Illusion is Reality

Chapter 95

-You clicked the wrong easter egg dummy-

"There are four types of people in this world." Miz spoke up randomly, out of nowhere as she and Soos prepared breakfast together the next day, having gotten back to a more comfortable baseline for behavioral output around everyone. "When their legs itch under their jeans, some will just cry and accept that there's nothing they can do, some will desperately scratch at it over the denim, some will slip their hands under their pants to scratch it… and the last type are those who will throw their jeans off to scratch it directly."

"Five types," Bill put out there. "Some just say 'to hell with it!' and amputate their legs!" He'd even Seen that one, too! Multiple times! (Even some humans, who couldn't regrow their legs!)

Miz looked over and nodded solemnly. "Big mood. Itches are no small matter."

Mabel snorted. "I'm the 'scratch at it over the pants' type." Miz grinned. "Me too!" The two high-fived. Dipper groaned and buried his face in his hands. Mabel mock-whispered, "Dipper's the type to stick his hands into his pants." Miz giggled.

"Mabel!" Dipper cried, flushing and pulling his hat down over his eyes.

"Ah dudes, I'd take my pants off." Soos nodded. "Leg itches under jeans are serious business." He looked down at his own pants. "That's why I wear khakis. They're easier to scratch through when I'm working, and even easier to take off."

Now Bill was staring at them all, unaware that this was apparently such an important subject for humans.

Melody walked into the room. "What're you all talking about?"

Soos looked over. "If your leg itches while you're wearing jeans, what would you do?"

Melody blinked before she snorted. "Reach a hand under my jeans to scratch it." She grinned.

Dipper looked up. "You too?" He seemed relieved to know he wasn't the only one.

Bill stared. Was… this really that important?

"Ooh! We should ask Grunkle Stan and Ford!" Mabel jumped up in her chair. She paused and turned to Bill. "Bill? What type of scratcher are you?" Bill continued staring at them all, unable to really understand any of this.

"...None of the above," Bill told her. "...I would make it stop itching, just ignore it, or get a new body," Bill added almost absently as he turned away from her, wondering why the kettle was taking so long to heat his hot water for tea - it should be DONE already! (When he'd been puppeting around Pine Tree's body, he'd mostly just ignored it… until said body had been on the verge of collapse, and gotten way too hard to control. Then he'd felt an overwhelming urge to scratch those mosquito bites. It had been annoying...)

Miz hummed cheerfully as she folded some more origami animals. "That only works for people who would be able to do that. But it's an efficient solution nonetheless." Melody had taken over the cooking for breakfast when she came in, so Miz had some free time now, Bill's veggies just needed to sit in the heat for a little while longer. Miz had been telling Melody about what sorts of things Bill liked to eat, and the woman was very attentive to his dietary needs.

It also likely helped that Bill had already eaten the salad she'd made before, and seemed okay with it. So that was one potential roadblock already sidestepped, if not shoved out of the way entirely

Bill was watching the hot water kettle like a hawk unblinkingly, now. He bunched up his shoulders a bit, more and more, as the seconds ticked on, and on, and on, and...

-the whistle went off, and Bill leapt to his feet, reached forward, and deftly snagged the kettle right off of the burner in a flash, turning away from the stove (and Melody, who was standing nearby it) and flicking the burner knob to the 'off' position with his free hand as he went.

He settled in at the table with his 'prize', pouring himself a cup of the still-boiling liquid into his waiting cup, teabag already in-cup.

Dipper rolled his eyes at Bill's impatience. He did this every time, literally watching water boil.

"Why do you do that?" Dipper finally asked him in exasperation, and to this, Bill replied, "Because it's better this way." He lowered the teakettle to the table, onto the potholder sitting ready for it off to the side. "You're supposed to make tea with still-boiling water."

"No, I mean, why do you watch the kettle boil? Isn't it frustrating to wait like that?" Dipper could see the way Bill stared and waited. The second-hand annoyance was pretty intense.

"Everything about waiting is frustrating, yes," Bill said, then turned his head to look over and down at Dipper. "What's your point?"

Dipper stared up at him for a moment.

"...Never mind," Dipper muttered out, pulling down on his cap with one hand as he looked away from Bill, back to his own journal and binders. (...Not that he was working on his next DDNMD campaign right now; that wasn't something he was going to be doing right there in front of Bill Cipher, c'mon.)

Meanwhile, from where she was sitting at her own seat at the kitchen table, Miz started singing to herself with a dazed expression, eyes semi-glazed, while a small light seemed to flicker across her iris. She was clearly staring at something that none of them could see.

Mabel raised an eyebrow at this. "Uh…" She waved her hand in front of Miz's face. Miz blinked slowly, coming back into the here and now.

"Oh, sorry, I was watching something." Miz said sheepishly.

Dipper raised his eyebrows. "Watching… like with your All-Seeing Eye?" He thought she couldn't do that while inside the barrier. Miz laughed awkwardly. "Eh… I was reviewing my memories of a video I watched a long time ago." Dipper looked even more confused. "What?" Miz shrugged. "Music videos for songs I like. Here, hang on…" She was getting better at using her powers through the cuffs. This shouldn't be too hard, she had her own version of the technology suit that Bill had, modified somewhat to work in conjunction with her other powers, specifically, projecting her thoughts and memories through them. She pointed at the wall and a projection screen popped up. Music began to play.

Everyone stared. Mabel grinned. "That's pretty cool." She turned to Miz. "Do you have more?"

The dragon-demon wiggled in place. "I've got thousands upon thousands," she admitted. "I love music."

Mabel looked at the screen, which was now white since the song had ended. "What was that song about?" the teenager asked, having been too distracted by the pretty dancing to read the subtitles.

Miz blinked and tilted her head. "Would it upset you?" she asked simply, and Mabel looked taken aback. "Is it actually horrible?" Mabel asked her.

"...depends? I'm not sure what your baseline for horrible stuff is," Miz shrugged. She was even less sure now, after that talk with Stan two days before.

It was Melody who responded with, "From what I could understand, that song was essentially, 'what if Cinderella was an assassin aiming for the prince's life'."

Miz blinked and grinned. "Yes. That." She personally thought that was a cool idea for a song, but wasn't sure how the twins would feel about it, since, you know, assassins and stuff. Miz's grin turned into a frown. "Should I find a happier song? Sorry, I just really liked that song, melody wise and all that." She pouted. "It's still a better message than some of the songs people listen to nowadays. Most of them seem to be cheesy, boring love songs. Or telling people to eat their own pants?" Miz said wryly.

Soos shrugged. "Hey, to each their own, dog. My pants didn't taste all that bad, to be honest." (Melody giggled at this, and Soos smiled.)

"Or the objectification of female bodies by male humans for some reason, or paying for sex and drugs with violence, or hamsters in too-hard-to-steal sportscars," Bill noted absently, as he raised and lowered his teabag in his cup.

"Which you shouldn't do." Miz told the kids. "If you're gonna date someone, don't go for the type of person who equates violence with affection," she warned them.

Dipper rolled his eyes. "I know that. That's just common sense. -And so does Mabel," he added for his sister - especially after what had happened with Gideon, ew.

Mabel shrugged. "Um, it's still nice of you to warn us?" She twitched at the implied mention of Gideon. "Ugh, right. Gideon…"

"Did you ever really like him?" Miz asked her, curious.

Mabel shifted in her seat uncomfortably. "Yeah, well, in my defense, I didn't realize he was going after me in that way to begin with? And no," she added. "No, I did not like him. He's a jerk!"

"He is!" Bill enthused out, as he removed the teabag from his cup of tea, and lifted said cup to his mouth to drink said beverage, post-haste.

"Could we maybe get back to talking about cool music, please?" Mabel asked them all and sundry. Any Gideon mention tended to bring down the mood, and she really didn't want to hear what Bill thought of him right now.

"Fine," Dipper agreed, though rather tiredly. "But what makes this one so great?" Dipper muttered.

Miz scoffed. "It's a love song about an assassin falling in love with her mark and having doubts about whether or not she should go through with it! Both of them make a connection with each other, recognizing each other's inner pain, and wonder if this is what 'love' is!" She gushed. "Isn't that more interesting than just 'oh that guy's hot so I think I like him'?" Nevermind how the final lines imply that she DID in fact, stab the prince and the two gazed into each other's eyes as he bled out and died ("I cannot move anymore.") It was twisted but it was a tragic romance! Miz lived for that kind of thing!

Mabel frowned. "That sounds super-sad. She fell in love with him and everything, but…"

Miz shrugged. "That's the entire point of a tragic romance."

Melody nodded, seeing her point. "Well, maybe choose a song with a happier ending?" the woman suggested. Stan Pines had 'warned' them about Miz's taste in music first off when they'd both come over to help babysit this morning - the twins this time, not Ford and Bill - and also of Ford's overall reactions lately when lyrics were involved, when it came to her songs.

Miz shrugged and projected a few more songs.

Taking Melody's advice, she chose the more… kid-friendly songs.

They spent a while discussing the benefits of storytelling through song, as Melody finished cooking up breakfast for them all (both grunkles in absentia for the meal). Miz launched into a lecture about how all human history was formed through stories and their very lives were essentially stories in and of themselves. Miz simply liked the interesting stories more.

And by the end of the meal, Dipper and Mabel noted that so long as Great-Uncle Ford wasn't around, Miz seemed to be able to act perfectly sweet, if a little odd.

Dipper sighed. If only she could be like this all the time, then… well, then they'd only have Bill to contend with. The dumb triangular jerk.

Miz held out her hand and concentrated. A door simmered into existence before her. It wasn't a real, physical door. It was in the Mindscape, separate from the world around it. And it wasn't like she was creating it; she'd already created it before. She was just pulling it back into focus. ...Hm. It looked like Bill had warded it, already. 'Probably a good idea.' She didn't approach it though, watching it carefully. She waited. Listened.

The door rattled.

Miz sighed. Nope. It was still out there. 'That's fine. It'll leave eventually. Probably.' She had the strangest feeling that told her it wouldn't be able to stay forever. It would get bored and leave. It would HAVE to leave.

She dismissed the door, and it faded out of existence. ...Well, so she had an excuse to stay longer. She hoped this wasn't selfish of her, to keep mooching off Stan like this. She knew that money was a thing. Stan probably had rent to pay and groceries and…

...and Stan said she didn't have to. But she WANTED to. She didn't like to feel like a leech. (She did enough of that as a human.) Maybe she could help do the dishes or laundry? Or force Pinetree to take a bath?

Ugh. How could he stand not bathing?

But she'd have to ask Stan if that was allowed. If she says that Dipper's filthiness offended her (which it did), maybe then he would allow that? Or maybe she could challenge Pinetree to a water fight? Or just clean his clothes while he wasn't looking?

Miz twitched. She wanted to clean something.

...Like that weird lamp with the deer legs she found in the back of the storage room and brought up to Bill's room because she thought it was cool (and possibly cursed?). She liked cleaning that. She just had to find more stuff to clean.

So she got to work. Cleaning.

The fishes above the fireplace...

The antler ceiling lamp...

...What else could she clean?

Stan walked into the kitchen for a soda a little before lunchtime. (Breakfast had been granola bars with Ford in his bedroom, mostly because Ford was protesting 'having' to take meals with the demons in the kitchen at the same time, the goober.) But Stan found himself stopping to stare incredulously at the sight of his (semi-unwanted) guest using a toothpick to scrape off the grime from around the seams and hinges of the sink. …And her brother was nowhere in sight while she was doing this. That was a new one.

So Stan turned to Mabel instead, who was sitting at the table working on one of her scrapbooks.

"Do I wanna know?" Stan grunted out to her. Mabel shrugged. "She said it was bothering her. And that she had to clean something before she went crazy… crazier? She wiped the dust off the Singing Salmon earlier." Well, Stan wasn't sure how to feel about that.

He watched Miz clean the parts that no one in their right mind really cared about for awhile. (Well, that's the point isn't it?) And after awhile, Stan sighed and trudged over to the fridge to get his soda, deciding to just not worry about it all that much. Not like she was hurting anyone doing it. There was one thing about the whole thing that he really didn't get, though.

Stan closed the fridge, popped the tab on the can, and took a sip, all before he turned back to the scene still going on behind his back at the sink and finally asked, "And the maid outfit?" It was the first thing he'd seen walking into the room, but he hadn't been sure if his eyes had been deceiving him or something.

Miz answered, "Because maids are cute!"

... Stan literally had nothing to say to that. He thought she didn't like wearing clothing? Hadn't she said that before?

Miz responded absently, "Costumes and dressing up to look nice is not the same as when I'm trying to be comfortable."

Stan's eyebrows went up. She hadn't even turned around to address him, and he knew she wasn't looking at him in the window reflection - that was what he was using to get half a look at her face, and her eyes weren't on him.

Stan glanced over at Mabel, wondering what was going on; Mabel made a confused sound herself, and Miz laughed suddenly for no reason that Stan could see. "I dressed up while I was a triangle too."

Mabel frowned at this. "How are you doing that?" Mabel asked Miz, closing her scrapbook and looking over at her carefully. She didn't see any mirrors, and it wasn't like she'd been mouthing any words… so how had Miz…?

"Doing what?" Miz asked, and Mabel looked frustrated.

"Responding to questions we haven't asked yet!" (Stan blinked at this. Dipper was usually the one to get all touchy about asking and then not getting his questions answered, not Mabel. But then...)

That got Miz to turn around and stare at them, looking at their mouths with an 'Oh shit!' expression. (Stan narrowed his eyes at this.) Miz winced. "I didn't realize you hadn't asked them yet."

Before Stan could say anything, it was Mabel who put it together first. "You can hear our thoughts?" Mabel asked, and Miz winced.

"I'm not trying to. And I don't hear ALL of them. Just the particularly loud ones."

Stan stifled a sigh and ran a hand over his face. "...This like your whole 'feeling emotions' thing?" Miz nodded hesitantly then shook her head before just shrugging, making a 'kinda?' movement with her hand. Right. And with her back turned she couldn't tell which stuff was said aloud and which was her just hearing things in her head. Great. (Ford was gonna lose his shit over this one, once he found out; the whole point of that metal plate was supposed to be keeping Bill outta his head - Bill out, and his own thoughts in.)

"...Define 'loud'," Stan asked her next. He had to figure out how bad this one was, too.

Miz thought about how to explain this. "Emotionally charged thoughts tend to be loud. Or things that you were going to say aloud anyway. And most of the time it'll just be disjointed, with a word here and there, and quiet murmurs where the rest of the thought was supposed to be. You guys aren't actively projecting, even if you're capable of passively receiving." …Okay. Stan sighed. Ford wasn't going to like this at all, was he. (Neither was the kid, Stan would bet.) Actually, he might as well ask... "Can you hear Ford's thoughts too?"

Miz's expression told him 'yes'. And from the looks of it, she didn't think his thoughts were all that nice. (...was this why Miz had been so upset by Ford not liking her, maybe? ...Huh. What sorts of things had she overheard Ford thinking about her?)

"I usually ignore them," Miz protested. "Like background noise." ...Right, and since he was askin' questions and she couldn't see his mouth move, she was tuned in to him and thought he was still askin' her questions out loud.

Yeah, no. Hell, no. They weren't doing this again.

"-Outside, now," Stan commanded her, pointing a finger to the nearest door with the hand holding the soda can. Better get this done and handled before Ford made an appearance. Then he turned away and grumbled out, "Where's the kid, attic or outside? -BILL," Stan called out loudly, walking away and over to the nearest window, to look outside. He peered out. (Nope. Bill wasn't out by the picnic tables; kid must still be in his room, instead of taking the roof route down and outside the barrier.)

Stan glanced over at Mabel as he turned back towards the rest of them. "Pumpkin, where are Bill and your brother?" he asked Mabel.

"Dipper's in the Mystery Shack gift shop with Melody. I haven't seen Bill around for a bit, maybe he's upstairs?" Mabel said truthfully.

Stan sighed. "Both of you, outside, with me." Mabel was supposed to be being 'babysat' (read: watched) by either him, Soos, or Melody right now, whenever they weren't in their room. They weren't even halfway through the first week of their house-arrest penalty, yet. "Stay in sight for a minute." He turned away from them, frowning.

Miz sighed. "Why is every part of me problematic?" she muttered, rinsing off the grime on the sink before wiping her hands dry on a towel. She and Stan passed each other as he headed for the base of the staircase to the attic, and she marched outside, head hung as Mabel followed her.

"Well, it's not your fault right?" Mabel asked, and winced as Grunkle Stan hollered up the stairs for Bill pretty loudly behind them.

Miz sighed. "Not like it matters." Mabel raised an eyebrow.

"Why didn't you seal off this hearing-minds thing along with your emotion-al thing-ie, too?" Mabel asked.

Miz shrugged. "Didn't really think about it. Like, do you ever think to yourself 'oh hey, I should just stop blinking or breathing' or something? These are just… natural functions I have. And most thoughts are set to private anyway. It's not like I can hear your every thought or something." Miz huffed.

Mabel winced. "Does it really feel like that to you? Like breathing?" She saw Miz step past the edge of the barrier and click off her (new) magic-cancelling bracelets. The things that sealed up Miz's powers. Mabel frowned. ...Was that how Miz really felt about them? The headband that cut off her senses and made her 'deaf' to emotions, the bracelets to hold in her powers like one long breath held underwater…

...Was that like forcing Miz to hold in and seal away and hide everything that made her weird and different, just to 'fit in'? Did it make her feel dizzy or kind of off and gaspy, if she kept them on too long? Was that why they usually spent so much time outside? Or upstairs, up in the attic, where Bill could do magic again, because he'd made a bubble inside the barrier that let him do that? And if it was...

...then did Bill feel the same way about it, too, every time that he walked inside? Even though he still did it, to stay with them, like Grunkle Stan wanted him to? ...Just like Miz was because she wanted to stay with Bill?

(And what did that mean about Bill's anchor, and Grunkle Stan? Was all of Bill's 'weirdness' really only horribleness that Bill could just have locked away like that, for him to go without as something completely separate from him? Or was all that weirdness actually a real part of him, too? -Were there maybe some things that the weirdness was supposed to do for him that weren't just horrible, that felt the same way to him with the anchor working on him as Miz was talking about feeling about this?)

(Woah, woah. Wait. -Did that mean that Grunkle Ford was right? That they really didn't know what Bill was like when he was all being himself, because the anchor was keeping the dream demon from doing all sort of things that were like breathing to him? ...She needed to talk to Dip-Dop about this later.)

"Imagine having something that is just perfectly normal to you, a part of who you are, as natural as being able to see Color or breathing without having to think about it - but it's something that people don't like. So then imagine that you have to hide it, or suppress it, just to be allowed to be around other people," Miz grumbled as she formed a leaf chair to sit down in. "I can understand sealing off my Empathy; it can hurt me. And I guess my hearing the thoughts you're thinking if they're loud is an invasion of privacy. But it's not like I hear everything. Especially since even with random thoughts I STILL can't understand ANY of you!" She sighed. "Besides, being able to tell when someone's about to try and kill me or know how someone's feeling is useful for when I'm making Deals back home. But..."

"Nobody's trying to kill you here…" Mabel said slowly. And she wasn't just saying that; they really weren't. Old Man McGucket wasn't even talking about it, and even Grunkle Ford-

Miz closed her eyes tightly. "It's just… annoying!" Miz growled. "I already have to wear these-" she held up the bracelets "-just to be allowed near the house and…" Miz made a frustrated sound. "I'm nothing but a goddamn burden. Nothing but trouble. Nothing but a problem for everyone around me-!" she buried her face in her hands and breathed heavily after her short rant.

Mabel winced (and not just at her language). "That's not…" She really didn't think any of that was right. If anything, it sounded just as wrong as some of the stuff that Bill said sometimes! But she didn't really know how to explain...

"-And Stan won't let me do anything to earn my keep around here!" Miz said next. "I'm just living here, mooching off you guys and I feel so… useless!" Miz flopped back on the giant leaf.

"Who's callin' somebody useless?" was the grumpy call across the yard from Stan, as he made his way across the grass towards her. (Stan had called upstairs to the kid, and Bill was on his way down. Stan had only really heard the last part of all that Miz had said. He'd been able to see them from the house, but not hear them; his hearing aid wasn't that good.)

Miz whined. "No one is. But I feel useless." she huffed out. "I feel bad that I keep mooching off you. I'm staying here longer than I originally planned to. And I want to do something to earn my keep." She rolled over on the leaf. "I wanna clean something. It's calming… and productive..."

Stan let out a long sigh, and pinched the bridge of his nose. He was kind of getting tired of trying to have this conversation with the demon kid. "Kid, you're fishing for your own food half the time, so I don't have to go cleanin' out the grocery store every day," Stan pointed out. "And you're Bill's family. -I told you, he's stayin' here, and you stayin' here with him's fine." Stan gave her a long look. "You know, I ain't exactly 'earning my own keep' here. I'm just livin' in the Shack these days, not running the tours or doin' much of anything else. Does that make me useless or somethin'?"

"... no…" Miz admitted.

"Well then, don't you go off feelin' all useless on any of us, either," Stan told her. "Heck, you're a kid anyway. Shouldn't be working unless you really want to, for you. Unless it's a helping the family business thing," Stan amended, rather obviously, "But Bill ain't doin' any business here. So it's just down to the stuff you want to do, for you. Get it?"

Miz wiggled in place. "I want to clean," she admitted.

Stan blinked at her. "Seriously?" Stan asked her, turning completely towards her to get a really good look at her. "You… really want to clean stuff, just 'cause?"

Miz nodded. "It makes me feel like I'm contributing to the household in some way. And I like it when things are clean. Except dusting. I don't like dusting because it makes me sneeze."

Stan snorted, rubbing the back of his hand against his mouth to help keep in the laugh. Right. Big bad demon-dragon lady, afraid of a little dust.

Stan shook his head and sobered up quickly, though. "Alright. We'll figure out cleaning stuff later, after the kid is down and he's got this… 'mind-talk thing' all settled out… if cleaning stuff is really something you really want to do for you," he told her, then got a little more serious, back on the main topic of problematic stuff going on right now. "So how bad is this 'you hearing our thoughts' thing, anyway? This thing as bad as the emotions thing, where you can't block any of us out when we're thinkin' stuff at you, either?"

Miz groaned. "But this one doesn't harm me and I don't hear ALL thoughts."

Stan gave her a long look. "But me no buts," he told her. "Can you block people out on your own, or not?" She sure wasn't doin' it earlier, though...

"I will have to alter my seal-headband again," Miz huffed. She was doing so now, wiggling her fingers along said headband.

"So, you can't block people out on your own, without doin' a headband-thing to help you out," Stan said, getting a little suspicious of how she was avoiding saying it straight out to either of them, here and now. (He knew better than to let her get away with not answering this thing, here and now. Either she told him straight-up, or she'd have to lie to his face about it. But he wasn't putting up with her going this sideways at him about something, just like he didn't with the kid. -That was what had gotten Ford into trouble with him, in the first place. Stan wasn't stupid.)

Miz whined a little bit. "I… I don't really know how it works. It was just a 'thing' I could do as a triangle, but even when I'm just in my energy form, I can still hear thoughts. So while part of it must be biological, not all of it, since it still worked even without a body."

Great... "Y'know, privacy's still a thing," he told her. "Don't think you'd like it if we heard every last one of your thoughts," he tried telling her. Then Stan frowned. Because if this was another one of those things that she didn't know how it worked… "Y'know, if you don't know how this works... you didn't think the emotion thing was a problem, either, and it was," Stan pointed out. Not until she'd talked it out with the kid, anyway, apparently. "I don't want me thinking somethin' around you hurting you, any more than I think any of the rest of us do. Same thing with us feelin' stuff, too. Yeah?"

Miz sighed. "Fine." She slumped place on the bench she was sitting on, up against the picnic table behind her. "This is related to my general hearing so it shouldn't be hard to block it out too, would have to be careful not to make myself deaf again though… and I can just ignore it the same way you can tune out other people's conversations when you're in a crowd or sitting next to someone on a bus." (Stan eyed her. Tuning out other conversations wasn't always a thing that happened inside people's heads - earmuffs and headphones and earplugs were a thing - and she still hadn't given him a range for how far out she could hear thoughts from other people. ...Well, he'd let her concentrate on the stuff she was doing for now, and sic the kid on her about it all later.)

She closed her eyes, frowning. It wasn't too difficult to isolate this particular aspect of her Being. It just felt weird to seal it off. Just like shutting off any of her senses. She wasn't lying when said it was like breathing or seeing or whatever. It was such a natural part of her. She felt everything go quiet. The world seemed to get… unnaturally quiet. Eardrums only picked up things that carried over on air waves after all, nothing like being able to hear (to know) everything around her.

"You done?" Stan asked, after Miz opened her eyes back up again. She nodded. Huh. That was quick. "How much of what I've been thinking have you been picking up?" Stan asked her. "Do ya know?" It wasn't like she'd seemed to be able to tell the difference in the kitchen...

Miz shrugged. "I wouldn't really know unless I'm actually listening for it." Stan sighed heavily. That didn't tell him anything; she hadn't even been able to tell the difference before - how would she be able to know when she was 'actually listening for it'? Or was this a passive versus active thing like the emotions thing, too?

Stan gave her a grumpy sort of look, but he let that one go. If she didn't know, then she didn't know. ...Not like he'd been thinking much that he wouldn't bring up with the kid if Bill had asked, anyway, but the little sis here seemed a lot more touchy on a few things. He was kind of surprised it hadn't gotten him into 'trouble' with her before, though, now that he thought about it. "How much distance you got on that 'hearing thoughts' thing, when you're tryin' to do it?" Stan asked her next.

"If they're in the same room as me, I can't hear through walls." Miz shrugged. Not unless she was Hearing in conjunction with her Sight. All-Seeing Eye and all that.

'Alright,' Stan thought. So, if walls got in the way… it was line of sight basically, then? Did that mean she could hear anybody outdoors, as long as there weren't any trees in the way? ...Eh, Stan would let the kid figure that one out for him. Not his callout.

In the meantime, Stan stared out at the forest a while, trying to remember a few things he had thought about before that might be a problem, before he finally brought up, "Hey, is that why you changed the color on that thing?" while waving at her headband. "Because I knew Ford didn't like the color, and I thought it at you before?" Because her headband had been yellow, that first day that Stan had saw it. But it was a dark blue now. Stan distinctly remembered thinking that Ford wouldn't like the yellow, when he'd first seen it on her, then. If Miz had heard that, then she had probably changed it because she'd heard him think that. She wouldn't have had any reason not to, otherwise; not really.

Miz nodded, and Stan sighed. "Kid, you had your headband on back then, and you hadn't finished fixing it up to only handle the emotions-stuff back then, right? Why didn't that block out this 'hearing thoughts' thing along with it?" That seemed a little off to him. She'd barely been able to balance properly going up the stairs...

"My headband at the time just blocked out my senses. I had Hearing enabled. And this, counted as hearing." (So, what, emotions counted as feeling? Like touch?) She continued unprompted to explain it some more, "It's from when I was a triangle. I didn't have ears or vocal chords as a triangle so all my Hearing and Speaking was telepathic, all communication was through the 'public' thoughts that the shapes around me projected out. This vessel was created with ears and an auditory system that translates vibrations of air into sound but my natural hearing from my triangle form is more 'natural' to me. Hearing thoughts for me is as natural as hearing sound wave vibrations are for you guys. Even as just energy, I didn't have ears so thought communication was all I really did."

