Illusion is Reality
Chapter 97
-You're probably wondering-
Miz pressed her ear against the Door. She didn't hear any buzzing. She knocked on the Door carefully without opening it. Waited. No buzzing. The glitch-Bill had finally left. Okay. She turned to her brother and smiled. "Today's the day. Should we go tell Stan?" Bill nodded his head, then shook it from side-to-side. "I'll go talk to him about it. You stay here and wait for me."
"And I'll get the barrier set up," Miz told him. Bill grinned, nodded, and pat-pet her on top of her head affectionately with a small smile. Bill had been showing her how to do things his way, all the ways that he thought were the 'best-worst' (and most efficient) way to do them. Miz didn't use them all, since a few of her own ways worked better for her, but she liked learning from him anyway.
(And Bill, for his part, didn't mind that she liked using her own ways of doing things better. When she said it was easier for her to do it her way, he believed her; he just knew that that might not always be the case - case in point, things being far more difficult for her to do here - and he was just happy to give her as many completely different ways as he could think of to do the same thing, in the hope that if she ever found herself in a situation where her usual powers didn't seem to be working for her correctly - if at all - that she'd have as many possible other fallbacks to fall back on that at least one of them would end up always-and-still working out for her, still.)
Bill had even taught her his way for fixing those tears in reality. They'd fixed those already - this morning, in fact. Not that any of the Pines seemed to have remembered that that had been an issue that needed solving...
(...and it was yet another thing that Bill had wanted to show his little sister how to do, given what she'd said about her own singular human-Earth-containing dimension, for multiple reasons. Bill had also made sure to make them all LOOK the same by 'sticking' those sticky-glue remnants in space, hovering above the ground, once he was done with each of them, just in case anybody went looking. He didn't want anyone to be able to tell that anything had been done to them at-a-glance, let alone easily differentiate between the ones that he'd gone and closed up completely, and the few that he'd not gone ahead and already 'fixed' up 'permanently' - just-and-only merely stabilized in place - for a reason…)
They already had a picnic blanket and basket set up near the edge of the forest in the 'yard' of the Shack as a reward to themselves for their own not-talked-of-to-others work that they'd just completed that morning, half in and out of a pleasantly-warm ray of sunbeam and otherwise half-covered by the shadows being cast by the trees overhead. A perfect picnic spot as it were.
If they were going through a Door, they'd leave their bodies behind, and with the unicorn barrier around the shack, it'd be a problem to get back inside to their bodies if they left them up in the attic in there (more like, it'd be annoying for both Miz and her brother). So their plan was to have a 'picnic' outside and simply… take a nap. And of course all sorts of protections needed to be in place to protect their discarded bodies from possession or harm. This was what Miz was setting up right now - a barrier of their own, keyed to keep out anything and anyone who wasn't the two of them.
Meanwhile, Bill went inside to talk to Stanley about what they were going to be attempting to do quite shortly, if everything stayed clear on the Door front before they left.
"Miz and I are gonna have a picnic near the woods today," Bill announced to the kitchen as a whole, as he put a kettle of water on the stove for heating to boiling, before he took in a breath and said next: "And we would like to remain undisturbed for the length of said outing."
Stan glanced up from his newspaper from where he was sitting at the table. Yeah, he'd gotten the message loud and clear, there. (Hell, he was surprised that Ford wasn't looking more suspicious about it. Not that he'd been able to talk the kid into a 'code phrase' that was even a little more subtle than that. Crazy triangle. He lowered his paper to look over it at him, then raised it again and said, "How long you think you're gonna be out there?"
(Ford, standing at the counter and nursing a suspiciously not awakening-feeling cup of (likely decaf) coffee, saw the long look that Stan had given the triangle demon, and looked between the two of them suspiciously. Since when did Bill announce when he was going to be spending time with his demonic 'sister' outside, in the general vicinity of the Shack? Let alone anyplace else?)
The kid didn't even seem to have to think about it. "A few hours," he said. ...Yeah, that wasn't surprising. Kid and the dragon-lady had said that this first one was only supposed to be a quick trip out and then back, after looking around at some stuff. So Stan nodded to him and said, as half a reminder… "Have fun. Stay out of trouble."
"HA! 'Trouble' better stay out of us!" the kid cackled out like the happy lunatic demon-kid that he was, before turning on his heel and began to rummage through the cupboards for who knew what the heck else that the kid thought he needed for this 'picnic' of his. Stan let out a sigh and flipped out his newspaper a little bit. Demons...
As soon as the kid finished up with grabbing a few teacups, mugs, and saucer-plates, along with significantly more forks and paper towels and stuff than even Stan was expecting the kid to go for, causing Ford to go from giving him a thinking glare to a frown… the whistle finally went off on the kettle, and the kettle and the whole stack of tableware and junk promptly ended up in the kid's hat (the eyepatch-one).
And as soon as the kid had not quite raced off upstairs, for who knew what else, casually walking over to the staircase but then taking the stairs themselves two or three at a time… once the kid was out of direct earshot, Ford grimaced, turned to him, and said, "Stan…"
"It's fine, Ford," was Stan's gruff reply. But at the look his brother was still giving him (and had been giving him ever since he'd told the kid to 'have fun'), Stan sighed and told him, "Ain't nothin' they're doin' that I don't know about and haven't talked about with the two of 'em before, okay," he said next.
At this, Ford's frown deepened. "What are they up to, then?" he asked his brother suspiciously. Because that told him absolutely nothing, and-
"It's fine, Ford," Stan repeated. "Don't go worryin' about it."
Ford stared at his brother for a little, then drew himself up and started to stalk off for the porch, coat billowing all dramatically behind him as he stated, "I'm going outside to keep an eye on the two of them."
"Yeah? You do that," Stan told him, completely unconcerned.
Ford didn't quite stop in place at that, but his pace did slow down a lot for a moment, as he turned his head to give Stan a frown over his shoulder for a long moment. But then he turned away again and slammed his way out the door of the Shack and out onto the porch, picking up steam all over again.
Stan sighed.
(Ford was not going to just leave the two demons to their own devices - not when they were so clearly and obviously up to no-good. He wasn't an idiot, though. He wasn't about to attempt to directly insert himself between them, given the sheer folly of such a thing; he was going to watch them both a safe distance away from them, out on the porch of the Shack instead, remaining under the barrier and far away enough that no-one could possibly complain that he was intruding on their so-called 'picnic' in some way. Luckily, they were close enough that he could still see them right at the edge of the treeline to the forest where they were having their picnic (which, quite frankly, made the whole situation all the more suspicious to him…).
Stan glanced up as Mabel and Dipper re-entered the kitchen from the Shack's gift shop. Neither of them looked hugely happy with him still, given what had happened this morning. (Yeah, when the kid had started getting all… pointed... and 'edgy'... talking about stuff from the night before that morning, Stan had gone and tried asking for a transcript of stuff again, even though he knew the kid hadn't been in the room, and about three-quarters sure that the kid wouldn't want to fess up to having bugged the rest of the Shack out (except for the bathrooms and bedrooms and basement) to the rest of them, like he had him. Except Stan had held out his hand and gotten one. The kid had done it. He'd done it for him right on the spot. He honestly hadn't thought the kid would give up the goods like that in front of the rest of them all, but the kid had. Maybe the kid had been trying to make a point of some kind, but Stan wasn't sure what exactly the kid was going for here, yet. He wasn't even sure if the point had been more for the niblings, or the kid's own sister.
"Yeah?" Stan asked of his grand-niece and -nephew, as they came up to the table (and the kid came down the stairs quietly - that was new - behind their backs), and they exchanged a glance between them.
"Pacifica wants to talk with you sometime," Dipper told him, as the demon-kid just as quietly walked up behind them, and...
"If she wanted to talk, she would have stayed for breakfast," the kid said right behind Dipper, and Dipper jumped nearly a foot.
"-Bill!" Dipper complained, but Stan just reached out and put a calming hand on Dipper's shoulder, while sighing, and said, "Kid, I think little miss rich girl there probably wants to talk to me without you around. Yeah?"
"Hm," said Bill, eyeing him back.
Stan mostly ignored that one as he took the phone Mabel had extended to him from her. "Well, you two are off your grounding, bein' stuck at the Shack," he told them both, "But you're still gettin' babysat," Stan added, trying to quash their good mood a bit, because they'd looked far too excited with those grins and that 'yes!' and 'hey-yo!' along with that high-five slap, right there. Stan looked back down at the phone as he started typing. "She's got her shift at the diner today, right? We could meet her there; get you two a late brunch-lunch thing, or somethin'."
"...The diner?" Stan heard the kid say next, sounding way way too interested and engaged in it and all that shit, right as Stan hit that 'send' key, and Stan's head came up; he was feelin' full-on grumpy on this one.
"Kid," Stan told the demon-kid, as he handed Mabel back her phone, "You got a picnic you're doin' with your sister, already," he reminded him. "You stay here with your sister and let me do my whole 'takin' point on the agreement' thing, yeah?" he told him, looking up to give the kid a stony look. Because hey, somebody had to talk the Northwest girl down, and that wasn't gonna happen easy if the kid came along with, Stan was pretty damn sure.
"Hm," said the kid pretty damn noncommittally, before turning away and wandering off (to who knew where else in the Shack, since it didn't look like he was headed for any of the doors outside), and Stan stifled a sigh. ...Great. So, that was maybe a fifty-fifty toss-up on whether or not the kid would actually stay here, instead of following them down.
"C'mon, you two," Stan told both Dipper and Mabel, as he slowly stood up from his chair. "Let's get going."
Miz set up the barrier and waited for her brother to come back.
And waited.
And waited.
And… where the heck was he?
Fighting down the worry, Miz Flickered and Saw...
What?! No fair! He went back to the diner without her? Miz whined and sat down on the picnic blanket. And he was talking to Stan, the twins, and... Pacifica. Ah, okay. Yeah. Miz could see why he thought this would have been important. She was still annoyed that he'd essentially stood her up for their multiversal scouting mission (picnic date), though.
Whatever. She would just wait for him to come back. They were already heading back now.
That didn't mean Miz didn't pout at her brother when he finally showed up though, despite his confusion at her annoyance at the (apparently short duration to him) hour-long delay. (Though, to her amusement, that Stanford - who was spying quite obviously on them - seemed just as disgruntled by Bill's tardiness.)
She wondered, however, at her brother's further confusion at her continued annoyance despite his handing over of what felt to her like a 'bribe' of both diner-obtained apple pie (solely for her, since it contained things like added sugar that he wouldn't eat) and hot water with various loose-leafs for tea from the Shack kitchen, with assorted utensils and tableware to support their imbibement of both.
"I needed to take care of a thing," Bill told her, still not understanding why she was so annoyed with him. "If I didn't take care of it now, either Llama or the living ventriloquist dummy or both could have ended up here, trying to ruin our picnic and everything else," he told her, frowning. "I said I was getting more supplies for the picnic, not just talking with Stanley. How long did you think I would take?"
At her, "Five minutes! Or at least tell me if you're going to take longer, and when you'll be showing up! Not telling me is- It's rude!" her brother finally seemed to start to get it, as his expression went from a frown to a startled raised-eyebrows look.
"Hmm…" Bill hummed out, thinking. He hadn't thought he'd need to give her a time for when he'd be ready to start the picnic. An hour hadn't seemed too long, and… well, Liam had never given him times for things when they'd done them together. Bill had either tried dropping in on him in his room out of nowhere, and they'd just… talked? And played? Or Liam had told him not to disturb him because he was working on things for awhile, and Bill had just waited until Liam had been ready to come out and see him again. And Bill was a big-brother. And Miz was his… little sister? ...Maybe it was different for little sisters? Nora had seemed a bit more impatient, overall. HMMMMMMMM...
"I think I understand," Bill told her. "If I am doing a thing with you, or if I need to do a thing without you, I will tell you in-advance and try to give you a working time when the thing with you will start, or when my thing without you will be done. And I will let you know if I need more time at the time that the working-time expires, if I need it," Bill ended. Though he was usually pretty good at his how-long-something-would-take estimates; he was usually pretty conservative in those, and it had been a VERY long time since he'd blown past any of those, for a reason.
Miz's pout finally went away and she smiled. "Alright, I don't mind waiting, just give me a heads up next time. Then I could have gotten something to entertain myself with while I was waiting."
Bill nodded. He understood a little better now. Miz got bored easily; she had far more trouble 'just watching and waiting' than he did.
"Picnic now?" Bill asked, pointing down at all the food, and Miz nodded quite happily. She set about setting everything up, glad to be able to just hang out with her brother, even if they both had an ulterior motive for it.
(And the mischievous part of her loved the baffled expression on Ford's face when they just did picnic stuff. Eating the snacks, pointing out clouds and what they looked like, cuddling… yeah, Ford looked really annoyed at them! Hah!)
"...Ready?" Bill grinned out at her, once Miz had finished the last of the pie, and a cup of tea to go with it. (He'd finished a good while before her, needing less energy overall than she did, still.) This was only going to be a quick trip out to search for information.
Miz nodded at him, and then the two demons laid themselves down comfortably on the blankets, after putting away the remnants of the lunch that Miz had made for the both of them. They curled around each other as per usual for their sleeping arrangements.
Then Miz took a deep breath and pushed herself out of her vessel, then turned around and pulled gently on Bill... until he slipped out of his human-ish body, too.
And Bill let her do it. That was the whole point, really - not forcing it, his 'removal', at all.
Bill felt the line from his anchor play out a bit - just like he'd discussed with Stanley - and… he felt the familiar 'chill' of no-sensation of the Mindscape once again, as his senses quickly spread out exponentially around him. Something was a little… odd, though. He just couldn't quite put his finger on...
Bill looked down at himself in the Mindscape.
His Mindscape-self looked like his physical human-ish-formed body.
...Hm. He'd wondered if this might happen. ...Well, it should be fine. It HAD been a probable consequence of keeping the anchor and doing it this way, and he should know!
Miz and Bill both watched and waited to see if anything was going to go wrong, and…
Nothing happened; Bill didn't start glitching, despite the fact that his own form in the Mindscape was still keeping to his human-ish body's form. The anchor stayed firm, but insubstantial; Bill could trace it, even if Miz didn't seem able to - which was also good. His Eye didn't quite feel sore, but he knew he was going to have to be careful not to do anything too strenuous overall, as he Looked around. No Scanning a trillion dimensions all-at-once for him, for need-it-RIGHT-NOW-information and safe-routes-and-outs and all the rest of it; he'd have to take his time, instead. -Good thing he wasn't planning on fighting with anything or anyone, out on this trip! They were planning on doing this slow; no lightning-quick retrievals or hard-and-fast scans on this little 'pleasure jaunt' - not THIS time.
After another few long moments, Miz mimicked a sigh of relief. So far so good. She took Bill's hand (he 'held' hers back gently, with the bare minimum of weirdness-force he could exert to 'trap' something at this level of existence - not wanting her to feel actually captured in the Mindscape itself, but also knowing that she liked the feeling of no-sensation here even less than he did), and Miz tapped open the Door.
They were sucked through together without incident.
Miz peered around the Void of Doors. This would be Blue's first time seeing it. He was staring around. Miz was in her triangle form (since she hadn't bothered to 'change' her mental image of herself).
Miz noted, as she started moving away from it, that Bill's Door was larger than her own by a few inches on each side. Huh, she hadn't noticed the Doors were different sizes before. Miz was reading the words on various doors. She wanted to explore, she wanted to find Seb. He was from the Triplet AU section but… there were so many Doors there, too!
Bill glanced around carefully, while keeping a metaphysical 'eye' (really, at least part of all his senses) attuned to any possible glitchy-ness in the immediate and surrounding area, as well as its farther-out environs. ...Interesting. This place…
Miz was floating up to a Door and reading the plaque. "Another mermaid AU? Ugh… what the heck?! A Lion King AU?! Bill Cipher saves Christmas? Where are these all coming from?!" she glanced around, keeping an eye out for any trace of that buzzing monstrocity. "Hey brother? Would you mind if we just go check out a few of these just for fun?"
Bill shrugged - he was here to listen and See and learn, more information was always better, he'd like to know more - and as he floated along, not sensing any more danger here (which Miz seemed to have almost forgotten about at this point, but he hadn't - it had been yet another reason he'd wanted them to take their time, while leaving the Door waiting and floating there for them, and why taking at least an hour or two before heading out had seemed like a natural thing to him - he'd wanted to see if the glitchy-Bill came wandering back once the Door was there long enough, or if it-or-they were actually and truly gone…), and Bill read the words along the doors with interest. -So, each one of these led straight to another Bill Cipher, did they? HMMMMMMMM...
Then Bill saw the words on one door out of the corner of one of his eyes and paused. He turned slowly towards it, his eyes going wide as he realized that, no, he had NOT misread it...
The door Bill was standing in front of said simply: [Anti-verse]. Bill grimaced and immediately turned away and marched his way down the corridor, fists clenched at his side while refusing to look behind him. (Oh no. No no no! -No he did NOT want to think about 'anti'-Bill maybe being- another him and that door might just belong to that being's old dimensional set or did it lead to HIS set now too NO NO NO-)
Stupid purple square couldn't POSSIBLY be another him-
Miz was floating up to look at a door reading [ReverseFlatland] and tilted her body in confusion. What would that even mean? "Hey brother? Wanna check out what this one is?"
Bill marched right up to her, looking not all that well and not even bothering to glance at the door first as he said, "YES! Let's go! RIGHT now! -Leaving!"
Miz raised an eyebrow before shrugging and tapping the door. It opened easily and the two of them were quickly sucked inside.
There was an odd feeling, like she was heading towards the Bill that this door led to before encountering some resistance. Miz squeaked as she tumbled through the air and landed gracelessly (as per usual) against the side of a large circular object. She groaned and slid down what HAD to be another freaking barrier. She shook her head and looked down to get her bearings. She seemed to have hit… the Mystery Shack again!?
Except… "Oh my spud!" she gasped. It was the Shacktron! Full robot Shacktron fighting with a giant… human-shaped Bill Cipher?! Miz glanced around quickly and saw that the people piloting the giant robot were… Shapes. Ohhh… so that's what it meant by ReverseFlatland.
Well, she didn't feel like dealing with some… weird alternative Weirdmageddon right now, so she felt around and opened a Portal so she could leave and come back at a different time.
Miz glanced over at Bill, who was staring at the surreal scene in front of him. "Brother? Are you coming? I want to go back to an earlier time so I can properly learn about what this Dimension is about." After all, that's what they were here to do, inspect and learn how different dimensions were run for Miz to fix her own, considering the worlds behind her Doors weren't all run by the same AXOLOTL.
Bill was still mentally off-balance from that information: that there might be more than one separate AXOLOTL. He'd never considered the possibility; it hadn't seemed a possibility. But when Miz had Looked to See his stupid lizard and mentioned that the thing she'd Seen was nothing like her own… she had seemed legitimately upset, having thought ALL the Axolotl were connected. (Well, she wasn't the only one - Bill was 'upset', but for an entirely different set of reasons!) That assumption was why she had thought Bill's Ax might have cared (which was not true at all!), because hers had cared (but did it really?)… and the idea that there were MORE THAN ONE Axolotl, who WEREN'T connected to each other…
...that the Rules Bill knew the Axolotl to play by might NOT be universal…
Bill shuddered. That's why he'd had to come and See it for himself. And this was much more dangerous to him personally than he'd told Stanley before. Because if there WAS a proactive Axolotl out there, somewhere...
Then Bill had no idea what it might do, or how stupid it might-or-might-not be in WHAT it did, in what ways and means and respects that intelligence could be measured against stupidity. And it wasn't as though Bill had some innate defense against being impacted or changed in some way by an other-Axolotl…
Bill knew all this, of course. And he was taking the risk anyway, whether he liked it or not, whether he did anything or not, because multiple Axolotls DID exist. So if he didn't See for himself what he could See NOW… then he'd just get blindsided by everything later. Eventually. ...Except he didn't know how far off 'eventually' actually was, because he didn't KNOW enough. He didn't know anything at all about this; not really. -AND HE NEEDED TO KNOW NOW.
Except he couldn't do that here-and-now, with this stupid-looking nonsensical funhouse-mirror version of his own Weirdmageddon going on, right here. -It was too distracting!
So (Blue)Bill followed Miz into the Portal to re-enter this dimension over 40 years prior, as she went off to see what had happened here and how it had all come to be. To figure out how this dimension worked.
It was Flatland… but not. (Not like Bill's home dimension; it was more like… and Bill watched Miz as) Miz watched the lives of the shapes. The Zodiac of this world - in particular, Stanley and Stanford Pines. They were two triangles born to square parents. Twins. The child should have been a square but twins meant the square that 'should-have-been' had split in half. A square split diagonally into two isosceles triangles. But they were still… squares. Should have been squares if only they hadn't been twins. Filbrick hated them both.
