Illusion is Reality

Chapter 109

-I've got to hand it to you-

The Stans and Shermie watched Seb clean up the plate he broke. "Seb, you ok?" Shermie winced.

"Do I look ok?!" Seb snarled.

"It's ok if you miss him," Ford told him sincerely. "He was your brother."

"He was! And-and I don't know if I want him back!" Seb grimaced, scared. He really hadn't thought about him, really thought about him. It scared him to think of Liam right now.

Why would he want to be back? To a brother who wasn't sure he wanted him again?

"I loved Liam..." He pulled at his hair, gritting his teeth. Stan was thinking about how to help. "I love him, he was the best brother… but he wouldn't want me back… He'd hate what I did in my past, he'd be disappointed and hate me."

"WE don't hate you," Stan said firmly.

"You don't even know what I did," Seb groused. Stan shrugged. "You were a triangle dude, like the other Bill. He was an ass. And you were an ass. But you're not like that anymore." He nudged Seb. "I'm sure your triangle brother would forgive you."

"B-but he might not even be my brother anymore." Seb shivered and looked down, pulling at his sixth finger to remind himself not to bite his fingers. "I mean… I'm… not Bill anymore… I'm a human now…"

"So you're just… afraid that he wouldn't recognize you?" Shermie asked. Seb rubbed his face. "There are… many reasons… Liam's… I just…" He shook his head. "It's complicated, guys. It hurts to think about this and bringing up my past is not something I particularly LOVE doing, especially not in front of every single person in the family! And I'm angry Xin seems not to think about asking ME when we're with Blue."

"He was probably just trying to help," Ford immediately jumped to say. Seb glared. "Yeah, that's not the point! Xin just let him talk about my past, in front of mom, of my wife, of my children! He lifted up my eyepatch!" Seb hissed in a shaky voice as tears threatened to spill.

"You know why it hurts?! Because it confuses me! And it seems I'll never have peace of mind- respect who I AM! I'm human! I'm fucking human, look AT me! I'm not like Miz or Blue! I'm not a demon! But if I think like him, and have his powers, and remember the things he knew… That means I'll never get rid of him…"

His brothers watched him shake as he continued. "I… I decided… a while ago… trying to make peace with all this, get my mind into some semblance of order… That he IS part of me… but that doesn't mean I'm him… He's part of me, Bill, Liam, Flatland…" Seb took a shuddering breath.

"But...how can I even say I'm not him… if I say Liam is still my brother?" Seb wiped his tears away. "And I feel like a piece of shit for this! Trying to ignore him just for my own mental stability! But- isn't it like saying that-that other mom is still my mom! When my mom IS Kari!" Seb took a deep breath because he was starting to breathe fast.

"I feel like… if I say Liam is my brother… I'm admitting I'm still Bill… And THAT has problems on its own! Because I don't WANT to be him. Because if Liam did come back, then-then he'd still hate me for my past! It'd mean I am not ME right now, not Sebastian…" He ranted.

"And the worst part...Even when I don't want to think about it… I still love him, just like I love you, guys, and it hurts!" He held onto Stanley when he reached to hug him.

They heard their mother's voice from the dining room called out, "-my little Stanford tends to skip meals sometimes too. You're much better than him in that regard."

Ford groaned. Really? Right now? "Oh my god, ma!"

He turned back to Seb.

"It's fine if you still love him, no one ever said you had to still be Bill to love someone Bill loved, you could still love your brother, even if he's not your brother anymore." Ford tried to reassure him. After all… there was a time when Ford had stopped thinking of Seb as a brother, when he'd thought he was Bill's puppet- but even then… some part of him had still… cared.

"Even if that's true- I still can't- Liam… he might hate being back. I mean, our parents are dead, and all the other flatlanders. There's no way I want to bring all that back, that place sucked. But Liam would be so mad to know I killed them all…" Seb sniffled, holding Stan as the larger man tried to comfort him the best he could.

"So… what do you want to do?" Shermie asked softly as he stood beside Sebastian and wondered at how much his brother hadn't told them all about himself.

"I don't know." Seb groaned. "And Blue's so… what's the word?"

"Forceful? In your face? Insistent? Pushy?" Stan listed off, grumbling. Seb managed a weak laugh. "All of the above." He frowned. "I don't know why Miz likes him so much."