...Okay, so hearing sound waves was actually more unnatural for her than hearing thoughts. She had to actively make herself hear soundwaves. "So you need a set of thought-plugs for your thought-ears, I gotcha." Stan paused for a moment. "How are you doin' it different now?" Stan asked, scratching at his cheek.

Miz sighed. "I'm setting my hearing to only sound wave vibrations." She didn't look happy about it. Stan asked, "So why don't your sight count as your All-Seeing Eye thing?"

"Because my All-Seeing Eye was a sense I got AFTER I became a demon and it's tied into a different aspects of my powers. My hearing thoughts thing was a natural part of my triangle biology back when I was still mortal." Miz explained.

Stan raised his eyebrows. "Huh. You got that thing after?" Miz nodded. (He wondered if the kid had, too.) "So your eye thing feels different, because you didn't have it when you were a human or a triangle. But the other things don't, because you were doin' them when you had a body way back when." he thought for a moment. "But you were a triangle after a human, and a triangle demon after a triangle, and neither of those got ears, so the human stuff don't feel so natural anymore?" It was only one out of the three, and the oldest one.

Miz nodded again. "That's why my Hearing sense still maps more naturally to telepathy than sound waves. I mean, I didn't fully understand how the soundwave thing worked back when I was human, so I had to manually learn how to craft a vessel that was capable of it, as opposed to hearing thoughts which I could do more easily since I just set my vessels to be like how my triangle body was like."

Stan nodded before a different realization came to him. "Hey, is the reason you keep getting upset at Ford," even after she'd gone and blocked out being able to feel all his emotions from herself, "Because he keeps thinkin' not really nice things about you, that you were thinkin' he was sayin' out loud?" Stan said leadingly, pretty sure he already knew the answer to that one, and Miz groaned.

"I actively try to tune him out." (Yeah, but she'd also just made it pretty clear that she couldn't do it without changing the headband to do that for her, now. Which meant…) "It's all 'evil monster this and 'kill the Demon now before she betrays us all' that. It's super annoying to listen to someone wishing you were dead just because of your Race every few minutes. So I try to ignore it." Stan sighed heavily at the last of this. He wasn't so sure he wanted to explain this one to her, given how she might end up reacting to it if he did, but...

"Look, kid," Stan told her, pinching the bridge of his nose again. "How far down can you hear him? Like, layers and junk." She'd said that… "You said that you mostly just hear the stuff that people would say out loud, right?"

"I don't hear all his innermost thoughts, if that's what you're asking. Just the stuff that he's thinking out loud to himself." Miz pouted.

"Yeah, exactly," Stan said, dropping his hand and looking up at her. "So if that's what you're hearing from him, then he's gotta have a constant mantra thing going on inside his head, telling himself not to trust you, right?" In other words, Ford was damn near one step away from muttering it under his breath at himself every time he found himself in the same room with her, having to remind himself that…

Stan let out a sigh. "-You think somebody does that if they're really all that sure about what they're doing?" Stan told her, and hoping that he didn't have to go any further than that. (Because, damnit Ford, not helping. Because if his brother were actually that convinced of things, then Ford would not be spending that much time trying to remind himself that the demon kids were monsters. -That Ford was doing that? Meant that his brother was worried about something, sure, but it also meant that that 'something' wasn't so much the demon kids hauling off and eating somebody out of nowhere with a bunch of really sharp teeth…)

Miz furrowed her brows in thought. "I guess not? It's just irritating. Especially when I'm actually trying to be civil."

And to that, Mabel said brightly, "Well then, it's a good thing you're not going to listen to what he's thinking anymore!"

Miz blinked slowly as she processed that. Finally she nodded. "Yeah. Yeah! That's…" She tilted her head. "... good?" (Mabel smiled at her for it.)

"Yeah, that's good," Stan reaffirmed. "Ford's trying' to keep it inside his head instead of just yellin' it out at you. Means he's trying to not start a fight with you, at least." ...Trying something, hell. "So just, y'know, let him keep his guns in his holsters and his thoughts inside his head, right where everything belongs, just like he's been trying to do most of the time. ...And let your brother tell you what a bad idea it was to go around listening to people's thoughts like that now, yeah?" Stan added, as Bill finally walked out of the house. Stan frowned, wondering what had been taking the kid so long upstairs, especially since the kid had to know that it was him that had been all 'alone' with her for awhile there, which he knew the kid still didn't like…

Stan pushed himself to his feet and started heading towards the house; he stopped and met Bill halfway across the yard and tossed a thumb back in Miz's direction, filling Bill in quickly. The kid (who was already frowning as he came out) got an even-worse scowl, and marched past Stan almost immediately after he was done talking. Stan had almost a smirk going, as he turned away and made his own way up onto the porch, to watch them all from there. (The kid wasn't 'cleared' to be babysitting the twins on his own for Stan as part of this whole new penalty thing yet, so Stan wasn't going to go completely all the way back inside. Didn't mean Stan couldn't pull out his crossword puzzle and not listen much, as the two demon-kids went at it with each other, talking.)

Bill stopped right in front of Miz and looked down at her, putting his hands on his hips. He did not look happy with her. (Partly because she'd 'snuck out' and downstairs without him having realized it, for her to have been around Stanley alone - he did NOT trust Stanley with her that far! no! not one bit! - but mainly he was upset with her because…)

"THERE ARE BETTER WAYS," he intoned at her, fully aware of how hearing thoughts could be used to one's advantage. -He also knew how very badly things could go if that was something one over-depended upon for one's safety.

Miz flinched back in mild guilt.

"Did you already fix it?" Bill asked her. "With your headband, or something else? Or are you working on it and still need some help with that?"

"I have it sealed off, like my Empathy now, too," Miz confirmed.

"Amplitude, range, and depth," Bill demanded of her next. "General characteristics also. And describe your control over that sense, too," 'or LACK thereof' was implied by Bill's continuing and deepening glower.

"Around 80 to 180 Hz, around 30 meters unless there's some sort of obstacle in the way, just surface/public thoughts that they're thinking out loud." Miz listed off. "And it's pretty much like listening with ears, I hear it if it's nearby but I can't dig in to hear more if they aren't publicly broadcasting it without having to use my powers to actively do so."

Bill gritted his teeth. "Give a relative metric-example for 80Hz to 180Hz, in 1 Hz changes of amplitude, of 'thought noise'," Bill said. "Define: 'obstacle'. Define: 'surface' and 'public' for humans and other species that are not considered telepathic," Bill said, and he sounded like he was gaining steam at that point, "and do you have ANY IDEA what would have happened to you if I didn't COMPLETELY WALL OFF my OWN thoughts from external perception?" Bill damn near shrieked out at her at the last, fists clenched at his sides. He was actually shaking in place.

Mabel was looking back and forth between the two as they talked. She didn't really get what they were saying but Dipper would probably want to know later.

Miz opened her mouth and let out a quick scale of melody from quiet to loud, just above a whisper and just below a shout. Then she responded, "Walls, doors, anything blocking me away from them. Though, I can hear through them if I'm standing really close and they're standing really close. Surface thoughts are quick things like 'I wonder what I should have for lunch' and public would be stuff that they might want to say out loud but haven't bothered to." Miz quieted. "And I've heard mental screaming before. I CAN block it out, like covering my ears or ignoring them." She winced, shuffled her feet against the ground. Except that she would have to keep covering her mental equivalent of ears to do that and she had to put her 'hands' down eventually. The headband was like having ear plugs she could wear on and around her head, instead.

Bill was trying to damp and tamp down his anger, but it wasn't going well. He closed his eyes and pulled in a harsh breath. (He didn't like that he'd been in the middle of meditating, and hadn't been able to stop what he'd been doing so easily. He hadn't actually finished everything he'd needed to do completely yet, he'd had to rush it to get himself downstairs for this, and he was still feeling a bit like a jangled sort of mess.)

(He also didn't like that he hadn't noticed Miz go downstairs, or that she'd spent so much time on her own with Stanley. She just didn't seem to understand how much of a threat Stanley really was and could be, to either of them. And he didn't understand why-)

In a rush he cut off rather abruptly at the end by literally clacking his teeth together, Bill said: "Physical blocks only? As in, in the Mindscape there is nothing getting in the way?"

Miz nodded. "I can hear whoever I can see while I'm in the Mindscape." Because it was so quiet there that thoughts were incredibly loud.

Bill still had his eyes closed. He still had his fists clenched and he was still shaking. "Are those characteristics for when you are passively or actively listening." (The more he heard, the less he liked…)

"Passive. Active listening requires my powers to come into effect." Miz clarified. "Which I don't really bother with unless I'm trying to find out information."

Bill opened his eyes and stared right at her.

"How many telepathic and telempathic individuals have you been within range of hearing in this lifetime," Bill demanded of her next. "Total in terms of species, and total number of individuals that you know you were hearing, of that subset." Bill wasn't really wanting to know or bothering to ask about the timeframe as to how long she'd spent around them. To him, that was almost a trivial question, given the risk she'd (most likely not) been dealing with (properly) at large.

Miz tilted her head in thought. "27394 different species… around? There are lots of species that don't have mouths or ears so they project their thoughts around. And total number of people I've met or 'listened' to who could 'listen' back is… 5482724?"

"Not listened back. Able to project," Bill corrected her tersely.

"4223721." Miz responded. Mabel was starting to get a headache from all the huge numbers.

"Does that include those other Bills that you have met?" Bill asked her, and the almost sweet change in tone was very jarring, especially when his eyes looked as full of anger as they remained.

"... yes?" Miz said slowly. She could tell Bill was mad, but wasn't quite sure why. Bill pulled in a breath. He let it out. He rocked back on his heels again, then settled on them.

"Do you know," Bill told her in almost conversational tones, "I do believe you have given me a reason to CAGE YOU HERE FOREVER and never let you go." He stared at her without blinking. "Would you like to know WHY that is, Miz?" She nodded slowly. Mabel backed up a little.

Bill glared at her. "Because you are apparently-" Bill twisted in place slightly, and he clamped down on what he was about to say, closing his eyes and letting out only a mere hiss of breath instead. He was clearly having difficulty not unloading his anger on her at-present.

He stood there and breathed heavily for awhile, and it took him awhile before he seemed able to try again (He couldn't stop right now and put this off, this was dangerous and this was important for her to know and understand RIGHT NOW. He had to-) "You are Mind. A being of pure energy and thought. You KNOW this! Yes?" Bill said quietly, opening his eyes again. Miz nodded meekly.

"Good. SO glad we're on the same page!" Bill gritted out, his teeth more bared than they were grinning. "Do you know what it takes to override one thought with another?" Bill asked her next. Miz blinked, understanding what he meant.

"They can't override my thoughts." She wiggled. "I'm stubborn. And stronger than that. I keep my own thoughts."

That didn't really make Bill feel any better. "Stubbornness isn't going to CUT IT." He did NOT trust whatever her definition of 'stubbornness' was, not one bit.

"I'm fine." Miz protested. "I've been fine all this time. I haven't had any issues with other people directly changing my mind about stuff by literally changing my thoughts." She whined. "I DO actually know how to take care of myself!"

Bill scowled at her over this. "No, you DON'T know that! CLEARLY you DON'T!" Because she was CLEARLY missing the POINT!

Mabel sighed. "Um, guys?" The two demons paused and turned to her. "Bill, you're worried about her, sure, but she's met a lot of other people who do mind stuff and she's still okay, right?" Miz nodded. Bill glowered. (That WASN'T what he'd-) Mabel continued, "And have any of these other people ever tried to change your thoughts?"

Miz scoffed. "They can project all they want. I can hear them but it doesn't affect me. Hearing thoughts isn't the same as with my Empathy. It's just hearing. It's not absorbing. And it's not overwriting. It's hearing the same way a human hears with sound waves but without the sound. So the only way people's thoughts can change my thoughts is if they manage to convince me through actual debate and I choose to change my own mind."

"That's not-!" Bill let out an angry chittering sound, stomping around in place in a small circle. "-They're different modalities!" he spat out finally, managing to keep it in English. "Emotion is like- like eating for you, and affects the equivalent of your 'body', that substructure," Bill told her. He was still pacing. "Thought is like… it's Mind," Bill said, "On the same level as interacting with your- YOU," he tried to explain, except he was trying to equate human existence to Mindscape existence and he knew he wasn't going to be able to get things across completely this way. "Emotion is subversive-below, because it has lower effects, but you are Mind, and you are not tied to your 'body' in the same way as having a physical body and no means to pull yourself into the Mindscape does." Bill was getting frustrated at how inaccurate he was having to be in explaining things this way, but there wasn't a better way to put it in the immediate moment. "But it's not the same. Hearing thoughts is… you said it is like hearing with sound waves but without the sound. But you are Mind. With your 'body', it is like hearing with sound waves but YOU are ALSO made of sound waves! It is all the same thing! You MAY have a translation process in-between, maybe," not that Bill knew what that translation process was right now, if she actually had one.

"But you are NOT good at boundaries!" Bill told her, looking both angry and anxious. "And you don't KNOW that the thoughts you are Hearing are not impacting you in some way. Sounds impact humans, even if they try to ignore them! And Stanley told me that you can't even tell the difference between whether something is spoken-aloud or thought sometimes! -How do you KNOW that the thoughts you are hearing are not impacting you in some way? How do you KNOW that the thoughts inside your Mind are all your own?! -'Being stubborn' is not enough! How do you KNOW that that stupid lizard of yours is not more stubborn than YOU?" Bill asked her, irritated and angry, because to his thinking, the stupid lizard might have FORCED thoughts upon her with little to no effort in this way. "You didn't know the full impact of emotion on you, or the problems it was causing - you didn't even think about it until we talked about it. How are you so certain that you know the impact of thought? Have you ever even THOUGHT about it before?" Bill demanded of her.

Miz sighed, rubbing her head. "Well, I've been around you and the Pines and even hundreds of teenagers at that school," (- that wasn't making Bill feel any better; rather, very much the opposite! -) "and even when people like that Thomas person had thoughts about wanting to take me to the cool kids place and do 'cool kid stuff' with me, I had no desire to do so. His thoughts and the other people, didn't affect me. I just hear them. But I know they're not me, I know they're not MY thoughts," Miz protested. "Brother, please, I know my whole… empathy thing was a huge issue, and I KNOW I fucked up on that front, but this, this is not like that! I'm…" She took a deep breath, to try and calm down. "I'm fine, big brother. I'm not gonna go around getting messed up from hearing thoughts. I can handle this. I have been handling it for over 600 billion years." She frowned and rubbed her head again. "I'm fine. Can't you trust me on this? I'm not afraid to admit when I've fucked up. The empathy thing, yeah, I fucked up. But other people's thoughts changing who I AM? I'm not going to let something like that happen. It DOESN'T happen with me!"

She huffed. "And I can't hear Ax or Time Baby's thoughts so I'm not picking anything up from them anyway." Miz wasn't sure what the real issue here was. She wasn't changed by other people's thoughts, though sometimes she would go along with them just to make things go more smoothly.

"You don't KNOW that," Bill said, sounding stressed. "All you know is that when you're around them, you only hear thoughts that you THINK are your thoughts!" he told her, half-hysterically. "If you can't hear anything around them that you think is not-you, and they're thinking when you're around them, then they're either shielding so well that nothing leaks out, or they're blocking what you're doing somehow! And doing either of those means that they are BETTER at handling thought than you! Which means that they COULD be making you think that their thoughts are yours, by making them 'sound' like YOU to you!" Bill stressed to her. "And that's not even getting into the impact of other-people's-thoughts on you, when you KNOW they're not yours!"

Miz sighed. "I have protections!" she protested.

"You split yourself," Bill told her. "And you communicate between yourselves. -You have a pathway from the outside-in from which you accept signals-and-thoughts that you think that are yours. How do you KNOW that someone has not been WATCHING YOU and has HACKED that!?" Bill was almost jittering in place by this point. "I wouldn't even know that!" Bill told her. "Not for certain! -Which is why I NEVER do that!"

Miz frowned at this, but she didn't really have anything to say to defend herself.

"-It's dangerous to do that!" Bill told her. "Even if you 'split' yourself 'properly', you can't tell whether what's coming in from outside-you is really something that is from YOU or not. And that's the very most-basic of checks! -Did this originate from inside my own boundary or not?" he told her, looking half-desperate as he tried to explain. It was why he didn't do that himself; not as anything more than a vision-based optical illusion, anyway. And as far as Bill was concerned, that was NOTHING LIKE the same thing! "It's hard enough as it is to be always-noticing when your boundaries are being impinged, and you are TERRIBLE at boundaries right now!" he told her, truly concerned - because she barely had any practice at even-that!

Miz thought about it. "I can tell the difference between others and myself. I'm not incorporating their thoughts into my Being in such a way…" She wouldn't allow that.

"You don't know that!" Bill repeated, then decided to add another concept to the mix besides the very-real problem of 'mimicry' that she'd been leaving herself open to. Because when it came to the incorporation of other-thoughts… "There are also direct-effects like a punch - except not a-punch - that can affect things immediately," Bill told her in all seriousness. "And then there are indirect-effects that don't seem to affect you, that set up growing resonances for you LATER - like being spun in place and then falling dizzy to the ground when you try to take a step moving 'forward'. Short-term; long-term."

"But I've got protections. I'm fine." Miz insisted.

"Protections that stop internal resonances from happening?" Bill questioned her, leaning in. "Do you?"

Miz crossed her arms. "Yes, I'm sure. But if you really want to check, we could test it…"

"-I don't have to 'check', and risk changing you unnecessarily," Bill told her, "I ALREADY KNOW. -You can't stop all internal resonances all on your own," he informed her, crossing his own arms, "Because you STILL have that PTSD!"

"That was from experiencing trauma…" Miz sighed. She didn't think that counted as the same thing.

Bill gave her a long flat look.

And then he opened his mouth and said, "And if you were in a fight with someone, and they thought at you exactly how they were about to chain you down and do that to you right then, how would you react?"

Miz stiffened. "I wouldn't let them. I would blast them as far away from me as possible." She rubbed her arm.

Bill leaned in a little more. "And if that were the DISTRACTION?" he questioned her next. "Because if that happens, and you are 'handling' things that way, you are attacking the person thinking that at you could-or-couldn't do it, almost thoughtlessly. -And while you were freezing and distracted and blasting them, the other person," Bill grated out next, "A person who you can't hear, is actually finishing up what they are needing to do, to do that to you, themselves. -What then?" he asked her. "-That's changing your thoughts. And then your changed-thoughts change your actions to reactions. And that," Bill told her, "Is how you get yourself caught, all over again." And Bill did not look particularly pleased with her just then.

Miz pouted. "But they could say it out loud via air vibrations and I'd still react the same way."

"YES!" Bill said. "Thoughts can be transmitted in many ways! -But you're missing the point," he stressed to her. "Someone can, right now, have you reacting reflexively in the way they want you to react, just by a little bit of pre-planning, in two ways - by thought or by hearing - when ONE way is already one way too many! That's dangerous to you!" he told his little sister. "I DON'T want you getting hurt!"

Miz wilted. "Then what am I supposed to do?"

"-Outthink them first," Bill told her promptly. "Blast everywhere AT THE SAME TIME as you run! -Always have an exit strategy. Always think of every scenario first! Look ahead, and behind, and plan for needing contingencies. -Thinking in short timescales is the wrong way to go about it. Reaction, tactics, strategy. You need all three." (Because, as far as Bill was concerned, his and everyone else's life was a constant warzone with enemy combatants everywhere, whether they realized it or not.)

Miz slowly nodded. She was starting to get an idea of just how difficult her brother's life had been. Enemies on all sides, always having to fight and defend himself. Being unable to trust anyone. No wonder he was paranoid.

"Plan for the worst that you can handle, and think about how to handle the worse-even-than-that until you have thought-and-planned-and-practiced-and-learned how to handle that, too," Bill told her. "Be suspicious of the best; don't just take it at face-value on-Sight. Plan to take advantage of the everything-in between - not just 'the best', but also 'the middling' and 'the mediocre' and 'the worst' - but never count on being able to keep any of it," Bill told her, imparting all-in-one go what he considered to be a good chunk of the sum of his hard-learned life's wisdom. "THAT just gets you into trouble, sooner-before-later."

Miz thought about it. It sounded like a very stressful way to live. "Am I too trusting…" she asked quietly.

"Yes," Bill told her promptly. "But so am I. -It's a common failing in all beings, trusting when you really really shouldn't!" he shrugged off. "I have to remind myself not to do that, sometimes!"

(Mabel was listening to all this with wide eyes. She kind of wished that Grunkle Ford was outside with them, hearing this. Did he know that Bill thought like this? Did Grunkle Stan? They'd all been listening in on what Bill had told Grunkle Stan a couple of weeks ago, repeating something out loud to her grunkle that he'd written to somebody else in another dimension about not trusting other people, not ever, but… Bill had talked like he'd never trusted anyone before, when he'd done that. But the dream demon thought he trusted too much?)

Miz fiddled with the end of her hair. "But always assuming the worst of people is a lonely way to live…" She liked to stay positive, she HAD to stay positive.

Bill blinked at her. "Yes?" he said. "Counterpoint: it keeps you alive to be able to be lonely, until you don't have to be lonely anymore."

"Being lonely was what made me not want to be alive…" Miz admitted. (Mabel's eyes widened, and she glanced over at Grunkle Stan quickly, really wishing that he was over here, and not so far away that he really couldn't hear them, what they all were saying, because...)

(Grunkle Stan looked up at them all with a slight frown, and Mabel bit her lip, not sure if she should wave at him to come over or not…)

Bill blinked at his sister. "Well." He blinked again. "Well." He looked a little uncomfortable. "Well… You weren't thinking that you were getting your brother back, or anyone else, before." Bill wasn't sure what he would have done, if he hadn't had that thought to keep him angry and screaming, to keep driving him. "You know that you don't have to be lonely anymore, yes? It is not an always-and-forever state of being," Bill said slowly. "You know that now."

Miz sighed. "I know that NOW. But I didn't know that THEN." And it just wasn't like she was going to be able to just be suspicious of everything all the time. It wasn't something she was used to doing for herself, by herself. She generally relied on her Empathy and Thought sense to see if people were a threat.

Bill smiled and relaxed a bit. "But you know that now!" he said a bit more brightly. "Being lonely-forever-after-again isn't a worst-thing that you need to plan for, because it will never happen!" he told her.

Miz smiled a little. "Well, that IS good to know."

"Yes!" said Bill, grinning. "That means that all you REALLY need to do is plan for what to do if you start thinking that you might be lonely-forever-again-maybe." Bill paused. "And do you know what to do if you start to do that?" he asked her leadingly. (Mabel glanced between them, unsure as to what the dream demon might say to her next.)

Miz bit her lip. "Not sure…" She felt like maybe there was something wrong with her if she couldn't even think of something like that.

"Well, I am sure!" Bill told her. "-You come to see ME!" he told her, tossing his arms out to his sides, and grinning even more widely. "And then we can do the hugging-thing, which you like. And then you can feel better." He nodded. (Bill had learned that one from his brother, and bedtime stories, and not wanting to be alone - and then not having to be, because you had a sibling right there and nearby! HAHA! ...Well, not the hugging-thing which Miz liked, since they hadn't had arms not like that other dimension that he'd Seen, with the triangle that was him but wasn't-him, with a Liam that was Liam, but wasn't-Liam, but the rest of it was something he'd learned well from his big-brother Liam doing it for him.)

Miz blinked. Oh. She smiled. "The hugging thing would be good." She stepped a bit closer to him. "I'm glad I found you." She raised her hands and let Bill decide if he wanted to hug her.

"I'm glad you found me, too!" Bill told her. "I did not know I wanted a little sister until I had one," Bill told her in all honesty, then looked around inquisitively at her hands and arms and their placement. She was holding them a little differently than the day before, so it took him a moment to figure out the hands-thing she was doing here this time, what that was communicating-and-implied (yes, the same thing?), and then he stepped forward inside her reach.

Miz didn't hold him tightly, just pressing herself into his chest and sighing at the feeling of it. She missed snuggles.

It took Bill another long moment to figure out what (he wanted) to do, since she'd moved in so quickly to him first, and then he raised one arm to wrap it lightly around her shoulders. His other hand, he raised up to half-pet and half-stroke her on top of her head a few times.

"You are very good at the hugging," Bill informed Miz. "Good job!" (Miz giggled at this. "You're good at this too." "Yes, I AM! HA!")

Mabel watched their very awkward sibling hug (even more awkward than the previous day) and couldn't help but wonder if, maybe, Bill having a sister was the nicest thing that'd ever happened to him…?

Well, if Bill believed he'd had a brother and lost him... and then went through a bazillion years or something all alone while believing that he couldn't trust anyone at all…? Yeah. Mabel thought having a sister was good for him. -Good for both of them, if what she was picking up from them being with each other was right.

"Also-also," Bill said next (while still hugging his little sister), with a bit of an evil tenor sliding into his tone. "I have now almost-changed you, with my thoughts! Which I have said out loud. Because I am THE WORST! -I win! And I am very good at being all sneaky with the thought-testing!" he told Miz with a grin. "-Which was a working thought that you should still listen to, though," he told Miz a tad more seriously, looking down at her. "I picked a good one to introduce very-carefully, this you-coming-to-me-again one," he confirmed to her rather explicitly.

Miz giggled. "Not all thought changes are bad." she pointed out. "And I will come to see you whenever I feel lonely."

"Yes. Good," Bill agreed. "Still have to be careful, though. Don't want to incorporate anything harmful to you, that is not consistent with you." He petted her gently on top of her head again a few more times.

"I don't think I can be suspicious of everyone all the time though." Miz admitted, a little embarrassed that she wasn't… able to do so.

And at this, Mabel carefully spoke up: "I think it's good to not be suspicious of everyone."

"HA!" Bill scoffed at Shooting Star, while patting Miz's head. "If YOU were, then you NEVER would have gone on that date with the living ventriloquist dummy in the first place!" he told Shooting Star as he continued his patting. "Think on that one for awhile, maybe!" His sister was purring softly as she relaxed into his arms. (Mabel frowned at him a little bit for that one.)

"HM. ...You could try being a LITTLE suspicious of everyone most of the time, first?" Bill told his little sister next. She didn't have to be excellent at it right away, after all. She could work her way up to it. "Every little bit of extra-thinking helps makes you more-safe!"

Miz nodded with a small frown. "I'll try…" Odd how she was getting a stranger-danger lecture from her brother. She already knew stranger-danger, she'd just… kinda forgotten to do stuff about it since she was immortal and didn't have to worry about getting killed anymore… Though maybe she should actually care more about that now.

"Sometimes, the easiest way to kill someone is to convince them to kill themselves," Bill told her, rather purposefully. (He was, in fact, worried that that might be the case with that stupid 'dad' lizard from her own dimension, or her Time Baby 'brother' who wasn't really a brother to her at all! Because if they rejected her before she rejected them first...) "It is also one of the WORST ways to die. -DON'T fall for it," he warned her quite seriously, unconsciously pulling her just a little bit closer as he told her this. Miz winced. It seemed like brother was REALLY upset about her… suicidal tendencies...

"...I'll try…" Miz murmured into his shirt.

Mabel was pulling at her sweater, eyes wide. If what she could understand from this all was accurate, Miz had… had wanted to die, because she'd been sad, so sad and lonely that… and Bill didn't want Miz to die. Bill was… worried about her.

Mabel really wished that Grunkle Stan was over here. (And she was starting to wonder if maybe this was why he wanted her and Dipper with him or Soos or Melody pretty much all the time, because when the demons were around and talking… she just didn't know what to do when they were talking about stuff like this!)