Bill noted the way that Miz trembled with anger at the way the older square had treated his children. Well, at least, the hierarchy was far less strict here than it had been in his dimension. (Not that 'twins' had ever been a thing there.) Here, shapes could actually rise above their station, more like Miz's dimension; even though the twins were isosceles triangles, they were tested for intelligence, the reasoning being that perhaps they could have been smart enough to be more than their unfortunate shape. Stanford tested well, incredibly well. His intelligence caught attention from the higher Shapes. Stanley, on the other angle, wasn't one for book smarts, and those tests weren't meant-or-made to properly measure the inner-sides and capabilities of someone like him.
So Stanley was slated to be sent off to do labor work for the rest of his life, like all the other isosceles. Meanwhile, Stanford would have a chance to try and impress some judges sent by the council. If he impressed them, he would be allowed to rise above his station. Maybe even up to the rank of a pentagon due to his test scores. And if that happened, it looked to Miz like the twins would be separated for good; Stanley would never be allowed to see his brother again.
Miz was biting her lip, worrying over the unfairness of it all. Bill could tell she wanted to interfere. But they were merely observing for now. Any changes could be made later. But she admitted quietly to him, as they watched, that in her own Flatland, the Council had forbidden her from ever seeing her brother again, because she was to be risen in rank and taken away from her family. Just like this Stanford would be. But Miz had rejected that. She hadn't wanted to leave her brother.
...unlike this Stanford. Bill watched as Miz struggled to talk herself through it. To make excuses for this Stanford here. How, 'no, that wasn't right.' How this Stanford didn't want to leave Stanley, but cared about raising his rank MORE than staying with his brother. Stanley was clearly upset, feeling like he was being abandoned.
With how upset that Miz was feeling now, and knowing how she'd reacted to his own Sixer with anger at similar seeming 'injustices', Bill made it a point not to bother to point out that this isosceles Stanford wasn't even considering how raising his own rank could potentially help his younger twin, born second instead of first. How, if he reached a rank equivalent to a pentagon, he could request laborers to help him with his work, with the way that things were set up here; how he would be in a position to influence the choices of fellow 'colleagues' in their choices of workers as well. Even if he was refused in his choice to pick his own brother by those higher up the hierarchy, while trying to follow the rules of the system as it existed currently in this Flatland here, Bill could see quite clearly that that isosceles Stanford might still end up having the pull in the future to potentially influence others at his rank-level to get that Stanley a better position in labor closer to himself, one that would allow them to be closer together, to see each other still.
But Bill knew how Miz tended to respond when she was angry, and the sorts of things that made her that angry. And Bill could See that Stanford's thoughts from the Mindscape, too. Bill saw how that isosceles had thought of his little brother's position and lot in life not at all, once it had looked like he himself would be getting a chance at what he himself wanted. That Stanford-triangle simply didn't care. -Not enough to consider even so much as working within the system to make things better for his twin, let alone breaking anything for him! Not even a single solitary thought towards Rebellion against those who were giving neither of them any REAL choices at all. Limiting them both.
And it wasn't like that Stanley-triangle was thinking of bucking the system in any meaningful way, to try and stay with his own brother, either.
And so, Bill let out a frustrated mental sigh at the pair of those 'twins' - flat minds, flat thoughts, always and all of them FLAT - and Bill turned his back on the two of them, as he had done many times before with other Stanleys and Stanfords he had Watched. He'd stay there with Miz as she Looked at what she wished, so she would have him there to support her, so she wouldn't be alone. But as far as Bill was concerned, he had other, more important things to do.
...Like what they had come there to do in the first place - to Look at the local Axolotl and the Rules and structure of this dimensional set, to see how similar or different it was from each of their own.
(Besides, if they wanted to go and change things later… if Bill wasn't the one doing the Looking, to See what was happening, it wouldn't necessarily require a nonlinear time loop to 'fix' anything later, to prevent the dimension from ceasing to exist or spawning new timelines. (If that happened, then that other human-looking Bill's Zodiac wouldn't exist anymore, and he might never get out; it would be far more likely that that Shacktron fight they'd both seen upon entry might never happen.) If he Looked at things, he'd See himself if he tried to do anything - there was nothing he could do to hide himself from himself; he'd made sure of that a long time ago. Alternately, if Miz was the one doing the Seeing, Miz could lie or be vague to him about what she'd Seen - and then he'd help her do the things she wanted to do, that she would have then Seen them already do in the same way that she'd Seen them, because he had already decided that that was what he was going to do - help her change anything that she wanted to change here later. And if there was anything she Saw that was something simple but confused her? Well, then it would have been something that he had done in such a way that she hadn't Seen him do it. Q.E.D.)
So Bill stopped trying to See what Miz was Seeing. Bill turned away.
And Bill Looked Up.
Meanwhile, Miz was getting pretty invested in the lives of the twins. Stanley had tried to talk to his brother and Stanford had said he was getting a great opportunity. He couldn't give up this chance. A chance to be more than just the lowest of the low.
"But what about me?" Stanley asked. Stanford paused. His brother would be left behind. He was JUST a triangle after all. An average, unintelligent triangle. He wasn't like Stanford, who had this rare, precious chance to make something of himself.
"You'll be fine." Stanford said dismissively. "You'll be given your job by the council like everyone else." He turned away, off to go work on his project some more, make sure it was perfect. Stanley stared after his brother, numb and shocked that he was so easily dismissed. "But…" Stanley slumped over.
And then Stanford walked off, left his brother to go back to working on his project, putting this whole issue behind him. Stanley sighed. So, even his own brother thought he was nothing more than a stupid triangle. He tried hard not to get mad. He WAS stupid after all. Stanley stayed out long into the night, thinking, getting more and more upset. As he thought, he wandered, ending up in the room with the science project. It was a small building that the Council had set up for Stanford to work in.
There on the table was Ford's invention. A perpetual motion machine, which Ford had told him before would change the way that all the factories worked. With a machine capable of generating endless energy, they would no longer have to burn coal to boil water to power their generators. It would revolutionize the world! Stanley didn't really understand it, but he figured it must be something important.
Stanley stared at the spinning object. It didn't seem all that impressive to him. Sure, it spun and spun, but it wasn't put together very well. Stanford was terrible at working with his hands on mechanical stuff. Stanley was better at that, having worked plenty of mechanic jobs part-time; he'd even built that sit-and-slide-boat out of scrap wood he'd saved up from his jobs down at the carpentry shop. So Stanley could see, just looking at this, that Stanford's project would eventually break. It just wasn't screwed together correctly. And it wasn't like it even worked, at all. Not in the way Stanford kept insisting it did.
Stanley couldn't help but want his brother to succeed though, even if he didn't want to be left behind. It really was a good opportunity for Ford. He could leave this shithole neighborhood and get a good job that would pay well.
So Stanley reached forward, intending to tighten a loose screw he could see...
"What are you doing?!" Stan jumped at that shout. He turned to see Stanford staring at him. "I was just trying to-" Stan tried to explain but Stanford shoved him out of the room. "Trying to wreck my machine!" The other isosceles glared. Stanley's eye went wide. Did his brother really think he would do that?! "No! I was just-!"
"Get out! I won't have you ruin my chances to be better!" Stanford growled. Stanley narrowed his eye. "Be better? What? Better than me? Is THAT what you mean?!" Stanford glared at his younger twin. "This is my one chance to be more than just a stupid isosceles! I won't have you ruining it for me!"
Stanley's fists clenched. Oh. Is THAT how it was? Well then… Stanley decided then and there, he wasn't going to warn his brother. After all, Stan was JUST a stupid isosceles, what would HE know?! He huffed and stomped away. Fine then. FINE then!
The machine had broken down by the time the judges came. Stanley didn't even complain when Stanford blamed him for breaking it. It's not like they would have believed him anyway. Stanley fumed even as he was assigned to janitorial work. He wasn't gonna go. They wouldn't miss him; he was one isosceles among a hoard of hundreds, he wouldn't be missed. Stanley took his boat and left instead, aiming to find his own way in life. He could be a salesman, like Pa. He could prove he was at LEAST at a Square level. Not just a stupid isosceles like everyone said.
As for Stanford, the judges left with dismissive snorts. He was still allowed a slight increase in rank; his test scores were still good, even if he hadn't lived up to them. Stanford was sent to further his education, and was told he would be able receive proper schooling despite everything. He wouldn't be as high on the hierarchy but he was still elevated above his station, by all accounts he should be happy he'd gotten this opportunity, but Ford continuously complained that Stan had ruined his life regardless.
The years passed as Ford studied, and he even met a pentagon named Fiddleford who became a good friend. Despite being a higher shape, Fiddleford was friendly and kind. He recognized Stanford's intellect and was thrilled to work with him. After graduating, Ford had to choose an area of study. He ultimately chose to study anomalies. -Why did they happen? What caused irregularities or birth defects that created shapes like him?
The Council liked the idea of studying this: perhaps, if they knew more, they could stamp out Irregulars from being born, perhaps there was a way for all shapes to be perfect and proper. So Ford was sent to a small town near the outskirts of the Flatlands, a town that had an unusually high rate of irregular births:
Gravity Falls.
Miz sighed. Well. This dimension was weird. She shook her head. Got too invested in watching the events unfold and she almost forgot why she came here to begin with. Right. She and brother were here to see what the other AXOLOTL and dimensional sets were all about. Miz glanced around to find her brother. She glanced around before Looking UP.
Whoa~
It was at that point that Miz realized this Flatland, while not being brother's Flatland, wasn't quite her Flatland either. From what she could remember of Seb's past, this world was somewhere between Seb's and hers - 2D people in a 3D space. So there was technically an up, but an UP was different. Miz gazed up and UP and Saw...
...A Human-shaped AXOLOTL?
And Bill was glaring at it with his arms crossed.
(It looked a little like a staring contest, actually.)
"Um… hi?" Miz said cheerfully, as she made her own way UP there as well - always try to be cheerful, it tends to work better for starting friendly relations! The human-shaped AXOLOTL slowly turned his head to face her, a faint expression of surprise on his face that was there and gone so quickly Miz wasn't sure if she'd imagined it. The AXOLOTL seemed to examine her for a bit before turning back to Bill.
-You should not be here- The AXOLOTL finally said. (Bill frowned at it, surprised - it had TALKED to them! Without him even needing to-!) Miz looked between the two. "Well, I was curious. And uh…" She blinked at the AXOLOTL. "...Ok, so a reverse Flatland means a Gijinka AXOLOTL, good to know?"
Bill looked over at her (the AXOLOTL had broken the staring contest first, so that meant HE'D WON! HA!) and it took him a moment looking through his Seen memories to catch the reference.
"Human-shaped, yes," Bill said to Miz. Then he turned back to the local human-shaped AXOLOTL and said, "WHY -do you think I-should-not-be-here." And Bill was glaring at the AXOLOTL again. (This stupid lizard had just tried to tell him what he should and should not do! He'd been challenged! -So it was TIME for Round Two of the Staring Contest until he won (again)! FIGHT!)
The AXOLOTL stared at Bill, -There should only be one Bill in this world. Please return from whence you came- he said evenly. Miz frowned. "Is our presence here messing with the threads holding this dimensional set together?" she asked. The AXOLOTL didn't look away from Bill even as he slowly shook his head. -This is not a matter of what you are effecting within this world, but how this world may affect you-
Miz tilted her head. "What's the problem here? Exactly?" The AXOLOTL finally closed his eyes and sighed. -My Bill will try to fuse with you, to expand his own powers- and that made Miz shudder. Ugh. Assimilation. How horrifying. The AXOLOTL turned away to look off into the distance. -Thus far, he has not noticed you. Please leave before he discovers your presence-
"HA!" said Bill. (He'd won the staring contest again!) "Note to you, Miz. THIS is why proper filtering and all those OTHER things are important!" he told her, not looking away from the AXOLOTL. His grin got a bit wider. "Won't work on ME. Not the way he might think. -I'd give him the worst case of heart-burn EVER! HAHAHA! And he wouldn't get anything out of it, either; worst-case, I'm just fine, he isn't," Bill waved off. He'd had other beings (and demons) try to eat him before. (Sometimes he'd actually let them attempt it, just for kicks!) "-Good to know that this 'Bill' doesn't value INDEPENDENT THOUGHT and discourse, though," Bill ended on a more sober note. But then he crossed his arms a bit more tightly and his eyes narrowed a bit further. "Unless you're LYING. Or planning on HELPING this other-us-who-clearly-is-NOT-like-us-at-all out with that."
Miz considered that. Hm. Yeah. She definitely didn't want to be fused with some other Bill. She liked being herself thank-you-very-much. Well, she was still practicing the whole, shields and filters and all other stuff. Her world didn't have alternate Bills so she'd never had to bother with this before...
"So, you ARE planning on trying to help this other-Bill eat us, then, since you're wanting us 'gone'," Bill demanded out of the AXOLOTL point-blank. It wasn't exactly 'asleep at the wheel' here. It felt more… active in the lives of the beings here than the one back from his own dimensional set was. Not just the demons - the beings here, too. ...Or maybe he should be saying 'just-and-only beings' here, since there didn't seem to be any demons-from-the-outside around - not anywhere that he could See.
-All I want is for you two to leave- the AXOLOTL responded calmly. -I do not want to help my Bill or you, but everything would be simpler if this wasn't an issue to begin with-
"Simpler is not better. Or worse," Bill said. "And I didn't ask for YOUR help," Bill said. The last time he'd done THAT, he'd gotten a very-long prophecy. He didn't want-or-need another one of those right now! Then Bill's eyes jiggled back and forth slightly as he stared at the AXOLOTL and… something occurred to him. Bill got a thinking frown. "...Tell me what you WANT," Bill said to the AXOLOTL slowly, deliberately phrasing it as a demand rather than as a question. He'd never really gotten an answer out of his own; his own hadn't ever really had a conversation with him before. (He'd screamed things at it once or twice, and forever-and-ever-and-ever, but…) This was new.
The AXOLOTL actually looked tired. -All I want, is to keep my dimensional set stable for as long as I can. MY Bill is disruptive enough, purposefully trying to tear Reality down around him; I do not feel you two are like him, hence why I am even bothering to warn you. Leave-
Bill's eyes narrowed further. "If all he wants to do is 'tear down' Reality, jumping into OTHER DIMENSIONS isn't the easiest way to go about it. ...I doubt it's even the most FUN, either." (Bill knew exactly how to collapse dimensions into his own unstable one. It was rather simple to do, in fact - though it did take a substantial amount of work and a very good understanding of the interdimensional processes and forces in play to actually pull it off. Still less work than portalling out of the 'Nightmare Realm', though. Stable portals to an unstable dimension were nearly impossible to do. NEARLY.)
Bill was starting to severely doubt this stupid lizard's words. (And he wouldn't even have considered that an AXOLOTL could have lied to begin with, if not for hearing about Miz's own lizard's deceitful and mis-leading actions and inactions.)
Miz frowned as she Looked back down and around and into and out of Everything. "What the heck?" she exclaimed as she shook her head. "Why the FUCK did you build this Reality like a goddamn house of cards?!" She stared at the threads she could see. That Flatlands place that this other Bill was planning to tear open was one of the Anchor spots, perfectly placed and connected into the other stitches holding everything together. If it was cut in just the wrong way...
Her own Ax had built Reality like a series of orbs. Free-floating and moving, but firm enough at their edges that they didn't crack or fuse with the others they collided with. Semi-permeable to allow for travel in and out without anything important on the inside leaking out everywhere. And even IF a dimension began leaking, any energy it lost would just end up like a free-floating 'substance' around the other orbs. (With all the spaces between being a mix of both the ACTUAL Space between Spaces, the Mindscape, and the Timestream.) Some of it would sink into the other orbs - hence why there was Weirdness throughout the multiverse - but collapsing ONE dimension where she'd come from wouldn't cause the WHOLE SYSTEM to come crashing down!
"What?" Bill turned away, looking away from the AXOLOTL, completely refocusing his thoughts and attention away from it this time without even thinking about the possibility of it trying to pick and win a 'fight' with him after losing a staring contest to him twice - best three out of five! - his little sister had sounded that freaked out and concerned. He began Scanning what he could, trying to figure out what she was talking about.
(This being the first alternate dimensional set that Bill was looking at, though, along with his lack of any experience at creating dimensions, he was having a good bit of trouble understanding and then analyzing what he was Seeing so very in-the-moment, as it were; parsing it wasn't an issue at least, but parsing and measuring by Eye alone was NOT the same as understanding it all. He tried to speed up the process, though, by using what Miz had just said as a bit of a clue as to one of the larger patterns he should keep his Mind and his All-Seeing Eye attuned to Looking out for...)
The AXOLOTL sighed. -I worked with what I was given. My Bill never wanted to help. My Time Baby went off on his own with progressing Time before I was ready to put everything together. I had to do a rushed-
Miz interrupted, "-You built a couple stable dimensions and anchored the rest of the multiverse into them in an upside down pyramidal tower that has the entire weight of the multiverse leaning on just those few stable bases! What the FUCK?! Why didn't you just tell your Time Baby to stop advancing time if you needed it?" At that, the AXOLOTL looked even more tired. -He and Bill wanted to one up each other. I don't have enough energy to deal with them while holding this all together…-
"Tower of Babble. Upside-down pyramid!? -Yes, Ziggurat at Er, upside down," Bill muttered to himself, half an 'ear' on the conversation that was continuing on without him as he Looked. And it all looked an utter MESS, to his Eye! (For starters, the dimensions in his dimensional set weren't so imbalanced in their relative placements to each other. The stresses of proximity alone with all those conflicting rulesets would-) Bill frowned further. (That wasn't what those connections were supposed to be for. They weren't supposed to be NECESSARY to-) Bill shook his head. (The dimensions in his own dimensional set had had almost no connections between them until he'd MADE them, wanting to allow for dimensional travel because-)
Bill shook his head in disbelief again, not Looking away from the entirely of the mess that was laid out before him. "You idiot. I could have done better than this while I was still Flat. -What are you going to do," Bill said, looking away from it all to recenter his gaze back onto the AXOLOTL. "Turn all those connections into taffy and lower them all down onto…" Bill paused, trailing off, then finally realized what he HADN'T Seen that wasn't there, that should have been there! He whipped his Eye around in a frenzy as he realized: "-you don't have an underlayer!?" Bill couldn't imagine why it hadn't- "Just spin up a 'net to catch it all! What have you been doing, actually sleeping this entire time!?" he spat out at it sarcastically, glaring back at it. Because as far as Bill could tell, most of these dimensions had been spun up quickly, one after the other after the other - they all almost looked to be the same age, relative to each other, from the outside here-
Then Bill blinked as he realized. He stopped and looked away and slowly looked around much closer in, instead. And finally realized EXACTLY where he was.
(They were 'standing', floating in the middle of the AXOLOTL'S dimensional pocket. More or less outside of everything. Or at the very least well-removed from it all. He'd 'ascended' himself 'up' this high after he'd looked UP without even half-realizing that he'd done it.)
...Bill slowly looked over at the AXOLOTL again.
The AXOLOTL rubbed his eyes. -I set up the first few and thought I would take a nap. The Time Giants had my blueprints, they knew what it was supposed to look like, but they had a son, then just… up and LEFT- the faintest edge of stress entered his tone. -I woke up to see the mess they left behind and reacted hastily-
Miz scoffed at that. "Well, you did this to yourself, badow-dow, and that's why it hurts." She put her hands on her hips. "Even MY Ax sets up a lot of things before he takes his naps… though I guess my Time Baby is not as annoying as yours seems to be."
The AXOLOTL sighed again. -I don't want to deal with you two on top of everything I'm already working on. I would hate to have to scrap this world and start over…-
"-No more Deals!" Bill bit out sharply, almost on reflex, then quivered slightly in place.
Bill looked away quickly, and Looked over everything a bit more, as a distraction from… And Bill pulled in a sharp breath (even though when he was like this - in the Mindscape, this way - he didn't need to breathe). Because it was all so BIG. -Yes, he'd known it was, OF COURSE he'd know it was - he'd even Seen it all in his own set, the entirety of existence, once before right before he'd fallen AND BURNED for the very first time… - but… it was like his hats, he realized with an edge of hysteria to his thoughts. The hats he'd made, they looked different from above. And this dimension, the dimensions he'd seen before had looked so… so... (It was different. It was harder to grasp when he was like this; you had to reconfigure yourself to ascend up so high, in order to handle it all properly, all of the different and varying input, at the levels and in the ways it was all meant to be Seen. And thinking processes shifted when you went through that; things had a tendency to change, but Bill hadn't really done that this time, and… he was still-) And right now, he was SO VERY above, so very HIGH UP…
...Bill barely resisted the urge to start laughing, because it was oh so VERY hilarious that-
"Wait, scrap and start over?" Miz asked. ("Don't ask it questions," Bill hissed out at her, half-twitching, because that NEVER worked out well with-) The AXOLOTL sighed. -What do you think happens to a collapsed Reality?- He twitched a hand, slender pale fingers twirling more threads into existence and tying bits of Reality into place. -What else would…- He trailed off, closing his eyes and just looking incredibly tired.
"Well-then you don't have to SCRAP it, because we are not Dealing with you, so you will not be Dealing with us!" Bill snapped back, his tone rising a bit, two-toned as he usually was. The pupils of his eyes were a good bit more slitted than before.