"Well, he's her… brother? I think that's how it is?" Ford frowned. "Much like how Miz considers you her brother."

"I guess. And Blue does back down if Miz- Xin wants him to…" Seb rubbed his face. "The problem is that he's making me uncomfortable, and enticing Xin to help."

"Yes, that… isn't good." Ford frowned. "I don't want to say he's a bad influence, he's clearly…" Ford realized, "...a child, himself." Which wasn't something Ford would have normally been able to connect the dots to, but he'd hung out with Miz often enough to recognize it when he saw it, now.

"How old is he? He looks maybe seventeen or eighteen," Shermie asked, confused. He wouldn't call that a child...

"He's one trillion years old," Seb noted dryly, pinching the bridge of his nose. "...Isn't he?" he said, blinking, as he realized he didn't actually know that one for sure. Miz had never actually said that… had she? He didn't remember Blue telling him, either...

"And Miz is over 600 billion." Ford deadpanned. "And she still whines when I don't give her piggyback rides."

"...and doesn't like to sleep without a night light." Seb realized. "Or something to cuddle with, I swear she's made a nest out of the dolls she stole from the twins by this point. She doesn't like sleeping alone. And gets scared of clowns..."

"...you ain't the epitome of maturity yourself." Stan chuckled. Seb whined, showing just how mature he was. Ford was seriously pondering this now. "So… demons are children?"

"I'm pretty sure it's just the two of them." Shermie, the voice of reason, muttered.

As much as he wanted to deny it, Seb found himself somehow feeling a little better, hearing his brothers make fun of Blue lifted his spirits a little. And if he thought about it as Blue being a little brat who was being selfishly pushy about getting what he wanted...

...well, Seb's dealt with Zoe's tantrums before. And as the oldest here, since Seb was over a trillion years old as Bill, and as a human now, was an actual adult, as opposed to Blue being a teenager...

...Seb was going to have to parent Blue too, wasn't he?

Uuuugh, parenting Miz was already a chore. Well. Maybe not parenting. More like… be an adult and not let him get through him and cry like a baby. Wanda had all the parental power in the relationship after all.

"-I wouldn't kill anyone who hurt my babies, I would destroy them~" they heard their mother say next. (They also heard the almost-reverential "WELL" that came after that, which they all consciously chose to try not to think about too hard at all, to varying degrees of success... up until the next "WELL!" which had all of them giving up on ignoring that one.) Stan walked over to the doorway and glanced out. "Ma, you're scarin' us."

"...so another Bill Cipher likes our mom." Ford rubbed his face. "I'm terrified of the consequences."

"SO... what do you think about living forever?" was what floated out of there next, in that other 'just visiting' Bill Cipher's voice. (Uh oh…)

"Nopenopenope-" Ford power walked back outside. "It was a 'no' for when Xin tried that with the kids, it'll be a 'no' here too!" Ford said loudly.

"STAY OUT OF THIS, YOU-"

But then there was an odd pause, as Bill asked Kari something tersely and got a response.

...and then Blue marched right into the kitchen, and past them all (including Ford and Stan along the way without even looking at either of them), while looking fairly annoyed.

"I'm only doing this the ONCE," Blue said, as he grabbed sugar from a cabinet, then an empty pitcher, "Because I... miscalculated," he was twitching as he filled it from the sink quickly, "Just a little..." grabbed a spoon, dumped in the entire thing of sugar, "...Because human-ish bodies are stupid," and marched out again with the pitcher and the spoon, while stirring the pitcher, still looking highly pissed off.

"I could have gotten you a sugarcane?" Xin sounded way too amused.

Seb didn't hear anything for a while from the other room, then a sound that sounded very suspiciously like a lot of cursing in Galactic Standard, and then a loud thump. (...He watched Shermie walk out there, too, and stubbornly stayed where he was. He didn't really have to go out there again right this very second now, did he?)

"Too long to eat; also: no! Sugar tastes DISGUSTING," and from the sound of it, Blue wasn't joking, so… he actually thought that?

"I could change your taste buds?" ("No!")

The entire family, literally every single one of them, (even Stan who leaned more towards the salty things) gasped. "But-SUGAR!"

"DISGUSTING," Blue repeated. "I DON'T like added-salt or added-sugar!" Less loudly, he added, "Not my fault you all have no proper sense of taste. Not expecting a bunch of humans to be perfect. That's a failing proposition, right from the start; by definition, you all are irregular."