Still, it looked like the demons were about done talking about this, and Mabel breathed a little sigh of relief as she wondered if she should tell Dipper that having Bill as a brother was actually probably a good thing for Miz? Because wanting to die, no matter who or what you were, wasn't a good thing. So if Bill could keep Miz from feeling like that, then it was really a good thing. Even if he was terrible most of the time to other people still, this was something that...

Mabel bit her lip and played with the ends of her sweater sleeves, feeling a little uncomfortable about herself as she realized… had she really just been thinking about trying to use Bill's connection with his sister to make him care more about other people? And was that okay for her or anyone else to do? Because that felt… kind of manipulative, or something. And… (She really needed to talk to Grunkle Stan about all of this, later.)

After a bit, Miz and Bill broke up their hug and Miz sighed. "Well, do you think I'm allowed back in the house yet?"

"HA! 'Allowed'..." Bill scoffed out at that particular word choice a bit. "You have your Thoughts-hearing sealed up now, like your Emotion-sensing, yes?" Bill asked, already knowing the answer, but confirming it for Shooting Star anyway. Miz nodded. "Then yes. Let's go back inside."

Miz put her cuffs back on, and Mabel followed them two of them both back to the porch, and then back inside (with Grunkle Stan taking a grunkly amount of time getting to his feet to follow her in after). The teenager was biting her lip. It… it didn't… really feel fair that Miz was being forced to… shut down parts of herself all the time? She wasn't… Miz wasn't even as bad as Bill, except with Grunkle Ford, and Miz had been doing a lot better at leaving him alone the last couple of days.

Stan caught up to them about the point that they all stopped and sat down at the table in the kitchen again, where Miz and Mabel had both been before they'd all left to take care of things outside, and then needed to come on back in again. He grunted out, "Is it handled?" to the kid, just to make sure of things. Bill nodded, not looking all that happy about everything on the whole, but also not TOO upset. (Okay, fine.) Miz looked pretty down. Enough so that Stan watched her for a bit longer, trying to figure out whatever the new problem was now, exactly.

Mabel was busy being contemplative herself, too.

"...Hey, Grunkle Stan? Can I talk to you? ...Um, alone? Just you and me?" Mabel asked him.

Stan raised an eyebrow. Had Mabel heard something while she out there with the demons? "Sure, pumpkin." He got up and followed Mabel out to the living room, out of earshot (and thought-shot?) of the demons. Actually, with Miz's apparent dragon-hearing, Stan moved a little farther, just in case.

"What's wrong?" Stan asked as soon as they were far enough, settling down to sit in his sofa chair in front of the TV to be more comfortable about it. Mabel was biting her lip.

"It makes me feel a little bad that Miz has to keep sealing off bits of herself just to 'fit in'," she said simply. "Isn't that… kind of bad?" It felt too much like… they were forcing her to conform and not be 'herself'. "She said that her thoughts-hearing thing is something she used to do all the time when she was a triangle, right? So isn't making her not do that, like… making someone have to go deaf just so that other deaf people would feel more comfortable being around them?" she asked.

Stan furrowed his brow at this, and then sighed. "Sweetie, it ain't like that," he told her, laying a hand on her shoulder. "This is more like…" He searched around for a better analogy than 'wrapping duct tape around her middle, to make sure her insides stay in and everything outside and nasty stays out'. "...Y'know how you like to tupperware things up in the fridge? It's like… she's gotta stick herself in one of those plastic containers, with maybe a colored lid so she can't go looking into other containers by accident, or nothin'. And so if stuff spills out in there in the fridge? She won't get any of that other stuff or any weird odors in there with her, that might have her feelin' not so great and even kinda sick maybe. Okay?"

Mabel still looked a little belligerent at this, though, so Stan sighed and told her next, "She'd be getting hurt by this other stuff if she didn't do this, pumpkin. She kept getting Ford's 'angry' feelings in her before, and it ain't right for her to be runnin' around reading other people's thoughts and getting all angry about them herself. Ford's got a right to keep what's in his head, inside his head, and to himself. It's like she's prying open other people's containers almost, without even trying," Stan told her.

"But she says that listening feels normal for her, though," Mabel objected, worried at the way Miz had been talking about things earlier within her hearing. Like she wasn't able to breathe right at all. Mabel knew that it would be bad if Miz kept hearing all their thoughts and stuff, but she also thought it might be really bad if Miz had to keep making herself 'deaf' to all of them, too. And she didn't know how to solve it or make it better, which was even worse!

"Look, pumpkin, even if it feels 'more normal' for her, that don't mean it is normal for her, or should be," Stan told her. "She was doing that stuff when she was around other triangles or shapes and stuff. Humans don't do that, and she didn't used to do that either back when she was human too, even if that was a really long time ago for her. Because a lot of her used-to-be-human stuff still carried over." Like the allergies thing in the bodies she kept making. "That ain't somethin' we like to have happenin', or can handle all that real well, and I'm pretty sure that she can't actually handle hearing other people's thoughts all that well, either. ...Heck, the kid's concerned that she's been hurting herself doing this, even." Stan sighed, and tried to explain the privacy thing another way, worried that that might be part of the issue. Because if Mabel wasn't getting that... "You wouldn't like it if Miz could just hear what you were thinking all the time, right? Every last little embarrassing thought? Even if you only felt mad or sad or scared for a little bit?" Stan explained patiently.

Mabel huffed. "So is eavesdropping on other people's conversations, but people do that all the time, too. Her thing is just… more intense eavesdropping." After all, she'd said that it was only supposed to be stuff that they were almost saying out loud, right? How much stuff could she possibly be hearing that wouldn't be okay, then? -And yeah, it had been weird and startling when she'd been doing it in the kitchen, but...

"What are you saying here, Sweetie?" Stan asked. "Because we're not gonna let her keep on listening in on us, even if you think it feels unfair. I just told you why." Hell, he really hoped he was misunderstanding her here. Ford would freak if he found out. "Why do you feel that way about it, anyway?"

Mabel shrugged. "I dunno." And she really didn't know. It wasn't like she wanted Miz to be spying on her, or Dipper, or Grunkle Ford, but... "I just... feel bad for her. And I guess, I just maybe want to do... something nice for her?" Mabel tried next. Because Miz wasn't like Gideon or Bill; she actually seemed to be trying to be a better person! And maybe Mabel couldn't fix this particular thing, but... "She's been trying really hard to be good. She didn't even get mad at Grunkle Ford this morning when he stepped on one of her origami animals by accident! -We're supposed to be doing positive reinforcement for Bill because he's a demon; shouldn't we be doing it for her, too?"

...Yeah, they should. And he'd been trying to. Stan grimaced as he remembered what had happened this morning: Miz and Mabel had made a bunch of animals and littered them around the Shack. Ford had been walking around with his nose in a book and crushed a fox under his big old 'adventuring' boots, without even realizing it at first.

At the time, Miz had let out a soft, distressed whine, but when Bill had reared up angrily at Ford for it, it was Miz who'd stopped her brother and told him that it was just an accident. And Bill had backed down easily, didn't even give Ford any caustic comments about being 'too self-absorbed to pay attention to where he puts his feet' (even if the kid glared daggers at him and made it clear from his expression that that was what he'd been thinking; it was still progress). Stan sighed.

"Yeah, I guess they have been on mostly-good behavior lately. -Doesn't mean you should be giving her the 'okay' to be reading your every last thought, though," Stan told her with a smile, ruffling her hair a little bit, which made her giggle. "Alright, well. We could do something else for 'em, though. You got any ideas on that besides a bunch of eavesdropping stuff?"

"I don't know." Mabel sighed. "But... Miz has been stuck in the house for a while, with the cuffs on and everything. ...Maybe we could take her out somewhere? She mentioned that she wanted to see the town." Frankly, Mabel was surprised the other girl hadn't gone stir crazy from being stuck in the house. She and Dipper had been going a little stir crazy from their grounding already! At least the week was almost over, so sweet, sweet freedom was just around the corner. (Well, assuming that Grunkle Stan didn't make them stay at the Shack for another week on top of that. Otherwise, she and Dip-Dop were gonna have to resort to desperate measures...)

Stan paused at that. Going out into the town? He'd been trying to get the kid to do that for awhile, but he'd always objected because…

Actually… yeah. If he maybe… then… and then the kid would...

Stan's smile slowly morphed into a grin. (Oh, this was gonna be good.)

"...You know what, pumpkin? I think that's actually a pretty good idea," Stan told her. After all, he did want the kid (and his kid sister) interacting with other normal humans more. (...Well, mostly-normal. Heh. -He'd take what he could get.) Would probably be good to have them socialized around more people, especially the ones down in town. Get the locals all used to them being up here at the Shack with them. And if Stan convinced Miz into wanting to go into town… well, the kid wouldn't leave her alone to go anyplace with just Stan, so… This wasn't a bad idea at all.

The only problem with this was… "You and your brother are still on 'house arrest', though," Stan said, eyeing her. "We'd need to be doing this today, if we were making this a 'reward' for mostly-good behavior. You wouldn't be coming along with us if we did this."

Mabel nodded. "Yeah, that's… that's fine. That's fine..." It wasn't fine, she really wanted to go with them, too. But it was more important that Grunkle Stan do the positive reinforcement thing with the two of them, right? "But be sure to take lots of pictures and send them to me, okay~?" Stan chuckled at her, at that.

"Alright, I guess me and Ford are going out to lunch in town with the demons," Stan told her, as he rose to his feet - because, just as there was no way the kid would be staying here while his sister went into town without him with Stan, there was no way he was going into town with the demons without Ford demanding to be tagging along, too. Then Stan grinned. "Maybe head to the diner, say hi to Susan while we're there."

Mabel smiled. "Would they like that?" she asked, bouncing a little in place.

Stan shrugged. "Heh, I'm sure Miz would like to try out some of the food they've got there. She really likes eating new stuff."

"Tell Lazy-Eye Susan hi' for me!" Mabel told her favorite grunkle, as Stan waved the two demons to follow him out of the kitchen. And Mabel skipped along in hot pursuit as Stan left the room, and the demons trailed behind him, as he walked his way up to Ford's bedroom door and knocked on it.

It took awhile to explain things to the lot of them. Stan started off with asking Miz what she thought of going out to eat at the diner in town, and it was all pretty much downhill from there.

Ford had a hell of a lot of (not so great) things to say about this plan (as did the kid). But Ford was hampered in his ability to be too vocal about it (read: curse in front of them all with Mabel standing right there and listening in), and Stan stood his ground on it. While Stan was 'distracting' his brother, Mabel jumped in with talking up the diner to Miz, and once Miz seemed absolutely delighted at the idea of going there for lunch…

...Bill (very grumbling) went along with it, and Ford was pretty much blackmailed into going along with things once again. He was all-but-forced to follow along as they all walked into town, just as he had been when Stan had decided to make that trip to that out of town warehouse store with the demons, prior.

(And Ford was not very comforted by his brother's, "C'mon, Ford. They didn't blow up anything or kill anybody or their dog in the other dimension. They walked home from the high school just fine for a week. ...Heck, there's not even any mob-types here.")

Ford was watching the demons warily, shooting glances at the oblivious townspeople around them as two demons walked amongst them, unrecognized for what they were and completely unhindered...

(...though not unnoticed or unremarked-upon - largely because, whenever they saw someone, Stan stopped and made it a point to introduce the demons to them for some reason.)

(And every. Single. Time. The person Stan was talking to said something along the lines of, "Oh, this is who you were talking about!" when it came to introducing Bill first. Laying groundwork, his...)

("Yup, this is the kid, alright. -Kid, say hi. And this is his little sister, Miz. Miz, say hi.")

Miz was looking around at everything and everyone as they walked down the side of the roadway. Since they couldn't take the car, they were hiking their way into town instead. (It wasn't that far and they all could use a little exercise and fresh air anyway.) Miz was running about as Mabel usually did, except Miz was touching literally everything as she went - the trees, the flowers, any animal that came close enough for her to chase down. Even the people.

At one point they passed Manly Dan carrying some logs on the road, and Miz went up to pet his arm (after asking if she could), marveling at how hairy they were. The lumberjack seemed pretty bemused at the tiny little girl "Oooh"ing at him as she ran her hands over the coarse ginger arm hairs. "A rough texture not unlike steel wool but without the threat of tetanus…"

Ford covered his face in embarrassment, while Stan just snorted.

"HEH. CUTE KID!" Manly Dan laughed before he'd waved to them all and walked off, easily carrying the logs over his shoulder. Miz waved at him cheerfully before continuing on. Stan had been holding back laughter even as Ford looked absolutely flabbergasted at Miz's behavior.

"Forests look different when I'm in them as opposed to flying through them. Damn glad this vessel wasn't made to be allergic to the plants. Good job me for not doing that. Would have sucked. Also, that bug-away effect is working wonders! Then again, if any of these mosquitoes came near me they'd be killed mercilessly anyway…" Miz mumbled to herself as she continued skipping down along the path, and Ford twitched at her casual statement of insect murder (mainly because he knew that most demons considered humans little more than insects themselves…).

Then they made it into town, and had many of the townspeople greeting them jovially as they passed by.

Miz absolutely lit up when she saw Tad Strange wave at Stan, though. "Looking good, Stan," the perfectly pleasant man said cheerfully to him.

Miz, who was used to Stan introducing them to people now, and having had positive experiences with several of the townsfolk here and now before this, didn't hold back at all this time. She materialized a few sheets of paper behind her back, and then bounced and bounded right over to him.

"Hello! I'm Miz! You're Tad Strange, right?" She was blushing and wiggling in place as she said this.

...And Bill got a very odd look on his face as he watched his sister do this, and recognized that she was suffering from what were clearly some very-squirmy feelings all over again. Ugh. (...Well, at least they weren't for that Stanford this time.)

Tad smiled down at the little girl before him. "Hello there. I don't believe we've met." He wondered how this girl knew his name, but perhaps the Pines family had told her? Tad hadn't seen her around town before; perhaps the Pines were introducing her to all the townspeople?

"Nope! We haven't met! But we're meeting now! Hi! I'm Miz!" The dragon-demon clutched the papers to her chest. "Um… um… I know we just met, but… if you're not busy, can you read this aloud? Please?" She held out the papers to him with a shy expression.

Tad raised an eyebrow but didn't see anything wrong with the request, and so he reached out to take them...

"-Wait!" Ford called out as he strode over to them. "Wait just a moment there, please. Let me check that out first-" He didn't know what the man-eater was planning but he wasn't going to let her trick some poor person into reciting some awful cursed spell or-

Ford took the papers from her and glanced over them, pausing for a moment when it appeared to be... a script?

Welcome to Night Vale, episode one, pilot. A friendly desert community where the sun is hot, the moon is beautiful and mysterious lights pass overhead while we all pretend to sleep.

Ford looked down at Miz (who was pouting at him for ruining her fun) and raised an eyebrow. "What is this?"

"It's the script for a podcast I really like. Mr. Strange's voice sounds just like the man who hosts the show." Miz rolled her eyes at Ford. "I just wanted to hear him read it." And a few other things. Miz kinda hoped Ford didn't read the rest of the papers, there were some… ahem, fanfiction she might have written concerning Cecil and his partner Carlos hidden in there too...

"It's not explicit or anything! I wasn't going to make poor Tad read out stuff like that! But it would have been nice to have some of the things on those papers audio saved in Cecil's voice so I can replay them in my memories for fun!" Miz mumbled.

Ford was staring at the younger demon with a stern expression, trying to figure out what nefarious plans she was trying to enact. For her part, Miz was trying to not get mad at Ford for getting in the way of her innocent fun.

By this time, Stan (and Bill) had caught up with them both. "What's the problem here?" Stan asked the both of them.

"She wants Mr. Strange to read these papers, for all we know they could be-" Ford didn't finish that sentence, glancing over at the confused Tad who was wondering what was going on. Stan looked over at Miz with a questioning look. She sighed.

"I like the sound of his voice and wanted to record him saying things that I could replay and listen to later," Miz told them all simply.

Stan raised an eyebrow. "You… like the sound of Tad's voice?" he deadpanned.

Miz blushed. She shuffled in place while playing with a lock of her hair. "He has a very attractive voice." she seemed somewhat embarrassed to admit it.

And at this, Bill made a rather frustrated sound. "You get squirmy from auditory as well as visual?" He not quite scowled down at her. Why did she keep leaving so many problematic things out of her explanations and things! -None of this had been on her list! None of it! "Do I need to make you some earmuffs too?"

For his part, Tad placed a hand over his chest and laughed. "Ah, you like my voice miss? I'm quite flattered. But I need to go to work, so I'm sorry but I have to go. It was very nice to meet you, though." He patted Miz on the head, before turning and walking away. Miz sighed dreamily after him, and Stan couldn't help but wonder if all young girls were like this; Mabel had certainly been a handful when she had been going through that boy-crazy phase all last summer.

Bill was thinking over how Miz had said she could get squirmy over people she hadn't even met, and reassessing that thought when combined with his new knowledge that voices were a thing she could also be attracted to. And Bill let out a sigh. "Come on, little sis." He strode over to steer her back on track, towards the diner.

Ford was following behind them, taking up the rear. He was still paging through the papers, trying to pick them apart for whatever hidden threat they might contain.

Rubber ducky baby batter. She sells seashells by the seashore. Ford flipped to the next page since this one all seemed to be tongue twisters. Sometimes Carlos and I just stare into each other's eyes. Sometimes Carlos and I hold each other as we pretend to sleep. Sometimes we actually sleep. I always wake up first so I could watch him wake up. Then I kiss him good morning. He appreciates that- Ford stared down incredulously at the words on this paper. Was the man-eater attempting to make Mr. Strange read out... a romance novel?

While Ford was busy with his thoughts, their group arrived together in short order at Greasy's Diner. The little bell above the door jingled as they went inside. Ford frowned and rolled up the papers, to stuff them into a coat pocket to look over in more detail (read: pick apart) later.

Lazy-Eye Susan looked up at their group from behind the counter and smiled. "Hey~ handsome!" she greeted Stan, who coughed and tried not to feel awkward about this.

Bill, meanwhile, strode right up to the counter, slapped his palms down on it and leaned forward and right up into Susan's face.

"I demand attention!" Bill, well, demanded of her loudly.

And Bill stood there in that posture, seemingly expecting just that.

Ford's eyes widened in horror and his jaw dropped. (And if anyone had thought to ask him later, he would have been hard put to say whether he had been more shocked, horrified, or just downright embarrassed by his former muse's the demon's behavior.)

But Susan herself just let out a delighted laugh at Bill's antics here.

"Awww~ how sweet!" she cooed out at him, as she raised a manicured hand up to Bill's head, and started half-petting, half-scritching him, on the top of his blue-haired head. (Which left Ford feeling even more shocked and horrified, because-)

Bill didn't lash out at her, snapping at her verbally or otherwise. He didn't pull away from her, slapping at her hand and declaring offense, or an angry 'Don't touch me!', or anything of the sort.

What Bill did was…

...let her pet him. Bill let her do it. -Yes, he seemed to blink and startled just a bit at the initial contact (just a very, very slight bit), but then…

He didn't pull away or flinch or even look uncomfortable at all with the treatment! Instead… after a few moments where he seemed to be 'just taking it' standing there and blinking- (...Bill was actually spending this time determining what specifically she was doing - and thought she was doing - and then deciding whether or not he actually liked what she was doing or not…)

-Bill actually relaxed into this treatment and the waitress's touch, leaning into it slightly as his eyes slowly slitted closed, and his head and body sank lower… and lower… and lower...

...until his head was pillowed in his arms on the counter, and he looked so relaxed that he was about to slide off the edge of said counter as his legs relaxed even further almost out from under him…

-and it was at this point, that Ford not quite leapt forward and got an arm under Bill's middle, to lift him up under an arm, pulling him out and back and away from the counter (before the demon slid himself off of the blasted thing and into a loose heap hitting the floor - which would surely cause exactly the sort of outburst that they would want to avoid-!).

And as Ford did so, performing that very necessary action - that frankly, Ford thought should have been his brother's job, if he had even been trying at all - Ford hurriedly told Susan, "I am so sorry about that." Frankly, he didn't know why either Manly Dan or Lazy-Eye Susan had put up with either of the demons' antics at all, let alone to such an extent. (And frankly, he didn't quite understand either of their, what had seemed to be, wholly natural responses to those demons and their terribly-weird actions, either.)

Stan was just staring (and frowning) a bit, because… had Bill been humming just then? (He was pretty sure the kid had been doing that always-getting-higher humming thing of his there, but why? -It had been damn well been there and audible, but the kid hadn't looked all out of sorts and needing to 'retune' himself or whatever right then. He'd seemed relaxed instead. And that humming had sounded kind of… out of place, almost? Except not?)

Miz pouted as Ford dragged (read: carried) a stirring (and starting to flail about and protest at Ford's manhandling of him) Bill Cipher away from the counter. And now Miz went up to the counter herself and told Susan, "I want headpats too!" She pouted adorably up at Susan and the woman coo'ed before petting Miz as well. "Such friendly ones you are," the woman praised.

"Stop that." Ford hissed out at Miz, as he just about dumped Bill in the booth (already having regretted letting Stan talk him into this long since, before they'd even entered the diner). He turned towards her and glared at her (why wasn't Stan handling this himself?!) until she pouted and stepped away from Susan, stomping over to sit across from - and then next to - Bill. (This particular peculiar seating arrangement occurred - two demons on the same bench, Miz closest to the window, and Bill still sitting next to the aisle - by way of Bill somehow managing to get up and slide himself over into the other side of the booth, all without looking like he actually got up and walked over, somehow.)

Finally, once the two demons were stowed 'safely' away in the booth - as safely as one could stow two demons away anyplace, that is - Ford turned back to the waitress and apologized again (feeling rather responsible for the situation, as he hadn't managed to talk Stan out of it at the house). "Truly, I'm very sorry for their dreadful behavior-"

Susan waved him off with a cheery smile. "Oh, don't be! They're such a delight! So very cute. Very unique coloring on the larger one." Bill seemed to preen at this praise, while Ford blinked at this statement, now quite lost at this point.

"...Coloring?" Ford echoed.

"Well, yes!" Susan said with a smile.

"Coloring…" Ford repeated slowly. "You are praising, the coloring, of…"

"Of your cats!" Susan told him with a smile, and... Ford wondered if this was what going insane by way of full-blown auditory and visual hallucinations felt like. Perhaps by the speedy onset of lack-of-sleep induced… no, it couldn't be that, he'd been sleeping far more than usual demon-induced psychosis?

Stan cleared his throat. (Yeahhh, he wasn't touchin' that one. Especially since the demon-kids weren't protesting it.)

"We're gonna get lunch," Stan told Susan, and he grabbed a few menus from her before shuffling Ford off to the same booth themselves post-haste (before Ford could protest any of this anymore). Stan ended up sitting down at the outer edge, and Ford was stuck (read: trapped in place real intentionally) up against the window, both of them on the other side of the booth across and away from the demon-kids.

It was about this point that Ford was starting to wonder why none of the townsfolk were having any terribly-adverse reactions to the two demons as of yet, and he glanced over at Stan and opened his mouth to ask-

"-Kid," Stan asked the kid, (overriding his brother) as he opened his menu, and looking at the kid over it, "What's your filter thing making you look like to everybody else and their dog right now?" ...Did they really look like cats to folks right now? Had to be just inside the diner just now if they were, right?

"I don't have any illusions or masking holograms up right now," the kid told him. "...except for what I'm using to make my suit 'invisible'," the kid added after a pause, "But that's more of a light-bending and -reproducing camouflage then anything else. It's just what it looks like," he finished explaining, for completeness. Then the kid stretched in place a bit quite casually and laid his head down on the table, head pillowed in his arms again and looking pretty content. (Really content, for a kid who was outright refusing to go into town for the last couple of weeks for any reason at all whatsoever, all things considered...)

Stan blinked at this. "You've got nothin' up right now?" He looked over at the dragon-lady, too.

"I don't have anything on except hiding my body-suit either." Miz shrugged. Then, picking up on what Stan was really asking without asking, added "We do not look like cats to other people."

"So…" Stan said, then trailed off. "You're lookin' like you right now. -All female-human, I mean," Stan added, trying to avoid the whole, 'no, I'm a triangle' thing protest. "Two-color hair, cat eyes…" Stan trailed off at the 'cat eyes', leaving out the clothing, as he realized...

"Yes," Bill confirmed. He wasn't using any illusions to hide his natural coloration or current looks, neither his hair nor his eyes. "How we look to you right now, is how we look to everyone else also." Stan glanced between them, and Miz and Bill nodded in unison to confirm to Stan that they weren't doing anything strange to other people's perceptions.

Stan let out a sigh. This town, he swore. ...Guess he shouldn't be all that surprised that Lazy-Eye Susan was actin' all… hell, she was the kinda gal who'd have a really wide definition of 'cat', he figured, but that didn't explain...

As Stan was mulling over this (and Ford was freaking out internally slightly), Bill perked up and raised his head slightly, turning his face towards Susan as she walked past their booth, carrying some food for another table.

And as she passed their table, she did pause in place for a moment, to smile down at Bill and give him another head-scritching and then stroking-petting, before moving on. Miz was distracted reading the menu to see what she wanted, but then pouted as she realized she'd been passed by. She pouted at Bill, because Susan couldn't reach her as easily now, with her brother in the way, but she quickly lost the pout when Susan came back the other way and took a moment to pet her then (leaning into the touch, rumbling softly), before giving Bill another quick top-of-the-head-stroke (after a wordless protest from him) and moving off again. (To which Miz pouted again, because her brother was getting more attention than her, but she was undeniably cuter!)

Ford was staring at the demons suspiciously throughout all this. Finally, he couldn't hold it in anymore.

Ford snapped at Bill, "What are you doing?!" because Bill had to be doing something here, some… some kind of spell that was making people see them as normal, or…

-Why was Bill allowing Susan to touch him? He hated being touched! ...Didn't he? (Though he did seem to let Stan do it sometimes… at night… sitting in that chair with him… but, that was only when the demon was too tired to protest much, wasn't it? Stan only seemed to truly get away with it when Bill was tired or distracted… or upset…) But now Bill was okay with it? Letting someone lay hands on him like that? -And from Susan, of all people? Some… some random, normal person who had nothing at all to do with his Zodiac?! To Ford, the idea was beyond belief! And he'd seen it happen twice!

But Bill simply cracked open one slitted eye and stared neutrally up at Ford, from where he still had his head easily pillowed in his arms on the tabletop in front of him.

"What?" he told Ford. "You think I can't recognize worship when I see it?" the demon practically purred out at him. "Or feel it?" Bill added, closing his one eye with a even-lazier smile, and Ford looked on at him, absolutely aghast.

Miz herself shrugged absently at this, kicking her legs as they dangled over the booth seat.