Miz frowned as she looked back and forth between the two. "We're not trying to cause trouble, just… observing…"
-Regardless…- The AXOLOTL turned to face Miz. -Your father would be quite unhappy if anything happened to you- He sounded almost annoyed. Before Miz could open her mouth, the AXOLOTL continued, -He contacted every other one of us that he could and we all passed the message on. He wants you home-
Miz winced. "I didn't think he would actually reach out to ask about where I was…" Then she brightened. "Wait. He's actually, actively trying to contact me?" She giggled. "Either he's worried, or he misses me~" she sang out, incredibly thrilled. Because that meant Ax cared. She always felt giddy inside whenever she got some proof that Ax actually cared about her. In his own distant way… (and this also meant that this dimension was still somehow close enough to her own that Ax was able to contact them. What did that mean, exactly? What specifications needed to be met for an Ax to be able to contact another Ax?)
BUT! Miz frowned. "I originally came here to see how things worked here. There's… no pillar system here. So… if your Bill and Time Baby are so problematic, why haven't you done something about them?" The AXOLOTL blinked, a brief look of surprise on his face. There and gone in an instant.
"-Because this thing's too stupid to think that just TALKING to anyone instead of tossing them out on their pointed-edge is a great idea!" Bill cut in nastily. "And it's CLEARLY too lazy to do squat itself, on top of that, since it'd MUCH rather just SCRAP everything apparently, instead of putting in the effort to FIX IT ALL like it SHOULD. -Got a perfectly-imperfect good and messed up dimensional set that could use some ACTUAL FIXING right here!" Bill put out there as he gestured outwards at all (literally ALL) of creation. "-OH! But that would be too much WORK for it, right! So just scrap it instead! But hey! Why not! Why not just start over, making the same stupid mistakes over and over again, collapsing EVERY FIRST AND LAST DIMENSION IN EXISTENCE WHILE YOU'RE AT IT," Bill half-shrieked out at it, halfway to hysterical. "Not like anyone will be LEFT around to CARE about that after you're DONE, right?! -OH! And maybe leave out the whole 'Bill Cipher' and 'Time Baby' this time, if they're such a PROBLEM for you, right?!" Bill added, deeper resonances entering his tone. "WHY NOT! -I mean, if you're looking for INPUT, here, buddy-boy-lizard-man, WELL! Far be it from ME not to PROVIDE anyone with a little HARD-EARNED KNOWLEDGE if anybody ASKS! -It's not like I'D wish anybody into being who'd have to grow up in THAT hellhole of a two-dimensional dimension and then have their brother killed on them ON TOP OF IT just to turn out 'right', RIGHT?!" Bill was shaking in place where he was floating by the end of this tirade, and his 'clothing' eyes, and hair had all shifted to a color that was a bright and nearly incandescent blood-red.
Bill snarled and turned away from it, not expecting an answer to anything he'd just said. He twisted his head on his neck almost painfully, working his way back to what Miz had said earlier. "-'Worried', 'misses you', or wants you back for WHO KNOWS WHAT other-reason, maybe. I'D put MY gold on door number three," Bill told his sister, as his coloring slowly dulled to a darker red-brown, then began to shift over to a nasty sharp yellow instead, rather than blue. "Or did it say why it wanted her back as part of that 'message'," Bill said to the AXOLOTL, not quite gritting his metaphorical back-teeth as he side-eyed the lizard. (It was hard to lie this far 'UP' where they were, but he wouldn't put it past any of them anymore, if THIS was the sort of thinking these stupid lizards did at this level. WITH EACH OTHER.) Bill glared at the AXOLOTL right in its eyes, once again.
The AXOLOTL observed the two of them for a while, silent, but there was something in his eyes, an expression that Miz couldn't quite understand. (And there was a feeling inside her, some sort of… loneliness… a sense of… being alone; if they weren't here, then…) Finally, he sighed again, closing his eyes and looking about as tired as anything. -Please leave- He turned away from them and floated off, clouds of energy flowing around his form.
(Not the same, better, worse, not that it knew. Don't risk it. Just be content with what you had.)
"Counterpoint: pLEaSe fix the damn place so everything and everyone doesn't have to lose siblings forever anymore!" Bill shrieked out at its retreating back, not even caring at this point that he'd 'won' a third staring contest with it. Because it was- just- it- that-! "-You fix it right now!" Bill yelled out at it, fed up with its… its… stupid-lizardness! "OR I'LL DO IT FOR YOU!" Bill thundered out at the last, far more of a threat than a promise.
Miz frowned at the AXOLOTL's back, unsure how to process these feelings she was getting (couldn't hear thoughts, not from Ax or that damn baby, but emotions were different, they were there and here and now and this Ax was so…) "Why can't you just make a world where people can be happy?" she asked this Ax, upset that he was just going to leave things as they are. All he seemed to care about was holding Reality together 'as long as he could'. Not making Reality a happy place, not making Reality a better place. Just keeping it around longer. Was that really all he cared about? "Why are you just… giving up? You're the goddamn AXOLOTL! Can't you FIX things? Can't you…"
-Fix and fix, but it'll only break again. Always and every time, no matter what I do. So what's the point? Starting over is more efficient for making less mistakes the next go around...-, was the faint words that carried to the two triangle-demons as the human-shaped salamander vanished from their sight. Miz's metaphysical heart ached at this. It felt as if he'd… given up, like he couldn't even imagine a world where things could be 'better' because he'd already seen it fail over and over and had resigned himself to just keeping this shitty existence going as long as he could, to delay the inevitable end where he'd be forced to start over or- or...
Miz shuddered. There was a feeling here, like she was wavering on the cusp of understanding and yet...
"Then you aren't fixing it PROPERLY!" Bill yelled out at it, seething. Because how DARE it try to pretend that starting over was more EFFICIENT! How could it POSSIBLY be easier to START OVER than just FIX the things that were there! How stupid did this thing think that he was?! "-SO GET SOME HELP AT IT IF YOU CAN'T DO IT YOURSELF, YOU IDIOT!" Bill screamed out after it, irate. Because, as far as Bill was concerned, that was what his Zodiac was for! Helping him! With doing THAT! "You stupid lizards can't TAKE TURNS?!" -What was wrong with this stupid thing?! Even his OWN stupid lizard wasn't THIS stupid! It-
Miz suddenly made a sound of understanding. "He said that his Bill won't help and his Time Baby won't listen to him either... "
"Then it should get the other lizards to help it out, since they all apparently talk!" Bill said caustically.
Miz frowned. "What if… what if they can't?" She turned to her brother, frowning.
"Why not?" Bill waved off, still seething with anger and irritation at the stupid thing. Stupid lizard. -Even more stupid lizard! "If they can TALK to each other, they can exchange information and energy. WHAT ELSE could they possibly need!"
"You need your Zodiac to help you…" Miz pointed out. "What if the AXOLOTL are like that too? But… instead of a Zodiac, they have a Trinity?" She thought this made sense. At least for this Ax they just met and for her own… probably? Her dad had mentioned that he needed her and Time Baby, and well, they were all in this together, eternal and endless, the three of them, immortal and interminable. Deathless, doomed to come back, over and over and over until all Reality ceased to be-
"I need my Zodiac for ideas, support, and energy," Bill told her simply, ticking them off. "My stupid lizard doesn't need ANY of that," Bill pointed out next, because his dimension wasn't set up that way with a Trinity or Zodiac for 'his' lizard, or anything else! -Not at all! "So CLEARLY not all of them do," he huffed out, crossing his arms. Counterexample given! Q.E.D.! (His overall coloring was slowly - very slowly - shifting from his striking warlike yellow back down to his favored blue, as he talked with her.)
"Well, the ones who HAVE a Trinity set in their worlds wouldn't be able to get help… right? Unless there's some loophole?" Miz rubbed her forehead. "This is kinda messed up." Some unfortunate cosmic trinity being repeated in more than one dimension, heck, that sucked. She really hoped the Ax, Time, Bill trinity wasn't something that happened often, because it seemed to just result in the three being stuck with each other, whether they liked it or not.
-Yes, it was messed up. That was the problem, as far as Bill was concerned! -All these dimensions were MESSED UP and this even-more-stupid lizard that actually talked with other beings still wouldn't fix ANY of it! "Well, WE'RE here. Obviously there is a loophole, since there are ways to get from one to the other when you're a pillar. -Because you're a 'pillar'!" Bill told her. "Don't see why they can't just talk to mine if..." Bill trailed off, then slumped his shoulders and glowered as he realized... "Unless MINE really DOESN'T talk to anyone other than..." demons-from-the-outside - and even then it only did that right before it kicked them back outside, Bill had gathered. He made a 'tsst' chitter-hiss of a sound in annoyance. Stupid antisocial pink frilly jerk of a lizard. -Why was he not surprised by this? SO ANNOYING!
Miz floated over to his side, not quite touching. "Well… maybe… if we help this Ax fix this world… the others can see that it's possible to do so?" she suggested. She hoped they would, she hoped that they would be able to stop… feeling so sad...
"Oh, I'm gonna FIX this place, all right," Bill said in threatening tones. "I'm going to fix this place SO WELL!" He glared at the lizard's retreating back as it vanished into the clouds, then turned back to look around at the rest of everything-else that was here-and-there with them. "We aren't even that far UP," Bill groused (and tried to talk himself less shivery about said UP as he went). "Didn't even really need to reconfigure myself that much, or even contort myself around hardly at all, to get myself up this high," he muttered out. -Because it was higher than the mental-energy state he usually tried to hold himself in and exist at, yes, but… it was different. Getting 'up here' had been almost reflexive on his part, Seeing and then ending up here - because objectively? "This isn't nearly as 'high' 'up' as the AXOLOTL in my own dimension is," Bill groused out next (...rightly or wrongly...) because... it felt more twisted-partly-sideways to Bill than anything, really. So he should be able to do this, right? RIGHT! (-HAHA, was that even a question?)
So Bill pulled in a 'breath' he didn't need. He Looked down, and around again once more. And then Bill turned to his sister and said quite seriously: "Where do you want to START FIRST?"
"I don't really know." Miz admitted. "If we just made it so everyone never dies, we would have to either roll back and start from the beginning when life first formed, or we could just make it so 'no one can die from now on' and have that be a thing…" She frowned as she looked around. Well, the Ax that was here didn't seem to be stopping them. No doubt it was because he was already planning to just scrap this place. Miz shuddered. How awful. Trillions of lives, all gone because the god who created them decided he didn't want them anymore? That was… beyond horrible.
Bill stared at her.
"...I was talking about taffy-izing the strings and making a net below," Bill said slowly, pointing downwards. Because as far as he was concerned, THAT upside-down instability was the first thing that needed addressing. Fixing dying could come after fixing impending-and-imminent-total-destabilization-of-all-dimensions-into-a-nonexistence-from-which-no-dying-could-be-reversed. ...Because with no dimensions, there would be no dead time in those dimensions to reverse, to get any of them back. First things should come first, for a reason.
"Oh right, that too." Miz face-palmed. She had almost forgotten. Zoomed out too much to look at the picture. She glanced down. "Well, I'm pretty good at holding stuff together. I could do that 'lower them down' gently thing and see about organizing this mess." She could already see all the problem areas where the stress was beginning to show.
"I'm used to nets from my own dimensional set," Bill noted, then looked around. he should be able to set up something similar here. Not like there was anything or anyone - demon or being - around to stop him or make any of it difficult, HAHA! Then Bill got a somewhat evil grin. "-Hope this lizard doesn't care about us deflating its own little pocket dimension of resources a bit 'for a good cause'!" Bill called out at their surroundings, then laughed a very Bill Cipher laugh loud and long, as he spun in place and then flew out, gathering up a quickly-growing bundle of 'pink fluffy cloud' material (for matter-energy conversion) in his hands as he went.
Miz shrugged. "Maybe once he loses some of his stuff he'll try working a bit harder." (Like annoying her dad until he actually did something about it, she always tried to discourage his apathy, and she was stubborn enough to continuously poke her dad until she got a rise out of him) She held out her hands to begin gripping onto the edges of this Reality, ready to catch anything if it fell. Slowly, she lifted one of the Dimensions up and began to gently guide it down a bit lower, separating it from the rest of the bunch and positioning it somewhere a lot less precarious. Heck, this didn't even take that much effort; she wasn't creating anything, just moving stuff around.
(Okay, so maybe finding a place to PUT the Dimension was a little difficult, in the end she decided 'fuck it' and attached it to an arbitrary 'location' within Space for now. It hung there, supported by the Spaces Between. Like a rubber duck floating in a pond, except it was inside the pond and not bouncing back up to the surface because there WAS no surface.
"Oh, I can MAKE it get MORE INVESTED in what happens to this place, yes!" Bill called out threateningly. "But if it tries stopping us, I'm killing it," Bill said of the local even-more-stupid lizard, as he beelined his way back over, cloudstuff in his hands.
Miz snorted. "Considering he knew how we felt about what was happening here and STILL left us alone? I think he doesn't care."
"It's stupid," Bill reminded her. "CLEARLY does not think things through, if this is what it came up with. After falling asleep in the middle of things when the stupid thing should know better," he muttered, as he frowned and started spinning 'netting' up into the first row of 'knots'. "Do your job right!" Bill called out to the absent lizard, to no response - not that he'd expected one. Being efficient, Bill 'coded' the process into being once he had the first 'edge' together and started (and attached via long-hanging 'lines' to the farther 'edges' of the cloud pocket dimension, so that it could hang 'below' and 'underneath' it, a bit like a 'hammock' or 'fishing net' of sorts) and then set the spinning-netting spell-like process running, so that he himself could shift to feeding more cloudstuff into it while controlling the speed of the netting-spin.
"-I'm starting with the junk-rules from mine," Bill warned Miz. "Have to start somewhere! Should be compatible, at least," he muttered. They were certainly general enough - the ones used for supporting and controlling things from the underlayer, at least. He hoped he had enough energy for this. He was 'cheating' terribly by shoving against and grabbing and feeding some of the energy here from their surroundings directly into what he was doing (rather than supplying it all from himself). Since the stuff here was so consistent to start with, he hardly needed do anything to it, but...
Miz was reaching into each Dimension as she worked on them, absorbing the emotions (filtering them quickly) for a little boost to help her pace herself. These Dimensions were pretty small, all things considered, not that 'heavy' if she had to equate what she was doing with weight. Making them 'float' on their own without falling apart or plain falling wasn't difficult, just tedious and boring.
Bill frowned (but also hummed) as he worked, trying to encode sections of the 'net' to shift the basic ruleset to the local-dimension set that would 'sit' against and 'above' it. Gradients for how far out they extended. (There didn't seem to be a higher Ruleset above it; not here. Not one that he could See, while he was here, like this.)
"Little sis, you'll need to place those dimensions 'down' far enough away from each other to keep these dimensional ruleset compatibilities from conflicting once I put the 'net' down, and pull the 'net' up. Or put them all down in a different ordering! The stupid gradients are gonna cause bleedover between them if you don't! So do one of the two, unless you WANT it to all collapse into a crazy tangled-mess later!" he called out almost cheekily as he kept spinning out 'net' (while pretty sure that she would pick at least one of the two of those, knowing she did not want that sort of collapse to happen). Because that whole upside-down structure was haphazard in its local rules groupings (hint: there weren't any consistent groupings, not in the least!) and interconnected in the stupidest way Bill had ever Seen! (Not that he'd Seen many dimensional setups before, just his and this-one. But the way it was all set up right now reminded Bill of stupid human-brain neural-connectivity! HA!)
Bill wasn't certain how many dimensions his little sister could hold up at a time, let alone while they were in so fragmentary and lopsided a manner, so he didn't bother to give her any suggestions as to which method she might choose. He just focused on his own work and left her to hers.
Miz nodded absently, most of her attention on grouping the Dimensions in some semblance of order. Dimensions with standard-Physics in this section, dimensions with anti-physics in another, and so on. The fragmented pieces were a little difficult to keep track of, but she'd had to wire and bead delicate paper figurines for arts and crafts, if there was any practice for keeping track of tiny round things that could easily fall and get lost, she had all the experience.
Bill hummed as he continued to feed in more and more cloud material that spun-about and knitted-together and spun-out, down and down again. Really, compared to what he had been working towards figuring out what he was going to have to do back 'home' in his own dimensional set to fix things, all this was EASY to handle by comparison. The whole place was self-contained! No ongoing extraneous incoming-outgoing connections to handle to-and-from the outside, because there was no outside that needed its ever-changing connections to it maintained with it, here. That meant no ongoing changes to account for from a multitude of sources, at all times, all-at-once. Here, all the edges and pieces here were static - Looking at things from where they were, Seeing what needed to be done. So he didn't even need to be able to See EVERYTHING all-at-once to be able to pull any of this off! -This was just TOO EASY!
And Bill's grin widened just a bit further, as the 'net' spun-out and about towards completion, as he measured and calculated the needed area - broad and deep - that would be needed against the rather large number of currently-existing dimensions that were all banded and bandied-about, tied-and-being-untied together. He let out a chittering chuckle, as he cancelled the spell-process, finishing the other-'edge' himself, the last row of 'knots' (and then floated off a good bit away to anchor-in another set of long-hanging 'lines' to another farther 'edges' of that pocket dimension, in the opposite direction of the first set of long-hanging 'lines', to connect to that other-edge).
He checked out all the long-hanging 'lines', over all the initial structure of the 'net' itself, and once he was sure it was sound (by plucking at it here and there and listening to the key of the hum…), he then said to Miz, with a hard glint in his eyes as he picked up the 'net'...
"Let's see how likely it is to tear this down NOW, now that doing that will TEAR DOWN the rest of this - AND THAT STUPID LIZARD WITH IT - if it TRIES! HAHA! CONSEQUENCES!" And with that, Bill half-shoved, half-tossed the new 'netting' over the side, out and away. "-Let IT have to handle some of the strain of holding it all together HERE, FOR ONCE!"
He looked out and down, watching the 'net' 'fall' and 'fall' and then 'fall' and reach the ends of those 'lines', to bottom out and down as it swung down into place, far far below everything. "Not so HIGH AND MIGHTY now! -Connected in EVERY way! No longer anything like SEPARATE! Can't even PRETEND that it is, now! NOT ANYMORE! HA!" Bill was downright shaking in place by this point, eyes wide, the form of his Mind's mental projection pulsating in strength, as his projection's coloration cycled between shades of red and yellow and black.
Miz watched her brother's not-quite hysterical joy(?)... vindictiveness(?) and shrugged. "Kay~"
She turned back to her own task, carefully moving things so that they weren't in each other's way or in danger of collapsing in on themselves.
Bill pulled in a 'breath'... and then he jumped up and dove in - in and down-down-down the 'lines' on the one 'edge' above, into and over and through and all-around the 'net' that he'd just made - his energy-and-self running across all the 'strings' below as he went.
-And he seemed to create a sort of suction force-and-flow behind him, an attraction, a push-and-pull towards him as he went, because the cloud-matter above started spiraling in and down and through the 'threads' of the 'netting' along behind him almost of its own accord, seemingly setting up a constant flow of the cloudstuff through the 'lines' down to, and 'strings' of, the netting. Bill closed the cycle by popping back up at the other-'edge' across the lines, to somersault and tumble out of them again into the clouds above.
"That's-" Bill coughed out a bit, then tried again. "That's there. That's there now. Haha." He shivered slightly, where he floated lackadaisically past his sister - more drifting than floating at this point, really. "How are… the dimensions… Going?"
Miz gave him a thumbs up before rolling her shoulders. "It's tedious and boring. But I've got around half of them stabilized by now. I'm organizing them by set up, physical base and size." Then she paused and added, "Also color. It looks nicer this way." She grinned to herself. "Do you love the color of the sky?" Miz said, with a tone that Bill had figured out by now meant she was making some sort of reference to something she was saying more for-and-to herself than as something she meant for anyone else to understand (in this case, that generally meant it was a rhetorical question).
(Not that he didn't usually respond to those anyway with-) "Pink-is-not-my-color," he got out fairly coherently, as he closed his eyes (and his Eye) for a moment, as he relaxed against the clouds. "Stabilized is good-good-good," Bill not-quite stuttered out next, as he 'breathed' for a bit. "That'll work. ...Good spacing," he added, after rotating onto his side, opening his eyes again, and taking another Look to assess the state of that. He took in another 'breath' he didn't need to take, then forced himself to float himself a bit more upright. "Second time's a charm!" Bill laughed out, seemingly short of breath as he did. "Lower them down further; I'll connect-them in as I go; can settle-them next after that," he told her, floating up-up-up, to go diving down-down-down the new 'intake' lines again.
And this time, Bill's form wasn't so completely lost among the 'netting' below, where this time he stayed, circling and cycling through and between the knots without interrupting or stagnating the general direction of the flow - sometimes jumping along the strings in jagged arcs of energy, in sawtooth-triangles below and side-to-side - sometimes twisting an echo of his human-ish body around the strings like they were fireman's poles he was sliding down - sometimes flickering into sections and pieces of a slitted eye here, a pair of eyebat wings there, a sextet of arms reaching out elsewhere - on and on and on he went.
