, Gideon stopped being funny after a while, due to his… limitations" Bill rolled his eye once again, "I have a feeling you'll be much more fun". The blonde princess sneered as she squinted her eyes at the delighted demon, "I'm not gonna be your dancer". Bill relieved a short snicker as he corrected "No, it's nothing like that. I have something much better in store for you". Pacifica offered a puzzled expression, questioning "What? Are you gonna torture me, or humiliate me or-".
Ringadingading!
A silence fell upon the chamber as the metallic chime's melody grew faint in the far corridors of the lair. Pacifica was left speechless as she became transfixed with a small trinket in Bill's clutch, her heart sinking from the cruel reality. Bill had apparently known of her father's methods of maintaining a manageable family lifestyle, and lord knew how he intended to abuse his power as her father once did.
"Don't talk back to your superiors, kid" Bill sneered with a gleeful glare from his single eye, before erupting into his infectious laughter. "Psychological conditioning" he described aloud as he examined the bell, "Such an ingenious human feat. The power of demons and angels held by a wooden handle". Upon turning back to his new toy, he noticed her feeble attempt to escape his infinite presence on foot, prompting him to merely wave his hand and resound the despicable melody once more.
Pacifica couldn't prevent her mind and body from stopping deed in their tracks, refusing her the will to flee from her impending doom. Dipper and Mabel witnessed and were both mortified, suddenly aware of how low Bill's thirst for amusement could descend. A being that could conjure a number of tortured souls and mind controlled zombies, and he delighted in something as petty, yet unspeakable cruel, as the mental torture of a young child.
Her will crumbling at a disturbing pace and swiftly approaching submission, Pacifica assumed Bill's expectations and turned to face him. "Hehahaha! When I'm done with you, I should do this to all humans, see how they all respond to it". However, his maniacal laughter suddenly ceased and he offered a sinister gaze upon his fleshy puppet. "Let's try something a little different" Bill declared before snapping his fingers in the air, the sharp sound echoing across the lair before eventually fading.
Before she had an opportunity to prepare herself for the onslaught, all of Pacifica's auditory reception had been replaced with the chiming of bells. Bells of various tones, frequencies and volumes, all them figments of her imagination that denied her peace. She collapsed to her knees and screamed in agony, holding either side of her head with her hands in a pitiful attempt to quell the pain in her head.
The Pines family looked on in horror, but were puzzled as to what Bill was exactly doing. Bill noticed their confusion and cheerfully announced "Just in case you're wondering, Pines, this is what she's hearing". He clicked his fingers and within an instant, everything that Pacifica could hear began blaring within the chamber, lacking a specific source or consistency. The Pines family looked around the chamber before turning back to face the suffering girl, the toll of the bells fading within the open air.
By this time, tears had begun streaming from the poor girl's eyes and saliva trailed from either side of her mouth, the girl herself being clearly too preoccupied to maintain her propriety. She fell forward onto her elbows and toppled to her side, the Pines family finally able to see the pure pain and anguish on her face. "You know… Life stranded in the second dimension has taught me to enjoy the simplest pleasures" he explained, before a sudden thought popped into his head as to what he should do next.
Instantly, the bells ceased to ring in her head, Pacifica herself relishing in the freedom she had found from the torment she's experienced. Hearing nothing but bells without an expectation or purpose from them had created a paradox in her mind, deconstructing her reality and literally driving her insane. An eventual return to a world she could understand was welcome, though a realisation of her situation had stolen her satisfaction from her.
Bill simply stared at her, subconsciously grinning as he said "Let's see how far that conditioning goes". As soon as Pacifica could regain a portion of her composure, she stood up from the ground and shakily held her balance. She looked up towards her tormentor, both defiance and exhaustion evident on her face as she assumed the worst to come. But nothing could've prepared her for what harsh punishment was waiting.
Pacifica suddenly felt something in her hand, unaware of what it was or where it came from. The moment she looked down at her left hand was the moment she knew that Bill intended the worst for her, worse than that awful wringing of the bells could ever accomplish. In her hand was a weapon, designed to be capable of killing anything that existed on the planet earth.
A handgun.
