Posting a day early this week because tomorrow I'm gonna be a bit busy.
No chapters next week because I'm gonna be away from the wi-fi, so I'm gonna post twice in two weeks - day after I get back, and then on that Friday.
Chapter 10 - Actual Conversation
Sixer still wasn't used to the fact that he now had an actual bed to sleep on. Yes, he'd had one for the last two times he'd gone to sleep, but the mere idea of it confused him. He would have been just as fine on the floor without a bed, or just sleeping on the couch.
But, it was the Guildmaster's and Alex's decision to make sure he, Crescent, Star, and Pine each had one, so he wasn't about to argue.
It's just that it made it difficult to get up.
Crescent grunted from across the room as he pushed himself into an upright position. Sixer watched him from where he lay on his side under the covers. "Whelp. Another day a' not destroyin' people's lives an' another day closer ta Cipher tryin' ta do that." He stepped out of bed wearing nothing but his boxers and pulled on the pair of sweatpants that was draped over the food of the bed, followed by the shirt that was next to it. He noticed Sixer watching and gave him a nod. "Morning."
Sixer eyed his brother for a moment, then pushed himself up to a sitting position. He hadn't undressed the night before, having just pulled off the new pair of boots he had been gifted with the day before and collapsed onto the bed and waited for sleep to take him.
"Come on, Sixer, she didn't tell ya ya couldn't talk ta anybody. It's okay ta look for loopholes."
Sixer frowned. "Is it? You searched for them and—"
"That was before. Things're diff'rent, remember?" Crescent raised an eyebrow at Sixer. "I mean, come on, Sixer. It's pretty clear she's not thinkin' a'ya as 'less than nothin'."
Sixer's ears pulled back. He remembered Cipher telling him such things; it wasn't hard not to.
"So don't worry so much about what Maria'll have ya do an' not do. She put more restrictions on herself an' the others than us, anyway." Crescent shrugged and walked out of the room.
Sixer looked around and, noticing that Pine and Star had already gotten up and left the room, pulled on his boots and followed suit. The Guildmaster was likely going to be expecting him on the couch downstairs soon.
The door was closing as a group of small figures disappeared out the door and Sixer stepped into the living room. He thought he saw Star's wings for a moment as he moved over to the couch and sat down.
Alex came out of the kitchen. "Morning, Uncle Sixer. Maria isn't over here yet, although she is usually up by now. I've got some breakfast ready for you if you're hungry."
Sixer's stomach grumbled at the mention of food, and Alex took that as an indication to bring over a plate of scrambled eggs and bacon.
Sixer considered not eating until the Guildmaster came over, but Alex was watching him.
Unbidden, his mind went back to what Crescent had just said when Sixer had been waking up. "It's okay ta look for loopholes."
The Guildmaster had never said that he couldn't accept food from anyone other than her. She had never said that.
Settled, but still uncertain about whether or not it was safe for him to do so, he ate the breakfast as Alex disappeared into the kitchen, then put the plate on the coffee table and prepared to wait for the Guildmaster to arrive.
It did not take her long to step through the doorway.
"Morning, Sixer," the Guildmaster said. "You up for breakfast?"
Sixer shook his head, causing her eyebrows to rise. "Alex provided that." He motioned to the empty plate sitting on the table.
The Guildmaster blinked, then smiled and nodded. "I'll have to thank him for that when I see him. Is he still in the kitchen?"
She wasn't angered at not giving him a meal herself. He had done something she had not said anything for or against, and she wasn't mad at his actions.
"Indeed I am." Alex stuck his head through the doorway. "You must've been distracted by something since you didn't get over here earlier. I figured that I'd get Uncle Sixer something to eat in the meantime."
"I'm glad for that. Stanley gave me a fake ID to work with so that I can get a job in town without any problem with taxes or anything like that." The Guildmaster gained a lopsided smile. "I was expecting them to take longer to get here, honestly."
"Fake ID? Are you sure you need something like that?"