Pass it down to me here! Bill buzzed-hummed-sang out to her from below, here-here-HERE! calling out and up to where she was far far up above. I'll CATCH it! I'll TAKE it! I'll MAKE it work! MINE-MINE-MINE!
Miz nodded as she directed them downward, the awful upside-down pyramid being almost entirely taken apart.
And the pure energy that was the being that was Bill arced upwards from the 'string' of that 'net', over and over again, dragging thin 'tenets' of the 'string' from below up a bit with him. 'Filaments'. Small anchors to anchor-points, in a way, up from each section of 'net', dancing and dancing, singing out in his humming-buzz as he danced out and about along the 'string'...
...until the last dimension was lowered, and there were no more connections to make. Miz sighed and relaxed, her form buzzing out a little as she slumped against the side of the net to rest.
Bill arced and flowed himself outwards then, directing himself sideways and over and out and back up the ends of the 'outflow' strings. He more slid out of them with a half-tumble - rather than somersaulting out of them - this time.
It took Bill a few moments to raise his head out of the cloudstuff he'd not quite face planted into after that (along with the rest of the 'body' of his mental projection of himself), but once he did…
"Just… just need to pull it up a bit, now. You get this side, I'll get that one?" Bill said after taking another few 'breath's, after already beginning to float his way over to the other set of lines again, rather more comfortable taking the more-'dangerous' more-tricky intake side himself than the outtake one. (His sister wouldn't have to worry about her hold over there as much; he didn't want to risk her being pulled and drawn down and having to try and fight against it if she was unsure of what she was doing, or became distracted. He knew he could handle it; he didn't want to risk her hurting herself if she couldn't. If he was this tired, she might be, too.)
Miz nodded, and they both half-floated half-drifted to their respective 'sides' of the 'edges' of connection. She was having fun, tedious as this task was, she liked this type of micromanagement. Dad never let her do anything like this back home, he probably worried about her breaking something.
"Shorten your 'lines' over there about this fast? -This fast," Bill said, making a slow-moving gesture at a constant speed. Miz nodded to show she understood and had seen. And then they both began working in tandem.
The 'net' below was lifted upwards ever-so-slowly, ever-so-slightly, and as the 'net' rose, the 'filaments' that had been connecting back down to it all strengthened and thickened out as the flow had less 'Up' to fight against; and the strengthening of those filaments helped to settle each and every single one of those dimensions below in-place, to place them cleanly down into the 'net'.
And the 'net' began gleaming with colors all across the spectrum, as the specific rulesets bled into them from the dimensions. Red and yellow and black, mostly. But there were also hints of blue and silver cycling through it, as well. (And, sometimes, a bit of green, or orange, or purple, or pink even…)
The colors below slowly bled into and through things, down through the rest of the 'net', but as they spread out in watercolor-like shimmering pools into the structure, they slowly shifted and settled into the consistent 'pink' and pearlescence 'color' of the cloudstuff above, between all the space of threads between them; there was just enough space to allow the flow from above to continue on and through it all, all of it, without being diluted or 'recolored' completely, in a flow that kept on cycling through and through and through, above to below and through and around and out and back up again, and...
Miz stared. "It's so pretty…"
"It's beautiful," Bill agreed. "As it should be. Perfectly-imperfect. -Well, ALMOST," Bill amended, as he lay his head back in the clouds. "The rules need some work, but..." it all wouldn't be collapsing immediately, if any one of those dimensions did. Not on their own. Not even with a little 'help'. -Not anymore.
Miz sat back on another cloud and stretched her 'arms' out as she relaxed. "We have time, time doesn't really pass unless we let it up here…"
"Mm," said Bill, slowly stretching himself. "Need to be careful about it, though," Bill noted. "That stupid lizard fell asleep up here, and look where that got it." Bill flopped back into the clouds and shook his head slightly. "Need to add in some connections between the dimensions down there to 'bridge' the 'gaps', too, still, at some point. All those so-called 'natural portal' connections between them." He smiled. (He was proud of that one. He'd done that ON PURPOSE in his 'set, adding in each and every one of those stable-and-stabilized 'natural portal' connections in himself. -They were never meant to be structural the way he'd done it, though, not like the stupid way it had originally been done everywhere here by that stupid lizard. And it would be child's play for Bill to do it here in the same way he had done it in his own set properly, again, in the here-and-now...)
Then Bill rolled over and looked at Miz, and asked, quite seriously, "Think anybody noticed anything happening at all, down there?" he wondered 'out loud' at her mentally. Everything here seemed to be largely in-step, time-wise. They'd taken care to make sure that the 'local time' that the changes they'd made happened after they'd come here; Bill had set 'himself' (really, the general area) at five minutes past that particular time 'forward' again as-and-after Miz had pulled herself Up. (It was… odd, here. Far more fluid, responsive, and… reasonable really. Bill was able to reason through what he was Seeing rather easily. This AXOLOTL's 'outside of time' area here didn't seem to follow the same Rules he was used to AT ALL…)
(Which, somewhat alarmingly, absolutely confirmed what his little sister had said about dimensional sets that were entirely unconnected to his own set, with very different rules in play and a VERY different lizard. -Because this one talked to them, and didn't roll back time on them after answering an outright question as-posed - so that they couldn't even REMEMBER what they'd asked, let alone its answer - in a blatant sort of cheating maneuver! The big frilly pink jerk!)
Miz grinned. "I've actually moved Dimensions around without Time Baby noticing a few times. It was hilarious how confused he got." The tantrum he went through when his agents kept getting lost was HILARIOUS. Though, Ax had told her to put them back afterwards. No fun. He didn't want her messing with them. No fair.
"Ahhhh~" Bill sighed out, kicking his feet and legs in frustration, as Miz brought up all of the moving she'd done and he realized... "I didn't watch you working! Not properly!" He'd been too focused on what he himself had had to do, to do what he'd tasked himself with doing all properly himself! "-I don't know how to do that," he complained to her. "If I'd known how to do that BEFORE, I wouldn't have had so many problems with only having the ONE dimension I could escape out of and to!" he told her, kicking his legs out again before letting them drop. And it was true - the real problem he'd had was that his old decaying dimension had been disconnected from nearly everything, drifting farther and farther away from everything else.
The two dimensions - the ones where his Zodiac were - were the closest ones that his own decaying dimension had been anything close to nearby in.. well, practically FOREVER. And they were the last ones that his dimension had been about to pass by that he might have ever been able to stably reach and connect to, ever, period. ...Grabbing and pulling down-and-in other dimensions to destabilize them into his own might've been possible after that still, to keep things going for him in his own decaying dimension after that, but escape? A true, real escape? To be able to turn back around again and then launch himself out and AWAY from...? -No. He'd really only had that one chance, because moving his own dimension himself was one of the very few things that he'd NEVER figured out, and never been able to do.
"All I could do was try to deform it from the inside a little bit," Bill told her, and even that had been pretty dangerous to do, with it already not being anything like stable at the time that he'd been trying to do it. "But I couldn't actually MOVE it." He frowned. "Is there a way to move a dimension from inside it WITHOUT destabilizing it? Or do you NEED the outside-leverage for it?" he asked her, realizing that there was one big difference between the two situations - then, and now - still. His little sister had actually had a lot of leverage here, being outside of it all. But that didn't mean that she did it the same way where she was from. But if she could do that and tell him how… if he could have done THAT from INSIDE it back then...
Miz rolled around on her cloud to get comfortable. "Well, I watched dad while he worked and picked up a lot from just seeing what he did." She thought about it. "But moving from the inside would require shifting enough mass to one side of the dimension that the 'weight' starts pulling it in a certain direction," and with her ability to turn pure energy into mass, well, lets just say she could really 'throw her weight around' if she tried. Reminded her of being inside a giant hamster ball, really. But more… stretchy? It was much easier to move stuff when she wasn't inside it. "I could manage it even easier by grabbing onto all the mass inside a dimension and moving them all at once in the direction I wanted."
"Hm," said Bill, thinking that one through. That might've worked if he'd been in any other (stable) dimension to start with, but... "Think mine might've been moving too fast for that to slow it down quickly enough to get anywhere in that space of dead time. -It didn't do its destabilization, HA, cleanly," he told her. "I lost a lot of matter-energy out of mostly one 'side' of it, I think? Sort of." Bill frowned. "Except not. ...The information of the matter-and-energy was retained?" It wasn't quite the right description for any of it, but… "My dimension was also completely flat to begin with, and then wasn't-later. So." Bill sighed. (This was one of the reasons he hated gravity so much. The concept Miz had described sounded a lot like trying to shift and concentrate the center of mass internally in a different enough way, through other expenditure of energy, that it would be pulled towards other-closest dimensions more than others. But with how fast his dimension had been moving, and with the lack of resources he'd had to work with… those last two nearest-dimensions would likely have collapsed on their own, at the end of their own lifespans, long before what was left of his dimension could have slowed down enough to even come to anything like a halt, let alone start speeding up again on a 'return' path trajectory, from their 'pull'. The forces involved were too weak, and what was left of his own dimension had basically been on an escape trajectory away from absolutely EVERYTHING, which had meant… well. Nothing good for him.)
He was going to have to think a lot more on this...
Miz laid back. "That sounds like it sucked." The thought of being trapped in a place like that seemed awful. She was thankful her own didn't do that.
"More like it 'ruptured'," Bill made a face. "Cheesecloth-as-a-boundary might be better-closer as a description? It got thin. More permeable. Lost a lot. Outer boundaries expanded and flexed in ways they shouldn't-and-weren't supposed-to. I don't remember it very well. Not sure I was awake-and-aware the entire time, either." Bill shrugged, giving her a grimace. (Yet another thing the stupid lizard hadn't helped him with. It hadn't tried to slow his dimension down at all, it hadn't set up a grouping of new dimensions to try and slow it down either - and it wasn't like it couldn't have done that; it was able to create new dimensions all the time - anytime it wanted, as far as Bill could tell. There didn't seem to be any rules on where new dimensions popped up, other than those the stupid lizard self-imposed upon itself, and-)
As Bill ruminated to himself and frowned furiously over the old state of affairs in his own dimensional set, Miz looked down at the dimensions here that were nestled neatly in the netting. Like little hammocks but not. "So how do we rewrite the Rules? Most of those places had a lot of stuff hardwired into it." Like how everything WORKED. What was up or down. What colors were what. Which wavelengths they traveled in.
"We generalize it first. Write the general rules into the 'net', with the same 'values' for 'variables' as the hardwired things. Let that bleed in and replace what was hardwired-there, since it's all technically the same. Then change the 'values' from the out-side to manage the in-side instead. And everything flows like it should. Simple and efficient." Bill closed his eyes for a moment. "Technically, I already did the first part of that, with the junk-rules in place. Now, we just have to let it sit for awhile, and finish bleeding together. Let it sit, and set, and come back to handle the rest of it later."
Miz poked at a nearby dimension. "We've probably messed things up for the native Bill. If he was trying to destabilize Reality then we've just made his job harder…"
"If he was really trying to destabilize 'Reality'," Bill put out there, "Then he's a stupid idiot who DESERVES to have his decided-upon 'job' made harder," Bill sneered out, then tossed an arm over his face. "Stupid lizard probably never had an actual CONVERSATION with him," BIll muttered. "Doubt it knows-or-understands what he's really trying to do, either." Bill lowered his arm. "I'd rather talk to him DIRECTLY. No reason to take the lizard's word for anything!" he told Miz half-cheerfully. (Bill sounded very tired as he said it, though.) "...The stupid thing didn't explain anything with that Time Baby that's supposed to be around here somewhere, either," Bill added, which they'd also not seen skin nor hair of during the whole process of this themselves. "-I can understand how they both might've been able to get in its way, though!" Bill told her next. "If this is ALL that it had to deal with, at THIS level," Bill said rather disparagingly, turning his head slightly to glance around at everything that was all around them again.
Miz hummed. "So… you think we should talk to the Bill here?" she tried to confirm. Her brother sort of sounded like he did, bring up the whole 'directly' thing there. She was a little hesitant at the idea of talking to him herself. She hadn't gotten a good look at him in that brief moment, but he was human-shaped, much like that AXOLOTL they met (and the fangirl side of herself was noting that they were both quite handsome… ugh that's a strange thought… she did NOT want to find an alternative version of her dad attractive…) and she wanted to know if that meant anything, but… he'd also seemed kind of mad, and a bit scary, during that fight.
"Yes," Bill said. "We should talk to him." He paused for a moment as he thought. "Precautions might be good," he added after a moment. "And… pick a dimension, rest down there for awhile, first?" he added hopefully, pointing towards the 'below'. He was tired, and if Stanley had been right about one thing, it was that Bill didn't handle things too well when 'tired' or 'hungry', and Bill was a big enough triangle to (continue to) admit to that being the case.
"I don't want to rest up here," Bill complained out to his sister next. "-I don't trust this stuff," Bill said, looking around at the clouds suspiciously. "What if the cloudstuff is the stuff making the stupid lizard stupid? -I DON'T WANT to fall asleep up here," Bill groused out almost petulantly. (At this point, it didn't even occur to Bill that if they stayed up there, the AXOLOTL might come back; to his way of thinking, it had run away and was probably asleep somewhere else, not lying in wait to GET them, as soon as they let themselves fall asleep.)
Miz snorted. "Sure. There's a dimension down there where everything is made out of pillows. Might be a soft place to sleep."
"Check the pillows first," Bill said in warning tones, feeling a bit loopy, but still more than coherent enough to both remember and note: "Always check the pillows first. ALWAYS."
Miz nodded and tilted her head at all the work she and Bill had done. "I wonder if the Ax here will appreciate what we did for him? It's much better now."
"It is, and it had better," Bill breathed out, his eyes fluttering half-open half-closed. "And if it wants to spin up more dimensions," Bill told his sister blasely, "Then it can expand out the 'net' if it needs to, first. Add more to it." Bill was not quite floating face-up in the clouds as he said this. He began panting slightly as he started to sit up, then gave up for the moment at doing that, flopping back down into the clouds. "-Self-limiting," Bill put out there next. "Add too much, means putting too much strain down there on everything up here, through all the 'lines' connecting down-there to up-here. Should make it learn its own limits. Not try to do more than it can, or should do. -Stupid lizard here clearly can't handle anything approaching a truly infinite-infinity all-at-once."
Bill let out a long 'breath', and marveled at the fact that, oddly, making the 'motion' with his Mindscape form did seem to have something of an impact on him, helping him to relax and to calm down. (...Was this because he was still technically connected to his body by that strung-out anchor? Was his body back there responding to what he was doing here? Was that having an effect on the projection of his Mind to where he was here? -AH! So many questions! So many questions that he didn't know the answers to, yet!)
"Running off and making us do its work for it, though," Bill grumbled, turning over in the clouds. "Lazy. Unfair! -It better N'OT complain!" Bill added, as he rolled over and out of the clouds, to float a bit more upright finally, this time without looking like he was about to pass out from shortness of 'breath' right away. "We'll come back and finish it later. -First things first! Second things second! Thenn last-things lasssst," Bill enthused out to her, as well as he could under the circumstances.
That was fine with Miz. She Looked at the pillow dimension and checked to make sure there was nothing there that could harm them before leading her brother down into it.
Bill trailed down slowly after her, more and more slowly as he went, though they both slid inside the dimension easily at the end of it. He slowly rotated around to Look at things in the surrounding area (read: entire dimension) as Miz materialized vessels for the two of them: a little girl form for herself and a teen-aged female form for her brother. The place looked safe enough to him, as far as he could See. (Even if his vision seemed to be trying to going double on him now, even with only one single Eye...)
Bill more swayed than bobbed in place in the Mindscape, eyes continually fluttering closed, then open, then closed again, barely able to concentrate on anything more than a colorless mantra of 'Look around, make sure there are no threats, don't fall asleep until you're in a body again' as Miz finished up what she was doing.
And once Miz was done, Bill barely gave 'his' own vessel a cursory glance with his Eye before slipping into it. Shortly thereafter, he was down on the ground, fast asleep, lying face-down across the flattest and least-fluffy of the nearby pillows spanning the whole pillow-scape.
Miz sat down beside him. "You must be exhausted…" she noted. "You could have told me you were getting tired…" Miz laid down on a fluffy pillow that seemed to be a 'berry bush' since it had little round cloth dangles and smelled like artificial strawberries. "Good night brother." She set up a protection barrier around them, to keep out both physical and spiritual threats. She made sure they would be safe before she finally allowed herself to drift off, a little worn out herself from the work. As she drifted off, Miz wondered why the native Ax hadn't been able to get off his lazy ass and just do it himself.
"Mmrmphmmm…" went Bill, as he slowly woke from his long slumber and tried to raise his head up. (Nope. Too early. Not doing this! -Don't care what time it is, still NOT doing this.) He let his head fall back down onto the pillow below him.
Miz had woken up before Bill had and had built a pillow fort around her brother. She hadn't wanted him panicking if she wasn't nearby when he woke up either, so she was sitting beside him with her eyes closed, puppeting another vessel out to explore this dimension. The grass was patchwork cloth and felt, the trees were much the same. It was a very soft world.
After another long while, Bill finally not only lifted up his head to try to look around blearily, but also actually opened his eyes this time.
And when Bill saw Miz, he blinked blankly, then blinked blankly and slowly again. (Things were not quite computing just yet.) Miz waved at him, eyes still closed. "Morning, big brother." She was making her other vessel hunt down a pillow rabbit. She was curious what it tasted like. Probably cotton, but she wanted to try anyway.
"Mor'n…-ing?" Bill echoed, as his mentality crawled slowly towards working its way from (his own native math to) Galactic Standard, and Galactic Standard to American English, and then he blinked again. "Miz. Sister." It took him another moment.
(...another dimension in another dimensional set, Miz with him, they did things Up there stupid lizard and then fell asleep down here...)
Bill closed his eyes and opened his Eye, and Looked around. (And felt a little stupid as he realized that he'd been a bad big brother, there were protections up that he hadn't put up, Miz had had to put them up for him…)
(...Miz didn't seem angry at him about that, though. And the barriers and protections were sufficient for sleeping-within, even with that other Bill out there. And she was safe.)
And then Bill pulled in a breath (that felt entirely like breathing this time, almost - because he was in a vessel instead of his own singular body) and grimaced as he lifted a hand to his forehead (closing his not quite overworked-yet Eye) and collapsed back to the pillow again. ...Well, at least he was face-up this time.
"Tiiiiiiired," Bill not-quite slurred out at her, trying half-heartedly to wave an arm back at her and failing miserably, making more of a flopping motion with it instead.
Miz giggled. "You worked really hard yesterday. Sleep more if you want, I'm trying to find food right now." And hopefully she'd be able to get him to eat something later. This might be a vessel and not his true self but it would still help him recover some of his energy.
"Pillows. are. not. food," Bill stated slowly, though a bit more clearly this time. He rolled over again to collapse a bit where he lay on his side. -Because if Stanley wasn't here to poke him about it and Miz said he could sleep more? He was going to sleep more.
"That vessel has the same stomach as me. Pillows can be digested." Miz said softly in case Bill was asleep, she opened one eye to check on him. Bill's eyes were closed, and he seemed ready to conk out again right then and there.
"Not food," Bill murmured out at her again, as he shifted in place, getting comfortable, and slowly began to drift off to sleep again. "Mmmmmnm…" He'd tried to use as little of his own energy as possible earlier, in 'fixing' things and in making that netting, but 'as little as possible' was a far cry from 'none' of it being used by him at all.
It wasn't a minute later that Bill was fast asleep and well-under, all over again.
Miz resisted the urge to coo at him. Her brother was so adorable~ Well. Miz wasn't going to tell him that. She DID snap a mental photo to 'print' out later. Maybe she could show it to Mabel so the two of them could coo over it together?
Miz stayed vigilant, checking to be sure the native Bill didn't discover them. She could feel him around but he wasn't able to See them. She wanted to talk to him, but not right now and not alone.
Bill was asleep for another several hours after that. What finally woke him up was the growling noises of his own stomach.
"Stupid human-ish bod-y- vessel-thing," Bill muttered, correcting himself as he rolled over onto his back. "Not food. Food is not the problem." Stupid vessel. He needed energy, not food, and he felt annoyed at this… this mismatch of things. -His own exoskeletons had never been this way! ...Then again, if he'd fallen asleep inside an exoskeleton, instead of a vessel that was pretty darned close to his own human-ish body at-present, then he probably would've...
There was a smell in the air that caught his attention. Like burning cloth? Bill shoved himself upright to see his little sister roasting a stuffed rabbit over a small fire. She looked very confused.
Bill saw her look up and grin at him, once she realized he was awake.
"Miz," he repeated. "Not food." He pointed at the stuffed rabbit. "Those are for hugging. You like hugging those." What was she even doing with that thing?
"I do. But I'm also curious what they taste like. The inhabitants of this dimension eat them, so that means they're 'food'."
"They don't eat them like THAT," Bill told her, eyeing the fire. Did she really think these things were going to be like meat-rabbits? Like human-dimensional type rabbits full of meat? She HAD to have noticed the feathers, though.