Hysterical and mortified, she dropped the gun and was preparing to kick it away, only for a toll of the bell the halt her in her tracks. "Pick it up, Llama" Bill snarled, faux rage in his voice to hide his delight. But Bill felt an emotion he'd not intended to ever feel when he watched as the girl struggled to stand still; astonishment. "I said pick it up, Llama" he growled as she began ringing the small bell in his grasp, pleased to see the girl finally cave and approach the firearm.
Her resistance finally beginning to unravel into submission, Pacifica retrieved the gun and held it in her hands, staring at it with sheer terror. Bill turned to face the Pines family, a sly twinkle in his eye as he began "The ritual doesn't work unless all of the participants are alive for it". His form turned a threatening shade of red and he turned back to face his marionette, "All it takes is one bullet… and the world is mine".
Bill's eye began shifting into an ominous black shade, before he demanded in a deep voice "Aim your weapon, soldier". Her muscles had begun quaking at this point, resulting from a combination of the prospect of murdering one of her few friends and the previous trauma she had experienced. Her arm slowly rose into the air and into an outstretched position, the gun's barrel pointing directly towards the cage and its occupants.
"Pacifica…" Dipper muttered, both he and Mabel stepping away from the bars in the pitiful hopes of escaping their upcoming fates. "Listen, Pacifica. You have to stop this yourself! But you are strong enough! I know you are!" Dipper encouraged hopefully, "You're dad was a jerk and he never deserved your help". Mabel stepped in and added "Yeah! You can't just let people boss you around!"
Though the encouragements hadn't fallen on deaf ears, Pacifica had barely retained any temperance of her actions, the only thing preventing her finger from having pulled the trigger by then. "You are a good person and I'm not gonna let your lousy parents affect that!" Dipper continued, Mabel once again stepping in and adding "Bill's the enemy! You are the only thing that can stop him! You have to-".
The gun cocked, Pacifica's thumb slowly descending along the length of the handle and settling above her fingers. Her shaking had begun getting worse as the bells and her father's will to dominate her had finally begun weakening her resistance. Tears fell once again as Pacifica selected which of her potential victims would die at her hands. The room fell silent for a brief moment, only for the despicable deity to suddenly command "FIRE!"
She thought to herself "Mable, I owe you so much more than my money could buy for giving me a chance. Dipper, you were the one thing to me that money couldn't buy... I wish you knew that". Impatiently, Bill snapped his fingers and the bells returned to haunt the lair. Pacifica had not a moment to hesitate in her next action as the awful ringing of the bells began to resound throughout the chamber and in her head once again. Still, her free will had managed to win out for that one brief nanosecond, though she knew it would cost her everything.
She pointed the barrel against her own head and pulled the trigger.
Pacifica's head tilted slightly from the impact, but the ability to open her eyes in confusion had proven her assumptions wrong. She could still see the Pines family in the cage, staring at her with a mixture of relief and confusion on their faces. Her eyes shifted to her hand to investigate what went wrong, finding the truth of her situation and leaving her completely dumbfounded.
A small wooden pole had extended from the barrel of the gun, the tip having prodded her in the side of her head. A small, white banner rolled open from the pole to reveal black text, reading 'Bang! The world is mine'. Previously unable to escape the cruelty and ruthless sadism of this grim fate, she was left mentally broken at its climactic revelation as a practical joke.
Naturally, Bill roared with laughter, as you could imagine one as evil as him would at this scenario. "Woah man! All of that struggle and that brief sense of nobility! That was way better than I thought it would be!" He continued to cackle at the poor blonde as she fell to her side and began curling into the fetal position, her eyes unblinking and her breaths shallow. Almost as abrupt as it started, Bill's laughter quickly shifted to "Heheheheh… now I'm bored with you. I'll toy with you some more after I kill your friends in front of you".
With a click of his fingers, Pacifica lost all consciousness and ascended from the floor, her eyes glowing a putrid yellow and her body glistening a repulsive shade of crimson. She ceased to exist as she rose and a final banner rolled downwards from the lair's opening, Pacifica's unmistakeable features clearly representing a single captured moment of her agony and mental torture.
"Looks like it's too late for your friends, Stanford".