"Cats," Miz stated (in a somewhat-distracted tone), confusing Ford even more. (Oddly, this seemed to solve something for Stan sitting next to him, because that had his brother stop his frowning and getting a more eyebrows-raised 'Oh…' sort of look instead. Which, frankly, irritated Ford even further, because-)

"Of course!" Bill smiled out at his sister, looking so incredibly pleased with himself and his situation that Stan had to hold back an eye-roll. "Old Lazy-Eye there knows how to treat a cat right," the kid sighed out contentedly next. "Mmm. Reminds me of some of the humans I used to encounter, when I was possessing cats for fun and leisure, back in the day. -Those Egyptians sure knew how to treat their 'deities' with respect," Bill murmured out next, to Ford's absolute shock. (Ford had known that Bill had had a great impact on the ancient Egyptians long-since, but he hadn't realized that Bill had possessed anything or anyone other than higher-order sapient intelligent species before! But if Bill could really do that, then that meant that-)

"The worship feels nice, cool that I can still get that. But I guess it's not the same as emotions. Feels really nice actually, should probably possess cats more often when I get home. But I like petting them too… oh wait, I can split myself, I can be a cat and pet the cat that I am at the same time..." Miz was swinging her legs as she turned the page of her menu. "It's so nice to go out to a restaurant where people aren't pointing guns at me," she commented absently as she traced a finger down the menu.

Stan sighed as he overheard this. (Luckily, Ford seemed to still be blown away about somethin' that the kid had said. Enough that what Miz had said hadn't really registered with him, looked like.)

"Hey, maybe don't go talkin' about that here. Not really good lunch conversation," Stan told her. "Besides," he said next, "I've been tryin' to talk your brother up here to the locals. You go talkin' about guns and stuff like that, they're gonna want ta know what and why…" Stan told her, "And you'll be havin' folks askin' if he was there with you when it happened, and why not." And piss off her brother about the whole people-tryin'-to-kill-her thing all over again, which they really didn't need happening around other people. "Small town."

"You've been doing what?!" Ford hissed out at him next, and Stan glanced over at him. ("Hey, I told you I was…" Stan began under his breath to Ford, both explaining and reminding him that- which of course got him an "I didn't think you meant that-" from Ford, and-)

Miz didn't look like she heard him, squinting at the menu as she tried to read past the coffee stain. "They have Eggs in a Basket, dang, haven't had that in a while. But it'd be kinda boring to get…"

Stan glanced over at the kid (after getting done handling Ford for the moment, kinda) and said, "Kid, get your sister's attention for me, will ya?" The kid grumbled (rumbled?) slightly, then pulled an arm out from under his pillowed head, to reach up and place that hand on top of his sister's head. Miz squeaked in startlement, and looked up.

"Miz. No talking about other dimensions or times when you were in bad situations an' stuff in public. Yeah?" Stan told her more firmly. Miz actually lowered her menu at that.

"Shoot, was I speaking out loud?" she told them, then frowned and poked at her headband with an annoyed look. Stan frowned at that himself.

"Does sealing off your…" he trailed off, not sure what to ask. "Does doin' that make it… uh... harder for you to tell what you're keepin' in your own head or not?" he asked, not so sure he was gettin' this right. (This, of course, got him another "What?!" from Ford…)

"Ah… well…" Miz admitted. "I generally have a non-stop babbling stream of consciousness narrating my life and everything I do and think, happening inside my head at all times." She poked at her headband again before frowning and seeming to tweak something, as she wiggled her fingers around at it. "I guess I need to calibrate this better. Everything just seems so quiet right now. It's a little hard to tell what's in or outside of myself."

"Quiet is good," Bill told her, without opening his eyes or lifting up his head. "Most times. ...Especially now."

Right. "...you do that," Stan told her, then rubbed a hand across his face. (Great. So sealing off her ability to hear thoughts made her own already terrible thought to mouth filter even worse. Wonderful.)

("What do you mean, sealing off her what!?" Ford demanded. "Did she stop keeping other people's emotions out?" Ford stopped for a moment, and went a little pale. "-Has she been projecting-?!" ...And this led to another rushed under-the-breath conversation with his brother, trying to reassure him about the emotional stuff being handled long-since, filling him in on what had happened earlier that afternoon, that everything with that was handled now too, and about how Miz was and had been used to hearing thoughts…)

(...which Ford looked more than a little freaked out about and was about to protest both rather loudly and angrily as 'not being fine, Stan! that's-' until Stan told him that, one, Miz had been hearing, not projecting, and two, Bill had been all for making Miz stop doing that too, just like the emotion-feeling stuff, once he had known about it...)

(...which really only led to Ford agreeing to table this one - like the other topic of discussion - but only until they were all safely home again, and he had Stan alone in his room or the basement someplace to talk to him about…)

Miz raised her menu again, and continued to read through it, then stopped. She pointed at the menu. "So what's this coffee pancake thing about? Is it bitter? Sweet?"

"Yick," was Bill's contribution to the discussion.

Stan shrugged. "Susan pours coffee into the batter. I haven't tried it myself." ...Yeah, sure, guessing the 'secret ingredient' made the plate free, but even he had never been that desperate for somethin' to eat. (Hell, he'd resort to, and risk getting caught at, pickpocketing again before subjecting himself to that. There were worse ways to go out… and the food in jail was both better than that, and free, Stan figured. So, y'know, win-win.)

Miz tilted her head. "Maybe I should go with the corned beef hash instead, I don't usually like coffee unless there's like a whole cup of sugar in it."

Stan let out a laugh at that, he couldn't help it. "You don't like bitter stuff?" he teased.

"I like dark chocolate! But coffee is so… bleh." Miz pouted. Stan let out another laugh.

"Just add sugar!" Stan teased her further (to a frowning look from his brother), as he took his time paging through his own menu (he already knew what he wanted, though, using it as a prop). "I'm sure you can ask Susan to add extra sugar to the pancakes- and you can pour a whole BUNCH of syrup on it too!" (But Miz wasn't the only one he was teasing there, because…)

Ford practically gagged at the thought. "Stan, that's disgusting," he objected. "Don't tell her to eat that!" (By his own line of reasoning, giving the man-eater things to eat that she liked less than eating people would end in a rather obvious conclusion only that much sooner. -Really, what was his brother thinking?!)

"Maybe next time. I like corned beef better." Miz declared.

Bill smiled at her, eyes still closed. "If you don't know what you want, go with what you like," was his simple advice. "Or don't." (The latter got a stuck-out tongue and a giggle at him from his sister. Bill smiled, eyes still closed.)

Susan came back shortly thereafter, and she stroked Bill's hair as she took down everyone's orders. Bill got a simple fruit cup - fresh fruit, freshly-made in-diner, no added sugar or syrup. Miz got the corned beef hash she wanted, along with a three cheese omelette with spinach and some toast with a side of homefries. Stan got a burger for himself, and Ford simply asked for a coffee.

Miz gasped aloud at this. "You can't just have coffee for lunch!" She seemed legitimately upset by this. "You're a large man, you need food! Sustenance! At least get a sandwich or something!" she protested. (Were the Pines really that badly off for funds?)

"I'm perfectly fine with just coffee," Ford informed her, narrowing his eyes at her.

Miz seemed about to argue with him about it, but then stopped herself with a visible effort, and backed down with an, "Alright, Stan makes sure you eat when you need to, so I guess you're fine." That, of course, made Ford look like he wanted to protest that he didn't need anyone babysitting him in order to-

-but his brother was snickering already at this, so Ford crossed his arms and pulled in a deep breath instead, practicing patience in the face of demonic 'prodding'.

"Don't worry, kid. Ford doesn't have to eat a full meal at every mealtime when everybody else is eating," he told her. Then he leaned in and said in a fake whisper, "He's watching his figure." (Ford, of course, quickly protested this with a sputtered-out, "-Stanley!")

Miz tilted her head and thought about it before turning to Ford and telling him seriously, "You're beautiful just the way you are." (Ford covered his face at this, because really?! Was this really happening to him right now?! ...And his brother wasn't helping either, letting out a snort before muffling his amusement behind a hand. Ford lifted his head and sent a glare his way.)

"Really, though," Stan said, leaning back, "Don't worry about it. He ate breakfast a little later than everybody else today, in his room," Stan told her, a little more seriously. "I'll make sure he eats somethin' substantial when we all get back home," he added, eyeing his brother, who proceeded to roll his eyes at him and let out a huff at this news.

Miz nodded at that before she thought about it and turned to Stan so she could tell him as well. "You're also beautiful the way you are."

Stan let out a laugh at this. "More like devilishly handsome!" he joked, taking the praise. "But thanks."

Miz turned to nuzzle against Bill's side. "And you're the prettiest, both triangle and human-ish."

Bill chittered at her a bit, with a very put-upon look. "I'm not pretty. I'm a snappy dresser. And handsome when I want to be," and Miz giggled at this.

"Okay, you're handsome," she teased him. Bill huffed out a breath at this, looking away from her, and- Ford stared. Was Bill blushing?!

"...you're beautiful, too," Bill spoke up to say, though he told her this a bit quietly, both serious and small, looking down at the table a bit as he said it. This, and… "Perfectly-imperfect." he said next, in a slightly more normal tone of voice for him.

Miz made a happy sound and leaned over to nuzzle him again, almost leaning on him. "Thanks," she said sincerely, blushing a little herself. It meant a lot, to know her brother thought she was imperfect and perfect, that she was flawed and still beautiful and right just the way she was.

Bill continued to look down at the table. And he smiled. (Not grinned. Smiled. He smiled, like he meant-)

Before things could get any weirder for Ford, the food came and interrupted everything (and Susan's 'petting' of the demons interrupted things further). Ford was almost relieved to watch Miz begin stuffing her face, instead of talking and being rather weird with Bill. (This play-acting of hers could not possibly end well, for any of them.) ...At least she wasn't just shoving her entire plate down her throat now out in full view of the public, like she had swallowed entire fish whole at the boat.

Susan gave Bill and Miz a few more pats on the head after putting everyone's plates down. "A hungry little one, aren't ya?" she coo'ed at Miz before heading back to work. Miz preened under the attention. Stan muffled his laughter behind his cup.

Miz cut up her omelette and 'nom'ed it. "It always tastes different when someone else makes it, compared to when you cook it yourself," she mused. "Even when using the same recipe. Cooking is amazing," she practically sparkled with awe.

Stan let out a short laugh. "It's really that amazing to you?" He'd kind of gotten that feeling from her before, but...

"Cooking is the path to life. Without access to cooked or prepared food, no species would have evolved enough to become people." Miz said simply. "It's what separates humans from most other animals."

Bill snickered, and then said, "Most, but not all," which had Ford practically bristling in place, getting him all riled up for some reason.

Miz shrugged. "I introduced cooking to the creatures in my world. Though most of their methods involved super burning their food, various acids, mincing stuff into small pieces…" she paused. "Well, once they started experimenting, I got to try out a lot of very different types of cuisine. It was fun." Oh~ there was that one restaurant on planet Joo-Fan that she'd been meaning to go to...

Luckily for Ford's (relative) peace of mind, the demons left it at that and didn't say anything more as they ate their food. Miz seemed to be enjoying herself, looking around to watch the people around them.

But near the end of their meal, Miz glanced over, out the window before pausing and saying, "Is that Gideon?"

Bill stiffened immediately and raised his head abruptly to glare out the window. Hell, Stan turned in place, tossed an arm over the back of the booth seat, and did the same thing.

Ford glanced between both of them, slowly lowering his fork and wondering what was the cause of such alarm.

Miz squeaked when Bill placed a hand on her head and nudged her down and below the level of the table surface, hiding her from view. Stan would have found it funny, considering Bill had all but pushed Miz under the table, but this wasn't the time for that. He didn't want the kid around Gideon; having Miz around him would be even worse.

Stan thought hard and fast, turning away from the window and casually glancing around at all the exit paths out of the diner.

...and Ford still didn't know why the tension had suddenly gone up. He didn't really know much about young Gideon, only having met him a few times, but he remembered how Bill had stuck the boy in that cage, dancing for him. The demon wasn't afraid of him, surely. Shouldn't this youngest of their Zodiac members be the one looking out for Bill…?

They all remained quiet, watching the pale child approach the diner, surrounded as always by his various prison friends. It didn't seem like he'd noticed them, as he approached the steps up to the door of the diner. ...Hell, Stan hoped it stayed that way. He leaned in across the table, a little closer to Bill, who was still hissing out at a struggling Miz to 'stay still and out of sight!', and…

Stan told the two of them under his breath, "There's a back door to this joint. 'Kid, you know it, right? I'll gonna get up and distract him; you get your sister out of here and back to the Shack, yeah?"

Bill nodded once, looking grim and just the slightest bit worried. He really didn't want his little sister anywhere near Gideon. Miz finally stopped her struggles, still half on the booth chair and half under the table. "Wha? I'm not helpless! I can walk past him no problem!"

"Look, Miz-" Stan started to say before the kid cut him off with a-

"This isn't about being helpless! It's-"

-only for the kid to get cut off himself, as the dragon-lady huffed out, "He doesn't know me. If he doesn't see me with you guys he wouldn't give me the time of day." And that…

...had Stan going expressionless on her (because did she really not realize…? Had the kid really not explained that-), while Bill told her, "Stanley just got done introducing both of us to nearly everyone in town! The living ventriloquist dummy isn't Stanford. -He talks to people and listens to rumors! He will know who you are!" Bill told her quite firmly.

"Fine, I can head out, wait for you guys outside," Miz told them. "I can even take the back door, so I wouldn't have to go near him."

Ford glanced back and forth between everyone. "Why is this such a problem?"

"-Yes, disassemble your vessel and go through the window-wall," Bill told Miz under his breath. "I'll meet you outside, out back, within three minutes."

"Bill," Ford said.

"-He's a bad influence," Bill hissed out at Ford finally, looking irate and glaring mental daggers at him. And Ford looked taken aback at this, though only for a moment. (Stan blinked as Ford almost immediately smoothed his face into a neutral expression and straightened in place, folding his hands in front of him on the table and giving Bill a long look, because… The heck?)

"He tried to kill Dipper with some shears when Dipper told him that Mabel didn't want to date him. And he refused to take 'no' for an answer when Mabel told him herself that she didn't want to date him," Miz whispered out as a further explanation, peeking over at the pale boy chatting with a huge muscular man as they got even closer, almost to the stairs up to the door...

When Stan stared at her over that one (because the twins hadn't told him about any shears junk) and glanced up at the kid (was she 'confused' again? Kid wasn't correcting her, but the kid was also pretty distracted right now, glaring daggers at the …), Miz shrugged and added, "He's a yandere." Yeah. Sure. As if that explained anything to him.

While Ford and Stan were still processing this, Miz's form seemed to shimmer and turn into vapor, flowing away out the window and then over and off to the side, vanishing out of sight.

Miz circled the building, and then came down near the back door, where she reformed herself out of sight of any passerby.

Bill relaxed almost immediately once she was outside and away from Gideon, who was walking up the steps of the diner, coming up the other side of the diner, to come in.

Stan blinked as Bill pushed himself to his feet and vanished as he left the booth - one second there and then, just, not.

Stan glanced around, not sure how the kid thought he was gonna get out - there were too many people in-between him and the door, and nobody was gonna move outta the kid's way now - but it had looked like the kid had been heading for the other door - away from Gideon - not looking like he was giving a care in the world, but Stan had seen the tense set of Bill's shoulders.

Stan did a quick mental calculation of the price for their meal, plus tax and (reluctantly) a small tip, and slapped the money (in exact change) down on the table before getting up himself. They were pretty much finished eating anyway. He walked normally, with a bit of a slouch and waved at Susan as he passed.

He knew it would happen, but still had to hold back a cringe when he heard the other door go (...and saw it stay open a bit longer than usual even after one of Gideon's two goons had let go of it, finished with holding it open from where they came in from the other side…) and then heard Gideon's shrill voice call out, "Stan Pines! How delightful to see you. I haven't seen you in town for a while."

"Eh, been busy around the Shack." Stan grumbled, not stopping his walk as he continued on. He saw the way Gideon's eyes were tracking him, and scanning the restaurant for, presumably, the kid himself.

"Busy keeping watch on your guest?" Gideon drawled out, and Stan had to cover a snort. Kid looked like he was desperately trying not to sweat. (...Yeah, Stan was fine with that. Stay scared, and stay away from the Shack, ya little pint-sized jerk.)

Stan shrugged. "Eh," he grunted out, letting nothing but complete unconcern show on his face. "You know the kid. He's… around," he told the Gleeful kid, not looking up as he saw, in the corner of his peripheral vision as he moved, somebody a bit taller with blue hair peek around the damn corner of the building, instead of staying out back with his sister like he should've. He was almost to the door, and here Bill was already outside; probably managed to get out past Gideon's goon somehow when the door paused in closing for that second or two there. (Hell, he coulda held the door for him on the way out, if the kid had just given him any more of a heads-up on what he'd needed. Damn kid, pushing things like that…)

(Normally, the kid would wait for him for stuff, but Stan knew the kid must've been on pins and needles at the idea of leaving Miz outside on her own for too long, even if the kid would probably never admit it out loud. ...Maybe because the Gleeful kid might have more of those 'reformed' ex-cons of his around? Hell, the lot of them weren't that bad though, even for hardcore convicted killers. Though why they'd end up deciding to follow around that little shit...)

Gideon's eyes narrowed at Stan's half-inflammatory evasiveness and it looked like he was gonna start something, but Ford strode over and stared down at him, before saying, "It was nice seeing you, Gideon. But we have to go. Our guest is waiting outside," dammit, Ford, "And we need to get said guest back to the Shack, now," he said in a firm tone, not exactly hostile. Gideon looked a little taken aback, and Stan blinked as Ford continued on with, "Stanley simply insists on our guest socializing with people, while under supervision, to see if they can learn to behave." And then Ford made a slight movement of his right hand at his side, to…

...brush along the side of his jacket, underneath which one of his two guns was holstered.

It was a deliberately 'not deliberate' motion that nearly had the hair on the back of Stan's neck standing up - not because Ford was being threatening, but because he wasn't trying to be. Because Ford had done it automatically, Stan could tell. Ford had learned to unconsciously check his favorite firearm placement, and at the same time effectively tell anyone who might be thinking about starting a fight with him that they might want to think twice about it, because he was armed and dangerous and ready to use it.

And because Gideon was Gideon, that 'deliberate' but unconscious motion drew Gideon's eyes towards it.

...And Gideon relaxed when he saw it. The Gleeful kid drew all the wrong conclusions from that damn scary-ass motion. Stan could see that, too.

Because seeing that firearm right there got a wicked grin out of the child for just a second there, before he smoothed it away again. ...Because the Gleeful kid thought the gun had been for Bill.

(Then Stan had to fight to keep his face straight, because it suddenly occurred to him that… Ford wanted Bill dead, and he'd already tried to shoot Bill dead more than once before now.)

(...What if he was the one reading the situation wrong, instead…?)

-Stan kept on walking. He didn't try to correct the little pint-sized ex-con jerk, right or wrong or not. Nope. He was gonna leave that whole mess to his brother this time, thanks...

"Behaving, eh?" Gideon chuckled out at the two of them, two rather large individuals (bodyguards?) at his side, who then all but jumped to laugh along with him. (Ford frowned a little at this.)

"We have things under control," Ford told him more calmly than he actually felt about the situation at-hand with Bill… (especially with his brother headed out the door to be left alone with said demons again. He needed to get out of here now.) "He's… learning to be better. Slowly." And Ford grimaced at his own half-lie (Bill would never really change, after all, not ever), but for some reason… the child seemed to trust him in this, at his word, and relaxed completely.

...said level of (unearned and undeserved) trust becoming even more apparent when the child let out another laugh and said, "Well, make sure you train 'im properly!" brightly next, with a grin.

Ford stared at this. And he tried not to think too hard about the fact that the one thing, the most worrisome thing, that he'd thought of, with Stan trying to 'twist the demon up inside his own head so badly that he will never tell him no…' was something that this child had so breezily and cheerily brought up just now as a completely desireable outcome-

The boy then turned towards the counter - all but ignoring them- him (...Stan was already out the door, damn him...) now, turning away from him to focus, rather, on complimenting the waitress, Susan, on her hair - and pulled himself up to a seat at said counter, his bodyguards sitting down on either side of him, defensively eyeing him for some reason.

Ford watched the child take up and start looking through one of the diner's menus, and after Ford had finished eyeing and evaluating the situation strike and trying not to think too hard about the fact that-, he turned away from them and made his own way to the door, as well.

Stan was already outside, standing across the street with Bill and Miz.

(...in full view of the diner's large glass windows. Ford had no idea what Stan or either of the two demons were thinking- though perhaps the simple answer was they weren't-)

Stan gave him a look; he'd finally caught on to what Ford had done. What he'd unintentionally (Stan hoped) and unconsciously implied. Stan wasn't all that happy about it, but if it kept Gideon from being suspicious, well, Stan would let it slide this time. (Kid wouldn't like it, but the kid could just deal with it, Stan figured.)

"Alright, looks like we're gonna have to cut the trip short here this time. Let's head back." Stan told them all. Miz was holding Bill's hand, sending worried glances back at the diner. Bill was already turning to walk off in the direction of the Shack, knowing all the shortcuts into and around and out-of the town that would allow them to run into (read: avoid encountering) the least amount of traffic or people.

As Stan and Ford followed them, Ford made a note to ask the twins about their interactions with Gideon, because… well, while he'd hardly trust the word of a demon as the whole truth of a situation… clearly they hadn't told him everything...

Illusion is Reality

Chapter 95.1

-Maniac Interlude-

(3rd person POV)

"Hey... Bill's been gone for a pretty long time."

Everyone turned to look at Keyhole as he pushed his food around his plate. Pyronica sighed. "It's only been a week. It's longer than he usually takes, but it's not actually the longest he's been gone. I remember once when Bill lost track of time and I didn't see him for a whole month."

Keyhole grimaced. "That doesn't make me feel any better."

Pyronica shrugged, not really caring either way. "Bill will return when he does. And he always does." She really didn't see why anyone would worry over that. Bill would never leave them. They belonged to him after all. And he belonged to them as well.

Xanthar snuffled and leaned against Keyhole, comforting him (or seeking comfort for himself?)

Keyhole buried a hand into Xanthar's thick fur and sighed. "I'm just... worried that maybe something happened to him. I mean, all we know is that he apparently found a brother, whatever that means, and that's all we really know." He pulled out his Com and frowned at it, pushing his dinner plate aside, not really having an appetite. "Has anyone been able to contact him?"

Hectorgon twitched when everyone turned to stare at him. "Why do you all automatically assu-"

"So did you?" PaciFire asked, picking his teeth with the bones from dinner, then tossing the bones into his 2nd mouth and grinding it down to swallow (he had a calcium deficiency okay?) Hectorgon groaned. "Alright, so I may have tracked down his signal to try and pinpoint where he is..."

"And? Where is she?" Kryptos leaned forward, his half drank bowl of soup nearly tipping over from the motion. Amorphous Shape reached out a tendril to move the bowl aside before it spilled. Would be a pain to have to clean it up. Both for them, and the potential stress it would cause Bill if he really did return home to see it. Amorphous Shape shivered a little, his mother was quite terrifying sometimes.

Hectorgon sighed, running a hand along his plane. "Okay, well. Do you want the good news or bad news?"

"Bill's not dead or captured again, right?" Now Pyronica had her eye narrowed, baring her teeth at the thought that they were going to have to fight whatever asshole managed to-

"Not, nothing like that." Hectorgon waved his hands quickly. Pyronica's flames had been flaring up. "I found Bill, but she's in another dimension."

"Well that's no problem. We have a teleporter right there." 8-Ball shrugged. Hectorgon shook his head by rotating his base. "No, that's the bad news. It's a dimension we can't get to."

"What does that mean?" Keyhole fiddled with his Com, swiping through the pages, opening and closing the chatbox.

"It's somewhere outside this Dimensional set. Outside this Reality." Hectorgon tried to explain. "It's... The signal is coming from somewhere that doesn't exist, according to all my scans, because it doesn't exist here."

Everyone stared. "So, is he stuck there? Can he not find his way home to us?" Pyronica asked, saying what they were all thinking (fearing). To their relief, Hectorgon shook his head again. "Bill is perfectly capable of returning. She just... doesn't." Here, he grimaced again. "I've managed to hack her Com and see some of what she's been writing or doing. She's having fun there." He paused and then added, "There are humans there."

"Wait." Kryptos sat up straight with a disturbed look on his face. "Humans? So she's on Earth? I thought you said she was somewhere that didn't exist?"

"It IS Earth, just not our Earth." Hectorgon deadpanned. Kryptos hissed in a breath. "Alternatives. A parallel world..." His mind raced. Bill really WAS far from home. They wouldn't be able to get to her- make her come home- there was no means of travel-

Kryptos frowned. The only way for travel between worlds in such a way would require a portal. A transdimensional portal built at the location you wanted to connect into. That's what made portals so difficult in the beginning. Portal technology had come a long way, not the least because of Bill's help. The Federation perfected portals so they could spread to a new Dimension and begin exploring (conquering) it. But they only managed to figure out portals from studying Bill's energy signature whenever she slipped between them.

This was information that Hectorgon had unearthed from the Federation files he hacked into. He told Kryptos about it, the two geniuses discussing together about what it all meant. The most stable portals would be built at the location that you wanted to go to, which was pretty much impossible to do without any contact with said other dimension, otherwise a portal would only be able to send through a few ships at once before closing behind them. A one way trip.

The Federation simply sent through a few ships filled with the builders and supplies to construct the portal they wanted on the other side. Sometimes they ended up not having enough supplies or the team would be killed by some hostile natives, but after the set about of time, the Federation merely sent more ships through just in case.

But...

That only worked for dimensions that EXIST.

Dimensions that were created by the AXOLOTL.

Their AXOLOTL.

And if what Kryptos studied about theoretical parallel worlds was accurate, what Hectorgon was talking about was a dimebsion outside their AXOLOTL's domain. A world under the domain of a different AXOLOTL. That was where Bill was, and they wouldn't be able to get to him.

Tangent, the fact that they could still TEXT Bill was a miracle in and of itself. Though, Kryptos glared at his own Com. The time difference between dimensions meant that it took a very long time for Bill to receive or send texts. Kryptos tried to calculate it out and was pretty sure they had at least a week of delay between texts they sent and the texts arriving at wherever Bill was.

It had been a week now, so they should be getting a text back from Bill soon. Kryptos had been tempted to have his Com on and staring at it like Keyhole did, but he'd had more important things to do.

Like getting the supplies he needed for the Temporal Destabalizer.

Murdering the god of Time wasn't as easy a task as Kryptos thought. Many of the items on his list were blacklisted non-tradable goods.

Kryptos scowled.

He had put off getting the last few items because he didn't want to talk to the man who would be able to get it for him.

The newest head of the Lituratura family.

Jorgio had been dead for centuries. Kryptos knew and understood that. He had no reason to hold onto this grudge with the man dead. But he still didn't like that he would have to ask Jorgio's great-great-great-great grandson for help. Even if, by this point, the Lituratura family no longer knew what their ancestors had done to him.

Kryptos clentched his fist. Outliving your enemy didn't really feel like revenge. And Bill had told Kryptos to let it go. Heck, everyone else had also told him to just let it go. The guy who'd hurt him was long dead. There was nothing and no one to hold onto this hate for. Bit Kryptos just didn't want to just let bygones be bygones. And it was petty. It was hateful. It was awful. Kryptos knew that.

But he couldn't just stop himself from feeling this way. He didn't know how to. But for the most part it didn't cause him any issues. But here and now, when he knew that the Mafia familia would have the resources and connections needed to get him what he wanted, Kryptos wanted to scream. He tried his best to hide all of this from his expression as he listened to Hectorgon explaining just how far away Bill was.

Well, Kryptos excused himself and left the dining room to return to his own quarters. As much as he missed Bill, having her away at the moment was a good opportunity. Kryptos could plan and scheme all he wanted without having to hide his thoughts. Bill would stop him if she ever found out how close he was getting to (temporarily) killing Time Baby. Kryptos wasn't stupid. He knew what would happen if Time Baby died.