"Considering that there is a version of me who already exists in Iowa? Yes." The Guildmaster nodded as Alex raised his eyebrows. "I'm not about to pull an identity theft on her by using my data, especially when I technically don't exist in this America's systems."
The Guildmaster had a counterpart here? He would have to remember that, in case they were to meet her. It would not be wise to mistake the counterpart for the Guildmaster by accident.
"…yeah, that makes sense. I wish I wasn't as okay as I am with the idea of you taking on a fake identity to be able to live around here for a while, but that makes sense." Alex frowned. "Did Uncle Stanley tell you about what he's doing today?"
"The grilling thing and how it might end up attracting the attention of the town, you mean?" The Guildmaster tilted her head.
Grilling?
"Not might," Alex corrected. "Will. If I know anything about Uncle Stanley's grilling, he and Uncle Stanford are going to be having a field day with cooking experiments. Most people will come out for the food and the show they're gonna get along with it. Not to mention it's also the twins' birthday and they're probably going to be spoiled rotten with presents."
The Guildmaster winced, looking worried. "Oh geez, I hadn't realized. If that's the case, then the situation might get found out sooner than I would have liked."
Sixer started frowning. Found out?
Had she been intending on keeping them hidden from the rest of Gravity Falls?
"Which means that either—"
"Guildmaster, may I ask something?"
The Guildmaster cut herself off and blinked in surprise before looking curious. "What is it, Sixer?"
Sixer's gaze shifted away from the Guildmaster for a moment, but then he refocused on her. "How long are you intending to keep us hidden?"
He had to ask it slowly; it felt like thinking enough to put the question together was walking through a bog.
The Guildmaster blinked, then answered carefully, "Well, that partially depends on you. We only rescued you guys about a week ago, Sixer. I would have liked to see you guys recover a little more mentally before letting you be exposed to the entire town at once. I don't know how well you would be able to handle something like that." She paused. "Why do you ask? Do you think there's a chance you could handle something like that?"
Sixer frowned and tilted his head as Alex stepped out of the kitchen, drying his hands with a towel. It would be wise to inform her of his experience with coming across large crowds of people. "I am…more used to having people run from me or fight against me, Guildmaster. I am more familiar with large crowds in that form."
"And if it's a large group that have come to eat food and talk?"
"I have been talked at, Guildmaster." Cipher had done that before, not seeing fit to give Sixer the permission to answer. But the Guildmaster operated differently. She allowed him to respond, and she responded to him in turn.
"But you haven't held a conversation with someone other than…" The Guildmaster trailed off.
It took Sixer a moment to realize she thought that Cipher held conversation with him. But there was someone he had talked to once. "I met a counterpart of myself in service to another Cipher. We have…spoken. On occasion."
It had eventually become Sixer getting talked at as well, but if he wasn't intended to be there as someone to participate with words, he didn't see much of a point in trying.
"Another kitsune?" the Guildmaster asked.
Sixer shook his head. "A bishop, Guildmaster."
The Guildmaster's face went white.
"A bishop to a demon?" Alex frowned. He noticed the Guildmaster's expression. "You know about him?"
"Only by word of mouth," the Guildmaster replied. "I'm — in my dimension, Gravity Falls is considered fictional by the people who don't travel across dimensions. I grew up watching Stanford's and Stanley's summer of 2012 as a cartoon. My knowledge of the other timelines here came from fanfiction that other fans of the show created. The Cipher-Bishop was one of the alternate timelines that didn't get as much of a focus as the others, but I did come across a little about him."
"But you didn't know about—"
"No. I didn't know about Sixer and his family until I arrived here. I never came across information like that in my dimension."
Sixer blinked slowly. The Guildmaster hadn't been aware of himself and his family before her arrival in this dimension. But ther ewas something that he remembered about their initial encounter….
The Guildmaster sighed and shook her head. "Talk about being woefully unprepared in the area I need to be."
"Guildmaster."
The Guildmaster looked over at Sixer. "Yeah?"
