Warning: this chapter contains slightly graphic violence.

Hopefully nothing TOO graphic, but I thought I should warn you just in case.

I'm conscientious like that.

...She says, just before writing about a man being horrifically tortured.

It turned out that Bill could be extremely creative when he decided to torture someone.

When he realized that Stan had dentures, he made his teeth grow back in, just so he could rip them out over and over.

When he realized that Stan needed a hearing aid, he fixed up both of his ears so he could hear his own screams more effectively.

When he realized that Stan had cataracts, he cleared those right up-and then ripped his eyes out of their sockets and replaced them with baby heads, before putting them back in again, and doing this a couple more times until he got bored.

And that was just the stuff that's the most comfortable to mention aloud.

Stan couldn't tell how long he'd been here. Everything was just a haze of agony interspersed with interrogation and insults and demonic cackling from all sides, occasionally stopping when Bill would ask him if he was ready for it to end.

All Stan could do was croak out defiance, telling the triangle and his group of freaks what they could do with themselves, and then brace himself for the next wave of pain.

He opened his eyes with a gasp, jerking wildly in his chains, as his chest throbbed. He realized that the demon must have made his heart stop, and then quickly restarted it again.

Ugh. So that's what a real heart attack feels like. Guess I oughta remember that for if I ever try ta trick my way into getting on a game show again.

Stan's tongue probed at the fresh gaping hole in his mouth where one of his newly-grown eyeteeth had been yanked out beforehand, and he managed to lift his head enough to see Bill hovering in front of him expectantly.

He opened his mouth.

"Ow."

Bill let out a frustrated growl.

"What is WRONG with you?!" he demanded. "Why are you still tryna protect old Six-Fingers after everything he's done to you?! You should be giving me his HEAD on a silver platter, and instead you're just letting me rip you apart over and over!"

Stan shrugged as best he could with his arms spread apart by chains the way they were. "...Guess I'm just a sucker for punishment like that," he rasped.

Bill sighed, and snapped his fingers; Stan felt the worst of his injuries healing up good as new, and knew things were about to suck.

"Whaddya think, guys? More electric shock, or seeing if we can make him puke up all his internal organs?"

Various suggestions were thrown forward, and Stan closed his eyes in preparation.

Before any of them could be implemented, however, a familiar annoying voice piped up.

"Boss! Boss!"

Bill groaned dramatically.

"NOW what, Keyhole?!"

Stan opened his eyes, and saw the jerk who'd captured him in the first place doing a little excited dance next to the throne made out of people who'd been turned to stone. "Look who the eye bats caught tryna get past the barrier out of town!"

He pointed to a couple of familiar stone figures that had been set on the arm of the throne. One of them was very small and pudgy, with a ridiculously high head of hair that Stan could see even from here.

Stan couldn't help smirking a little; he'd never realized how much he would love to see Gideon turned to stone.

Bill floated over, and snatched up the Gideon statue. After a second it unfroze, and the little ventriloquist dummy came to life. He took one look at Bill and screamed.

"It wasn't my fault, I swear-!"

"Seriously, kid? You had ONE JOB, and you completely screwed it up!" Bill put his free hand on his hip, and asked scoldingly, "What am I gonna do with you, hmm?"

"Bill, listen ta me!" Gideon pleaded. "Dipper and Wendy showed up, and I was gonna deliver 'em to you, but their friend, he shot me! And by the time I woke up they'd already taken Mabel's key and-"

"Wait wait wait, what friend?!" Bill's eye narrowed.

"I didn't see his face, he had on some kinda cheap hoodie, like what angsty teenagers like wearin'!" Gideon clasped his pudgy hands in front of him. "Please, you gotta believe me!"

Ugh, does he have any backbone at all? Stan couldn't help shaking his head in disgust. And then he realized who this "friend" Gideon was talking about had to be.

He was disgusted by how much his heart leapt with relief at the realization that he was safe, and that at least two of his kids were safe. Even if he didn't remember Mabel having a key, didn't know what that meant. But it sounded like they were all going to be together soon enough. That was good; if anyone could protect them, it was Ford-as long as he didn't decide that some new dumb mystery was more important, of course.

Bill patted Gideon on the head; he tried to escape to no avail, and scowled, clearly not enjoying having his hair flattened like that.

"Don't worry, Gideon, I believe you."

"...Really?" The kid smiled in relief. "So you'll let me go?"

"Of course not! You still failed me, so I'm gonna make you do cute dances for all eternity!"

The smile dropped. "Wait, what?"

A snap of Bill's fingers later, and he was in a horrifically gaudy sailor suit, and stuffed into a tiny cage above the throne-and as Bill had said, he began doing some kind of stupid little dance, clearly against his will.

"No! NOOOOO!" the boy wailed, ineffectively.

But Bill was done paying attention to him; he turned back towards Stan, while in the background a few of his minions took delight in swatting the cage, making it swing about as the boy inside squealed and wailed.

"Well, well, well!" Bill chirped. "I just had a bit of an epiphany, Stanley! Maybe Stanford's not the one you're trying so hard to protect! Maybe you're not that pathetic!"

Stan got a cold feeling in his gut. No, no, no no no no no nononononono-

"Yeah I am! Trust me!"

Bill wasn't listening.

"Maybe you're not the one I should be torturing to get you or Stanford to tell me what I wanna know!"

Without even thinking about it, Stan lurched forward in his chains as best he could when he was literally dangling in the air.

"Listen to me, you one-eyed demon." Even without an exclamation point at the end of the sentence, his tone was dark enough to draw the attention of everyone in the room, except for the frozen statues whose attention was currently un-drawable. "If you do anything to my kids, there is nothing and no one in the universe that'll keep me from destroying you."

There was a moment of shocked silence, aside from the sound of Gideon's rapidly tapping feet.

Then Bill tilted backwards, and burst into loud, cackling laughter. Soon enough his minions joined in, the noise reverberating off the walls of the Fearamid all around Stan.

"Oh, oh boy, that is just priceless!" Bill wiped a tear from his eye; when it hit the floor, it ate a hole in the bricks or whatever this thing was made of. "If I had a dime for every time someone, even a mortal, made that kind of threat towards me, I'd be rich beyond imagining! That's cute, Stanley! Real cute!"

He looked towards his hench maniacs. "You know what to do, guys! Go out and bring me those kids!"

A door opened in the side of the Fearamid, and the monsters went bounding towards it.

Bill raised his arms dramatically.

"Fly, my pretties! Fly, fly, FLY!"