Bill had mentioned offhand a few times about the Pillars she was part of. Kryptos could put together what it would mean if Time Baby, the Pillar of Time, were to fall. Heck, Bill once mentioned about accidentally knocking down Time Baby and having to hold up Time before it unraveled and caused a temporal collapse. Well. Yeah. Kryptos knew that would be a problem.

But. It would only be a problem for other people.

Kryptos had been studying everything he knew about Time. How it worked, how it functioned, how it trudged ever forward, requiring the most intense of technology to go backward. Kryptos could easily build a Seal around himself, around all of the Death Star, place his home and his family outside of Time. They would be safe from the collapse. And the rest of the multiverse wouldn't even notice that anything had been wrong once Time Baby reformed and put everything back in place.

All it would mean was the fact that for a mere 1000 years, the rest of the multiverse would be inaccessible.

And Kryptos saw no problem with that. What did he care for the rest of the multiverse? His friends were here. His family was here. They would be safe once he set up the barrier. And when Bill returned, they would all be together for 1000 years, with nowhere else for Bill to go, Kryptos would be able to have 1000 years together with Bill.

...and it's not like the rest of the multiverse would be hurt by this, no time would pass for them, they would be perfectly fine. And Bill's power would ensure that he and the rest of their friends would survive the thousand years with no problem. They had Bill's huge garden filled to bursting with crops and flowers, and it wasn't like Bill couldn't simply create food for them. They would all be together. It wouldn't be a problem.

Kryptos just needed to finish making this Anti-Time barrier. And then build his Temporal Destabalizer. And he only needed a few more items to do so.

Time-Tape, a Gravitational generator, a LOT of Cosmic Sand and... Unobtainium.

Kryptos frowned. Those were difficult things to get.

But the mafia, with their connections and money, would be able to get them. Kryptos would simply have to suck up his pride and ask the current head of the Lituratura for help. Bill had a good relationship with them, even now, and they all knew who Bill's family was. They would be willing to do a few favors. Kryptos simply didn't want to ask them.

But, Kryptos was getting to the point where he was considering just doing so. After all, what was more important here? His pride? Or his chance for pursuing Bill in a romantic sense?

"What if Mother doesn't like you back?"

"Auuugh!" Kryptos jumped and turned to see Amorphous Shape lounging on the sofa in his room. "Ammy! What the heck!?" Kryptos placed a hand on his front plane and felt his heart buzzing quickly. "What are you doing in my room!?" Kryptos cried.

"I followed you." Ammy blinked slowly.

"...why?" Kryptos groaned.

"I was bored." Ammy shrugged.

"Right, well, please leave." Kryptos buried his face in his hand. Amorphous Shape merely laid back on the sofa. "I'll leave after you answer my question." Ammy said simply. "What if mother doesn't like you back?"

Kryptos took a deep breath. "I already prepared for that. If Bill says 'no' I will accept it."

"And then what?" Ammy tilted one of his 'head' blocks. "Will you move on? Find some other being to lust over?"

"Can we please not talk about it." Kryptos turned to face Bill's son.

"But I want to know."

Kryptos internally groaned at this aspect of Amorphous Shape that was so much like his mother, both Bill and Ammy were curious about everything. Nosy as fuck too. Neither of them really get the hint to leave well enough alone. And, Kryptos knew that Amorphous Shape wouldn't drop this matter until Kryptos told him enough to satisfy his curiosity.

"I will be upset." The polytool admitted. "But I won't blame Bill for not liking me back. That... that's fine." It wasn't. But Kryptos wasn't going to force Bill to do something he didn't want. And he would do his best to pretend it wasn't going to be a problem. If Bill said no, at least. Kryptos really, really hoped Bill would say yes. But...

(If he had to be honest with himself, Kryptos suspected that Bill didn't see him as a potential partner. A friend, definitely. A sibling, most likely. But even so, he had to know for sure. He had to hear it from Bill herself.)

"Look, if you're gonna go around asking me about my love life, I'm gonna ask you the same." Kryptos tried to turn the conversation around. But Amorphous Shape shrugged with a, "Haven't met anyone I'm interested in." He absently played with a loose thread on the sofa. "I suppose I haven't met much people aside from you all." Ammy blinked slowly. "Is romance really so important? Is finding a mate really so important?"

"It's complicated." Kryptos gave up on making Ammy leave, he clearly wasn't going to. "Sometimes, you get to know someone, and you realize that you just... Love them. Love being with them, hanging out with them, seeing them happy." Kryptos was flushing darker and darker as he spoke. "And then you realize you want to be with them. You want to be special to them. For them to look at you and want to be with you too."

Amorphous Shape wiggled on the sofa until he got comfortable. "But we're already loved by mother. And we already have mother forever. He'll never leave us. He will always return."

"It's not- that's not the same!" Kryptos sighed. "It's like... I... I want to... be close to Bill in a way that isn't just friendship." He waved his hands, searching for the right words. "I mean, Bill is very adorable and I do, kinda, want to... t-touch her lines an-and-" Kryptos was nearly black with embarrassment, "-measure her angles-"

But no etching. Pyronica had told Kryptos many times that Bill was uncomfortable with the actual act of mating when it involved herself. Oh, Bill was definitely a pervert. Kryptos knew that from personal experience. But the instant she had to be the one involved in anything more than just touching...

Kryptos groaned. "But I'm not just after Bill for that. I just... really like her." He slumped over his desk chair. "Look, can you please leave now? I have a lot of work to do." He told Amorphous Shape, hoping that the segmented being was finally satisfied. He was. Ammy nodded. "Well. Alright." He slid off the sofa and glided smoothly towards the door.

Before leaving, he stated "Regardless of what happens and what mother chooses, he will still love you."

"I know that." Kryptos did. He knew very well how much Bill cherished him. It was part of why he loved her so.

Ammy nodded. "Good. I'm glad to hear that." He left the room, closing the door behind him and Kryptos wondered about getting a lock. As he settled back down to begin penning a letter to the current Lituratura head (what was his name? Sammio?), Kryptos wondered how Ammy managed to sneak into his room with him without him noticing.

He looked down at his paper and jumped a little to see Ammy's handwriting on it with the words 'I'm a ninja'

Dammit Ammy!

(Ax POV)

The days went on and I couldn't feel Bill anywhere. I knew they had left and the worry unsettled me. I couldn't keep watch over Bill while they were away. I didn't enjoy no knowing. I shouldn't be so worried, but I was. I pulled in my power, to prevent Space from expanding. It would slow down the heat death of the universe. The worry built up in my core. Bill wasn't here. The Weirdness within the Nightmare Realm was powerful enough to last for a couple million years, which wasn't that long, all things considered. It leaked, that was to be expected for a collapsed dimension, but even with me grabbing onto the leaked energy to convert into a form I could use, I could do nothing to stop the leak. The Nightmare Realm wasn't meant to hold together.

Even with Bill gone, I would be able to use the leakage from the Nightmare Realm to sustain the universe for a few million years. I can only hope Bill returns before that time.

Time Baby hasn't even realized Bill was gone. He didn't care. I allowed myself to sigh. Why that boy didn't understand how important Bill was to the continual existence of Reality was beyond me.

We three are the Pillars of reality. We were all important.

But Time Baby never sees just what it was that Bill did, what Bill helped us with. I suppose it was my fault for never sitting the two of them down for this talk. But I've never had to have this talk with my Bill and Time Baby before.

The others I've had never even had the chance of ever getting along enough for me to need to talk to them about this.

I've always wanted preferred for those two to get along. I've told all my Bills to try and get along with Time Baby. They've never bothered. The two would fight all the time and end up destroying each other. Generally, Bill would kill Time Baby. It's happened over and over and over and-

Frankly, I only really request such a thing out of routine by now.

So imagine my surprise that this Bill actually tried. Still tries, actually. Even after everything Time Baby did to them.

And I didn't do anything about it.

For a brief moment, I wondered if perhaps... Bill had decided to leave, had found someplace that they liked better than here. For a brief moment, I almost felt afraid. The idea of Bill leaving and never coming back... after I've made a decision (for myself, by myself) to actually try and perhaps... be a father, a real father, to Bill...

...It hurt.

It hurt to think of what I would do if Bill never returned to me.

I couldn't imagine a world without them anymore. Perhaps I'm being foolish. The other Mes certainly thought so, leaving me one by one until I was alone. They didn't want anything to do with an AXOLOTL who chose to love their Bill Cipher. And this here, was part of the reason.

I was worried. I was stressed. I was wondering where Bill was, when Bill would come back, whether or not they even would.

It hurt, not knowing.

For one insane moment, I almost considered getting one of those 'Com devices' that all the mortals were getting nowadays, a way to be able to contact Bill when they left the boundaries of my Reality. But that was a ridiculous idea. I couldn't even hold one. I didn't have thumbs-

I shook my head, waving away some of my clouds. That wasn't the point. I shouldn't be thinking about this sort of thing at all. My purpose was to keep Reality running as long as I could before everything ends. I shouldn't be wasting my energy with worry. But I couldn't help myself. I didn't know where Bill was, whether they were safe or-

Wow. I really have become a father, haven't I?

I frowned and burrowed into one of my clouds. I felt odd. Or rather, I was feeling anything at all. I had been numb for so long, simply going about my duty without thinking of anything else, mind clear, heart calm and uncaring of the world around me.

It was easier not to care. It was more fair to not care.

But now I can't go a day without feeling.

Is this how Bill goes through life everyday?

It's exhausting.

It was odd in a way. I felt... for a lack of a better word, more alive than I've been for trillions of years. When an entity gets to be my age, the days blur together and you get so used to things. Numb and done and just going through a routine without really thinking about it. But now I've found myself struck with all sorts of new thoughts and feelings and I didn't know how to handle it.

Things have felt strange ever since the other AXOLOTL disconnected from me.

I felt light. I felt free. I WAS free.

It was something I was still unused to.

Desires I was never meant to feel, wants I was never meant to have.

I don't even know what I'm thinking anymore. The thoughts in my head were too much for me. I had to stop worrying. I shook my head and went back to my work.

I gathered more of the leaking weirdness from the Nightmare Realm. If left alone, it would merely diffuse into the multiverse, mildly effecting the creatures within it as they absorbed and grew under the effects of Bill's energy. But when I gather it myself, I could clean it, use the energy for my own work.

Not for the Souls I have to recycle, but for the new worlds I had to create.

Every new Space needed a bang. An initial burst of energy and mass to get the ball rolling, to push the space apart so it would expand and grow. Bill's leaking energy had to go somewhere, so I merely took it to help me with my work. But I could only do this for so long as the Nightmare Realm still had energy to leak. A few million years go by so quickly.

Perhaps...

I sent my gaze down at that odd little polytool that Bill had taken in. He sought to kill Time Baby. I knew this, of course. I doubt Bill did. Bill, for all their Sight, was very blind to what goes on right before them. They didn't like to think badly of the people they loved. They didn't like to suspect them of such things. I had originally thought to warn Bill about that child (what was his name again? Kryptos?) and his ambitions. But now, I wonder if maybe... maybe having Time cease functioning, at least for a little while (a thousand years was nothing really, I've had naps that lasted longer). So I kept watch over his antics and set up preparations to make sure Reality wouldn't fall from the loss of a pillar for a short time.

And it wasn't as if I was only allowing this because it would be a good excuse to not work for a thousand years.

Definitely not.

...I really have been corrupted, haven't I?

Somehow, I didn't feel disgusted at myself like I thought I would.

Illusion is Reality

Chapter 95.5

Interlude, various conversations and then a continuation

(After the DDNMD game, in Ford's room)

Dipper slowly pushed the door to Great-Uncle Ford's bedroom open. And he had an odd mixed feeling of relief and uncomfortable exclusion as he saw Grunkle Stan and Mabel sitting next to Great-Uncle Ford (and what his great-uncle looked like just then). He paused, and began to quietly back out of the room, thinking that maybe he should leave and just let them…

...but then Mabel looked up and straightened, and he saw both Grunkle Stan and then Great-Uncle Ford lift their heads to look over, and…

"Get over here, silly!" Mabel enthused out, making a wavey sweater-hand motion at him from Great-Uncle Ford's left side. She said it a little more quietly than usual, but it was clear from looking at them all that they all thought…

Dipper couldn't help but blush a little and duck his head slightly, as he moved the rest of the way into Great-Uncle Ford's bedroom and closed the door behind him with a soft click, as the door latched shut.

...He still felt both a little like he was intruding, and a little like he was not, as he walked over to where Mabel was sitting, smiling up at him, and Grunkle Stan was looking him over with a slight grunkly frown, and Great-Uncle Ford was looking up at him with a tired but welcoming smile, and...

"Sorry," Dipper said, feeling completely silly and maybe a little stupid about it, now, as Mabel crawled her way up into Great-Uncle Ford's lap, and Dipper sat down at his great-uncle's left side where Mabel had just made room for him. And Dipper couldn't help but let out a breath as Great-Uncle Ford wrapped the arm he'd just had around Mabel around him, too, and…

-Dipper let out a soft laugh as Mabel practically tackle-hugged him in place, still half in Great-Uncle Ford's lap. Great-Uncle Ford let out a slightly startled laugh himself, and Grunkle Stan… Grunkle Stan just moved in a little closer, to wrap his other arm around Mabel in a hug, for 'full hug coverage', as Mabel liked to put it.

"Are you all right, my boy?" Great-Uncle Ford asked him quietly, and Dipper let out another breath and nodded a few times. Yeah, he'd been out there for awhile, and kind of almost gotten 'cornered' by the two demons again, but… yeah, he was fine.

He just hadn't wanted to disrupt what was going on in here, is all. He… hadn't really thought he'd be able to try and make anything better, just by being there. But with the way Mabel was hugging him now and giving him that lopsided smile, he knew that she knew, and that she thought he was being a big dumb-dumb head about it.

Because yeah, Great-Uncle Ford had been looking a lot better than he usually did when he and Mabel tried to bookend him with hugs and… just sitting next to him for awhile sometimes, when he couldn't even do that. And yeah, it had left Dipper feeling grateful, and happy almost, that he hadn't gotten in there first, before Grunkle Stan had sat down where he usually sat - and boy, had that been uncomfortable to feel when he'd realized what he was thinking...

...but it was really the truth. Dipper was terrible at making Great-Uncle Ford feel better, and when he'd walked in… It was weird, but Dipper knew that this wasn't something Mabel had done. And he probably wouldn't have believed it, if he hadn't saw it. But the way Great-Uncle Ford and Grunkle Stan had been sitting next to each other...

...yeah, Mabel totally had stars in her eyes of excitement over it for a reason (and yeah, she'd just been waiting for him to come in, to share). Because when Dipper had walked in, Mabel had been curled up right into Great-Uncle Ford's left side, sure, but at Great-Uncle Ford's right...

Grunkle Stan had been sitting there with his arm around Great-Uncle Ford's shoulder, and Great-Uncle Ford had been just leaning up against him, his head knocked up against Grunkle Stan's own, and… he'd looked so relaxed. They both had. Great-Uncle Ford had had his arm around Grunkle Stan's back, too, and they'd both had their eyes closed, and… Mabel had almost been superfluous, a superfluous hug, in addition to that. And that was saying something.

And there wasn't any awkwardness there, either. Something had happened, that had had them finally… well...

"-You two finally hugged it out!" Mabel almost squealed out at them, finally, his twin unable to keep it in anymore. And...

...oh. Oh, man. Dipper had maybe been expecting old-man blushes, or some looking away and scratching the back of their heads, all embarrassed, with some denials or something. Because with the way the two of them had been fighting before they'd gotten back, and the extra week that they hadn't talked about yet, that had worried him and Mabel at first when they'd first heard about it - because an extra week of the two of them being 'dumb' and arguing without them around to try and stop them, when they'd been yelling at each other like that, the last time they'd saw them? That was kind of horrifying. But with the two of them acting like this now, Dipper had thought...

And he hadn't been the only one. Dipper winced, and he saw Mabel's face fall, and her struggle not to frown, as the mood between their grunkle and great-uncle shifted to something that neither of them had been expecting. Something kind of heavy and… hurt, almost.

And it was a guilty kind of hurt, that Great-Uncle Ford was feeling. (Which meant…)

"...Grunkle Stan?" Mabel asked, her voice wavering a little bit as she looked up at him, and their grunkle let out a sigh and gave her a little squeeze of a hug, before letting go to muss up her hair a bit. "Did you…?"

"Wasn't exactly a hug," Grunkle Stan told them both in grunkly old-man tones, though he sounded almost muted as he said it. "Guess we worked through a couple things, though."

Dipper had to stifle a frown as he felt Great-Uncle Ford wince at his side. ...But apparently, so did Grunkle Stan, because he just sighed and looked tired himself, as he lifted a hand and… ruffled Great-Uncle Ford's hair, next? (Woah.) "Hey, knucklehead, I ain't mad. You know that. Right?"

And somehow, this made things even worse, because Great-Uncle Ford curled in on himself a little more and looked even more miserable, now.

"I'm sorry, Stan," Great-Uncle Ford said quietly, looking away, not looking at any of them, and he looked slightly startled as Grunkle Stan ruffled his hair again at the back and then pulled him in closer, kind of cupping his head and neck.

"I ain't," Grunkle Stan said roughly, and, okay, he and Mabel were totally lost now. "And you shouldn't be either."

Whatever was going on, though, what Grunkle Stan had just said seemed to work, at least a little, because… It had Great-Uncle Ford looking terribly pained all over again, but kind of… more openly this time? And he just sort of… ducked his head up against the side of Grunkle Stan's head next, and started to relax again. It looked… painful. But… kind of that good kind of painful? Like the pain was bleeding out slowly, instead of just staying stuck inside.

Dipper swallowed hard, as he watched this. Mabel had used to have an easier time at this stuff, before. Pain had used to drain away a lot more quickly, in elementary school. Just… shave both your heads, and she'd let go and it'd all drain out in almost an instant. But things had gotten harder and harder in middle school, and Dipper had started to see it last summer - what it looked like when your twin held in pain, instead of letting you help them get it all out.

This looked like something Great-Uncle Ford had been holding in for a really long time, and this wasn't going to go away in just an hour, or even one night.

Dipper exchanged a look with his twin, but Mabel gave him something of a hopeful look, and Dipper couldn't help but relax a little bit.

"Stan…" Great-Uncle Ford said quietly.

"Nope, none of that," Grunkle Stan said next. "Nobody's being sorry. We're all just fine. Everything worked out over there… uh, kinda. Yeah. -And we're not needin' to talk about any of this stuff again anymore," Grunkle Stan rumbled out, almost hurriedly at the end there.

"Grunkle Stan…" Mabel chided, and said grunkle pulled a grunkly-grimace on them.

"-Tonight," Grunkle Stan amended, after a Mabel-patented 'I am going to prescribe you so many hugs' glare. "We ain't gonna talk about any of this junk any more tonight. -We've got other stuff to talk about," Grunkle Stan brought up next. "Like 'what did we learn from this one'. Yeah?"

Mabel pulled in a breath, and she and Dipper exchanged glances, (and Dipper tried to tell her to just let it go for awhile, he was pretty sure pushing was going to make it worse), and… "...Fiiiiine," Mabel said, not quite collapsing up against Grunkle Stan's back, and staring up at him.. "But you two are going to tell us about that whole summertime-without-us week, misters! And no leaving anything out this time, either!" she declared, pointing up at them. "I want all the details!"

At this, Dipper stared a bit, because he saw Great-Uncle Ford raise his head away from Stan's shoulder slightly, and… turn to his own twin, to give him an imploring look. A 'do we have to?' look.

Stan huffed out a long-suffering sigh. "A little bit. Later," Grunkle Stan said, while exchanging a twin look with Great-Uncle Ford, that had him grimacing and looking away, but not arguing, and... (Oh, man. Wow. Wow. Dipper hadn't actually thought that Grunkle Stan was really being serious, when he kept saying that he was the 'alpha twin'. Oh man...)

Dipper sent a twin-look of his own to Mabel, a sort of 'did you just see that?' look. And Mabel gave him the slightest nod, followed by what was the scariest sort of determined look he'd ever seen out of her, which read: 'if the grunkles don't tell us, we can ask Bill.'

Dipper really wasn't sure about that one, but...

...after glancing up at his grunkle and great-uncle, he could understand the urge to know exactly what had been going on over there in that other dimension with those other 'them's, that they just didn't know about. Because if it had messed with their grunkle and great-uncle this much...

(Which was messed up. Their grunkle and great-uncle had already told them a lot, but Mabel was right - they'd apparently left out a lot of stuff, too. A lot of stuff. And...)

Wait. Did this mean that Bill had done something to try and get them to stop fighting, that had worked better than anything Mabel had managed to come up with to-date, ever?

"So," Stan said. "What did we learn outta that crazy triangle demon this time?" he prompted, and Dipper saw his twin try not to look disappointed as Great-Uncle Ford grimaced slightly and straightened in place, moving a bit away from Grunkle Stan's side to sit up on his own. (Wow. Yeah, he really had been leaning up against him a lot and everything. ...Well, at least they really were acting like twins again? Finally? Huh. Was it gonna be weird seeing them like this, when they hadn't been like this around them before?)

"Ummmm," Mabel began, game for trying to help Grunkle Stan out. (She was trying to get Grunkle Ford to stop dwelling on whatever bad stuff was making him feel awful right now.) "Which one?" she asked first.

"Both of 'em," Grunkle Stan said promptly. "Miz agreed to it, too." And he had a slight almost 'gotcha' smile going, that Dipper noticed.

Dipper frowned slightly. "She really likes stories," he put out there. "She was a lot heavier on the roleplaying and stuff than even… uh, even Great-Uncle Ford gets, sometimes?" Dipper tried not to wince at what he'd just implied. He'd only meant that he usually used it as a means to an end, setting up the scene, and... "-It's not that I don't like that stuff!" DIpper said. "I mean, you always mix it up with lots of fighting-" It just… always felt like there was a lot of depth when Great-Uncle Ford did it, is all.

"It's fine," Great-Uncle Ford told him, to Dipper's relief. "I've had many more years to think of backstory and characters for the settings."

Dipper couldn't help but blush at this. "I, uh," he said. "I think I understand what Bill and Miz were saying about murder-hobo campaigns, now, though," he told them all. But then he couldn't help but frown. "I don't think I want to play them that way, though," Dipper admitted, glancing over at Great-Uncle Ford. "Not if Bill's going to talk his way out of everything. He's got the build for it," Dipper noted, "Even with the super-low charisma score." With the way he'd dorked up all the numbers, and all the items he had that (mostly) made up for it...

"Aw…" Mabel said, and Dipper couldn't help but wince. "Dipper, I liked getting to talk with the werewolves, though." She sounded a little resigned to not getting to do that again, though. Because if it was going to hurt Great-Uncle Ford seeing Bill doing stuff like that...

"-I'm fine," Great-Uncle Ford said. "I just…" He grimaced.

"Ford, don't go pushing yourself," Grunkle Stan told him.

"It's not that," Great-Uncle Ford told them. "I just... " He pulled in a breath. "If it was just Bill, I could tell him to stop. But…" He trailed off.

"But?" Grunkle Stan said, as Great-Uncle Ford got super quiet, looking down.

"...I don't want to talk about it, Stan," Great-Uncle Ford said quietly.

"Doesn't have to be specific," Grunkle Stan told him. "Just keep it general."

(Dipper glanced between them almost anxiously. The way Grunkle Stan had sounded so level there had seemed almost… dangerous. And he wasn't completely sure why.)

Great-Uncle Ford grimaced at this, and pulled in a breath. He looked away, and let it out as a sigh.

And then he finally said, "Bill and another demon working together is… too much."

There was a pause.

"That happen often?" Grunkle Stan said, and Great-Uncle Ford shook his head, still not looking at any of them.

"Not if you don't count the Henchmaniacs," Great-Uncle Ford said dourly. "But-" he seemed to almost twitch in place, "The two of them were- were playing together- and-" Great-Uncle Ford cut himself off abruptly, almost snapping his mouth shut.

Grunkle Stan was watching him the entire time, carefully.

"...Okay," Grunkle Stan said slowly, and Dipper saw him rub a hand across Great-Uncle Ford's back. "I got it. Bouncing stuff off each other is a couple steps too far."

And weirdly in synch, Dipper noted. The two demons were eerie sometimes in how they would just mirror each other without what looked like any pre-planning. The way the two were able to just… do stuff around each other to reach the same goal, without trying to do it on purpose? Dipper had seen how the two moved around each other, or would be doing the same thing as each other, while not even looking at each other-

...Maybe Miz really was a Bill Cipher, too. Maybe when Bill said that whole thing about 'a me that is also me', he was really on to something about...

"I'll tell 'em to try and lay off of doin' that around you too much," Grunkle Stan said next.

"...It would be best if they didn't do it around anyone at all," Great-Uncle Ford muttered, which just had him grimacing as Grunkle Stan told him, "I ain't gonna tell them not to do that stuff around me," next.

"Stan…" Great-Uncle Ford not-quite complained.

"Nuh-uh," Grunkle Stan told him. "Ford, I'm serious. I can handle it. Believe me, you don't know half the stuff the kid's told me so far, and the more I see the two of 'em together… -You have no idea how much stuff I'm learning about the kid, looking at her," Grunkle Stan told them.

Great-Uncle Ford looked up at Grunkle Stan over that one, and Dipper felt a sudden sort of panicky shock. (So did Mabel.)

And their grunkle and great-uncle noticed, turning towards both of them.

"-Dipper, it's fine," Grunkle Stan told him.

"-Mabel, I know," Great-Uncle Ford said shortly after.

Mabel let out kind of an odd laugh, and Dipper didn't get what was going on here. At least, he kind of hoped that he didn't.

"...Know what," Dipper said slowly, and… then he felt like dirt at the sad, almost hurt look Great-Uncle Ford gave him, at how his face fell.

"I would never hurt you and your sister, Dipper. Never. You- you have to know that," Great-Uncle Ford told them both quietly

And Dipper swallowed hard as Grunkle Stan told them, "Ford knows that Miz thinks she's another Bill Cipher. He remembers when she told him the first time. And we were listening to you all from the close side of the boat."

Dipper's stomach dropped.

"I…" Dipper swallowed hard, as he looked up into the faces of his two, suddenly very serious-looking great-uncles. "I didn't actually think that you would…"

"...You were both looking out for each other, I understand that, Dipper," Great-Uncle Ford told him quietly, and he felt his great-uncle give him slightly more of a hug with the arm at his side. "Some things are simply too great a risk-"

"-I should have known better than to listen to either of them at all!" Dipper verbally castigated himself, angry at himself. "I-"

"Dipper, Mason, stop," Great-Uncle Ford told him, and that finally gave him pause, halted the cycle of self-loathing that Dipper was feeling just then, as he pulled his knees up to his chest and curled in on himself, even as Mabel pressed up against him, surrounding him with her own hug. "I know how hard it is to feel right about something, when Bill is so very convinced of something else, otherwise. I know what that is like. And he does believe that, very strongly."

"I still shouldn't have believed him," Dipper said, feeling frustrated at having listened to the dumb dorito over his family. He was so stupid about it. He kept making the same mistakes, over and over again. Mabel had been right about Grunkle Stan and the portal, and now-

"Don't worry about it," Grunkle Stan told him. "The kid and Miz know that Ford remembers the stuff about her saying she's Bill Cipher just fine, now; it's just that they don't know that we know that you two know, now. Heh. -Or the other way around. We're gonna hit both of them with that one, now, real soon," Grunkle Stan told them. "See how much of a loop that throws the kid for, yeah?"