"You're going to burn down the entire dimension," Bill informed her dryly. "And they taste like feathers. It's all cloth and feathers. The entire dimension. -All of it." He could tell just by Looking at it; all those chained-together hydrocarbons were...
Miz frowned at the fire. "I guess that's a valid point."
"They probably rip open the outside-cloth to get-at and 'eat' all the feathers, locally, if the local-things do the whole eating-each-other thing like most places do," Bill told her, as he levered himself into sitting up upright. He hadn't Looked long enough before to See it all happening explicitly, but he was more than certain enough at what he had Seen to 'guess' that they, "Keep-and-reuse the stitching-and-cloth to expand their own outer coverings, which is dangerous to do in an open setting-area; can't really move while all those stitches sitting there, open and undone," he told her, rubbing at his eyes. Because that was generally how he'd Seen it done in several similar dimensions from his own dimensional set, at least. He hadn't done an in-depth Look at everything in this one, just a cursory one Looking for differences. "Not sure what they use for needles, here. Broken button-eyes?" He wasn't entirely sure he felt like checking to find that out for himself just then. Was that something useful that they needed to know? It probably wasn't, if they were going to be leaving soon, anyway.
Miz put out the fire and considered the burnt rabbit. "Damn, why does it have to be so cute…" she said, before she 'healed' the animal. The stuffed rabbit jerked and wiggled out of her hands to hop away. Miz sighed. "Well, I found another difference. The Ax here doesn't grab the Souls immediately. It feels like he lets them pile up a bit before grabbing them in bulk," else the rabbit would have been revived as a soulless husk.
"Thing need to learn how to automate all those flipping processes," Bill muttered out, rubbing at the side of his head vigorously and fuming. Was it going to just keep being lazy? It had better not ignore the whole 'net'-underlayer he'd set up for it here; there was lazy, and there was lazy and stupid at the same time. ...At least his AXOLOTL the stupid lizard from his dimensional set had never stooped so low as to being both of those at the same time...
Miz got up from her seat on a large mushroom pillow. "I don't think I'll be able to kill one of those again. Was hard enough the first time. Too cute." She'd eventually killed the rabbit by accident. Using her 'puppet' to chase it off a cliff onto a bed of foxes who'd torn it in half with their jagged zipper teeth.
"So? We go somewhere else to eat something that's actually food," Bill said, shrugging. "This is a problem?" By which he meant both the eating-elsewhere-not-here and the Souls in bulk. (As far as Bill was concerned, if this AXOLOTL was that lazy, and didn't even try to use the underlayer he'd put in place for it for anything, to do its own job better, then it would probably be just that much easier for Bill himself to set up things so that the Minds stayed connected with the Souls, and to then shunt the Souls away from the lazy-stupid lizard into a 'waiting area' that it couldn't get at so easily instead, using the very 'net' that Miz had helped him with himself. Because if the number of souls never built up enough for it to pick them up before the regeneration-unkilling process Bill wanted to put in place occurred? Then-)
Miz brushed her hands off. "I just usually check out the local cuisine whenever I visit a new dimension. But I can skip this one. Maybe."
"Tastes like feathers," Bill repeated for her, then frowned. "Stab the mushroom, pull out a few, put them in your mouth, they'll taste like everything else. Done. No wondering-forever later." It was about as much of a compromise as he could think of, under the circumstances.
Miz proceeded to actually try it and made a grimacing face. "BLEH. That texture…" She blinked. "But this actually tastes mushroomy."
Bill blinked at her.
"...Stab the ground?" he said next. Not that he was hoping exactly that it would taste different. He just knew that Miz liked tasting potentially-food things. He certainly wasn't going to taste it himself!
Miz poked at it and pulled out some green tinted feathers. "Well. This is kinda grassy. Like fresh cut lawn." She still didn't like the texture. Feathers did not feel nice on the teeth.
...Bill refrained from musing out loud if finding green feathers in a rabbit-pillow would have them still tasting 'grassy', or if they would slowly start to taste potentially-'rabbity' over time.
"Not food," was what he pointed out again, instead.
Miz shrugged, satisfied for now. "I saw a dimension with actual food. And beings that look humanoid enough that we wouldn't stand out." Miz looked off. Reminded her of a place from her own set, but it was different, had different people, even if it kept the same 'type' of society.
Bill slowly stood up, and shifted in place, looking uneasy. "...I need energy," he finally admitted, looking away from her. "Preferably without having to actually feed." He had a feeling doing THAT would be very dangerous here, in another 'set with another AXOLOTL and another Bill around doing who-knew-what and potentially mad at things in general (and maybe even ready to be mad at THEM…). Yes, he was drawing down energy from where his form and Mind physically were currently, but it was slow, not instantaneous, and he had to keep it that way in order to...
Miz smiled. "Well~ your vessel has my kind of stomach so you'll be able to get all the energy within molecular bonds."
That just had Bill grimacing. "I don't know how to operate it correctly," he told her. He couldn't exactly See it well from being inside it, to start with. And he didn't particularly want to get into how he'd truly learned how to operate bodies from the inside with his little sister just then. (Primarily, 'test to destruction' with a few 'test' subjects who wanted to self-annihilate and knew exactly what they were getting themselves into with their Deals with him, there.)
Miz rolled her eyes. "You don't have to do anything but eat food like a human. The stomach will work on its own."
"No," said Bill, looking uncomfortable, "YOU don't understand. I can't just PULL IN energy out of EVERYwhere, from anyTHING. There's a process," he told her, because that was what it was: a conversion and integration process. (And his reserves were already somewhat integrated into his form.) He wasn't entirely sure how she did it, but... "I'll reject it, otherwise. It won't incorporate into my Self." It was part of how he automatically rejected any- and every-thing that was not him. Part of his defenses, innate because he'd reconfigured himself to make himself so. And he didn't really want to discuss HOW he did it any further than that with her while they were quite literally standing in what could potentially be enemy territory, if the AXOLOTL hadn't been lying to them earlier about things. (And if it had, then it was still enemy territory, just in a different way…)
Miz thought about it before handing Bill a feather from the mushroom. "Test out a little and see if it works or not. If it doesn't, I can help you find something that does."
Bill grimaced. He knew perfectly well how his form as a being of pure energy both worked and didn't-work, mental projection of his Mind from where he actually physically was lying in place or not.
But he took the feather from her anyway and he put it in his mouth. And then he swallowed it.
(It wasn't as though it was going to damage him if he did it. He could handle it, however the finer details of the process Miz had set up for him actually worked, he was certain. And it would be informative for her to see…)
And a few seconds later he made a hacking noise and then bent over and spat out a small pinhead-sized chunk of ball lightning, out of said-vessel's mouth, which hit the pillow-ground hard and left a burnt mark right where he'd spat it out down onto the fabric.
"Oh my gosh!" Miz gasped and then grimaced. "Probably should figure another method then." Ball lightning? Interesting. Now she was curious if that was a thing with her brother or if she could hack out lightning too.
Bill, hands on his knees and looking a bit ill, made a sort of 'ugh' sound and sent her a look. (Yes, he'd been right; hadn't damaged or hurt him, just felt incredibly uncomfortable. That energy had actually felt like it had been forcibly INJECTED into his energy form; he hadn't been able to keep it out to begin with; he'd had to shove it out! And even after doing that, it had continued to crawl all over and across his energy form in a largely-uncontrolled manner, inside this vessel with him, before he'd decided that that was enough of that and finally forcibly-cycled it up this vessel's throat for expulsion...)
"Sorry, didn't think you would reject it that harshly." Miz felt bad that it apparently sucked THIS much.
"I'll explain LATER," he told her, as he finally straightened up a bit, swaying. He'd only just recently taught Miz layers, and she still found it a bit uncomfortable to hold them herself. Getting into how he'd quite literally ENCRYPTED the most important parts of the standing wave of his own energy form, well beyond that even? Was something he considered to be a bit of a trade secret of his. (Not 'just' ciphers, but ACTUAL encryption.) And that wasn't even getting into the algorithms he used for determining how he cycled it all - all and which parts of himself - between frequencies in order to make himself that difficult to characterize, monitor, track, sense, follow, trap or otherwise contain, or in any way stop. Or how he still managed to actually process and react to everything around him, incorporating that new information-as-energy-shifts into his being without disrupting or unencrypting any of the rest of these processes to do so. Or the layering-shifting-flows that he'd put in place on top of and integrated into all of that. Not to mention the error-checking and memory-'data' compression, and his own equivalent of 'self-corrective' healing…
"Not here, and not now. Not when anything or anyONE could be listening," Bill limited himself to telling her instead.
(ReverseFlatland!Bill interlude)
That was strange~? Bill craned his head up from where he was standing over the broken crappy house-robot and Looked. He could have sworn everything just moved. Like the multiverse had shifted. Odd. That damn lizard was too lazy to do something like that.
He opened his Eye to Look and frowned when he couldn't See it, whatever 'it' had been. It frustrated him to no end. Was that damn lizard blocking him again? -Well, no matter. All he really needed to do was See what that moving feeling was...
...what? WHAT?!
Bill shrieked with anger. Whatever had happened had completely RUINED his plans! All of them! All of it was changed! Moved! Stabilized?! Who the FUCK did this?! It couldn't have been that lizard - he was a lazy fuckin' asshole and...
Bill pulled at his hair, screaming and screaming with rage at whoever had so THOROUGHLY fixed the layout of the multiverse.
...and WHY was it so neatly ORGANIZED?!
Illusion is Reality
Chapter 97.2
-Why did the old man do this?-
"Nn," said Bill. He twirled the 'credits' card between his fingers. He'd thought stopping by that Blips 'n Chips would be the best idea ever, since they had 'change machines' and 'currency converters' of many types unknown to man! …but apparently a bit of Searching with his Eye for some Knowledge to convert into the local non-gold just didn't pay here like it did back in his own dimensional set - or at least not in the same ways here. His payoff had been a lot lower than he'd been expecting - he barely had enough on this thing to buy a single solitary planet! Really, he'd thought that juicy little tidbit would be worth a small solar system, at least! He'd even passed on the info on how it could be used to best-effect, to pass along to the species owning that particular machine! And this was all he'd gotten for it? Really?!
...Oh, well. Wasn't like he wasn't used to being undersold and underappreciated! He'd just gotten into the habit of not having to put up with it! (He'd pushed things along in his own dimensional set to the point that people - and demons - actually appreciated a good bit of useful information when they heard it! But apparently here was a different story. It made him wonder about what exactly this local Bill Cipher had been up to, all these years, if…) ...With the laundry list of things that Stanley wanted him not-doing, he'd probably have to get used to getting himself out of that habit of not-putting-up-with-certain-things again, too. Annoying.
Bill still restricted himself to ONLY letting out a disappointed sigh at the measly little payout he'd gotten for his efforts though. No use complaining about things he wasn't going to immediately do something about to change for the worse, after all. He stopped the twirling through his fingers of the card with a solid 'snap' against the palm of the hand of his current vessel, then shoved it down deep into a side pocket of his clothing - vessel and clothing both Miz-supplied.
"Having fun?" Bill asked his little sister, as she skipped along next to him, while he moved along at his own somewhat more sedate walking pace. Miz nodded, scanning everything they passed. "The crepes they have here are so intricate!" She held up one of the pastries, filled to the brim with various fruits and drizzled in creamy sauce. "I liked the smolemon one but I think the drackoberry is my favorite." She took another bite and mumbled. "It's sad that you can't eat it…"
Since Bill didn't like digesting the way she did, Miz had shooed him out of his vessel for a moment, then fixed it up to just do things like a human for now until she could help him tweak it to digest the way HE wanted it to. (...Which apparently wasn't going to be right away, because now was food time according to him, apparently.)
"Ha," Bill laughed out, about sedately as he was walking. "This isn't my body; this is a vessel! I'm a being of pure energy! I DON'T CARE what I eat in this thing, as long as it doesn't do anything like that translation-injection process like it did earlier, again!" he told her. (Really, his stupid human-ish body only had any sort of impact on his energy form due to the anchor that was attaching him to his body at-present.) "As long as the current physical form I'm inhabiting doesn't impact my energy form, it's not a problem! This vessel only did before, because of the way you set up the stomach in this thing earlier…" Bill trailed off.
"But this vessel doesn't do that anymore," Bill noted. "Now it's a little closer to working like an exoskeleton," Bill told her, shrugging it off. Because, really, the main difference between this vessel and an exoskeleton now (as far as Bill was concerned) was the complexity of the vessel's innards by comparison, and the ability for it to 'naturally' translate and more accurately map all of the sensations and sensory input of the vessel's pseudo-body back to his being, unless and until he decided to disconnect any of that, himself. (He'd already disconnected his sense of smell first-thing, because noses were 'yuck!' and smelling was eww!) "I can eat anything I want right now, no problem!"
To prove it, Bill reached over to pluck out a piece of sour fruit from one of Miz's crepes, tossed it into his mouth, and bit down. HA! (...Hm. He found the taste of it actually quite pleasant.)
Miz beamed when she saw Bill actually smile while eating. "So this means that I can cook anything for you! And you'll be able to eat it!" She got up close to nuzzle her brother, thrilled that she had been able to move him into a vessel that let him be able to eat yummy stuff!
"Haha! -For now!" Bill said with a grin, patting Miz's head, as the two of them walked down the crowded streets. Miz seemed quite lost in thought at all the wonderful food she'd be able to make without dietary restrictions, while Bill was trying to gauge whether or not he'd be able to get any energy here that he could process before going to meet that local Bill.
(It was looking like he'd just have to resign himself to going without any local replenishment for now, and keep slowly drawing down weirdness and energy from his Mind to just as slowly replenish here what he was using here locally. It wouldn't solve the overall lower-energy not-much-in-his-reserves problem he'd had going since well before Miz had arrived even for the first time in his 'set, but grabbing energy here to lower the energy debt he was incurring here, or to try and refill his reserves even slightly back where he was physically, was probably a bad idea anyway. ...Well, it was fine. He could handle it for now.)
Miz nodded in understanding. Of course there was still the issue of keeping his actual body alive with enough nutrients in the meantime if he wanted to stay in a vessel even longer, but otherwise this was good! "You'd tell me if there was something I could do to help you get your energy back up, right?" she asked.
"It's fine," Bill told her, patting-petting her on top of her head. "I always keep plenty in reserve, just in case." He wasn't worried. (Uneasy wasn't worried.) A little more time - just a few hours, really - and he'd have pulled down enough to be back to a decent level in what he had to work with here without stressing anything, Mind or Eye or anchor, in even the slightest, even going as slowly as he was right now to avoid any remotely possible detection from the local Bill, or any other possible-enemy within this 'set, at least. "It's just a matter of getting it here to this projection of me without going too, haha, overboard in the process!" he told her with a smile. Because yes, he didn't like expending so much without knowing how likely he was to be expending even more later, but… what he'd told Stanley before was right - he had no idea what was out there that he might have to handle or even fight off, and he could only prepare so much in advance of that for that eventuality, that eventual-possibility that may-or-may-not happen before he was ready for it. So he might as well start getting used to the uncertainty now, in this, that he hadn't had to face in a very long time...
Miz still looked a little worried. She didn't want her brother running out of energy, 'specially since it sounded like he had a harder time of generating it than she did. But if her brother didn't want to ask for help, she'd have to let it be for now.
"So what now? The native Bill did a search earlier, didn't find us though," Miz commented, nibbling on her snack. "Should we confront him?" Frankly, she wasn't sure if she wanted to meet him, but it wouldn't hurt to hear his side of the story, right?
"Confront him? -Really, little sis," Bill said with a sigh. "We come here, to his dimensional set, we move things all around on him, and then… we leave without saying anything? -If that happened to ME, I'd consider it an ATTACK," Bill told her. "RUDE!" He slipped out his 'credits' card abruptly, at seeing something he WANTED, waved the card at a nearby kiosk, and casually plucked up a 'meat kebob' skewer of some sort as they walked, taking a big bite out of it as he went. "WHY WOULDN'T WE drop by and say 'hi!' We should AT LEAST introduce ourselves and explain!" Besides, it wasn't as though they hadn't shown up and shown themselves in that other dimension where that not-a-triangle Bill Cipher had been before. If he'd noticed then or since, then leaving NOW would be beyond rude; that was just BAD MANNERS!
"So… we find him and just… invite him for tea?" Miz asked, eyeing up several restaurants nearby. "I do hope he isn't too angry. I really don't want to start a fight."
"Tea would be good. If he's a Bill Cipher like us," instead of a him-that-is-not-him, "Then he will like tea, too!" Bill nodded to himself. He paused to glance sideways Miz. "You do like tea, yes?" She'd certainly seemed fine with it during their picnic!
"I love tea." Miz replied easily. Bill grinned as he let out a chittery-laugh. "SEE?" he said, gesturing at her. Of course she had good taste! Besides, with her liking food so much, why wouldn't she have excellent taste in beverages? Like tea! She'd just about have to, because of that!
"We should bring the tea to HIM though," Bill told his little sister. "WE are the 'interlopers' here. It's only polite to go to him, instead of making him make the EFFORT the other way around!" It'd be too easy for that other-him to think that they'd been trying to avoid him, otherwise. ...And, remembering what they'd both seen when they'd first arrived, Bill added, "He Looked like he could USE some tea!" He'd seemed pretty frustrated overall, getting fought against like that, after all! -And Bill could relate!
Bill looked (and then Looked) around the marketplace that he'd recommended to Miz. "If this place is anything like the one I know," and it didn't seem quite that far off to him yet, despite the lack of understructure and a few other things, "Then this place should have the ingredients here for a decent pot of Cosmic Tea, or two, or three." Bill finished off his skewer and tossed it in a nearby waste receptacle, then laced his fingers behind his back and stretched his arms and shoulders a bit as he walked, before relaxing them again. "Could maybe brew up a good bit of Time Punch, too - for later," Bill clarified. "After we've done the first bit of introductions and talking, maybe." Tea was good for serious conversations; Time Punch was great for celebrations. Bill knew he was being a bit optimistic, there, but… he DID like his plans, and, well...
Bill grinned. -After all, Time Punch was a good thing to have on-hand for all SORTS of occasions! HAHA!
"Oh! Should we make cookies or other tea-snacks to go with it?" Miz asked, skipping along beside her brother. "Like a whole picnic?" Bill grinned. "Even BETTER!" And why not? They'd told Stanley they were having a picnic after all; why not have two?
And so the two of them went strolling about the market, gathering up the things they needed; Bill even taught Miz a new recipe for mixing drinks as they went. She was quite delighted at the prospect and gave him a bright "Thank you!" to which Bill let out an appreciative (and proud) chitter.
Shortly thereafter, the siblings finished their 'scavenger hunt-of-a-search' and found an open eating area to sit down at and put together their little picnic basket of treats and other goodies. Miz even introduced Bill to the idea of spicy cookies, "Since you don't like sweet things." (Heck, cookies were one of the few things she could bake, mainly because even if they melted or cracked, they were still edible. Unlike bread and cakes that could get ruined in all sorts of ways just because she thought it would be fine to substitute a few ingredients, or three.)
Bill pet Miz on the head, feeling warm inside at her thoughtfulness over the things he liked to (not just could) eat.
And once all that was done, they were off to 'drop in on' the native Bill!
Something in the air was shifting. Bill Cipher glanced around. Something… powerful. He frowned, pulling his power in, strengthening his shields in case this was an attack. Had that damn lizard finally got off his lazy ass and decided to face him directly? He WAS just about to threaten Stanford into finally giving him the information he needed to bring down this dimension (though, with that restructuring he'd felt happening earlier, it wouldn't be as triumphant as it originally would be, but it was still a start for gaining power...
He blinked in surprise when two females phased into the world nearby - not too close, not quite close enough that he would count this as an attack, just a few meters away, while holding… a picnic basket? Bill stared. They were...
The smaller-looking female waved. "Hello! Are you Bill Cipher?"
Bill scoffed, straightening up and tossing a lock of hair back. "Well, who ELSE could possibly be this handsome?" he winked at them, turning up the charm. (He kindly ignored the incredulous sound coming off the little triangles in the room of the Fearamid where he was threatening them.) Whoever/whatever these two were, they were quite powerful. Were they fellow gods? Probably. Inwardly, he frowned. Their energy felt familiar. But more than that, if he had to ask for who (or WHAT) could have restructured this Reality, it could only be them. They were new. He'd never Seen them before, but suddenly all of reality shifts and two god-level beings show up? He wasn't stupid. They were probably one and the same! (Normally, he'd be right up for defeating and consuming another god to gain their power, but these two felt a little too much for him to take on both at once.)
The smaller female giggled. "Well, I suppose you are kinda cute." to which the older female rolled her eyes and looked a little exasperated at the younger one's antics. Bill grinned wider.
"So, just going out on a limb here…" He sauntered over, long legs crossing the distance in just a few strides. "Are you two the ones who so thoroughly ruined my plans?" He drawled, gazing down at them from his height.