"You…recognized my brother, when you found us." Sixer frowned. The words were being said, but he was having a somewhat difficult time finding them. "Is it because of who my brother's counterparts are?"
The Guildmaster paused, then shook her head. "No, that's not — I get visions of places, sometimes. And…I got a vision of the inside of what I guess is the Fearamid. I saw a Stan who looks like Crescent there, and I tried to ask him about what was going on. He kept avoiding the subject and told me to get out before 'he' came back. Then I heard indistinct voices from somewhere and was forcefully pushed out of the vision." She shrugged. "I didn't see the connection it had to what I was doing in getting Stan and Ford home until I got here last week and ran into you guys."
Sixer's frown remained. Something about that…. "Crescent mentioned running into a girl before we were sent here. He said she looked like a ghost and disappeared when th — when he returned." He focused more on the Guildmaster's face. "He said he thought you were a ghost of someone who had been killed in the Fearamid."
The Guildmaster looked surprised.
"You're saying she was physically—"
"Not physically," the Guildmaster cut Alex off with a shake of her head. She frowned. "I guess…visions are more of a mental projection, then? Or a spiritual one? I never really thought of what really happened when I experienced something like that. But someone was able to interact with me through a vision once before — a man named Rourke, or a shade of him. That was about 980 years ago, though…. Thank you for telling me, Sixer. That actually explains a few things."
"What do you mean?" Alex frowned.
"Cipher's presence kept me from knowing about what had happened to Sixer and his family until now. It would have kept me from being able to portal right into his dimension too — I tried to bring Stanford home that way and ended up getting blocked. Cipher knew I was trying to get involved somehow."
"Well, then why were you able to bring Uncle Stan and Uncle Ford home?" Alex responded. "They've got their Cipher to deal with, don't they?"
Sixer shifted again on the couch, remembering something. When the Guildmaster looked at him, he said, "Some Ciphers have met abrupt ends to beings known to other Ciphers, but not known to me."
The Guildmaster's eyes widened. "Someone else is out there killing Ciphers besides the Pines?"
Sixer shrugged. That was apparently the case, but he didn't know who it was.
"So then, that means that Stan's and Ford's actually passed at some point before I got them home last week. That's a relief. Huh." The Guildmaster smiled a little at the thought and nodded. "That's really interesting, actually. It means that we're not alone in the fight against Ciphers across the multiverse. I like that."
Sixer's tails twitched as he frowned. The Guildmaster was glad that Ciphers were meeting their ends — as she herself wasn't a Cipher and was against one, it made sense that she would react in this way. He could feel his thoughts growing more sluggish again.
"Think there's a chance that this other person could take out the Cipher that's supposed to come at the end of the year?" Alex asked.
The Guildmaster frowned. "As much as I'd like to hope for that, I'm getting the feeling that we're not that lucky." She sighed. "As much as I'd like to think that Cipher could die between now and then, the Multiverse seems to like to mess with me enough that we're probably still gonna have a Cipher problem next August, whether we like it or not."
Alex frowned.
"Guildmaster…." Sixer hesitated, then decided to follow through. "He made deals with other Ciphers, and with other creatures. Former humans who shed their humanity for a new form, in exchange for loyalty to him. He will not be easily killed. He is far too strong."
Alex frowned. "What makes you-"
"He's got a point."
The Guildmaster turned to face the source of the voice — Mizar, standing in the doorway leading out to the porch. Sixer saw that Pine was standing behind her, a calculating expression on his face.
"Alcor's told me this — demons live on deals." Mizar stepped into the house. "If their Cipher's made a ton of them and those deals are still going, then it's gonna be hard to take him down."
The Guildmaster's frown deepened. "That's…going to make stopping Weirdmageddon a lot more difficult than it was the first time around." She put her hands on her hips. "Well, that's just great! At least we have a year to think of something that could be his weakness, but at the same time he's probably shoring up whatever he needs for when he gets here! He definitely wasn't happy when I broke Sixer from his control."