Dipper and Mabel exchanged a look at the smile Grunkle Stan had on just then, and then Dipper… well, he couldn't help but shrug it off. (Though that was really a load off of his shoulders, hearing the two of them talk about it. He'd hated having to walk on eggshells over everything about that, and Mabel...)

"So Miz and Bill really are a lot alike?" Mabel asked, unprompted.

At this, Grunkle Stan made a face. "Well, kinda. Not exactly. It's more like…" Grunkle Stan scratched his cheek. "Kinda looking in a funhouse mirror. How some stuff could've happened differently with the kid. -Some stuff's the same, or kinda-almost-nearly. It's really more like a siblings thing. Not a twins-thing, though. Even if they are 'supposed' to be 'the same'," Grunkle Stan put it, with a grimace.

Dipper frowned. Looking at Miz to learn more about Bill… if they really were dimensional counterparts, then it made sense that Grunkle Stan could do that. But it felt weird to think about it, let alone think about it that way.

Then Dipper blinked as Grunkle Stan shrugged and said next, "Like all the stuffed animals. Miz likes 'em, obviously. And Bill ain't really into that specifically, but I was able to get the crazy triangle to, y'know, bite pillows and stuff when he gets too angry and all stressed out and junk, even before I knew about her and... -What?" he said, as Great-Uncle Ford turned his head to give him an incredulous look. "It's one of those 'constructive outlets' things for getting mad, right? Punch a pillow? -Kid's lousy at punching, so he sorta bites and claws at 'em instead," Grunkle Stan told them matter-of-factly, to a slight giggle from Mabel. "Hey, he's got a body now; getting him to tire himself out actually works, so I'll take what I can get," he told them all next. "Figure that's better than sending him out to go explode a few trees, anyway," Grunkle Stan told them. "Not like we need any more firewood-"

"-Perhaps we should get back to the DDNMD discussion," Great-Uncle Ford interjected rather strongly, and… yeah, Dipper could get behind that one. Because from the look on his face, Dipper realized that Great-Uncle Ford was probably having the same mental image that he was trying to get rid of just then: Bill cuddling up with one of Miz's huge stuffed animals...

"Sure!" Mabel said, happy to help. "Soooooo… Bill's super-paranoid about traps and stuff, still," Mabel pointed out. "This time, he even checked every single foot for traps. It made the dungeon take forever!"

"Might've been trying to set a good example for his little sister," Grunkle Stan put out there. "Kid treats this stuff like real most times. I know he sees it as a good' teaching tool' with us," Grunkle Stan said almost sarcastically. "He might feel the same way about it with her. And from some of the stuff I've heard him tell his sister… pretty sure he's trying to do the exact opposite of showing her any bad habits at all," he told them.

"...He didn't nyarf the game," Dipper noted. He could've, to mess with 'his sister'. "-I mean, okay, he kind of did with the fireball at the end, but he didn't pull the whole 'this game is broken and I'm gonna wreck everything you throw at me' junk he pulled on me, before we switched the ruleset." Really, before they'd made Bill give them a ruleset that wasn't completely broken. Since Bill had apparently come up with the game in the first place.

(Dipper still felt weird about it. The way Bill had been looking at him, when that had first come up. And then Bill had asked him if he liked it. If he liked the game Bill had made, even if Bill hadn't admitted it outright...)

(He'd seemed almost on pins-and-needles, almost nervous in some way, when he'd asked. While he'd been waiting for Dipper to say…)

(-And the way Bill had smiled afterwards had been...)

"Probably didn't want to spoil stuff for his little sister," Grunkle Stan put out there. "She likes the game, he wanted her to have fun…"

"...But he still set off that fireball at the end," Mabel said, with a slight frown.

"Yeah," Grunkle Stan said, frowning himself. "He did…"

There was a pause.

"...Bill goes out of his way to avoid fighting in the games when he doesn't have to do it," Dipper added. "That hasn't changed." Even if he had been more extreme about it this session - but then, Miz had been setting up the game differently than Dipper did. Bill did a lot of flying up and out of the way in Dipper's games; even if he tried to play it off as gathering intel for them pretty much every single time, it still stood out a lot. More often than not, he played the spy-and-support role, when it came to encounters. Not first-string, not tank; support. He almost always left most of the actual killing up to Mabel and Grunkle Stan, and only jumped in himself when it looked like they were starting to get overwhelmed.

"If there's a choice… does he really pick not-killing someone?" Dipper asked Great-Uncle Ford, because that seemed a little unbelievable to him. "I mean, maybe he only did it because Miz doesn't seem to like the whole 'murder-hobo' thing..." or because he didn't want to go off risking his own character dying - but that was an argument they'd had a couple different times, after each session, now.

"Eh, the way I see it, the kid thinks killing someone when you don't have to is a waste of time and energy. It's that whole 'efficiency' thing he's got going." (Stan had pretty much figured that one out from just talking to Bill about killing versus not needing to a good several weeks ago, what with the agreement and in getting him to let him take point on fights, along with everything else.)

"'Not having to' generally means not getting in the way of something Bill wants, Stan," Great-Uncle Ford said quietly, "And it doesn't work. Bill doesn't generally feel the need to inform anyone of what, exactly, he wants, until you've already crossed him." Dipper and Mabel exchanged a look at this, because this wasn't how this whole argument usually went, when the two of them got talking about it.

"We're his Zodiac - far as he sees it," Grunkle Stan said, then amended. "Pretty sure letting us know is pretty high up on his list."

"He hasn't told us what he really wants yet, Stan," Great-Uncle Ford said next, almost quietly, and that had Dipper and Mabel exchanging yet another glance.

"He wants his brother back," Grunkle Stan said straight-out, and it left Dipper feeling wide-eyed and almost breathless. "And I'm workin' on figuring out the rest of it, whatever else he wants outta everything. -Don't know what stupid twisty thing he's got going, that has him worrying about... aw, hell," Grunkle Stan said next, then rubbed a hand across his face. "Okay, yeah. Nevermind. Think I've actually got a handle on that one, now. Hell," Grunkle Stan said kind of darkly, like he was kicking himself over something.

"...Stan?" Great-Uncle Ford said slowly, straightening in place.

"-You, don't ever bring up his brother again. Ever," Grunkle Stan told Great-Uncle Ford outright. "Having one, not havin' one - none of it," Grunkle Stan told him. "That's what pissed him the hell off with you, that had him lettin' you have nightmares to hell and back again, and almost... " Grunkle Stan shook his head, then grimaced again.

"He did what to Great-Uncle Ford?" Dipper asked, on the heels of Mabel's, "-Grunkle Ford, are you okay?"

"-I'm fine," Great-Uncle Ford told them hurriedly, though he didn't look too happy about something, and Grunkle Stan said, almost as quickly, "-Look, I talked the kid back out of it again, it's handled. No more nightmares for Ford. Yeah?"

Dipper and Mabel felt truly uncomfortable at this, as they looked between their great-uncles.

"Look, just don't- either of you, don't go bringin' it up, the whole thing's a hot-button nuke-everything kinda thing for the kid, he's-" Grunkle Stan stopped and let out another frustrated sigh. "-Look," he said, sounding like he was levelling with them all. "I think the kid's…" He glanced over at Great-Uncle Ford. "Hell, you thought he didn't even have one, and you've been, what, tryin' to kill him for years? Find a weak spot? -He-"

"Family isn't a weak spot!" Mabel protested, strongly.

"-It is when somebody's got 'em held hostage and is usin' them against you as leverage," Grunkle Stan told them all. "Ford nearly gave up that equation-thingy the triangle wanted so bad over you two, durin' the whole Weirdmageddon thing." Grunkle Stan glanced over at Great-Uncle Ford. "He knew it, didn't he? He figured it out real quick."

"...Yes," Great-Uncle Ford was staring at him, now. "Frighteningly so."

"...Which you'd never expect outta somebody who never thought of family as anything other than junk, yeah?" Grunkle Stan said almost leadingly.

"Or, he could have seen someone else do it before, to see how effective it can be," Great-Uncle Ford said slowly, but he seemed almost tense now.

"Triangle wasn't bein' theatrical in the pyramid, Ford," Grunkle Stan said, like he was building up steam. Like he was almost… "He almost threw in a 'two-and-a-half' there and everything," which confused Dipper (and also his sister) - but for whatever reason, Great-Uncle Ford seemed to get what he was saying, and he looked almost shocked, even as he shook his head vigorously at Grunkle Stan. "He was shakin'. Actually shakin'. That hand... -I couldn't figure out why, barely thought about it at the time," Grunkle Stan told him, almost urgently. "Thought maybe he was just that angry, except that didn't fit-"

"Stan-"

"-He didn't actually want to do it." Grunkle Stan looked both angry and almost… alarmed, now, and the way his grunkle had breathed those words out had the hairs on the back of Dipper's neck standing on end. "He really, actually… that son of a-" Grunkle Stan grimaced, looking angry as anything. "That was mostly a bluff. -Maybe half a bluff, the stupid-!" He cut himself off, then looked up at Great-Uncle Ford. "...He would've still done it anyway, wouldn't he," Grunkle Stan said next, still angry, and then some. "He really was still gonna kill Mabel."

"Yes," Great-Uncle Ford said, without any doubt in his expression, tone, body, or voice. "He would have killed her, if you hadn't stopped him." (Dipper felt a chill go down his spine. Because they were talking about-)

"We stopped him," Grunkle Stan said almost on reflex (which left Dipper blinking). "Hell." Grunkle Stan shook his head. "'Least now I know why the kid gave me that kinda look, when I told him I don't want him doin' anything he doesn't want to do, ever. That that's half of what the agreement is for." There was almost a laugh under his tone now. "Still does."

"Stan…" Great-Uncle Ford said quietly.

"-He got all nuts about hearin' about that other house burning down, y'know. That whole week there," Grunkle Stan said next, sitting back a bit, looking… Dipper wasn't quite sure what. It was almost like… Grunkle Stan was talking to himself out loud? Trying to finish working something out? "That home. Like his home, burnin' down, too. Kid was goin' halfway outta his mind, until he fireproofed the Shack, to try and…" Grunkle Stan let out a breath. "-Kid ain't human, but he can relate. He knows. He knows what that feels like," Grunkle Stan told them next. "And-"

"...you can't actually believe that he can-" Great-Uncle Ford began.

"He doesn't care," Dipper interrupted, unable to keep it in anymore. Because- "He was going to kill Mabel-"

"-He knows better now," Grunkle Stan said, in tones that reminded Dipper of the zombie apocalypse, what Grunkle Stan had been like then. "He knows what'll happen if he even thinks of-"

And Dipper saw Grunkle Stan stop, and pull in a breath, as Great-Uncle Ford put a hand on his shoulder.

And he felt Mabel hug him, reminding him that she was here, and okay...

He saw Grunkle Stan breathe for awhile, and then, finally, pick up again, kind of heavily, with, "Kid's got an idea of what kinda blackmail it'd be, having a sibling as a hostage like that. He'd do damn near anything to get him back, I'd bet." Grunkle Stan sent Great-Uncle Ford a look. "Except tell other people about him. In case they might try and stop him." And Grunkle Stan looked grim as anything as he said next, "Or try and kill that brother of his again, once the kid finally manages to bring him- back."

And Grunkle Stan wasn't the only one left blinking at the look of sudden (extremely, completely horrified) realization that spread across Great-Uncle Ford's face.

There was a long pause.

"I…" Great-Uncle Ford began slowly, and almost carefully, still looking a little shocked.

Then all three of them jolted in place as Mabel loudly clapped her hands together once.

"So!" Mabel said brightly, with a smile on her face. "No talking about Bill's brother, because he gets crazy-stupid-protective about him, even when he's dead! Got it!"

It left Dipper and their great-uncles feeling a little embarrassed, and a little on-edge. They'd almost been talking about Mabel like she hadn't even been there. And she'd let them do it.

"Sorry," Dipper muttered out at her, pulling down on his cap, and he was.

"It's fine," Mabel told him, whapping him in the arm with a sweater-covered fist. "Brothers get stupid sometimes about things!" Dipper winced again. (So did Grunkle Stan and Great-Uncle Ford.)

"Uh…" Dipper said, searching for something. It was kinda his turn to try and pick up something else, next. "There's…" Oh, right. "Bill had that whole thing planned out right from the start, with that fireball spell of his," Dipper noted. "He knew what the campaign was, and he planned stuff out towards that." Dipper had suspected that Bill had done that before, but he really hadn't ever been that blatant about it, before. Then again… "If he hadn't ended up using it, I probably wouldn't have noticed it, though." A lot of things with his campaigns had been like that so far, with Bill. Stuff would happen, and eventually Dipper would trip over something Bill had done, or planned for, and...

"The kid making plans for everything without talkin' about it is nothin' new," Grunkle Stan noted, though he sent a look to Great-Uncle Ford, who gave him a nod. "What else."

"He had a whole thing planned out for how a vampire could get food while also not killing anyone," Mabel noted next.

"Well, if the villagers agreed to his plan, at least," Dipper added, not really sure if that actually would've worked out so easily, with the way Miz had been playing out the players. They certainly hadn't seemed like they'd be so open to the idea. ...Unless the 'not dying after being eaten' or 'bitten' thing might've somehow played into it.

"That sound like anything we can use?" Grunkle Stan said next.

Dipper frowned, because was it, really? "I mean, the dumb dorito's really talky," Dipper noted. "He's still really easy to distract with talking, to make him stop fighting." But they all already knew that. Just because it worked with them, though, didn't mean it'd work with the rest of the town. Heck, during Weirdmageddon, it hadn't actually stopped Bill from…

"Wait." Dipper paused as something else occurred to him. "Is that why Bill didn't kill anyone in town during Weirdmageddon?" He looked up at Great-Uncle Ford. "He turned everybody into stone, and they all just… it wasn't anything close to permanent." The whole stone chair had just fallen apart, so easily, and... Dipper's eyes widened as something else occurred to him. "He actually stopped when he thought you gave up," Dipper said to Great-Uncle Ford, as he realized... "Except you didn't just give up, you made a deal with him, right?" he asked Grunkle Stan next. "The equation, for us safe."

"He likely wouldn't have kept that deal, Dipper," Great-Uncle Ford told him.

Dipper almost protested, because what if-

-but then Grunkle Stan told them, "I didn't think he was gonna hold up his end of any deal." And that made Dipper feel pretty uncomfortable (because Grunkle Stan knew a liar when he saw one), but...

"Okay, but, he didn't kill anybody in town. He could've. Would making the eyebats have killer laser beam eyes be harder, just zapping everybody dead, than zapping them all stonified and flying them all back to the Fearamid?" Dipper asked kind of rhetorically. Because if he was some evil triangle demon who was at least as bad as… heck, as Gideon if he'd had Bill's powers, instead of Bill himself? "Why would he even need people, to make a chair out of them? He made a whole floating pyramid thing out of nothing!" It made absolutely, literally zero sense. And as much as Dipper would like to just write the dumb dorito off as having zero sense… "Did he just forget to furnish the stupid thing?"

"...No," Great-Uncle Ford said slowly. "I was… upstairs in the Fearamid at one point. Unfrozen. When Bill first asked... well, demanded for the equation out of my mind, I woke up in the 'penthouse suite', as it were. It was fully-furnished," Great-Uncle Ford told them with a frown.

"Okay, so… he was just keeping them around… why?" Dipper asked. "I mean, this is evil overlord 101, right? Why would he do that? -I know he doesn't make sense practically any of the time, but..." It was just so frustrating!

"...Maybe," Great-Uncle Ford said slowly, but he looked almost pained as he said it. "He…" He pulled in a slow breath, then looked to... "Dipper, do you remember… did you hear anything he told the town, while I was setting up the quantum destabilizer?" Great-Uncle Ford asked him. "Or did any of your friends tell you what he said, afterwards? Their actual interactions with him would be very important-" Great-Uncle Ford stopped, seeming to realize something that made him almost cringe.

Dipper frowned. Bill had been talking to them all. "No. Uh… I could ask Pacifica?" He knew she had been right there.

"Yeah, okay. Gonna table that one for now, then. -Anything else?" Grunkle Stan said.

"No, wait," Dipper said. "I just-" He glanced over at Great-Uncle Ford. "Do you really think that he might've, uh, maybe wanted to make a deal with the people in town, too? Like… like maybe trying to make a compromise with that vampire and the villagers?"

Great-Uncle Ford and Grunkle Stan exchanged a look.

"...That's ...possible," Great-Uncle Ford said, with great reserve, and Stan rubbed his face. "But… it would not have gone well, for any of them. I…" he looked away.

"Other dimensional stuff?" Mabel said.

"Yes," Great-Uncle Ford said tersely. "I'd rather not… talk about it."

...Well, that wasn't completely worrying at all. With, y'know, Bill apparently owning other dimensions - like the one his hat apparently connected to - and doing who-knew-what with them. Dipper and Mabel exchanged another look.

Dipper frowned. Because, the more he thought about it… the whole thing with the chair was just… poor planning. It was almost as if Bill had purposely set things up so that all those townsfolk could be freed quickly and all at once. And Bill had let Gideon know how to free the townsfolk. he had to have done that; how else could Gideon have known about that? But why would Bill do that? Had he been gloating, or something? Letting him know how easy it would be for somebody to let him out of that dancing cage, if only he could just reach…? -Okay, nevermind, that kind of gloating did sound like something Bill would do. Ugh. Stupid dorito.

...There was so much they still didn't understand about Bill. Like why he'd attacked them all to begin with; why had he invaded earth? Because from what Dipper had learned in all this time around him, Bill always had a reason for doing what he did. Maybe it was something that they would never think, and usually it still didn't make any sense - because the dumb dorito was insane - but... A crazy party and taking over the Earth? That wasn't a reason, that was an action. "How is throwing a Weirdmageddon party supposed to help bring back Bill's brother?" Dipper groaned out.

Grunkle Stan sighed. "Pretty sure that was just the 'hey, I've escaped' celebration. Ain't like I got a lot of pushback from the kid on not trying to pull one of those again. -More like, none," he said, sending a look to Great-Uncle Ford. "Kid made it sound more like it was for the demons than for him."

"That's…" Great-Uncle Ford blinked, then got a thinking frown. And he got quiet.

"Well, Miz said that Bill plans to overthrow the Axolotl," Mabel put out there. "Maybe he needs to do that, before he can get his brother back?" she spitballed. "And he needs help from his friends to do that? Do they want to take over the world before helping him with that?"

Stan scratched his chin. "Kid's okay with not talking with his demon 'friends', for at least a while. But the whole apocalypse thing is off the plate now; he needed his friends to take over the place. The way the kid's talked about it, he thought he needed them to do that to make this dimension 'his', and to make people agree with that. -I told him he don't need to do that. Not sure I've completely convinced him yet, though," Grunkle Stan noted, crossing his arms. "Kid's definitely changing tactics now, like I want him to. He's got some new plan in mind. Hasn't gone over it with me, yet." ...Yeah, a plan that probably involved Grunkle Stan, somehow. Dipper remembered seeing how Bill had reacted when Grunkle Stan had said… and the way Great-Uncle Ford had panicked hadn't made anything better. Bill thought Grunkle Stan would, and could help him out with something, somehow, as crazy and off-the-wall as that was.

"Whatever. I'll get it outta him eventually. Maybe after his sister's left again, and he don't have to worry about her maybe being disapproving of people getting killed, 'accidentally' or otherwise," Grunkle Stan mused out loud. "-Murder ain't the kid's first option, though. Not unless he thinks that's what he's gotta do to get what he wants. -It's why I want him talking to me so much," Grunkle Stan said at Great-Uncle Ford, "Coming to me, first. -I've been giving him options. He comes to me, I tell him what I don't like, what crosses my line, and I give him more choices. Anytime I can give him something better, he takes it and runs with it, every time."

"Bill doesn't do 'better', he does worse," Great-Uncle Ford said disparagingly.

"I don't care how he defines it, as long as he sticks to only doin' stuff that I'm okay with!" Grunkle Stan ground out at him, and they both started looking combative.

"Is that part of the rules?" Mabel asked next, and it left the three of them blinking again. "I mean, in Dipper's games, you almost have to kill bad guys to get experience to level up, right? If Bill wasn't in our party, he wouldn't get any experience at all, almost. But Miz's game wasn't like that," Mabel told them. "She said we'd all get the same amount of experience, just for playing, right?"

"That isn't how real life works, though," Dipper noted.

"But it kinda is! Well, at least sort of," Mabel said next, walking it back a little, almost embarrassed. "I mean, everybody has different experiences, and… um… it's okay for me to be really good at knitting, and you're good at DDNMD, and Grunkle Ford is really good at baking-"

"It's simply an application of organic chemistry," Great-Uncle Ford said, with a slight blush.

"Which you almost never do," Grunkle Stan said, eyeing him. "When's the last time I saw you cook, huh?"

"We don't have an oven on the Stan 'o War II, Stan," Great-Uncle Ford pointed out, to a "Whose fault is that, huh? With all your geeky gadgets and-" he was cut off by Great-Uncle Ford messing up his hair, with a veritable smile on his face.

Mabel couldn't help but giggle. "I bet Miz would be so jealous to see Ford bake! She can't bake at all. She told me that. Was feeling pretty down at herself about it, actually." That was an interesting piece of trivia, but Stan steered the conversation back to the topic at hand.

"Right. Dragon-lady's got negative-1 points in cooking that involves pastries." That got another giggle out of Mabel. "So, what. You think the kid's maybe blowing smoke on that one, with the game? He's convinced that's the system he has to work with, killing people the second it looks like they won't leave him alone?" Stan put out there, then frowned. "Like... maybe not an experience thing. Maybe it's…. more of a progress thing?" Grunkle Stan noted, though he didn't sound very sure of it. "Kid tried to keep us pretty on-track in your games, Dipper. We don't hit too many 'encounters' just for killing; he helps the most when we're powering through stuff to get to the… it's the whole plot thing. To get to the end of the thing. To get where we're going." Grunkle Stan frowned even further. "In your games, we can only progress if we kill the stuff that's in our way, so he... does that." And now Grunkle Stan looked like he wanted to curse for some reason.

"But he finds it boring," Mabel noted, which left Dipper feeling… weird about the whole thing.

"Does he really just want to… talk his way around stuff, the whole time?" Dipper asked, because… Did he? Bill… did practically interrupt his own fights with them, when they started talking to him. He stopped fighting, and started… well, taunting, most times, but-

"-Yes," Great-Uncle Ford said, "But that is only because he tends to get more out of it. Having people working for him increases his reach, and exponentially increases what he can do, if he can convince someone strongly enough that they will then go out recruiting others to his cause." And he sent some kind of a look Grunkle Stan's way that Dipper didn't quite catch.

"Wait. Bill has a cause?" Dipper said, confused.

"Getting his brother back?" Mabel asked, then frowned. "But Grunkle Ford, you said he doesn't talk about that with anybody else."

"That isn't…" Great-Uncle Ford began, then grimaced and stopped. "I'd rather not."

And for some reason, that had Grunkle Stan giving Great-Uncle Ford a very long look.

"...What does Bill usually tell everybody and their dog that he wants?" Grunkle Stan asked, and Great-Uncle Ford grimaced, looked down at his hands, and admitted:

"I don't know," Great-Uncle Ford said quietly. "I've refused to listen to him, any time the subject has ever come up." And from looking at him, it was pretty clear that Great-Uncle Ford didn't want to know. Though for some reason that Dipper didn't understand, he also looked a little afraid for whatever reason he had right then, too.

Well, Dipper didn't blame him. It was probably some stupid, insane thing that didn't have anything to do with anything. Because if it wasn't about Bill's brother, and that was what he really wanted…

...then whatever the dumb dorito was telling people instead wasn't really important, then, was it? It couldn't be.

Grunkle Stan let out a sigh, Great-Uncle Ford grimaced a bit, and after a little more talking (this time about Miz, instead of Bill, and how she had played - and whether she'd had any ulterior motives with what she'd been doing or not, because apparently Grunkle Stan thought she was a little more twisty and less direct than Bill Cipher himself?), they concluded their discussion, with Dipper and Mabel going back to their room for a bit, while Stan went to the kitchen to start working on dinner.

And once Dipper was back in their room, he grabbed his old journal - the one Mabel had given him at the end of last summer - and sat down on his bed. He pulled out a pen (not paying much attention to his twin as she tossed herself into her own bed across the room from him, and grabbed up one of her stuffed animals to hug), and started scribbling down all the new things he had just learned. There was so much they still didn't know about Bill! -Even worse, every new thing they learned only brought up even more questions for him. (Admittedly, the problem was driving him a little nuts, because the more questions he asked, the more questions he had, and it was starting to get to the point that a lot of those questions could only be answered by Bill-)

Dipper bit his pen as he frowned. Still, he was getting closer to something. And the more they knew, the closer they'd get to figuring out how to get rid of Bill once and for all.

The only problem now was, did they talk about the whole 'brother' thing with Old Man McGucket, or not?

And to figure out the answer to that question, Dipper glanced up at Mabel.

"Hey, sis?" Dipper began.

(Back to the present. After Miz and Bill and "the Grunkles" return from the diner)

"Welcome back~!" Mabel greeted them when they got home. Miz waved, but Bill simply nodded at her before he not-quite pulled Miz with him up the stairs and out of sight. Mabel blinked at seeing this, before turning to them both to ask, "What's wrong with Bill?"

"Ran into Gideon at the diner." Stan made his way past her to the living room.

Mabel winced at this. That couldn't have gone well. She remembered the tap-dancing cage. "Did he-"

"Bill and Miz got out before he could see 'em," Stan told her, not quite collapsing into seat in his sofa chair with a grunt.

"Bill didn't do something really bad to him, did he?" Mabel asked, though she clearly had some mixed feelings on the subject. (Mostly because she thought that nobody deserved to have Bill torturing them with sailor dance moves forever, not even Gideon, 'reformed' or not.)

"Nah," Stan waved off. "Kid got himself and his sister outta there without the little jerk even realizing they were there." Gideon had been on a fishing expedition there with his questions. He hadn't wanted to run into the kid; he'd only stopped sweating once he'd thought Bill wasn't nearby, and that Ford had things under control.

"More importantly," Ford knelt down in front of Mabel. "What happened between you and Gideon? The man-eater claims he tried to kill your brother-"

And from the way Mabel stiffened and looked away, Ford began to frown. (And Stan's frown deepened.)

"How many times has that little jerk tried to kill you two?" was Stan's question next, not like he didn't know about the explosives in the mountain rock heads - he'd been there; he remembered it - and Ford whipped his head around to look over at him in shock.

"Um…" Mabel dissembled, and that sent a chill down Ford's spine. "I mean, he didn't really try to kill me until the thing with the mayoral election?" she said with a sigh, not looking too happy just then. Then she looked up with a frown.

"Gideon didn't say anything about Dipper, did he?" Mabel said next, with something of a steely glint in her eye, and a set to her jaw, and...

"No," Ford said, not quite rushing to reassure(?) her. "Gideon said nothing about you or your brother. Just Bill."

"Good," Mabel said with a nod, still looking quite uncharacteristically serious to Ford.

Ford paused for a moment, taking this in before adding, "...Bill seemed rather adamant about Miz not meeting, seeing, or talking to Gideon, for some reason."