"Well," the older looking female drawled back, meeting his gaze cooly with no sign of any intimidation, "I'd need to know what your plans WERE to truly answer that." She didn't seem combative or defense about it, simply straightforward in her own manner.
Interesting. Bill raised an eyebrow. "Before all that, perhaps some introductions are in order? You seem to know who I am already but…" and here, his gaze turned mildly suspicious. "I can't seem to See anything about who you lovely ladies are." It was rather annoying actually, he didn't like NOT knowing stuff. But with the power he could feel coming off these two, he couldn't quite bring himself to attack them, not without knowing a little more about them; it was two on one and right now he didn't know if he'd win.
"I'm Miz Cipher," the smaller female said cheerfully as the two walked towards him. "And this is my brother, Bill." She gestured to the other female. Brother? Bill narrowed his eyes. Another person with the same name as him, and with energy that felt so familiar somehow… it didn't take a genius to figure this one out.
"So, Bill Cipher from another dimension, eh?" Bill grinned, as the 'brother' simply gave him a nod. "And isn't this just interesting."
"Miz, do you have any… 'nickname' for me?" the older female 'brother Bill' said to the younger one. "It would be more polite than claiming THIS one's name for my own, here, in his own local backyard. -Not trying to steal your thunder, here," the 'brother Bill' said to Bill, turning a wide grin at the local one. "And yes, you SHOULDN'T be able to See our pasts," 'he' said to Bill next. "I've had TROUBLE with that BEFORE. -It's for all of our own protection, including yours," Bill was told, which left him frowning.
"And, as a courtesy," this other Bill added, "I have chosen not to Look at your Self and YOUR past, as well. A level playing field, as it were. -We can talk, as a start. I'm happy to answer any questions you may have." Then Bill felt a slight shiver go down his spine as he looked (and Looked) on, and this male-female him went from grinning at him to simply giving him a slight smile and- the power he was feeling wafting from this other Bill suddenly just… VANISHED. As if it'd never been there at all! (How had he done that?!)
"Miz, nickname?" the 'brother' said to Miz next, otherwise not looking any different in outward appearance despite the vanishing of his aura of power, as 'his' sister(?) looked on and blushed. "OH!" The 'brother Bill' clapped 'his' hands together and swiveled back to him, smiling more widely at him now and leaning forward as 'he' asked, "We aren't INTERRUPTING anything, are we?"
...said the older female as 'he' stood in the middle of the Fearamid with the rest of them, two triangles clutched in Bill's tendrils and another two held in a pyramidal cage of Bill's own devising, stones and rocks strewn absolutely EVERYWHERE from the gaping hole in the side of the wall nearby that that stupid Shacktron had punched in it (again!)...
...and waited patiently for a response to 'his' question from Bill.
Bill stared at this other 'brother Bill' and wondered if 'he' might be just a bit brain-damaged.
"...Or would you like some help from me and…" the younger female blushed as she said, "Blue," (the older female's eyebrows went up a bit at this "Hm, Blue. ...Yes, that works.") and her blush got less red as she looked around, "In cleaning up first?" the younger female offered tentatively but sincerely after a beat, looking around at what she apparently considered to be a mess that needed cleaning up(?!).
And Bill blinked, the tiny child triangles in his grasp (as well as the older adult ones in the cage) staring at these interlopers. "Help?" With cleaning the place up? Was that what they were both trying to get at? He frowned around at the debris. "Well, it IS quite messy in here. But, I'm sort of in the middle of something." He gestured around. Because apparently they hadn't realized that when they'd come in, and weren't going to realize it until he said something.
To this, the one named 'Miz' shrugged at him, though. "Ah, well, Time is dead, so you can wait a little? We kinda… wanted to talk." She held up her picnic basket. "We brought tea and snacks?" she said hopefully, tempting him with whatever might be in that covered basket.
Bill considered it. He DID want some answers, he could actually See what was in that basket right now when he tried Looking at it, at least, and it wasn't like those pesky Pines were going anywhere...
"Sure. Why not?" he grinned, moving the smaller twins so that they dangled in the air, wrapped up in ribbons of his power, instead. Why not just give Stanford a few more minutes to stew in his own fear for the nibling's lives? It changed nothing, they couldn't stop him anyway. Bill adjusted his tux and grinned at the other two Ciphers. "I'm guessing 'Miz' is a nickname? You're also a Bill Cipher, aren't you?" he asked, trying to get confirmation one way or the other; her energy was similar enough, but he wanted to be sure. He looked around. "A little clean up would be nice," he said next, rather calculatingly. Because he could see how her powers worked, by seeing what she did to 'clean up'. (And he didn't miss how Blue's eyes narrowed slightly at his ask, either. A suspicious one, huh?)
Miz didn't look suspicious though. She just smiled, waved a hand, and reversed the damage done to the Fearamid, the black bricks floating up and clicking back into place where they needed to be. She even formed a neat little table with three chairs for them to have their picnic at. "We're from out of town, as it were, and thought it would be polite to come and say hello," she told him, setting the picnic basket down on the new table and opening it up to take out plates and cups and some napkins.
(Bill blinked. Miz had been very… thorough. He looked around and... yeesh, he wasn't sure the Fearamid had been this clean when he'd MADE it. The dust was gone, the scuffs from people running around were gone; there was even a nice scent of citrus in the air, as if she'd applied an air freshener as well - did great for cleaning out the stench of sweat from the terrified shapes, he had to give her that.)
"Especially after changing things up on you, here," Blue said, as 'he' sat down at the table, on one of the chairs. "I know I wouldn't appreciate some drive-by messing-up of any of MY plans," Blue added, "Intentional or not. The lazy-stupid lizard around these parts thought as much, anyway, not that I trust it," Blue added more dourly, and with more than a little suspicion in 'his' tone. "So we thought we'd do the polite thing, and come see you in-person, after."
"How kind of you." Bill raised an eyebrow, striding over to claim his own chair. "So, what brings you two here to my little section of Reality?" he asked the two of them, as he sat down.
"Miz was curious, and wanted to go exploring," Blue told him, as he flipped the cloth that had been covering over the top of the basket out over the table instead, and the things currently on the table floated out and over to the sides, then up and around, to land back on top of it again, after the (table?)cloth had finished fluttering down through the air to meet the surface of the table, to cover it over. "I didn't like the idea of her going exploring out on her own, so I decided to go with her and See a few places, myself. See what was different."
"...and why have you gone and rearranged Reality?" Bill asked, accepting the cup and saucer Miz handed him, after she'd finished pouring it. Oh~ the tea was nice.
"It was completely UNSTABLE in structure and going to collapse, without even the most-basic of fixes," Blue told him, as he took his own teacup to sip from, with a 'mine; thank you' to his sister. "It needed FIXING. Badly."
"...that was kind of the point, yes. Collapsing everything in on itself." Bill picked up one of the sandwiches in a dainty manner, cut into neat little triangles and filled with meat and fresh vegetables. Hm. Not bad.
Blue eyed him. "Interesting. The lazy-stupid lizard said as much. Which really just begs the question… Why?"
Bill scoffed. "The Time Giants are all DEAD. And with Time Baby dead as well, there's no one left except me and that damn lizard. So all I'd have to do is take down this dimension-" he lifted his arms up to gesture around them "-and EVERYTHING would have come down. EVERYTHING, EVERYWHERE, IN EVERY DIMENSION!" He grinned, wide and unhinged. The triangles all stared at him in horror. "And once everything was in one place, mashed together under its own weight, I would take it all and make it MINE. Then that stupid lizard would be forced to start over, and once he tries, I can take that moment to kill him and take it all for myself." He seemed quite pleased. "Then there would be no one LEFT except ME. And I can do WHATEVER I want with this world."
Blue looked at him over 'his' teacup for a very long moment, with not much expression on 'his' face.
"WELL," said Blue. "I think I see a FEW problems with your logic, there. -Would you like me to POINT THEM OUT for you?"
And Blue lifted 'his' teacup and took another sip of 'his' tea.
Bill frowned. "What do you mean?" He didn't like being wrong. He glanced over at Miz, to see if she had similar criticisms as this other interloper, but Miz was nibbling on the sandwiches as she swung her legs back and forth (the chair being a bit tall for her), seemingly distracted by the triangles in the cage that she was looking over. Bill looked back at Blue. "If I kill that lizard, I get to take over. It's that simple." Bill said slowly.
"HM." Blue set down 'his' teacup. "WELL. I don't know about that. -Let's start at the start then, shall we?" 'He' held up 'his' pointer finger. "Does Time Baby have the ability to reincorporate his molecules? Pulling everything into one single-singularity will do that FASTER." Blue held up another finger. "You and the stupid lizard are not 'the only ones left'. There are several other 'ones' around, right here even!" Blue took a moment to gesture at the four triangles, large and small, and then at 'him'self and 'his' sister. "Taking down this dimension will not take down everything everywhere anymore." Blue held up another finger for that one, then added an additional finger after that. "Everything mashed together includes YOU being mashed, and if you can't take control of everything SEPARATE, I highly doubt that you have an actual plan or understanding of how it all 'suddenly' becomes YOURS by doing this," Blue told him, "Unless I missed something rather overwhelmingly and glaringly NON-OBVIOUS in how your lovely little setup is here, before or after we messed with it."
Bill was frowning at this point. "But-"
"Oh yes, but-but-but," Blue said. "But let's say that it DOES work that way, just for the sake of argument!" Blue said, then pushed out a thumb. "The stupid lizard being mashed in with you means that it 'takes over' even MORE strongly than you do, before you have a chance to, by your own indicated ruleset." Blue set his teacup and saucer down, to let it float in the air next to 'him', and poked up the pointer finger from 'his' other hand next. "Putting everything in one place and forcing a start-over seems HIGHLY arbitrary to me, since from what WE saw of the stupid frilly thing, it'd be FAR MORE LIKELY to just curl up in a ball and sleep ON TOP OF IT, instead." Blue held up another finger on 'his' other hand. "The stupid lizard could EASILY kill you first before trying to start anything over." Blue put up another finger. "If the stupid lizard is rushing to restore things quickly enough that it doesn't have the time to kill you first, then in the time it takes YOU to kill IT, and take its power, and figure out how to use it..." Blue grimaced. "You WON'T have the time yourself to be able to stop the progression yourself anymore. The stupid lizard's had forever to get used to its own power; you'd have LESS than NO TIME to do that, and probably DIE HORRIBLY while that is going on, as everything else finishes disincorporating in pieces around you, along with YOU."
"You don't know that I can't do that-" Bill began, starting to get annoyed.
"-And you don't know that you can do that, not for certain," Blue interrupted him saying, then shook his head and added, "But, even if you DO manage to pull ALL THAT off…" Blue held up a final finger. "There won't BE 'a world' to 'do what you want with' after you've done all that, just one gigantic singularity-MESS for you to have to clean up all by yourself, instead," Blue frowned, "And NO-ONE to SHARE it with, later. -Now, how BORING is that?" Bill asked him, lowering 'his' hands. "There are FAR easier ways to get yourself a little PEACE AND QUIET, if you ask me," Blue told him, leaning back in 'his' chair, to retrieve 'his' teacup from the air and then take another good sip of 'his' tea.
Bill frowned, because that last part had thrown him for a loop. "But-" His brow creased even more, because he hadn't even considered... "He has to reset it-" The demon looked quite frustrated. "It can't just… leave Reality all… fucked up! He's supposed to-" His voice went up a little before he forcibly calmed himself and hissed out, "I can devour EVERYTHING and then I'll be stronger than that lazy sack of shit-" (One of the larger triangles in the cage gasped at this.)
"Ah, and here we come to the FINAL sticking point of your problematic and unworking 'solution'," Blue told him, with a sigh. "We're talking about the lazy-stupid lizard here. Trusting it is a BAD IDEA. Trusting it to DO ANYTHING for you is even worse! After all," Blue told him, "If it was safe to trust it to do that, wouldn't it have DONE SOMETHING already? Anything? ...Let alone done it all PROPERLY the FIRST TIME? -Have you talked to it lately?" Blue asked Bill mildly. "It doesn't seem to have learned from its mistakes. And," Blue grimaced, "Devouring everything in existence won't do much, if you're not VERY careful when you're going about it. Certainly won't do anything to that lizard," Blue waved off. "-It'd probably just thank you for taking everything out of its hands, and go off to a new sleep FOREVER. And if you devour IT, too, then you won't even have anyone to yell at, anymore. It'll be just you, and nothing else, ever again. FOREVER."
While Blue ranted at this other Bill (and this other Bill ranted right back), Miz was frowning at her teacup, biting her lip and trying very hard to keep quiet. Because there were so many things she wanted to say, to express. And she wasn't sure if she should say any of it. This other Bill's plan to devour everything… wouldn't that just make him explode? Unless he didn't work the same way she did, but even so, devouring everything wouldn't fix anything. Sure it would make everything part of him never leave again, mine, mine, mine but it wouldn't necessarily fix things. Not at all. Even if he became everything, he still wouldn't know how to be everything. Devouring Ax wasn't going to make anything better. But Miz didn't want to offend him by straight up saying he was wrong, and didn't know for sure if this world worked like her own either, what with the lack of the Pillar system, so she shoved a cookie in her mouth and kept quiet for now. Besides, destroying all of existence would be pretty bad, that wasn't a good plan at all - and it looked like Blue agreed with her on that one, so Miz was going to let her brother talk the other Bill down from this plan. He was on a roll and she didn't want to impede him in what he was doing.
(And the way she used her powers was very different from him, even if they might look similar on the surface; she'd learned this while they were restructuring this reality, things here and things in brother's dimension just… felt different than everything did in her own. Back in her own world, since her Weirdness and Energy had been used to help create the multiverse, she held power over them. They were her, they were parts of her, and that was part of the reason why things would simply start to happen around her if she wasn't paying attention or keeping her power contained. The world, the people - everything was made from her! This was also why Ax had to work so hard to stay neutral. She had enough trouble keeping the world around her from distorting from her very presence, she could only imagine how hard it must be for Ax to keep from affecting the Souls of all the people in much the same way… well, she managed it through sheer willpower and self control, but she slipped up, a LOT. And for Ax… he simply couldn't afford any slip ups. Never. So he kept himself away from it all. And Time Baby could destabilize time just from throwing a tantrum so there was that too.
Miz briefly wondered if Ax could even affect her. It shouldn't be possible since she was quite powerful in her own right, and Ax couldn't really make her do anything, neither her nor Time Baby. After all, Ax wanted them to get along but that wasn't freaking happening anytime soon. So Miz was pretty sure she was safe on that front. Whatever their ties to reality, the three of them couldn't really effect each other, not that Miz could tell.
Bill put his teacup down a little more firmly than needed. "I-" He huffed. "I just want to-" He shook. "I CAN do this! I can! Even if it takes eons for me to figure out HOW to rework reality back to the beginning, I will figure it out and then I can get them back and we could be together and there wouldn't be any stupid-"
And at the mention of 'them', Blue's head came up and 'his' eyes sharpened to a much stronger intensity.
And Blue smiled.
"WELL," said Blue. "That sounds like it's all WELL AND GOOD," 'he' told Bill, as he set down 'his' teacup (on the table, this time). "It even sounds like something I am doing, myself! -BUT." Blue leaned forward in 'his' chair. "You are leaving one VERY IMPORTANT thing out of your equation there, Bill."
"What?" Bill folded his arms. The little triangles in the air were struggling, trying to escape from the threads of his power. It was almost funny how they still thought they could defy him.
Blue leaned forward and GRINNED at him.
"US," said Blue, gesturing at 'him'self and 'his' sister.
And then Bill saw Blue take in an almost-expectant breath, eyes gleaming, and Blue said, "Would you like some help?"
Bill's eyes widened.
"Because if you want YOUR very-important 'them' back, well," Blue's grin dimmed a little, "I do believe that both Miz and myself understand THAT sentiment COMPLETELY. ...If you know what I mean."
And by the time that Blue was finished speaking, he looked completely and entirely sober.
Bill's heart (if he still had one) raced. Help. They… they were offering to...
(-this wasn't just some 'offer' to 'help clean up the joint' because they didn't like the mess they were standing in, purely and selfishly for themselves, they were actually-)
No one had EVER offered to-
Bill looked over at Miz, and… she nodded at him, too. They both- it wasn't just the one of them, it was both of them- they-
There was a desperate hunger in Bill's eyes, as he realized just what exactly was really being offered to him, here. And Bill opened his mouth to immediately accept it - why wouldn't he accept it?! But then he paused, right there. Because his mind had caught up with him, and he realized…
"How do I know you're not just lying to me?" Because so many people had. Empty promises and failures! Betrayal of trust and-
"Well…" Miz spoke up. "If I could, I would really want my little brother back." She looked down at her lap. "I was even willing to work together with Time Baby if that would have helped to make it happen. So I know how it feels to want to get someone back. And what I might do to try and have it happen."
Bill stared at her. "Ew. Working together with Time Baby? How desperate were you?"
Miz puffed out her cheeks in irritation. "Any plan was better than no plan. And I needed some way to reach through time to try and get what I wanted…"
"...And she did not have me as her brother then, yet, either," Blue concluded, which left Bill blinking, and Miz looking a little blushy herself. "I," said Blue, as 'he' crossed his legs and propped 'his' head up on a fist, "Am planning on fixing EVERYTHING everywhere. And I do mean EVERYWHERE." 'He' gave Bill a look. "It wouldn't make sense to leave things here so very not-even-close to half-done, let alone un-done! And it wouldn't make sense to do things that don't take into account what the locals think and want - and that includes you, doesn't it? We 'helped' the lazy-stupid lizard," Blue pulled a face, "So-to-speak. And I don't even LIKE the lazy-stupid thing; I HATE it. -You are a me-that-is-VERY-MUCH-ALSO-a-me. Why wouldn't I help you out, even more?" Blue asked him inquisitively. "I make it a point of practice not to lie to myself. That causes PROBLEMS. And you are a self-that-is-also-me. So."
Bill frowned. He couldn't feel any sort of deceit happening here, and with the power he'd felt from those other two hims-who-weren't-him-but-kind-of-were on their arrival, if the three of them worked together-
"We have more than enough will and power and want and need between us to do whatever we need to do, to get everything that we want," Blue said with a smile, almost as if reading his mind. "The only thing here that's REALLY up for a discussion is, are all our wants and needs in alignment, and what is the PLAN that will ACTUALLY get us those things?" Then Blue sat back and waved off, "And what would we be doing in which order, and how much. -Not sure how I'd feel about pulling you back to MY set to help ME out with things, anytime soon," Blue told him. "Things are a LOT more complicated there, compared to what I've Seen here. -You could owe me a favor, instead," Blue told him, "And I'd be careful on what I asked of you to collect. Or…" Blue said, holding his cup out to the side, "We could just exchange information instead, help you work out your plan, and you'd actually have to do all the 'heavy lifting' yourself, with your own Zodiac, no favors needed! -Up to you!" Blue told him with a smile, as the teapot lifted up into the air and tilted, starting to fill up the teacup in Blue's outstretched hand. (...effortlessly. While this other version of him gave off no aura of power at all while 'he' was doing so. Which meant that...)
Slowly, a smile worked its way across Bill's face. They could really do this, couldn't they. Between the three of them, they… And what he'd been offered, just now? That he'd been all but promised, from both of these two? That… that was more than he'd ever thought he'd get- from anyone- and all he'd have to give in return was some information? He was MADE of information! Well, not literally, not like they were asking him to rip of pieces of himself to- not that he WOULDN'T be willing to do that if it meant he'd get his mommy and daddy back- and-
"Alright, so how would we go about doing this?" Bill asked, sipping the (very nice) tea as his yellow eyes gleamed. He hardly cared about having had his spoken plans more or less verbally torn apart before; as long as they were going to help him make one that they all agreed and knew would work out, he couldn't care less about what few small disagreements they might get into in figuring out that very thing along the way.
"WELL," said Blue, as 'he' pulled 'his' own teacup back in towards him, once it was refilled, "-And this is the tricky part, mind you," he told Bill next. "The first thing you'd have to tell us, to get this all started, is WHAT YOU NEED." And it was clear from Blue's expression, as 'he' sipped on 'his' own tea, that 'he' thought 'he' was asking a very dangerous and difficult thing of Bill there, in telling them. "Not just what you think you want. What you NEED, at the end of it all. I'm talking the final, everything-is-absolutely-perfectly-imperfect-forever scenario, here. The whole ball of wax."
And Bill thought about it. He really thought about it. -Not just the immediate thing he wanted, but what he needed to really get what it was that he truly wanted.
"I… want my mommy and daddy back. I… want us to be able to live together, in a world where they and I can be happy and…" (The triangles were gasping as they listened in on this conversation.) "...and they wouldn't be killed for trying to protect me…" Bill finished. He paused then, waiting to see if these two demons were going to sit there and laugh at all his childish-sounding goals.
...And Blue seemed to be struggling with something, something to have to do with what he'd just said. Or… maybe all of it. "...You ...want your parents back?" Blue sounded a bit strained.