No, he probably had not been, Sixer silently agreed. He could still remember distinctly what had happened when the Guildmaster had taken control.
"We'll come up with something," Mizar said. "I mean, it's going to take a bit of thinking, but Ciphers always have a weakness. Everyone does."
"I don't doubt that, but it's gonna be a matter of finding that weakness — or finding something we can use that hasn't been used already. He probably knows about the memory erasing trick already, so that's a no-go." The Guildmaster frowned. "Great; now I'm gonna have this stewing at the back of my head on top of everything else."
"How about a distraction, then?" Mizar grinned.
The Guildmaster frowned. "What kind of distraction?"
"Well, we're gonna need help getting everything together for the whole Labor Day Party thing, so do you wanna help with the grilling bit? We've got one, but Grunkle Journal's not gonna go anywhere near it, and I'm not gonna trust Grunkle Andrew with it, either." Mizar rocked back and forth on her feet. "I mean, you've been around for a while, right? You've gotta have a few tricks up your sleeve that nobody else around here does. Please?"
Sixer watched Mizar and Pine. If Mizar was asking for the Guildmaster's assistance, than it was likely he was going to become involved as well. His gaze locked with Pine's, and he noticed his eyebrows come together in a way that was similar to how the Guildmaster looked at him sometimes. He wasn't sure what the look meant.
The Guildmaster blinked at the question, still frowning. "Well, I…I don't see why not, I guess. I've got a few things in subspace storage that I can use for that kinda thing. Give me some time to set up and whatever meat you want me to grill and I should be good to go."
Mizar grinned widely. "This is gonna be fun. Come on, Pine! I'll got introduce you to the Multibear in a bit — we gotta get the grill out first and make sure Alcor's not gonna mess with it!" She turned and bounded out of the house.
"S-sure," Pine replied quickly. He looked at Sixer for a moment longer, then followed after Mizar.
The Guildmaster watched them go for a moment. Sixer watched her in return as his thoughts sluggishly put themselves together in his mind.
Pine appeared to be…behaving differently. Sixer wasn't sure how.
"Well, might as well go help set up and figure out what I'm gonna be doing all day." The Guildmaster looked over at Sixer, who had moved his gaze to her as she had spoken. "Come on, Sixer. Might as well get introducing you to the locals over with, if they're gonna be coming here later."
Sixer nodded and rose from the couch, then followed the Guildmaster outside.
Sixer found he was getting better at figuring out when he was on top of where he was. According to the sun, it was still morning, and he could see his counterparts and the Guildmaster's nephews getting something set up in front of each of their homes. Stanley — with Vash and Knives' help — was moving a few old, sphere-shaped black pieces of metal on stands form somewhere behind the Shack. Gargrunkle was carrying out a battered-looking black cauldron of a grill in his claws, and Mizar was already standing outside of her library-shack, next to Pine and a long table of ingredients.
And a large fire pit that hadn't been there before.
The Guildmaster frowned and walked over, Sixer following behind and staying in step with her. "Did you make a deal for that?"
"What?" Mizar looked at the Guildmaster curiously.
"The fire pit. That wasn't there yesterday."
Sixer tilted his head slightly. Deal?
"Oh, that? Yeah. I figured you might want something different to make the meat a bit more smoky or something." Mizar grinned. "The meat over there's all store-bought, though — don't touch the candy on the end; I'm gonna make Alcor corporeal later when people start showing up."
"And your grunkles?" The Guildmaster moved closer to inspect the fire pit, giving it a closer inspection.
"Grunkle Andrew might be out later. I dunno about Grunkle Journal, though. He likes his books, and he doesn't like fire."
"Fair enough." The Guildmaster paused, thinking. "Got any wood nearby? Or coal? If we're gonna get this fire pit started, I may as well get it stoked now." The Guildmaster looked over at Mizar and raised an eyebrow.
Mizar grinned. "Not gonna be a problem!"