"Really?" And then, rather suddenly, Mabel went back to being her usual smiling and cheerful self. "Well, I guess Bill maybe has another reason not to go into town and make a big scene now, right? That's good," she said next, rather brightly, before going back to her coloring book.

Ford started at her where he was kneeling down in front of her, rather at a loss for words.

He looked up at Stan, and his brother exchanged a look with him that Ford didn't quite understand, before turning away from him and picking up the remote to the TV.

Ford slowly stood up again as Stan clicked the TV on. He rather wanted to ask after the mayoral election (- had he missed something important? He'd given the mid-control tie to the niblings to help them help him win the thing, and he remembered hearing that Stan had in fact won the election... but had also then lost it because he hadn't filled out the proper paperwork, apparently, among other things like his long history of known criminal enterprises and crimes…). But with the way Stan was acting, turning on the TV so dismissively like that, his brother clearly didn't want to talk about it just then.

Ford frowned as he turned away, walking across Stan's view as he headed for the gift shop and basement (to no response from Stan, not even a complaint at said view-blocking).

But when he got to the door to the basement in the gift shop, and saw Dipper at the Mystery Shack's register counter with Melody, he thought the better of letting the question go so completely, and stopped at the vending machine opening to ask, "...Dipper, could I talk with you downstairs for a moment?"

Dipper looked up, and then nodded and got up, closing his book and putting it under one arm, but stopped (and almost winced), when Melody said, "I can take a break in 5 minutes."

"Ah," said Ford, "That's… good to know?"

Melody gave him something of a significant look. (And Dipper was staying right where he was… why?)

"Dr. Pines," Melody said to him, "With all due respect, Dipper and Mabel aren't supposed to be out of sight of myself, Soos, or Mr. Pines for the rest of the week.

Ford blinked. Then he remembered. "Ah, yes." The punishment Stan had given them. He paused for a moment, as he realized that Dipper was still standing over by the counter, and Ford began to frown, not understanding the problem. "But surely, it would be alright if Dipper remains with me-"

"-Mr. Pines didn't say you were on the list," Melody told him, and that stopped Ford right in his tracks, a bit stunned. "But you can ask Mr. Pines if you like," Melody said simply, and Ford stared at her.

"Surely, that was an oversight-!" Ford began to protest, but at Melody's lack of change in expression, and Dipper's slight wince in place where he stood...

"You can ask him," Melody repeated. "He just went in with you, didn't he?"

"...Yes, he did," Ford frowned.

And then Ford's eyes narrowed slightly.

"Mabel was in the living room alone just now," Ford began, at the realization that the niblings were apparently being given unequal treatment in this regard, and he saw Dipper grimace slightly and look away from him, rubbing at the side of his arm, as Melody said:

"The door was open; I could see her from here. Mr. Pines closed it after you, Bill, and Miz walked in."

Ford stared at her. And then Ford looked down at Dipper.

Dipper looked up at him, with a half-strained smile.

"...We could talk up here?" Dipper tried, then looked away almost embarrassed and ashamed as Ford felt his own face fall.

Ford stared down at Dipper for a moment, and then he knew what he must do. His course was clear.

Ford straightened up to his full height in place.

"I'm going to go talk to Stan about this," Ford declared, turning on his heel and striding back through the door to the living room.

"Good luck!" he heard Melody call out good-naturedly behind him, as if she truly meant it (she probably did, given what he knew of her), and Ford barely stifled the wince.

He strode into the living room of the Shack, and was greeted with the sight of Stan watching some odd show about babies slapping each other.

Ford stared at this scene for a moment.

And then he shook his head slightly, firmed his resolve with a steely glare at his brother, and opened his mouth to-

Ford sighed as he stepped out of the elevator with Dipper, down at the basement level.

-It had been a win that still felt like a loss. He and Stan had talked, and Stan had gotten up and followed him back into the gift shop, to explicitly tell Melody himself that Ford was now 'cleared' to watch one of the niblings at a time, anywhere inside the house, on his own.

-But not both of the niblings together, not either of them alone after 10pm, and not with any of them one single step outside of the house. Not the parking lot, not the yard, not even a single one of the porches, even though the niblings were not constrained to the house proper and could go out onto the porches and out into the yard with proper, 'adult' supervision.

And Ford had had to swear up and down to his brother that he wouldn't try to help the niblings get around their grounding, to get even that much.

It grated on Ford that he was given so little trust by his own brother in this respect. ...Not least of which because Stan himself was, of the two of them, the more childish and less-responsible one by far...

-It wasn't as though Ford had approved of what the niblings had done, risking themselves life and limb, let alone to that extent! If Bill had realized what they had done before he and Ford had realized something was wrong, or simply been more resistant to Stan's demands at first, and gone after them both alone-

(Hearing Mabel try to protest on his behalf that Stan was planning on giving Bill 'full' watching privileges in less than a week, more than he was giving Ford himself now, 'so why didn't Grunkle Ford even get that much?', didn't exactly improve Ford's mood any, either.)

(To this, Stan had said that Bill getting that was going to be contingent on 'the kid' actually understanding what 'babysitting them' meant, and... proving it. Somehow. -A point upon which Stan was not at all clear with them on, as to what the specifics of what that might actually entail, to a degree that it left Ford suspicious of what-all his brother was leaving out of this 'magical' solution and training course he was apparently, supposedly going to be putting Bill Cipher of all people, though, in order to get him to such a point.)

(But still, there was the existence of a 'somehow' that Stan seemed completely adamant about and upon prior to this allowance for Bill - a fact which only marginally made things better, in Ford's own opinion…)

But what was done was done. Stan was being critically stubborn about this, and - more importantly and rather worse in For's own opinion - the kids were listening more to Stan than to him on this, so Ford would have to go along with it for the interim.

...Well, at least he could have Dipper down in his lab with him, now without having to drag his grandnephew down there 'against his will' and Stan's own expressed 'orders', risking his twin brother's own ire and who-knew-what else, with Bill Cipher currently at his brother's back...

Once they were downstairs with the elevator door shut, and Ford had finished checking the space for eavesdroppers both inert and active, electronic and biological (cryptids included), once again... the scientist let out a soft sigh and sat down in a chair, motioning for Dipper to take his own seat in a nearby one as well.

And once his grand-nephew was seated, Ford asked him what he'd wanted to ask him upstairs. "Dipper, how many times has Gideon tried to kill you."

"Three," Dipper told him promptly.

Ford blinked at him, taken aback.

"Gideon Gleeful has tried to kill you three times?" Ford repeated. He felt… almost odd about it. How very matter-of-fact his nephew was being about-

Dipper nodded, then grimaced. "Well, okay," Dipper told him next. "Maybe he wasn't actually trying to kill me the second time… Oh, wait," Dipper said, straightening in place, and Ford was about to breathe a sigh of relief at Dipper's rethinking of whatever situation, up until Dipper said next, "Are we counting Weirdmageddon stuff, too? Because then it's definitely three, maybe four."

Ford managed to keep his composure, as he tried to tamp down the rising rage he was feeling internally.

"...Perhaps you could start from the beginning?" Ford said. "Just so that I understand the situation more clearly, and fully. What did he try to do the first time?"

Dipper nodded. "The first time, he tried to cut me in half with some shears, though Mabel stopped him. And then we both almost died falling out a window and off the side of a cliff after that, except Mabel caught us both then, too. -But the falling thing was an accident; neither of us were trying to do that, it's not like Gideon was trying to take me with him."

Ford blinked. Shears? How did one… "And the second time?" Ford prompted.

"The second time, Gideon tossed me onto the top of a cliff face after grabbing Mabel," Dipper told him next. "I… kinda cratered a… kinda-long furrow into the ground, and almost hit my head on a big rock behind me pretty hard. But I think that was maybe an accident, therock thing." And Ford stared as Dipper told him, "It's not like he tried to toss me off into the trees of the woods way farther down or something; he was just trying to get me out of the way, not actually try and kill me, right then." Then Dipper let out a sigh and told him, "...And we both fell down when his robot tumbled over a cliff in the middle of our fight, but that was an accident, too. And, uh, when I fell out of the robot, Mabel caught me before we hit the ground. That would have been an accident, too." Dipper gave him a rueful, almost embarrassed smile, as Ford looked on at him in confusion. There had been some sort of robot involved in this?

"-That was from the time when Gideon got that giant robot to chase the bus down after Stan tried to send us home, since we became homeless because Gideon stole the deed to the shack," Dipper told him, at Ford's look of confusion. (...And now Ford knew what his nibling was referring to, somewhat - when 'the Shack being taken over' had come up, Stan had grimaced, grumbled, and said he remembered that, and they'd skipped over that page of the scrapbook almost entirely.)

"What robot did you fall out of?" Ford asked him.

"Oh, uh, Gideon had Old Man McGucket make this huge robot that kind of looked like himself," Dipper told him. "They set it up right by the Shack. We didn't know it'd actually work, until Gideon was actually piloting it around. We thought Gideon had just had that made up as some kind of big metal statue or something, for the amusement park he'd been talking about in those TV ads he'd been showing. Like some kind of mascot at the front gates?"

Ford stared at him, feeling a little faint. Fiddleford had created a robot that… had been used to almost kill his grand-niece and -nephew?

"So, yeah. -Oh, the third time he tried to kill us was with a bunch of fireworks during the town election… uh, except I guess he thought it would only trap us inside the head of that memorial statue of the mayor. -But we were practically sitting right on top of all of it, and Gideon only said he was going to leave Mabel in there after she said she'd rather die than marry him!" Dipper let out a huff, now starting to look more than a little angry, before he calmed down again.

"...The fourth time?" Ford prompted, slowly, not wanting to derail his grand-nephew. ...But, marriage? What did that have to do with any of this?! (Ford refused to think about how the man-eater had said something about romance, when she had been telling him about the reasons why she had thought Gideon had done the things that he did.)

"And the fourth was when Gideon was working for Bill during the beginning of Weirdmageddon-" Dipper stopped. "Uh, but I guess that kinda doesn't count," Dipper said "Everybody was acting pretty crazy back then, and Gideon probably would've ended up in that cage a lot sooner if he hadn't tried to get back on Bill's good side again…"

Ford forced himself to pull in a breath, and let it out just as slowly.

(He also held back the instinctive "Bill has no good side!" rebuttal.)

"Are there any other times that you've fought with Gideon that seem particularly notable?" Ford asked him, attempting to stay (at least outwardly) calm.

"Well…" Dipper paused. "Uh, I guess... -Well, there was this one time, when Gideon shrunk me and Mabel down to, uh, about an inch tall, and kept us in a jar? But he wasn't actually trying to kill us that time, just get us out of the way." Dipper grimaced. "We wouldn't have gotten caught like that if we hadn't been fighting over the shrinking-growing crystal flashlight right out in the open in front of him, though," Dipper admitted. "So I guess we were kind of asking for it. Gideon couldn't have done that if we hadn't been fighting over it, or if we'd seen him there; we would've stopped sooner. He just took advantage of the situation." Dipper shrugged. "Oh, and Mabel and Soos saw Gideon summon Bill and make a deal with him, to have Bill go into Grunkle Stan's mind looking for the code to his safe, so Gideon could sneak in and steal the deed to the Shack. -That was when we first met him. Bill, I mean," Dipper noted.

"I see," said Ford, and he believed that he was, in fact, starting to see. When Dipper and Mabel had first brought up 'fighting Bill', post-Bill's return when he'd asked for more information, they'd talked about following Bill into Stan's mind and how they'd fought him there (in far more detail than listing off his weaknesses to him in abbreviated form the summer prior) - but they hadn't said why they'd done it, and Ford hadn't asked at the time. They'd all been far too focused on identifying Bill's weaknesses, and...

...Ford was starting to see how very much of a mistake that had been.

"And… Gideon hasn't faced any punishment at all, for any of this?" Ford asked very carefully. (That was something that was going to have to be rectified quickly, post-haste.)

"Well, we got him put in real adult prison for spying on the town," Dipper noted. "-That had to do with the whole robot thing. We couldn't really get him jailed for just kidnapping Mabel, or trying to kill me, since we didn't really have any proof." Dipper shrugged at this, though he did look at least a little frustrated at such an egregious lack of justice and fairness. "And he was already in prison when he tried to blow us up. -We're not really sure how he did it, but he was controlling Bud Gleeful to move him around and talk for him, somehow. ...Maybe it was part of that video belt he was wearing?" Dipper shrugged. "He did try to help us out during Weirdmageddon, though," Dipper noted, looking more than a little conflicted about it. "Twice. Once with Mabel's bubble, and once with the circle? So… we decided to give him kind of a second chance, I guess," Dipper told him. "Gideon leaves us alone, and we leave him alone. No more bothering me or Mabel."

"I see," said Ford. And he was exercising all his self control now, to not let any of the rage show on his face. (He didn't have to like the fact that apparently his grand-nephew and -niece had, in at least some respect, apparently forgiven this little troglodyte for his transgressions.) He had to force himself to take in another deep breath before he said, rather neutrally: "And, for what reason did Gideon believe he thought he had reason to kill you?" Because the man-eater had been right about the shears, but surely she had been lying or misunderstanding about that child making these murder attempts simply from being slighted from Mabel's affections-

Dipper snorted. "It's not like he had a good reason," Dipper told him. "He was just obsessed with Mabel. He pressured her into dating him, and got upset when she broke up with him. I mean, he actually wanted her to marry him, which was pretty crazy. I think maybe he still does." Dipper shuddered. "Mabel just doesn't like him back. He refused to accept that. And it's not like attacking any of us is gonna do anything but make things worse with his chances with her, not that he really got that."

Ford twitched, because... How, exactly, was this a thing? -And why wasn't Dipper more upset about it? That Gleeful boy had tried to kill him multiple times, and had gone after Mabel in a terrible fashion, but his great-nephew was largely acting like it wasn't a horrendous problem of the highest order-

"He tried to kill you, because Mabel broke up with him?" Ford just couldn't understand. Being turned down by someone was not enough to have any sane individual resorting to… to murder atttempts on the sibling of the object of their affection in… in some plot for revenge! That was insane! And the Gleeful boy was only 10 years old! He would have merely been 9 years old last summer, when the niblings were 12, and… that was a three year age difference, and at that age- That wasn't-

Dipper shrugged. "Like Mabel says: he's a creepy little dork," was all Dipper had to say about it, apparently in his sister's own words.

This was insane. Completely and utterly- "Why haven't his parents disciplined him for-"

"For what? We didn't have proof for most of this stuff, and Bud was okay with setting up that arranged marriage thing with Grunkle Stan in the first place, when Gideon first started dating her. And Grunkle Stan was pushing for it, too, until Mabel told him she didn't want to. Then he was all kind of, 'whatever' about it, like it wasn't a big deal that she didn't want to." (Good. Because Ford would have to murder his own brother, if he hadn't.) "I dunno. Gideon had this bolo tie thing he was using for his shows and stuff. I didn't even realize that was how he was doing half his act, until he used it on me to try and kill me with those shears. There was this blue gem, that I think was actually the important part. I don't know where he got it? But Mabel destroyed it," Dipper muttered. "And, well, between that and whatever he did to control Bud, I don't think Gideon's parents could exactly stop him from doing whatever he wanted. I mean, he summoned Bill just to get the code to Grunkle Stan's safe, and then blew it up because he got impatient waiting for Bill to get it for him. I mean, who summons a demon just to-"

Thinking over things, something suddenly connected for Ford that made him go cold. "Wait! Gideon had- he had an… you said it was a large blue gemstone? Was he able to use it to levitate objects?" Ford asked, as he pulled out a piece of paper, and started sketching.

"Ah, yeah. He was able to levitate a lot of stuff with it." Dipper frowned slightly, then sat up a bit straighter. "Wait, you know about it?" Dipper asked next, just before Ford showed him the image.

"Is this-" Ford began to ask, but Dipper was already nodding. He lowered the sketch. "That mystic amulet is something I found. The use of it bleaches the user's hair white, and corrupts their soul."

"Yeah, that's a pretty good description of Gideon Gleeful," Dipper noted. "Are you sure it was just the amulet, though? He hasn't had it for awhile…"

"Soul corruption is not easily purged," Ford noted, though he couldn't help but frown. "I thought I had hidden it well." He'd written down the location in Journal 2, but… no. Surely not. No elementary school child could possibly be so conniving or clever as to manage to find it, or dig it up, with how he hid it on those school grounds. That was the entire reason he'd hidden it there - with that much foot traffic and children nearby, no-one so shady that Bill would be able to make use of them would be able to approach the building without being stopped, let alone begin the difficult process of retrieval.

...And yet Stan had had that journal in his possession, upon his return. (And no offense to his brother, but Stan would never have been allowed near a school building as an adult, even if he had been inclined to approach a school again.) Stan would not want to enter any school grounds without a very strong reason to do so - which was, in retrospect, an even less likely occurrence. And Gideon had been the one who had had the amulet on him, not Stan, and Stan would not be one to throw something so potentially useful out; he would hardly care about the potential corruption of his soul either, Ford had no doubt. Which meant...

"Dipper, how long did Gideon have access to Journal 2?" Ford asked him rather urgently, to a rather blank look from his grand-nephew.

"Gideon didn't have Journal 2," Dipper told him with a frown. "Grunkle Stan did. He was just missing Journal 3, until I told him about it."

Ford frowned. "You are absolutely certain that Gideon never saw or knew of any of the Journals?" he queried him.

Dipper frowned at this. "Uh. Actually, Gideon did know about the journals." Dipper looked almost shocked. "-I nearly forgot! That's why he was chasing me and Mabel down with the robot. He took my Journal 3 when we tried to get the Shack back the first time, and he was yelling at me about the other journal. He thought I had another one! So, he must have had either Journal 1 or Journal 2, right? Oh, man..." Dipper buried his face in his hands. "I didn't even think about that. I was so distracted with everything else that…" Dipper muttered out.

"It's all right, my boy," Ford comforted him, resting a hand on his shoulder, which had Dipper slowly lowering his hands to look up at him again. "I myself have not always been able to keep track of everything, in the heat of the moment. That you remember him saying such at all is a testament to your memory and recollection ability." Ford smiled at him. He truly was proud of his grand-nephew. He hadn't realized what sorts of things he and Mabel had been facing all throughout the past summer.

(...Not that much of it wasn't, apparently, entirely stoppable, if not avoidable. Ford would just have to see to it that his niblings wouldn't have to face any of that sort of thing from this particular miscreant, ever again.)

Dipper flushed a bit. "I should have thought of it, though."

"Well, we are getting to the truth of the matter together, now," Ford told him, before frowning further. "It is not as though I did not note Gideon's hair color, myself. Given the general appearance of his parents, I should have suspected such far earlier myself." He himself had not asked Stan. how he had managed to find the journals, either - and, apparently, he really should have. "I'll have to conduct research into the purification of souls, again." He'd tossed away some of it when he'd discarded his journals in the Pit; the rest of those Bill-tainted papers, he and his family had burned along with every other Bill-tainted thing that had remained anywhere in the house.

"I really don't think it's gonna make much difference with Gideon Gleeful," Dipper told him almost warningly. "It's not like Bud's really any better."

"We shall see," Ford said neutrally. Then he paused for a moment. "It certainly does not excuse his behavior towards either you, or your sister."

"Well, yeah," Dipper said, like he thought that such a conclusion was obvious, and Ford couldn't quite hold back the laugh.

"You know," Ford told him, "While I may have written a substantial amount of those spells, rituals, and curses that I researched down in Journal 2…" He paused for dramatic effect - well, only slightly - but could one blame him? Because... "...I did not write down absolutely everything in there that I found," Ford confided in his young (unofficial) protege, with a small (and not quite evil) smile. "So if you would like to know a few things that even Gideon could not possibly have ever known about real, true magic…"

And with that, Ford was rewarded with a very excited, happy smile from his young grand-nephew, who certainly deserved far better when it came to the knowledge of magic, than an accidental localized zombie apocalypse, a desperate and hurried attempt to forestall Bill's invasion of Stan's mind, and whatever terrible things that this Gideon child had tried to inflict upon him. Dipper deserved far better than that.

(And yes, Ford was going to still talk about this with Stan, to confirm what he already knew now must be true. Gideon had had what sounded like the mystic amulet, along with the ritual to summon Bill. Both had been things that he had written down in Journal 2, and neither of which would have otherwise been accessible in any way to an elementary school child by any means. The amulet had been secured by one of Fiddleford's own locking - and passcoded - inventions, and the caves were a several day hike out into the woods from the town. The chances of a nine year old somehow stumbling across that old native cave that had Bill's drawings and warnings in it were absolutely, and perfectly, zero. It would be, unbelievable as it was, far more likely for an elementary school aged child to have somehow retrieval Journal 2 from its hiding location. This all led Ford to his final conclusion: Gideon, at some point, for an unknown amount of time, had read at least part of Journal 2.)

And Ford felt like a bit of an idiot. The niblings had told him that Gideon had summoned Bill to make a Deal with him; he should have put it together sooner, the fact that Gideon knew how to summon Bill must have meant that- But he had become so used to the idea of Bill being ever-present and so well-known throughout the multiverse that the thought simply hadn't crossed his mind that, no, Bill's summoning circle shouldn't have been so freely-known here. Thirty years had passed, yes, and it could have been possible that Bill had made a larger foothold in this, his home dimension, but he should have checked. And he hadn't. The first two people he'd talked to in this dimension had known of Bill Cipher, and...

...yes, he supposed he'd had other, more pressing things on his mind, such as properly securing his mind during sleep, and the Rift, but...

Ford sighed as he slowly got up, and moved off to the larger lab space, with Dipper all but bouncing in excitement at his heels. Of course Gideon had learned all of this from his Journal. Of course he had.

(Had he copied down the instructions for any of those spells and curses from his journal at some point? How dangerous was the child, still? Were those spells part of what allowed him to keep those rather dangerous-looking bodyguards of his in line?)

None of this was making Ford feel any better. Because even disregarding everything- the fact remained that Gideon Gleeful had tried to kill another child, multiple times. Two, in fact: both Dipper and Mabel. His grand-nephew and grand-niece.

...and apparently no-one in town really cared, or even knew anything at all about it?

How much did Stan know, that he hadn't told him? Why hadn't he told him?

"Great-Uncle Ford? Are you okay?" Dipper asked in worry, apparently at the expression on Ford's face.

Ford rubbed a hand across his face and sighed. This wasn't normal. It couldn't be. It shouldn't be. (Was he really so out of touch with what was or wasn't normal anymore? Forgiving and giving a second chance to someone who had tried on multiple occasions to kill you, who you still didn't really like, was one thing. It was barely conceivable, but perhaps somewhere within the realm of possibility. Maybe. But the fact that Gideon was free to just… waltz around town with those bodyguards of his, even after multiple attempted murders - convicted or not - and no-one was doing anything about that? Should Stanley be up in arms over all of this madness? And how exactly had Gideon been able to be convicted for spying on the town, but not any of these multitudinous attempted murders?)

"Dipper, I know this may be something of an odd and pointed question, but why isn't Gideon still in prison?" Ford finally asked, as they strode into his lab space together.

Dipper shrugged. "Well, the convicted criminals that broke out during Weirdmageddon aren't in prison anymore, either." ...And that was considered acceptable as well? This town… (He hadn't any idea at all, about any of this. It just made Ford feel even worse about all of this, that he hadn't even known...) "I mean, we told everybody about what had happened, so they all know that Gideon helped us when we were trying to get rid of Bill. So I guess the townsfolk just kinda… forgave him? And Gideon says he's working to be a normal kid so…" Dipper shrugged again, though he also grimaced at this.

...This wasn't something that his great nephew should worry about, so Ford simply nodded at this and moved on to what he could do for him, instead.

...Which was to gift him with (and then drill him in) as many defensive spells and counter-spells as he possibly could.

After awhile, they had to stop. (Dipper seemed rather overwhelmed, and Ford was beginning to think that perhaps he'd been going a bit fast with him. ...Ah, well. Better to give him more to work with, to be able to refine later, than not enough of anything at all.) And as Dipper left him to his own devices, on his way back upstairs, Ford slumped in his chair, ran a hand across his face, and sighed. He had a lot to think about.

...Namely, what he was going to do about the other, potentially-subverted member of Bill's Zodiac Ten, who they would have to rely upon to perform the circle in the most dire of circumstances, whenever they came to be.

Dinner was blessedly uneventful that night and passed without incident. Miz seemed distracted by something and didn't attempt to speak to him or anyone else really, just eating her meal quietly and causing no further trouble. Bill didn't seem particularly restive that night, either, for whatever reason. (Frankly, Ford was happy to be able to count his blessings on that front, for once.)

Ford ate quickly, sent Stan a glance to let him know that he wanted to speak with him later, and after Stan sent him a silent response in the affirmative, he got up and left the room, trusting Stan to keep the niblings safe for the rest of dinner. They were pretty much done anyway, and Bill had finished eating long since, sitting back and staring at the kettle for boiling water as he usually did these days.

Ford still lingered in the hallway outside his bedroom, where he could hear the noise from the kitchen, until the niblings had finished eating and put their plates away. He watched them pass by, heading for the staircase upstairs to their room, while he listened to Bill (and perhaps Miz) wash the dishes from that night. Bill wasn't yet done, when he heard Stan's footsteps approaching, and Stan finally shuffled his way into the hallway.

"Alright, what's this about?" Stan asked as he headed for Ford's room, Ford falling into step with him.

Ford waited until they were safely behind closed doors before beginning to unload his latest questions and worries on him - this time, about another member of their very self-same Zodiac, one who he had previously (and apparently wrongly) assumed had only been tricked into helping Bill, while actually and truly being on their own side.

Miz was dealing with a very odd problem that night. It was a problem that cropped up whenever she was in a physical form for too long.

She was feeling horny.

Miz sighed as she rolled around onto her stomach on some pillows up in the attic after dinner. Ah… she really wanted to masturbate… but Bill was right there. She felt uncomfortable at the idea of doing that in front of him (at least while he was watching).

Well, perhaps she'd wait until he fell asleep… or maybe for sometime when he'd left the room so his suit's sensors wouldn't record such a lewd act for him to see… damn physical urges. Miz supposed she should just make a vessel that wasn't capable of having a libido, but that wasn't good either… it almost felt like the itching from when there was too much power surging through her (which was different from the itch of a karma imbalance) but… less painful and more annoying. She kinda preferred feeling horny over feeling itchy (since at least this she could satisfy without hurting herself) so she left her vessels capable of having a libido. But part of her still got embarrassed about it. Even when she knew that she shouldn't be. While she couldn't say it was as natural as the bodily urges she'd had as a human, it wasn't really all that different. Just a different body.

Thing was, she could go years without feeling any need for sexual stimulation, so there was a reason why this was coming up now. If she had to be honest with herself, this had been building for a while. Ever since she'd asked Bill to modify and make an 'older' and 'voluptuous' looking version of her vessel. Miz flushed and buried her face in the pillow. Watching her 'child' form grow and swell in all~ the right places stirred her up in ways she couldn't fully articulate. At the time, she'd been in the Mindscape, without a body to express the feelings, and afterward, she'd been too busy with things to really address it.

But things had calmed down, the days passed peacefully and Miz still had some pent up desires that hadn't been addressed.

...and damn if she didn't feel a little ashamed to feel like this. She knew she shouldn't, there was nothing wrong with wanting or enjoying sexual relief. Even if one was asexual. But in this house with young children, who were so sweet and innocent, she felt dirty for having such desires, fearful they would find out and be disgusted with her. Stan or Ford? They were adults, she didn't give a shit if they knew. Bill? Well… maybe she felt a little afraid he'd be grossed out by her physical needs. By her wanting to have physical needs.