Miz spoke up, "So your parents tried to protect you?" she asked gently. (And Blue glanced over at her, looking a little startled. He'd had so much difficulty with the first concept Bill had tossed at them that he'd hadn't quite gotten to parsing even one single bit of the second or third ones yet, let alone any of the next-level-down layers of it after that.)
Bill nodded. "They... " He paused. "I wanted to learn stuff. Even when it was forbidden for those of my caste to be allowed to-" (The demons all ignored the startled sounds coming from the triangles.) "-but they would help me hide my books. And they lied to the police about them. And they…" He seemed to struggle. "...they got gunned down. Right in our shop. Even though there wasn't any PROOF that I had the books, even though-" He hissed a breath through his teeth.
Blue raised up a hand in front of 'his' face, touching his forehead with a finger. 'He' looked like 'he' was getting a headache.
"...And your sibling?" Blue asked. "...Or ...siblings?" 'he' added belatedly, sounding strained throughout.
At that, Bill blinked. "I… didn't have any?" (Blue dropped his hand and stared at Bill.) "We were forbidden, we had to pay a fine if we wanted another child-" He frowned. "But, mommy said that she wanted to give me a brother or a sister, once we'd saved up enough money…" He pressed his eyes shut tightly. "But that didn't end up happening."
Blue was staring at him now. "...You didn't have a…" Blue said almost breathily. 'He' sat very still in place for a very long moment. Then, finally, 'he' steepled 'his' hands in front of 'him', and lowered 'his' forehead down on top of them.
"I… need a minute," Blue said rather roughly.
Bill glanced over at Miz, confused at weird reaction from Blue. The smaller demon sighed. "I had a little brother. Blue had an older brother. They are the ones we want back."
Bill blinked, as the silence stretched out. "Oh."
Blue was quiet for about a minute. And then…
"Your parents... acted like… brothers…" Blue said slowly. "Right."
Bill was somewhat confused now. Miz translated, "Your parents actually loved you. They protected you." And then Bill understood. He sat straight up, rigidly, staring at the two of them, as he realized...
"Your parents didn't love you?!" Bill couldn't even imagine what that must have-
"-They 'loved' the concept of the space that I ended up filling for them," Blue rattled off rather tonelessly, raising 'his' head after a moment. "'Mommy' and 'daddy' as… yes. Fine. I understand," 'he' said with a little more color to his tone, after a moment. "That's fine. You want them back; it's the same. The same thing." Blue pulled in a breath, then gave him a (not too very strained) smile.
"And then he can get that brother or sister!" Miz pointed out. "Because whatever fucked up government that forbid it wouldn't be around anymore."
"That's really ALL that you want?" Blue asked him. "It feels rather… small." Blue was frowning slightly. 'He' was staring at Bill, almost as if concerned.
Bill sat back in his chair. "Well, I'd wanted to know stuff, get rich and live comfortably. At first, at least. But that…" Blue had asked what he wanted at the end of everything, hadn't he? And in the face of what he really wanted, at the end of all of everything... "...doesn't really seem all that important. Not anymore."
"Yes, but…" Blue seemed to be trying to think of a good way to put… "-Oh, fine!" 'he' sounded vaguely irritated. "I'll just ask- HOW LONG are you wanting this to go on for," Blue rattled off almost hurriedly, like he was trying to quickly get to the point of something that he wanted to say.
Bill blinked. "...How long?" He thought about it. "Until we're done, and then…"
"-Done, done, yes, fine; define 'DONE'," Blue demanded out of him next.
"Done?" Bill looked back and forth between the other two demons. "It could be forever, but that'd get boring after a while. And…" He sighed, seemingly tired. "I don't think mommy and daddy would want to be around forever, but they had their own wants for the future and they never got a chance to- I just want them to be able to be happy."
Blue was staring at him in sheer disbelief. Then 'he' let out a sort of chittery-groaning sound and scrubbed at 'his' face with both hands.
"yOu ArE FINE wiTh tHeM DYING," Blue said between 'his' fingers, sounding a little bit off. "And staying dead."
"Not dying." Bill narrowed his eyes. "Living until they're satisfied. If they want to live forever, then I'll let them. But if they're done, I don't…" He placed his hands on the table and leaned forward, "I won't subject them to anything they don't want."
Blue dropped 'his' hands and snapped out "Of course not! They're your br- 'family'," Blue self-corrected with a grimace. Then 'he' tilted his head back and stared up at the ceiling. "Am I really the only one here who's thought things this far through yet? REALLY?!" Blue sounded annoyed as 'he' shouted this out.
Miz glanced over. "Well, would Liam want to live forever?" She asked gently.
"-Of course he would!" Blue exclaimed, looking back down at her, almost aghast. "There's always more to learn! ALWAYS!"
Bill and Miz were looking at 'him' now. "Then, you would have your Liam with you forever, if he wanted it." Bill said. "And I would have my parents with me for however long they wanted." He raised an eyebrow. "And my parents want to be with me. So if I wanted to be around forever, they'd want to be here forever. So it's not like I'm- it's not like I'm going to make them die or-"
"-Yes, EXACTLY!" Blue said, looking over at him. "They won't be 'done', as long as you want them with you, because they love you! And you love them! So 'living until they're satisfied' isn't a thing - they can KEEP ON LIVING and BE SATISFIED THE ENTIRE TIME! 'Being satisfied' is NOT a STOP CONDITION! -It's SUPPOSED to be a START AND CONTINUOUS ONE!" Blue practically yelled out at him, then started rubbing the side of 'his' left hand against 'his' left temple for some reason. "You… you don't always say what you mean at first," Blue said next, a little more calmly. "Faulty not-fault-tolerant concepts. I need to ask for CLARIFICATION…" 'he' muttered, glancing away from him. "No translation errors…"
Bill looked a little bemused. "Ah… okay…" He glanced at Miz, who shrugged, long used to her brother's unique brand of insanity.
Miz wasn't just paying attention to her big brother and the other human Bill throughout all of this; she was watching the triangles, too. And right now? The triangles were still trying to escape, the ones in the cage turning themselves every which way to try and slide through the bars of the cage, and it seemed one of them had gotten stuck. Miz sighed, as she looked on at this. And when Blue glanced over at her sigh, and followed her gaze, to realize what she was looking at...
"You're going to break yourself," Blue said, grumbling, as he got up from his chair, because he'd looked over to see what Miz was looking at, and seen it, too. So annoying. "Stop that. -You idiot. Are you trying to die?!" Blue told them, as he walked over, Looking the stuck one over then letting out a sigh of frustration.
"-You mind if I...?" 'he' directed back at Bill, waving a hand at the stuck triangle. "He's your Zodiac." It took Bill a moment, then it occurred to Bill that Blue was actually asking permission to lay hands on him.
The triangle, who looked like Stanley but wasn't Stanley, glared as he kicked his legs. The near identical triangle dressed like Stanford who wasn't Stanford, sighed, burying his face in a hand. "I told you this wouldn't work."
"Well." Bill said, standing up from the table and dusting his hands off primly. "If you really ARE going to help me, I don't need them anymore-" He smirked at the shapes and a small pressure began to build...
"So you'll let them go?" Miz asked (while Blue's eyes narrowed at him slightly). Bill blinked at her, stopping the tension that had been about to spring out and-
"Uh…" He looked between the two demons, then looked over at the triangles, and then relaxed. "Yeah, sure, whatever." He snapped his fingers and lowered the kids to the ground, releasing them. The cage disappeared. The tapestries floated down and turned back into shapes as well. They all let out confused sounds. "Dunno why you care about that," he mumbled, realizing that Blue himself had reached out quite quickly to get 'his' hands under the one stuck-shape, who'd been wedged in-between the bars in an odd orientation, when the cage had disappeared.
Miz walked over to the shapes. They were so smol~ "Well, they're not gonna be fighting you anymore. So it's fine to let them go…" She waved at the tiny little triangles. "Hi! I'm Miz. You're… Dipper and Mabel, right?" It was so strange to see them as triangles. They stared up at her, Dipper had a hand out in front of his sister, trying to put himself between Mabel and the demon.
Blue straightened up, holding the one older triangle in 'his' hands. -Not even grasping it, just holding it, with 'his' hands underneath it. Bill didn't get it.
"W-what are you going to do to us?" 'Stanley' asked, from where he was being held in this new blue-haired demon's hands. 'Stanford' rolled his eye, "Don't go askin' them that!"
Blue looked down at the triangle he was holding. "Well, for starters, I think I'm going to have to think of a way to have you not screwing things up for this other-me! We've got BIG PLANS for him!"
Then Blue blinked, then frowned down at the triangle in his hands a little suspiciously. "...Which one are YOU, anyway?" he asked of said held-triangle. He didn't try to get eye-level with it (which would require either raising it, or lowering down his own head) having learned THAT particular lesson from Shooting Star and her spraypaint can. ...And the Shacktron and that dinosaur claw. …And-
(Well, let's just say that he didn't particularly feel like having to regenerate either one of his - count 'em - TWO eyes that he had, right now!)
'Stanley' paled. "I-I'm Stan…" he stuttered out from where he was half-sitting half-being held in the blue-haired demon's large hands - which just had the demon eyeing him that much more critically, oh no - while 'Stanford' (still on the ground behind him) groaned.
"It's fine, poindexter. I think we've blown our cover anyway by this point," the triangle that was Stan wearing Ford's clothes said. Ford stilled in place at his brother's words, looking rather tense and worried about the fact that Stan had given the ruse up so easily. But shortly afterwards he realized that his brother had been right to do so - this one looked far too suspicious to be fooled so easily.
"Your name?" the blue-haired demon prompted him, and Ford slumped and sighed tiredly, as he admitted to this new demon that he was, "Ford."
"Hm," said the blue-haired demon named (rather unoriginally in Ford's opinion) both 'Blue' and 'Bill'.
"Okay, so, bringing back your parents… are you going to need a 'pulling them here' through time thing, or are you planning to bring back your old dimension as well?" Miz asked Bill.
The other demon scoffed. "Oh I have no reason to bring that shithole back. It was an awful place. But I want my parents back and they can tell me themselves if they want anything or anyone else back."
"Ah. Yes." Blue looked a bit subdued as 'he' said this. "And here we come to a potential… sticking point," Blue said next, "That may make things take a little while longer." 'He' turned 'his' head, to not quite look over 'his' shoulder at Bill, as 'he' said, "...Have you done anything since your parents' deaths that would have them, mm, not too happy with you? Anything that they might not approve of?"
Bill winced. "...yeah…" He shook his head. "But they don't have to know! I can make a nice little dimension for them to live in and…" he shuffled a little. "Look, it's been like a trillion years, I've had to do a LOT of shit-"
Miz patted the other Bill's arm soothingly. "Yeah, we get it. Shit happens."
"And it's not like they'd know if I don't tell them," Bill told them next, but for some reason Blue frowned at this, not seeming to think that this was… possible? Bill rolled his eyes at the 'guy's apparent disbelief. "Hey, I can just have them settle down in a nice dimension with no contact to the others and then…" Bill frowned when he noticed the shapes were all trying to sneak out of the room. "-Oi, where are YOU going?" He asked. Silly Zodiac, really think they could leave and regroup for another attack?
Miz sighed. "Just let them go, it doesn't matter. Even if they tried something, there's three of us here." She turned to look at said Zodiac. "Right~?" she asked pointedly. The shapes all winced at the smaller demon's not-quite glare. "Also, if you need a portal out to find some other place to set up a base or anything…" Miz suggested.
Bill laughed. "Well, considering the collapse of this dimension's pretty much a wasted effort by now, sure. Any places you got in mind?" Bill asked leadingly, and Blue immediately started to grin. Miz tilted her head in thought, because was her brother considering...
Blue's grin widened as he waved his hand in a lackadaisical manner. "Well! There's a nice quiet space we know of with plenty of STUFF in it to work with…" and seeing as how he and his sister had been able to mess around inside the lazy-stupid lizard's space without any retaliation… WELL!
"Sounds fun, though I will have to know more about where you're planning to take us." Bill turned on his heel and snapped his fingers, using his power; the Shapes were floated into the air and sent out the door. The other demons packed up their picnic in short order and they all floated out after them.
"Hey guys!" Bill called out to his henchmaniacs. "Change of plans, we're moving the party. This place is the dumps!" He straightened his suit as he floated himself down to them, prim and proper with his hands on his cane.
The other demons looked a little confused but, hey, boss's orders were boss's orders. Also, he wasn't wrong. This place was so flat and boring, not much fun at all.
"What about that barrier?" Teeth asked. Bill frowned and looked over at the other two 'hims' from another dimension. Miz was flickering as she Looked around.
"Well, this feels nothing like your barrier," Miz told her brother. "It actually feels closer to the one I have back home. But… it isn't stopping me or you from passing through it, which is how we managed to get in here in the first place…" She looked over at the native Bill. "But it is keeping you guys in." She thought about it before she snorted. "There's an insanely easy way around it," she told them, before she floated up and grew until she towered over them all. (Really though, this dimension was waaaay less oppressive and constrained than her brother's dimensional set. She could feel that almost 50% of her full powers were free for use here, as opposed to the less than 10% in the other world.) Then Miz reached up to dig her fingers into the edges of the barrier, and she pried them apart like tissue paper. She wasn't breaking it, though; it would seal back up after she let go.
She grunted as the barrier shook, trying to seal itself back up. "Fly through the gap I made, then wait for us while we finish up with things here," she told the Henchmaniacs. They shrugged and did as she said - hey, if there was a demon strong enough to pull apart the barrier that none of them could do anything about… yeah, they weren't going to argue. Even the boss hadn't been able to do that...
Once the Henchmaniacs were through, and Miz got the go-ahead (the slightest of nods) from Blue, she let go of the barrier and floated straight through herself without resistance to begin chatting with the Henchmaniacs. She'd open the barrier again once the older demons were finished with their talk.
Bill turned around, grin fixed on his face as he realized he'd just been left stuck inside here at Blue's direction(?!) - and about to ask 'him', hey, what gives? - then blinked as he took in the scene behind him and realized... that Blue was still holding one of the Shapes there. -Wait a minute! He'd thought he'd tossed them all out the door of the Fearamid back there!
...except he'd actually lost track of the one Blue had been holding. Stopped paying attention to it, really.
"Hey, what gives?" Bill complained, though for an entirely different reason than he'd originally been planning on complaining to 'him' about. Because why would Blue be continuing to cart that dumb loser triangle around with 'him'? "Why're you hanging onto that lousy-"
"Insurance," Blue said cooly, cutting him off. "We're leaving 'here'," Blue said (for both Bill's and Miz's benefit), "And won't be 'here' to stop them right away if they try and start something. Can't form the Zodiac if one of them can't reach out and hold hands with the other. ones of them," Blue told him next, with a shrug.
Bill frowned at this for a moment. How Blue was holding the squirming triangle. How Blue was easily handling the squirming Shape without even trying.
...How Blue was just and only holding it. Not holding it still, not holding it in a punishing grip; 'he' was just and only-
"...Problem?" Blue asked him easily, blinking slowly at him, as the Shape continued to squirm fruitlessly (and not actually get anywhere) in 'his' arms...
"HA! No," Bill said. "Solution! -Can't do anything if they're DEAD, you mean," Bill said with a growing grin, slowly raising a hand. "It would just be easier and I don't need them anymore."
"L-let me go-!" Ford demanded almost helplessly. He hadn't liked the sound of anything that had been happening thus far, and- "S-Stan!" he couldn't help but cry out, even though he had no idea where his brother even was right now, because Stanley had always helped him, saved him-
"That isn't necessary," Blue said smoothly to Bill, eyes narrowing ever-so-slightly. "I have things under control with this one, thank you. ...Unless you don't believe me, when I say I have things under control," Blue added next, almost (but not quite) dangerously, and 'his' odd (and unexpected) tone of voice made Bill pause for a moment.
"...You don't want him dead," Bill said slowly, starting to frown. Because that wasn't-
"It isn't necessary," Blue repeated. "Who knows, he might be useful later. …Maybe," Blue noted after a moment with a bit of a sigh and an eye roll, at Bill's disbelieving look at the idea of a Shape maybe being useful in any way, shape, or form.
"...fine." Bill finally said, lowering his hand. He wasn't going to go out of his way to antagonize the people who were offering to help him. (Especially while he was still trapped in this stupid town, and the only keys he had to getting outside of said barrier were currently (a) floating outside of it, peppering his friends with questions about their most favorite snacks, and (b) quite literally being held in the hands of another version of himself that he still wasn't sure he really wanted to cross.) No, he wasn't doing that. That would just be stupid.
So instead, he looked up and drawled out, "So, should I go leave the barrier now too?" before glancing back over at Blue.
Blue pressed 'his' lips together and turned his head to look around at the dark sky and ruined town outside the Fearamid. "I think you may want to fix all this first; put things back to the way they were before you came. My sister would be upset if it stayed… this messy," Blue informed him rather dryly.
Bill blinked at 'him', then snorted. "Huh. She does seem like a bit of a neat freak," he noted. He had clearly seen how clean she'd made the Fearamid, earlier. Huh. Maybe he'd misunderstood the head-nod that had been exchanged between the two demons earlier. This 'Blue' one did seem to be the more confrontational and chatty one of the two. If the younger one wanted him to explain why she didn't want him to leave just yet, then…
...Well, fine, whatever. Bill snapped his fingers as he floated in almost a saunter higher into the air, to land on the edge of the Fearamid again, looking out over the town. The scar in the sky closed, the animated buildings turned back to normal, the roads were fixed, the monsters were sucked back into the Nightmare Realm… yeah, put things back to the way they were before. Then Bill made the Fearamid float up even higher, closer to the edge of the barrier. He saw Miz looking down at them, and look around for a moment, before pulling the barrier open once more.
Bill floated himself and the Fearamid up through the open tear in the barrier, before stopping it all in place - he was FINALLY out of that stupid thing! (Blue himself floated up and out shortly after him, before Miz let go of the barrier to let it snap closed again, after checking things over one more time, making sure of their staying power - especially that of the Rift that just closed.)
"So." Bill placed a hand on his hip, feeling quite jaunty at the whole thing, as he quirked his eyebrow in a manner he knew looked quite fetching on his handsome face, "Where's this cool other place where I can get shit done?"
Blue, still holding a thoroughly-horrified looking Stanford up against his chest, suddenly grinned at him rather widely. "WELL…"
"...This is the Axolotl's realm…" Bill deadpanned.
"Yup!" Miz giggled even as she bounced on one of the many clouds there. Weee~! "Don't worry about him, he doesn't seem to mind us playing around in here!" she giggled, hugging Kryptos and Xanthar as they bounced around together. (The gray demon was laughing along, this Miz demon was pretty fun to hang out with. Xanthar was rumbling cheerfully as well, the purple demon liked how warm this new demon was, reminded him of Bill when he let him get that close.)
Bill felt around, the energy just… free-floating around here was… amazing. "That damn lizard really wouldn't try and… stop me?" he asked faintly. He couldn't believe it. He'd been trying to get up here for like… EVER! But he had never been able to figure out how, having believed that the process might destroy him or something if he angered the all mighty god lizard, but these other hims had made it look so… easy. And he'd just followed them up, letting the younger one carry all his Henchmaniacs along for the ride for him, and...
He heard Blue sigh. "That lazy-stupid lizard seems to… like... Miz?" Bill was told, though the blue-haired demon grimaced at that as 'he' said it. "It at least talks to her when she talks at it - and even me when she's with me - when it's here and awake and not entirely lazy. I don't think it wanted to talk to me, but it definitely seemed to want to talk to her," Blue noted, in an odd tone of voice that Bill couldn't quite place - but whatever was going on with Blue, 'he' seemed to shake it off after a moment. "-I don't know why yet, but it's useful."
Bill looked over at the little demon girl, currently riding piggyback on 8-Ball and laughing as he trotted around with her on his shoulders, and raised an eyebrow. There was something here, something important. Like a realization on the edge of his thoughts, so close but not quite there. So… for whatever reason, the lizard favored this… child demon? Odd, suspicious even, but so long as he could use this to his advantage...
"It won't try to stop any of us while Miz is here," the blue-haired demon told him next. "Maybe ask her for some tips on handling the lazy-stupid thing sometime; it's apparently more like the one she knows than the one I have several problems with, in a lot of ways," he was told.
"Right." That was really all he needed to know. Because if the stupid thing wasn't going to show up to stop him while Miz was here... "Well, I have a lot of work to do." Bill turned to the nearest 'cloud' and snatched it from the air. "A lot." He wanted to do as much as he could while he could.
(And Blue sat down - Stanford in-hand - and WATCHED him do it.)
Bill… actually couldn't believe this was happening. Finally happening!