So Miz rocked around on the pillow and decided she would wait for everyone in the Shack to go to bed and then lock herself in the bathroom to… take care of her needs.

Wouldn't take too long, everyone had gone to their rooms after dinner. It was only a matter of time until they all fell asleep. She had her cuffs off, she always took them off when up in Bill's room, and she considered how she wanted to do this. Well, it was that older form Bill created for her that had set her off this time, and she had wanted to thoroughly explore that lovely body. Those large, round breasts~ so heavy and soft~

Miz buried her flushing face deeper into the pillow. There was something seriously wrong with her. Lusting after her own bodies. And other people's bodies, though she had no interest in other people for sexual relief. Ugh… it sucked sometimes, being an asexual with a libido… this was probably why she'd thought she was bisexual for the longest time, because of her horniness...

"...Problem?" Bill asked her, from where he was seated. Miz looked up to see that he'd cracked open an eye (and looked to be done with his meditation properly, this time). He seemed a bit… not calmer, exactly, but his energy hum seemed to be... that much more smooth? (The flow of it seemed to be a little more…)

Miz sighed and rocked on her pillow again. "Just… some physical stuff." she was too embarrassed to outright say what it was she wanted here.

"Hungry, thirsty, itchy, tired, need-to-move, need-to-stretch, need-to-spin, touch-craving, sex-cravings, adrenaline-reflex, squirmy feelings, itchy feelings, other-thoughts, other-emotions, or just-other?" Bill asked her simply, resituating himself in place.

Miz couldn't help but twitch when Bill listed 'sex-cravings' and she saw Bill raise an eyebrow at this.

"...Hmm?" Bill said, and then Bill blinked, then sighed. "Miz." He shifted in place a little. "You make your vessel bodies with this problem, why?" he asked her. She hadn't twitched at the 'squirmy feelings', only the 'sex-cravings', so he assumed it had nothing to do with that Stanford this time. (Which was good. -Progress!)

"...I sometimes enjoy the feeling…" Miz mumbled into her pillow. "And this feeling is better than feeling itchy. Since I can satisfy it. And it doesn't happen very often. Just when something that..." she wiggled again. "...that arouses me comes up…"

Bill blinked at her. She hadn't twitched at the 'squirmy feelings' mention though, which meant that...

"...This was a 'better' feeling for you before you started blocking out other-beings' emotions and thoughts, though," he reminded her. "Do you know whether you still like it or not, yet?" he asked her next, rather clinically.

"Well," Miz rocked slowly on her pillow as she thought about it. "I enjoy the feeling. But I don't want to have s-sex with anyone else. Just… myself and my own touching…" she whined a little. "It's a little embarrassing."

"Masturbation, yes," Bill nodded. He'd seen that a lot, in a lot of species! Including... "That's normal for most humans," he noted, propping his chin up in his palm. It wasn't quite a question.

"I used to do that a lot, back when I was human. I think part of me still registers that." Miz pulled at the hem of her pajama t-shirt. "I still have most of the same fetishes. Though I think I've developed new ones over the years, in this life."

Bill let out a sigh. If it went that far back… well, she also had that 'melon allergy' that she hadn't gotten rid of yet, either.

"Do you want to keep it, or learn to get rid of it?" he asked her rather practically next. It hadn't been on her list, but… That sort of thing could be incredibly annoying and ill-timed, after all, and distracting. It made one much more likely to be attacked, and harder to defend oneself properly, in that timeframe. Made it harder to concentrate when it happened. (Notably, his current stupid human-ish body was not quite that stupid, and did not have that problem. ...Not least of which because what little it might seem inclined to do, were it left completely without management and fully to its own devices and balances and original baselines and setpoints, Bill had rebalanced and tweaked and otherwise handled himself quite thoroughly, to make it far more properly useful, in completely his own regard.)

(Bill was fairly sure that if he himself ever had some sort of sex cravings - not that he did, ever had, or ever expected to; he was a triangle, that wasn't something Shapes felt, or how they did things - then if he ever tried the physical human way of performing their physical act in his current stupid physically-human-ish body, it would likely leave him as seemingly-vulnerable and open to attack as he was when he was trying to feed. Not that he did any feeding when anyone else was around, being or demon - blasted Glasses jumping in on him like that - it was a very delicate procedure!)

Miz paused and thought about it. "I… don't dislike the feeling. As long as I can take the time to satisfy my needs. And I can ignore it to take care of it later once things settle. And…" she wiggled. "I got aroused back when we were in that other dimension, and I've been able to ignore it until now, since things are more settled down and I have the free time to allow the feeling to really surface…"

Bill thought about it. So she could 'ignore' and suppress this feeling well-below her surface until she was in a place where she felt 'safe' enough to pursue it. And this had been something she'd been holding back since they were in the other dimension? Hm. ...Well, he was pretty sure she didn't have all the correct blocks and shunts in place to prevent resonances from being created in response to external pressures, and then surfacing and becoming a problem whether she wanted them to or not… BUT... the fact that she was talking about this NOW and didn't seem worried about this sort of issue, meant that Miz felt safe enough here that she believed it was fine to start feeling it here (...allowing herself to feel it?).

"Well then." Bill told her, "If you want to keep it, and you're sure you want to keep it, then you should. And if you want to not-feel-it anymore, later, you can do that too?" He'd save the resonances talk for later. Bringing up the PTSD now when she was feeling safe now was not something that he wanted to do. He liked her feeling safe, upstairs, with him, and he wanted to keep that one going. Because he was starting to think that Stanley might actually be right about that whole 'humans needing a safe space they can retreat to' thing. ...at least a little bit. Maybe. For some humans.)

"...If I wanted to, I could just… not." Miz thought about it. She didn't get horny when in a fully energy form, so far as she could tell. She could still look at things that aroused her, but she didn't feel any of the 'hot and bothered' feelings until she went back into a physical body. "So long as I'm not feeding off Lust energy, I'm fine with experiencing sexual arousal and satisfying it."

Bill nodded at her. He'd never really seen the appeal (for a multitude of reasons…), but… if he'd had some kind of… squirmy-feelings back when he'd been a triangle… like she had back when she'd been a human… maybe he would have felt differently about it, too? And… it was proof, in a sense, that she was, in some ways, clearly still who she'd always-been before...

"Do it when you want to, don't do it when you don't want to, and if you want to take your surroundings into account when determining the 'want', well," Bill let out a laugh and grinned at her, "I won't argue with that! That is much safer! Less risky to you," the rather-untrusting triangle demon noted, in the lightest way he could touch upon the subject at-present. "As long as it's not a problem, it's not a problem," he shrugged off (as he set the groundwork for a later PTSD discussion at the same time), lowering his hand to his knee. "Yes?"

Mis nodded slowly. "Ah, yes." She paused. "You're not… grossed out by me? She asked quietly. "For being a weird pervert?"

Bill blinked at her, then looked a little taken aback. "No, of course not!" He sighed, then told her, "You were a human. You are still sort-of a human. You do human things still. This is a human thing!" he told her. He shifted over a little, closer to her, and placed a hand on her head. "You like what you like. It doesn't matter what anyone else thinks." As long as she was safe and having fun, he'd be happy about it, whatever she did. He just didn't want her getting hurt or DYING AGAIN.

Miz leaned into the touch, feeling a bit better about not being judged for this one bit.

"Don't know why humans keep getting all up in arms about this stuff all the time, the prudes," Bill told her next, as he patted-petted her on the head. "Like they think they're the only species that does this stuff? And MOST of the time, they're so BORING about it! It's just the same thing to See, over and over again. -You know, I actually helped that one guy write the Kama Sutra, just to spice things up a bit?" Because if he had to See that stuff from time to time, the least they could do was make it a little more interesting to watch! "Though a few of those poses REALLY should've kept the warning labels," he told her, making a face, and removing the hand from her head, to gesture to the side. "Flexibility and joint-limits are a thing! If you don't warm up the RIGHT parts of those human bodies first-"

...Aaaaaaand now Miz was getting super-embarrassed all over again. "-Uh, brother?" she asked him, tugging at his sleeve, and he stopped.

Miz wiggled, pressing her legs together.

Bill blinked at her. "Oh Right. -Right," he told her, as he thought through his catalogued tally of 'things that embarrass humans a lot' (along with several of his theories behind their sources) and 'got it' as he got a one-to-one match to them, with her, on- "Sexual displays in front of 'family members' are biologically hardwired to suppress and misfire in humans. Avoidance of incest is an evolutionary thing for most species! -I can go downstairs for awhile?" he told her. "And direct my suit-sensors not to sense or record anything this far upwards?"

Miz nodded, a bright blush on her face.

But as he was about to get up, Miz reached out and tugged at his sleeve again. Yes, she felt a little horny (okay, a lot horny, and being reminded of that particular book hadn't exactly helped calm her down any!), but right now, she was feeling embarrassed enough about it that she wasn't sure she could do it, even if she knew he wasn't watching, she felt so very self-conscious about it now. She needed to calm down a bit (-not that way!) and think about something else for awhile.

"...Another problem?" Bill asked her again, settling down to sit down again, and looking at her curiously. He didn't know why she had stopped him.

Miz nodded at him almost desperately. It took Miz a moment to think about what she wanted to say, and exactly why she wanted to say it, why she was feeling so embarrassed about everything right now...

And then it hit her: Bill knew all this stuff about her now, but she didn't know anything equally potentially embarrassing about him. -That was so unfair!

"-I can wait a bit!" she told her big brother. I want to know something else about you, first!"

"Something about me?" Bill asked her, a little confused. (Had he been wrong about the wanting him to leave and not watch thing? Most humans were like that, and she'd seemed to react that way to what he'd said just now, too? ...Then again, some humans were very much the opposite, almost exhibitionist-)

"How did mating happen in your dimension? As a triangle?" Miz asked, honestly curious, and she tried to suppress her own current still-embarrassed blush. Her own dimension had incubation of piece/eggs, but Bill (from what she's been able to See or learn from listening to him talk) didn't have such things. The way he'd talked about stuff on her blog... Well, he'd said that the sex-related stuff had been really different than what she'd described, and with the way he'd asked about stuff in hers, it had sounded like the shapes and lines in his dimension hadn't had parts or slots or anything like that at all.

"Hmm?" Bill blinked at this rather odd question. "Well," he began, trying to think through things (given his limited knowledge on the subject, though he hadn't really realized it at the time - and still didn't, somewhat). "If you were my younger triangle… line? Sister/brother?" Bill frowned for a moment, then shrugged it off. "Either way, I would have to teach you the Equations, as a start," he told her.

It was Miz's turn to blink at him. "Equations?" she asked him. "Equations for what?"

"For making more Shapes and more Lines," he told her, settling into place, and making a triangle shape out of his hands at her for a moment, before dropping them, too.

Miz blinked at him. ...Right, he'd been a triangle, and… in the other dimension that they'd just visited with the younkle twins in it, Bill had said he'd been geometry in a really two-dimensional dimension - breadth, depth, and time, with no height at all? (She was still kind of trying to wrap her head around that one…)

"Um," said Miz. "What would be the stuff past the start?" She was a little curious now, and if that was 'the start', then there should be something else too other than just the start. Right?

"The circle-Rules for the pro-cess of pro-creation," Bill told her. "When you're supposed to use the Equations and not, and who-with. Not that there's anybody around to enforce them anymore," Bill told her with an odd chittery-chuckle, propping his chin up on his fist again.

Miz thought over this. "You know both sets of equations?" she asked him.

"Both sets?" Bill repeated, confused for a moment. "-No, no, no," he told her, "There's only one set of Equations! One!"

...Okay, that made his first comment about it not mattering if she was a shape or a line for what he'd have to tell her make a little more sense, but now she was even more confused about… "If there's only one set of equations," she asked, "Couldn't somebody have a little shape or line all on their own?"

"...Theoretically, yes," Bill told her. "But they'd have to be very smart, and maybe think up a 'suitable partner' who they'd be solving them with, who was 'there' in their mind and thoughts - but not really there bodily in-body - as they solved these equations along with 'them', but not with them," he told her. "And they'd have to know themselves very well, as well," Bill told her next.

"...Okay?" Miz said. "But why would they need… an imaginary second person?" she asked next.

"Because of the way that the circle-Rules for solving those Equations are laid out," Bill told her. "They include starting-instructions, for how to work out the solution. You don't have to be very smart to do it," he told her, "You just need to be willing to put the time and energy and intense concentration into doing it - a very-intended and intentional intent," he told her. "'One shape and one line measure each other'…" Bill began almost sing-song, "'They take their partner's measure', and 'they take what they know', and then 'they work on those Equations together', and then..." Bill ended his explanation there with a little shrug. "It's… a little like the making of 'hat-idea's?" Bill told her next. "Custom-made, tailored to fit… Everything has its place, and everyone has their own place, too. -There is a place in the family-unit that needs to be filled, and it needs to be filled relative-to that shape and that line that make up that family-unit; circle-Rule." And then Bill shrugged again.

"What if the shape and line already have a child?" Miz asked next. "Do they have to measure the child as part of the family, to figure out the next 'hole' in the family to fill?" That sounded… more than a little off to her. And potentially super-creepy and wrong.

"Measuring is only ever done relative-to the parents," Bill told her. "Children just have to deal with it and make more room for the new child, if it's needed, whatever the outcome finally and with-finality is. The parents decide if there's another section of space that needs filling with yet another child or not, and then they go off and they fill it. And if there's some overlap there…?" Bill shrugged. (Oof. That sounded more than a little bit brutal.)

"But somebody could potentially do it differently, right?" Miz asked next, getting back to her original question, now a bit intrigued. (She was certainly feeling a lot less embarrassed, and more than a little distracted from certain other things too, by the new concepts she was hearing here and now from her brother.) "Like a shape and another shape, or a line and a line?"

"Maybe." But Bill seemed to mostly shrug that off, too. "I haven't solved the Equations myself, so I don't know what the outcome would look like for that, though," Bill told her, "Or if it would even work," he told her next. (He'd need to solve them using the original instructions first, in order to analyze them fully, to know that one. And he'd never had the urge, or felt the need to do that, to run that sort of 'Being-creating' experiment, for a MULTITUDE of reasons.) "I never heard of anyone defying the circle-Rules like that," he let her know. "And I haven't tried to think of any shortcuts for getting the same result, obviously," not having solved that particular set of equations before even once to begin with, not on his own all by his own self or with anyone else.

Bill wasn't capable of forgetting anything, but he honestly hadn't even thought about the existence of those Equations since forever, almost - not for a very long time. (Honestly, even if he had been inclined to want his own child-spawn for some odd un-weird reason at some point, though - and he wasn't, hadn't, and never-had to-date - why in the name of all that was terrible and chaotic would he even consider bringing another being into being-existent to begin with, before he'd ended up ending all of the horrible Rules that made everything SO VERY WRONG, long before he'd finished FIXING EVERYTHING that he needed to fix?!)

(-That would just be rude, and wrong, and a terribly-horrible idea!)

"So…" Miz thought this over. "You solve some equations, and then you have another person? What if you solve them accidentally?" she asked next.

"That's not how it works," Bill told her, blinking. "You have to have the intent to do it."

"Huh?" Miz was thoroughly confused at this point.

Bill looked a little frustrated, and clicked and clacked under his breath a bit to himself, thinking. (Apparently, this was something that seemed obvious to him?) After awhile, he nodded to himself and finally said, "Everything in my old home dimension was math and ideas. Yes? Ideas, and math. Everything, and everyone," Bill told her. "When I made hat-ideas out of ideas and described them with math, I made a thing. I had to try and make it, to make it," he told her. "If I wanted to time-lock the store-space, I had to think it, and want to do it, to concentrate and do it - intent," he told her next. "If someone can think ideas-of-things into being a thing, if they know how to do it and try hard enough, intending to think ideas into being as-intended, why wouldn't they be able to think beings into being, the same way?" he posed to her, as if it was obvious. Then Bill sighed and said, "The problem is… when somebody gets the math wrong."

Miz blinked. "Gets the math wrong?" she asked. That… didn't sound good, the way Bill had put it...

Bill nodded, looking dour. "You solve for X - plug in your parameters and go - and you think the answer is going to be 3? But it's actually -27 instead, oops! -Better get rid of the mess, start over and try again!" Bill let out a huff. "Solve for a shape, a line - maybe you aren't sure, you just know you really want one, and you want them to be the best, the greatest something-and-everything-ever, one that will be just perfect - those are your parameters, the things that you think are important, defined by you, relative to you and your own thought-processes and those of the other about-to-be-a-parent, and… - uh oh, you got an equilateral Triangle, not the isosceles that you'd really wanted to keep, instead. Oops! Well, that's taken care of easily enough, though. You'll never have to see them again," Bill told her. "Probably. -OH!" Bill clapped his hands together suddenly, startling Miz. "But maybe you want an equilateral Triangle, and try to set up the Equations just-so, so you'll be sure to solve your way to a solution for getting yourselves a really smart one of those, right? Thinking that's what you'll get?" Bill told her next. "But, oh left, you got an irregular Triangle instead! ...Guess you must have 'screwed up' your math. Oops..." And Bill trailed off almost darkly.

Miz pulled in a soft breath at this.

But then Bill raised his head, smiled at her, and seemed to shake it off.

"I used to solve hat-ideas all wrong on purpose, you know," he said to her next, apropos for nothing. "Just for fun." (Really, he was just trying to shift the subject to the next-closest thing, by backing up to what he'd said before, right at the start - when he'd brought up the hat-ideas he'd created - to then turn away from what he'd just said, just a little - and move forward in a different direction instead, to talk about the creation of things instead of beings, again. Because the creation of things was much more fun to talk about!)

"-I never sold any of them, the ones I did wrong," Bill told her (confided in her, really), "I never even tried; I knew no-one else would want them. Because of the Rules. -But I liked them, though; I did." He let out a sigh. "It's why I like silly straws," he told her, "They're just so silly!" He grinned. But then the grin dimmed down to an older and smaller, old and small smile. "They remind me of some of my first hat-ideas and ideas-for-hats, all backwards and squiggly and crazy and wrong. Folding in on themselves, and all the rest. But they were still hats, though," he told her. "They were still hats." (And it was fine, right? That he'd liked them? That he liked them still? -He'd decided so, long ago, and he hadn't changed his mind yet…)

(He would never change his mind. He was Mind. And he would never change. NEVER. -He'd decided that long ago, too. In order to save his brother, he needed to not change, to still and always remain himself, so that he'd never forget, never stop, he'd never stop-)

"Nothing is perfect. It becomes perfect when you love it for what it is." Miz quoted with a small smile. "I'm sure your hats were amazing."

"I-" Bill blinked at her, staring. Then he took in a slow breath. "...I could show you," he said next. "...If you want." He bobbed his torso side-to-side in place slightly, as his arms lay a bit slack at his sides, hands in his lap.

"I would love to see your hats!" Miz told him eagerly.

Bill blinked, and blinked again. "Well. ...Well"

And then Bill slowly raised a hand.

And he drew a righteous tangle of lines a bit in front of him. He started with an equilateral triangle in front of him in another trailing color of light...

...and when he was done, that triangle had a larger crazy-looking squiggle of light all over the place around it (...but never actually intersecting the triangle anywhere; the squiggle always and only intersected itself…) and...

...when Bill got done, he dropped his hand. And the entire mess of color and light hung there in the air, in the space in the middle of the attic, and Bill sat there and stared at Miz in place, staying quite still as he did so; his torso was no longer bobbing-swaying from side to side at all now, not rven the least little bit (though it had as he'd worked). His eyes were slightly wide as he looked through the mess at, and to her, his sister, here. Watching. And waiting.

And...

"It's beautiful…" Miz breathed, staring at it. She reached out tentatively at it, tracing one of the glowing lines with a finger.

And Bill slowly started to smile.

"It's okay," he told her, "You can touch it." It wasn't a Shape or a Line, after all, and he completely understood the urge. (Besides, even if it had been a Being, she was gentle-enough anyway to do that safely, still. He knew that from her hugs…)

Miz placed her hand on the lines, careful and soft. She trailed her finger along it, following the lines as they curved around and into each other.

"It's smooth," she noted. And just a bit warm. Not slippery-smooth, though. Just smooth. And the edges weren't rounded, exactly, but they also were not sharp...

"That was my first one," Bill told her, as he went from staring at her, to staring at the thing that he'd drawn and made and thought-up himself. "I liked it almost the best."

"Because it was your first." Miz told him, smiling softly. Gosh, she didn't even remember what her own first art had been...

*Yes," Bill told her. "But also because I went all-out with it," he told her as he continued to stare at it, as he told her... "I didn't know any better back then, that I shouldn't do it this way; that no-one else would want it."

"I would want it." Miz told him seriously. It was so pretty. The lines going in and around and out of each other. It reminded her of the scribbles she and her sister used to draw on the walls when they were children, reminded her of one particular scribble that she used to trace with her eyes every night as she fell asleep.

Bill blinked at her again, then… blushed a bit, and brightened up (and straightened up a bit in place) even more.

"-You can have it, if you want," Bill told her. "You saw it, and you like it; I don't mind if you have it, too. -You watched the order I drew it in, too, right? Where, and how quickly? -The order is important, too," he told her, "I meant it to be. I didn't know the rules for that yet, either," he told her, his light blush deepening slightly without him realizing it, just a little bit more.

Miz giggled. "You're really proud of it, aren't you?"

"Yes!" Bill told her. "It was my very first hat, you know!" he told her quite proudly, puffing out his chest a little bit.

Then Bill looked at her, and he looked at the hat-idea (that wasn't-quite one of those exactly, since it was all three-dimensional and upright-currently and made out of magic instead of 'weirdness' after all, but... it was still…).

And then Bill reached out, and fiddled with it slightly, and then...

...he seemed to undraw and then redraw it, by sliding his finger back and forth in the air just below it. Did that a few times, and then seemed to adjust the speed of it a bit. 'Re-ran' it for a moment, watching it unfold and then fold itself, back to the start.

And then Bill took the little dot of light that seemed to be hanging in the air there, plucked it away from where it was with thumb and finger, and held it, and held it out, as he reached out and gently took Miz's hand with his other hand so lightly...

...and then placed it all down and onto her palm, ever so gently.

"This one is yours now," he told her, as he pulled his hands away from her again. "You can rerun it, fold and unfold it, and, if you want to…" He looked up at her slightly, almost peeking up at her, "You could take it off the triangle base, expand it and wear it a bit. If you wanted to, sometime."

Miz looked down at the hat and then did just that. She let it unfold before her, and tried plucking the 'squiggle' hat away from the triangle it had drawn itself around (it came away easily). She raised it up to place on her head. It somehow fit in place, like a very odd sort of flower crown, woven out of light. She smiled up at Bill and he made a slight chittering noise in surprise but also glee, as he looked up at where she had placed it.

Then he looked back down at her.

"Snappy dresser," he told her with a nod, eyes bright. "You make that look good."

"Thank you." Miz told him before reaching for a hug.

Bill smiled, and hugged her back.

And then, after he had pulled away from her, he grinned down at her and told her enthusiastically (while still blushing a little bit pink), "Let me show you the rest of my collection!"

Miz nodded eagerly, thrilled to be able to see Bill's art. She was so proud of him, his work, his art. Her sisters had been artists too, they'd all been. And she had loved everything that they'd made, kept all their old drawings, even when Zeon said to just throw it away because she'd been embarrassed at her old work, but she'd kept them anyway, in a little folder hidden away...

Bill grinned, and he turned to sit a little more next to her, his side next to her side, a little closer, as he raised his hand up again. And there was a bright and happy smile on his face, as he began to draw-

...and when Bill was done showing off all of his saved up, and never-before-seen by anyone else wonders of work…

Bill made like a good big brother, and went downstairs to the living room post-haste to give his little sister some 'alone time' for her masturbating routine. (He also promised to wait for her downstairs, and not go back upstairs again until she came downstairs first, to tell him when she was done.)

(He also temporarily locked everyone else out of the attic's access rights for the duration just in case - up to and including Stanley - and made sure the full two-way soundproofing was in place for her, without her even needing to ask. Because he was a good brother!)

Miz laid back down on the pillow and carefully took the hat off so it wouldn't get crushed, back on its 'holding triangle' once again. ...Well, that was enlightening. Pun not intended. She wasn't feeling embarrassed anymore, and it made her feel better to know that her brother wouldn't judge her for having physical needs, for wanting to have physical needs. She looked up at the ceiling and projected a mirror so she could see herself. She stared at herself and then aged up her form into the older looking one, watching herself swell and grow and shit, she really was horny...

Well… she had the room all to herself… and Bill had soundproofed it...

Heavy blush in place, she made her clothes vanish and got right into it.

Miz refused to take the hat off for the next few days. (It fit juuuuust inside her bracelet's anti-magic field, so she could even wear the original one downstairs and around the Shack! But she had the whole thing stored in the holographic matrix of her bodysuit, too. -All of the ones that Bill had shown her, really.) Mabel had complimented it. Heck, she sort of wanted one too ("It's so pretty!") and Bill had looked so proud and so bashful at the same time.

...But Bill hadn't said anything to his Shooting Star about how he had been the one to make it. He didn't tell her that he'd made it; he didn't offer to make one for her, too...

Bill had smiled, but he'd stayed silent, and said not one single word to Mabel about it - or to any of the others, whether any of them said anything encouraging and nice about it or not.

Bill didn't say anything at all about it.

Bill didn't say anything about it at all.

And Miz noticed this, too.

Notes:

A/N from Jo: By the by, in case anybody was wondering? The being who Bill showed that very first hat of his to? First? Before he showed it to anyone else? ...and who'd told him that he'd done it all wrong? And to 'never' try and show anything like that to anyone 'ever again!'...? -Had been Bill's mother. He'd started to show/explain it to her, using himself as his very own guide-base, and… he got stopped before he even got very far in, not more than past the first few idea-lines of it. (And boy did he get told off for that pretty hard.)

And then, Bill ran off and showed it off to his big brother Liam next, of course! Because Bill didn't know what he'd done wrong and Liam was always super-supportive, and was always always able to explain everything to him that just didn't make sense at all, not one bit. And Bill had been feeling confused and a little bit hurt, too, at this first and rather not-so-great reception to what he'd thought was a really really great thing! And of course Liam listened to the whole thing for him, just like a big brother should!

And then proceeded to tell Bill every last thing that he'd done wrong in making that hat.

And why it wasn't okay and just wouldn't work.

And why nobody would want it.

And…

It was Bill's first introduction to the concept of 'irregular' being wrong...

...and it came from his very own looked-up-to and loving big brother.

It was also, notably, the first time that Liam had explained something to Bill, that had… well, it had left Bill sort-of agreeing to 'just go along with it, Billy, okay?' because Liam had told him so (that was usual), but it had also left Bill feeling that something wasn't quite right about all of it. That something felt… off...

(...that something was wrong, really really wrong, and Bill didn't understand it, couldn't understand it…)

...and it left Bill with the realization that his brother must be so much smarter than him - and a start of a sense of the gap between them - because Liam had explained something to him, but for the very first time, Bill realized that he still didn't understand what he'd done wrong…

...why was it so wrong to make something that, when he thought of it, he thought of his brother? And why would it be so wrong to want to make something that his big brother Liam could wear himself next, as his next great hat masterpiece that he had been going to make after this one (not just something that had reminded him of the idea of Liam this time), too…?