Sure, he'd been dreaming of this for a trillion years, but in the back of his mind, he'd never thought it would actually work. (He'd thought he'd just end up dying instead. Because of that stupid prophecy… after all, why else would the damn lizard tell him that when he burned, he had to invoke it's name?! Like, was that meant to be a threat? -The stupid jerk! Well, he'd gotten away with this, now! It paid to have a bunch of other-him's on his side, to scare the stupid thing off! Who was laughing now, huh!? -That's right, it was HIM! He was getting EVERYTHING HE'D EVER WANTED, AND-)
He'd created a little planet, all his own. He'd managed to pull forward his parents (with Time Baby dead and the Axolotl being a no-show with ALL this energy around...) - Bill was able to grip and pull them out through time without anything stopping him at all! Heck, Miz had even helped him create a new dimension where his Henchmaniacs could live and rampage and do whatever they wanted in, without bothering him for ideas for something fun for them to do all the time. Miz had populated the dimension with billions of soulless lifeforms that his demon friends could mess with without Time Baby giving him any grief about it once he reformed himself; that dumb baby didn't want soulless beings to boss around, so he wouldn't come after any of them wanting to grab them for himself. -They were very well made, too; Bill wouldn't have even known they were all unfeeling constructs if he hadn't watched Miz craft them right before his eyes. She claimed that it was better to play around with toys that weren't real people who would feel pain or loss, then to go around hurting real people. (Well, whatever floated her boat.)
Miz was very proud of herself. She'd made a world where the Henchmaniacs could live, with people who were all fully made to act like people without being real people. And, if they got bored, they could head out to another dimension where real people were, as long as they promised not to harm or bother the real people.
"If you want to kill people or rampage, just go back to the toybox," Miz grinned. It seemed like a perfect solution to her. The constructs she'd made weren't even sentient, she'd specifically made them so. There was a bit of a chance they might develop sentience over time - and if they had children, the next generation would definitely develop Souls - she knew this from her time observing the Penis Planet™. So she took steps to make sure these constructs wouldn't end up like that.
(Blue tried not to frown over this. There were problems with the idea of this, least of which would be the constraint that would keep the local Henchmaniacs locked into that 'toybox' if they tried to leave while wanting to hurt other-lifeforms with a Soul. -There were too many ways to circumvent it, for a start: they could leave while not wanting to and change their minds later without getting pulled back into it. The other problem was that it was a trap; if they wanted to get out, they couldn't, which was taking away their choices from them, potentially turning it into a localized hell in the long-run.)
(At least… Blue had thought that was going to be a problem, until he watched Miz keep not adding in those constraints that she'd talked about with them, and Blue realized there were literally no restrictions in and out of that dimension for any of the local Henchmaniacs at all. There was nothing holding them there. Nothing even remotely set in place that would hold them to what she'd just offered them - given and then demanded of them really, this 'only killing or hurting things in the toybox' - and that they'd all said they agreed upon, because Miz was clearly more powerful than any or all of them combined. It was… almost like Miz was just… trusting them to hold to the agreement without- oh. Oh. She was trusting them to hold to their agreement...)
(...Oh, that was such a bad idea. These Henchmaniacs weren't like them - they had no reason to keep their word, no reputation with the rest of the multiverse for hard-and-fast dealing that they cared about keeping intact! Their reputations here, to a T, were ones for rampaging and killing instead!)
(Not to mention the fact that these local Henchmaniacs would get bored to death in there, and start rampaging elsewhere, eventually, with the way that Miz had things currently set up. If there was one thing that Blue knew, it was demons and beings. And with those things in there, not being sentient, there was going to be no challenge to it. No change or learning going on, on the part of the being-killed soulless; no newness or increase in difficulty level or surprise or change to anything, including those soulless' reactions, once the Henchmaniacs had exhausted all possibilities and variations for killing them - and it didn't look like it was going to take too long for the 'maniacs to explore all of those that were there. Not to mention the fact that there was nothing preventing the 'maniacs from either pulling those soulless constructs out of there, to do who knew what with them, mixing them out into other dimensions instead, or pulling Soul-holding beings into that toybox instead, and...)
(Blue pulled in a breath, and he let it out slowly. He flexed his hands around the triangle he held in his lap without realizing it, and stopped doing so at the triangle's immediate distress just as without realization and as quickly, by feeling of touch alone. -He'd have to have a talk with her once they were back in his own dimensional 'set. The way things were going to progress here, over something like the next hundred-thousand years at most, would have Miz coming back to a lot of broken 'promises' and potentially losing her temper over it badly - and that was assuming that one of these local Henchmaniacs didn't have the 'brains' to get creative about things even earlier than that. This was not the way to try and entice demons or beings not to do things and expect results. -Going against the flow NEVER worked. People and demons wanted what they wanted; instead of denying it, it was better to work with it - catering to it, instead. Give the people-and-demons what they want; why not do it, as it were?)
(-For instance, finding a group of Soul-holding thinking beings that liked and wanted to be hurt and killed would be the better option, then setting up processes inside the dimension to automatically un-kill them once done; locking it with a barrier not quite like the one that she'd opened in that other dimension here, one attuned instead so that Time Baby could never get into it to cause problems; allowing the recruitment of others into the 'toybox' to keep things interesting and ever-changing, keeping the Henchmaniacs engaged in doing things there where they would not ever be interrupted, instead of elsewhere where they would be; auto-ejection of those who did not want to hurt or die anymore into a holding dimension elsewhere. ...Something closer to how his sister had set up her library-maze, in fact - only with death and then un-dying again as a part of it, here. The idea was to create incentives for them doing what you wanted them to do, not disincentives for doing things otherwise. The former was self-perpetuating due to greed and inherent-want; the latter would be broken eventually-and-always, sooner or later, because people (and demons) never stopped wanting what they wanted - they just wanted it more and more when they thought they couldn't-or-shouldn't get it! And eventually, they would want to scratch that itch, and then they would do it. And usually - in Blue's experience - they would almost-always do it at the absolute lousiest of most-inconvenient times.)
(Then Blue had to pause for a moment. Because… he'd been thinking under an old and usually-perfectly-correct assumption, but. -These weren't demons-from-the-outside here, they were just... demons. They might as well be people, for all the similarity they had to the demons from his own dimensional set. If anything, they were likely more like the 'demons' from Miz's 'set, which meant... These Henchmaniacs were probably going to die well before that hundred-thousand years came rolling around, if that local Bill didn't do something about it, and that was a whole other problem…!)
While Blue was frowning over all of this (and the triangular Ford was still trying not to lose his mind over having had to watch all of those demonstrations on how one could kill such realistic-looking people without worry, as they had screamed and screamed and then gurgled out wetly and horribly, as they'd had limbs torn off and holes punched straight through them and then bled out and died there where they'd lay right in front of him, without him being able to do a damn thing about it!), Miz was earnestly explaining to this universe's version of Teeth and Hectorgon about all the ways they could go around harmlessly pranking people if they get bored of messing with the soulless constructs. They were just nodding along at first, humoring her… until Miz gave them such a sweet, trusting smile that they realized if they ever broke her little heart, they'd feel like complete dicks.
'Don't look at us with such eyes!' the two of them complained in their thoughts. This just wasn't fair at all!
Meanwhile, Bill was busy coming to terms with his own final wanted happily-ever-after. He had his parents' Souls, pulled back into the world again in the here-and-now, with only the most minor of help from both Miz and Blue to get him here, to this physical place where he'd actually been able to stand here and do it. All Bill had to do now was to actually bring them back, Mind and Body, and.. that was it. He could settle them into the new world he'd made for them, and then...
...and then that would be that. He would have his family back.
It almost felt too easy.
...and maybe it was, in some ways. Miz had told him that he was lucky his dimension hadn't become a new one after being destroyed, and how his Axolotl was leaving so much free energy around to use, because it would have been more difficult otherwise. (Blue had stayed silent, but rolled his eyes slightly at this, for some reason.)
But, also, having three Bill Ciphers working together had definitely helped to speed the process along. Bill still couldn't believe this day had finally come.
"Hey, um… I know you said you were just gonna hide what you did from your parents, but you can't lie to them forever," Miz spoke up as she floated beside Bill, looking at the two Souls swirling around inside the bubble she'd suggested that Bill put them in for now. "And it'd be better to tell them yourself than having them find out. Heck, just… break the news to them gently, start small?" the girl suggested.
"Bad idea," Blue noted dryly, adding in 'his' own two cents. "If they're going to be around forever with you, they're going to find out eventually. -Might be better to FIX EVERYTHING that you had to destroy before this, on the path-and-way to finishing-up before getting them back, first."
"...Or maybe I'm wrong," Miz noted, glancing over at Blue for a moment. "I actually don't know how they'd react to any of what you've done. But I hope you get your happy ending," she told him cheerfully.
Bill sighed. "You sound very childish when you put it like that." And yet, he did feel somewhat more confident at her words. (At Blue's though, admittedly not so much. What a downer.) "I'll figure something out. And…" He glanced around at the pink clouds. "Now that I know how to get up here, and all the things I can do while I'm here… I can fix whatever mom and dad want me to fix. I'd be able to-" He just hoped they wouldn't be too mad. He also hoped they didn't ask for him to bring back their old dimension. There was no reason for it, nothing about it that Bill really cared to want back. But, if they really asked for it, he would.
Bill glanced over at Miz again, noting that she was now cradling that Shape that they'd kept with them this whole time in her lap; it was trembling in her lap there. (She'd taken him away from Blue again; they'd been passing the shape back and forth between them, as they'd each taken turns helping him out throughout all this work that he'd been doing.) "So… what now?" Bill asked.
Miz hummed as she pet Ford and kicked her legs idly. (The Shape had more-or-less calmed down somewhat over time as he'd realized the demons weren't… actually hurting him… even if the one who was petting him currently had just gotten done horribly killing so many of those people she'd apparently brought into being, people that she'd made just to be able to kill in any horrible way that she or those other demons and nightmares might like, while not calling them people and claiming that it was all okay because they had all been made 'without souls or minds' within them - which was just another sort of horrifying to him. ...Frankly, he had started thinking this was all some truly fucked-up dream a while back, that maybe Bill had just shocked him into unconsciousness again and actually left him to it this time, finally).
"Well, I'm gonna have to get brother home to his own dimension," Miz told Bill. "We ended up staying here longer than I thought, but even just from this first Door I've visited, I've learned so much." She'd gotten to fully examine a world without pillars! One that wasn't built on a web-matrix with an AI Axolotl like Blue's world was, either. It was interesting! She still wanted to examine Blue's world more fully, but it was too dangerous; the AXOLOTL there was much more… scary. But here, here she'd been able to Look around to her heart's content.
"You're leaving?" Bill blinked. And, he shouldn't have been as surprised as he was. They weren't from this world, this dimension, after all; of course they would leave eventually.
But part of him did feel a little… sad at that.
"I can come visit, if you want?" Miz offered. "Though there are so many Doors, it might take some time to find you. But… I'm gonna work on that, learning more about my Doors and just how they work, what I can do with them…" She frowned. "And how to notice and stay away from those Glitched ones…"
"Glitched ones?" Bill frowned. What was she talking about?
"Eh, Bills that aren't Bills anymore. Not… quite…" Miz shook her head. "It's not something you'd have to worry about unless you try to open my Doors. They can't open any of them. They'd need one of us to open it for them." She gave Bill a shrug. "So, if that Door starts rattling, don't go near it, don't open it. It'll leave eventually." Miz nodded to herself. "So… just don't mess with my Doors and you'll be fine."
"Just to be clear," Blue spoke up abruptly. "We're talking about Doors like that," Blue said, pointing to the side.
Well that was ominous. Bill slowly turned in the direction that Blue was pointing, and…
"There may be one like that now, inside your Mind," Blue told him next, as Bill stared at the door that was somehow just THERE in the Mindscape, hanging there in space.
...and Bill firmly resolved to stay the fuck away from any doors like the one he could now see floating nearby. Even as he watched, it faded and vanished. Well, yeah, gonna ignore it. (There BETTER not be one like that in his mind!) More importantly...
"So you're leaving." Bill didn't ask, he knew they were, but he wanted to have confirmation of this.
"Yes," Blue said. "But if Miz wants to find you more easily again, I will help her do that. Mark her Door on her side in a way to make it easier for her to find you again, quickly." 'He' didn't exactly look like 'he' wanted to come back here anytime soon 'him'self, and Bill was fine with that. (Miz seemed a lot easier to get along with than the older one; Bill felt a lot less threatened by her.)
"Yeah, I'll find a way to keep in touch, if you want. I've got an interdimensional Tumblr blog that I can accept messaging and stuff on as well?" Miz rested her chin on Ford's top point, nuzzling the triangle (and confusing him further). "If you want," she repeated.
Did he want? Bill wasn't sure. Part of him liked the idea, the other part of him thought he'd relied on these other-hims enough already. But, it wasn't like he would be asking them for help again, Miz just… wanted to keep in touch. That… wasn't… a problem, right?
Bill looked back at the Souls of his parents. Well, regardless, he kinda… owed these two for everything they'd helped him with. (And he had promised to exchange information with them for it; they hadn't exactly done any of that yet. Not really. ...Maybe he should do some of that before they left, so they couldn't coerce him into doing even more of it later.) Though, speaking of which...
"Blue said the Axolotl would leave me alone while I worked here, because you were here. What'll happen once you leave?"
"Hm…" Miz didn't seem worried. "I'll ask him nicely to let you do your own stuff. I think he wouldn't mind so long as you're not trying to destabilize or destroy dimensions anymore?" She gazed off and away, Flickering as she checked up on this world's resident Ax. Hm, sleeping. Figured.
"Getting rid of dimensions for no reason is a bit of a waste of time and energy. And it does seem rather lazy overall," Blue noted. "If you get in a staring contest with it long enough and win two times in a row, or try complaining at it for too long about things that involve it actually needing to do its stupid job, it seems ready to float away pretty quickly."
Was it really that simple? Bill couldn't believe it, but, all the same, he was going to keep his guard up in case the lizard tried anything. At the very least he should go get his parents set back up in their new dimension, their new home.
Home.
The idea made him feel giddy in a way he hadn't been in eons.
"So… that was fun, and informative!" Miz declared once the Door had closed behind them. They'd talked with that HumanBill for hours about the way his powers worked, the way he manipulated the world around him... It was cool to compare notes, so to speak. (Blue had helped her try out a new technique this time, one that didn't require her to go inside other Bill's Mindscapes or Dreamscapes. And it had worked! ...Even if it was a lot more tiring. -Her brother had apparently been working on it for awhile now, not having known that Ax had already fully removed the restriction he had imposed on her before, on the creation and location of her Exit Doors back to her own Dreamscape-proper. Blue had apparently known how Miz and Seb had left his own dimensional set, but he hadn't known that her not needing to use the one that was still sitting somewhere within his own Mind had been a one-time thing or not. So he'd been working on alternatives in the meantime, and she'd been game for trying his way of doing it this time with him, but… she kind of liked her own way of doing it better.)
(She was actually feeling a little drained in general, now; while they'd had free reign on that Axolotl's Realm for building material, she'd felt bad about using it herself at all and had used a lot of her own power for the stuff she'd built, instead. She hadn't ended up quite as tired as Blue had gotten all of a sudden at the end there, but while he'd dropped down and out-and-out crashed farther and much harder than she had, he'd also seemed to recover after all their work rather quickly; Miz, on the other hand, was still feeling almost as drained now as she had been right after they'd finished fixing that dimensional set's setup, even after sleeping and eating a few things in that other dimension.)
(They'd really only rested the once while they'd been there, and before leaving they'd only taken a quick detour to drop off that ShapeFord, no additional rest before going, and…. Blue had quickly done something to him, that Miz was pretty sure was supposed to keep the Shape from being able to do the Zodiac with the rest of the other Shapes easily, knowing him. But Bill hadn't actually explained, and Miz had been too tired to ask at the time, when he hadn't offered, and… she could ask him later though, right?)
"Fun and informative, yes," said Blue Bill. (Bill Bill Bill. -He could reclaim his own name now. Now that there wasn't another Bill who wanted to be called Bill with them, he didn't have to be polite at all about it! …but now he was struck with the thought that this was Miz's space, so technically maybe he shouldn't go taking it back for himself just yet. It had been a little uncomfortable for him, though, to go by a name that wasn't his own when Miz had only just given it to him - it was so new that he hadn't broken it in yet AT ALL! And having a not-broken-in name when he hadn't been holding onto the name 'Bill Cipher' at all underneath it, either, was… difficult and almost a little uncomfortable, really.)
(...Was it uncomfortable for Miz when she did it, too? It occurred to Bill suddenly, looking at her, that Miz had had to effectively give up her chosen name of 'Bill Cipher' while staying in his dimensional set with him, and... he wasn't sure how to feel about that, now. Because sure, she was used to taking on different names in different forms - he knew that - but so was he when he was puppeting people about, from time to time. Especially when he'd been doing it with Sixer- Nevermind that. But it was different when you were just 'masking' your name, and not giving it up entirely. …Had Miz really given it up underneath it all though, like he'd done while they'd been visiting that other set? She still seemed to cling to it strongly, so maybe not? But she also seemed to do things rather differently than he did, most times… not that there was anything wrong with that!)
Bill frowned. He had a lot to think about, himself. That dimension had been really different from his own. And the damn lizard there was… actually manageable, almost. It had talked to him. Actually talked to him. Without him having to- And not just because Miz had been there, he realized only now, well after the fact, because if that had been the case, then wouldn't she have had to ask-and-or-demand that it to talk to him, for her, to get the lazy-stupid lizard to do it? But she hadn't done that; he hadn't had to ask her to do it.
Bill glanced over at Miz, wondering if she'd done something that he hadn't seen to force the lizard to 'play nice' with him, and... suddenly noticed how pale she looked. -And they were still in the Dreamscape. Her Dreamscape, if he'd understood her right, and this was a place where she should be at rather the height of her power, second only to her own Mindscape. Which meant-
"What's wrong?" he demanded of her, as he floated over to hover next to her, feeling worried.
Miz waved him off. "I'm just a little tired. I'll be fine once I get somewhere safe to rest." But her brother frowned at this. He'd thought he'd been the only one to be that tired over everything. -Why hadn't she said anything before? Had making that 'toybox' really drained her that much further? Why hadn't he noticed this sooner?!
-Well, Bill wasn't going to risk Miz getting hurt if she was so drained. Not when he didn't have any tried-and-proven techniques for handling any of those 'glitch'-Bills' yet! So despite how he still wanted to check out other dimensions - not that 'anti-Bill' dimension, though - he grimaced and declared, "We're heading back to my dimensional set, right now. You need REST." It hadn't escaped him that he'd gotten a lot more rest than she had before, too, and… now that he reviewed his own memories and all of what he'd Seen, he realized that anytime he'd been watching her, she hadn't been using nearly as much external energy for what she'd been doing with anything that she'd done as he had.
"I'll be fine!" Miz insisted, which only made Bill take her hand and pull her with him towards where he could just feel his own Door. And as he went, he memorized the words on, and look of, the Door they'd both just come out of. It took him only a moment to do so, and once that was done, he made a backhanded motion with his free hand, trying something new, tried 'splashing' the Door with 'paint' of a recognizable and distinctive color and type, so that his sister - as promised - could find it again easily if she really wanted to. (-He used Bled, actually. He wasn't about to go back to that dimensional set anytime soon if he could help it, and that particular 'color' could serve as a warning mark and sigil to himself and others, for all he cared. Maybe he'd left things only half-broken-to-being-fully-fixed there, and maybe he'd have to go back there eventually, but he DIDN'T have to like how all the Zodiac there were Shapes, as a start.)
"Will 'be fine'? -No," Bill told her. "-I mean yes. Because I 'will' MAKE it fine! -I'm your big brother, and I'm telling you - we're getting you back to my dimensional set, and getting you some food for energy for your Self in you, RIGHT NOW!" he declared outright (rather self-righteously as much so as Sixer could get at his worst, almost).
Miz rolled her eyes but there was a fond smile on her face. "Alright~" She did hold back the urge to complain about the Bled on HumanBill's Door though.
Back in the Reverse Flatland dimension, Stanford was finally dumped off back home by the female demons, after they had left that odd dimension of fluffy pink things called 'clouds'. The one called Miz had even jokingly told him to 'behave himself' before setting him down (and Blinking away).
(Ford shuddered a bit in place where he stood. Where he'd finally been left alone, by himself, behind. He hadn't exactly liked the way that that other 'Blue' Bill-demon had looked at him - and muttered something while waving a hand at him, too - right before she'd gone and disappeared on him herself.)
Ford could only stare off into the distance, feeling all sorts of off-balance.
"GRUNKLE FORD!" a high-pitched voice screamed before Ford was tackled by… by his niece from behind?
"M-Mabel?" Ford trembled in place as he turned to wrap his arms around her, in shock and absolute wonder. She was alive. He was alive. He… he'd… actually never thought he'd see them again.
He looked up from his grandniece as he heard other yelling, and he realized… His brother and Dipper were running towards him too.
(Was… was this a dream? Hadn't he been dreaming? Or was this... right now… actually...)
Stan pulled him into a hug, crying and trying not to show it. "Dammit poindexter! Don't scare me like that again! I thought they'd eaten you or something!"
(No. No, this was far too crazy to be anything but real, and really happening. And the way Stan was hugging him now…)
...Well, Ford might have been crying a little bit, too, as he hugged his twin back just as hard, if not harder.
Not that either old triangle would admit to such a thing, later.