"UgH. Your cooking must be like Carol's..." Seb said as he exited the kitchen after Shermie, looking at Wanda while the twins shuddered.

"You like spicy stuff." Xin wagged his tail. "I personally don't like that taste. I'm more for umami."

"I like spicy and sour-or-bitter edible-foods, yes; I told you that," Blue noted. "Umami is fine, so long as it's not a LIE. Empty-of-calories," Blue added with a frown. "Also, I can cook ANYTHING," Blue corrected Seb. "I just don't want to eat those sugary or salt-added things myself," Blue ended with a slight frown.

"I'll eat them." Xin raised his hand.

"Yes, I noticed you like those; you can claim them, that's fine," Blue noted without seeming to have any issue with this.

"Xin, I need to talk to you." Seb glanced over at Blue before sighing. "I'd say I wanted to speak in private, but since you did the thing that I don't like, right in front of everyone, I'm just going to say it." He put on his best 'dad' voice. "Don't touch my eyepatch without asking. It's rude. It hurt my feelings."

Xin's eyes went wide. "Oh! I'm sorry!" He looked down, "I wasn't thinking…"

"...Boundaries?" Blue noted, head tilted slightly as he looked between them. "You violated them?" he asked of Xin.

"Miz has trouble with boundaries." Wanda spoke up, and Blue turned to face her. It was something she'd noticed, but hadn't been sure how to address. "She comes into our room whenever she wants, and often forgets to knock. Or looks through my desk at work when she's bored."

"Well, yes," Blue said. This problem had been rather obvious to him; he'd found it out once his sister had been living with him, within the first day. "He hasn't been layering very long; it's a new way of handling things entirely, opposite of what he is used to. What's your point?" Blue asked Wanda first, before something occurred to him and straightened and glanced over at Xin. "-This is the tupperware-asking, since you can't just tell from the seeping-in without asking first. Yes?" he said to Xin, touching on something Stanley had told Miz before (a good while ago to his sister, now).

"...I mainly just keep forgetting I'm supposed to ask first…" Xin winced. "I did that as a human too, so I think it's actually just… me being dumb."

"You are not 'dumb'," Blue contradicted him immediately. "You just need to reorder your top-level priorities," Blue told Xin, with something that was almost a complaining sigh, before reaching out and mussing with Xin's hair on top of his head. "You keep dropping important things out of your main focus, that YOU think are important to keep track of right-then! -Priorities!" Blue was frowning a little bit now. "Say it! Not dumb! Priorities!"

Xin whined, trying to wiggle out of reach for the mussing. He even shrank back into Miz to dart away and hide behind people.

But Blue wasn't having it, following her around a bit and not-quite grabbing her up with one arm once she got herself Miz-small enough for him to do it, while continuing said hair-mussing all the while, just about scooping Miz up as she tried to move away from him to get out of reach. (Avoidance failed! Noooo!)

"-No excuses, either!" Blue grumbled out at her, before finally dropping his hand to the top of her head just to lie in place there, and stopping all of his mussing. "You need to work on your boundaries properly, too. Especially if you're going to be around all of the humans and the resonance and- we talked about this," Blue ended, setting her down again as he told this to her quietly, but with a great amount of annoyance still in his tone.

"Uwu…" Miz whined, trying to fix her hair. It was all mussed up, sticking out in all directions. "But I just… forget… to remember it all the time..."

Blue frowned at this. "You still have your suit, don't you?" Blue said. "If you're having trouble with maintaining your priorities properly and as-needed now, and need it to work NOW while you're practicing and working on it, then just use an aid in the meantime sometimes. Visual. -Reconfigure the your-eyes-only visual display for situational use. It can pop up reminders for you, once you program it properly-enough."

"My eyes don't do that." Miz pouted. "There's no GUI here like there is in your Set."

Blue rolled his eyes. "Not THAT," he said with no small exasperation. (That thing had been put in place by the lizard largely to just stunt demons' growth by promoting pure laziness, he was very, VERY sure. It also only showed what the lizard wanted it to show.) "The one in your suit. Your spaceship-capability suit that I showed you, that you cloned and then made one for yourself out of, back in my own dimensional set. You Saw it; you made another one for yourself here, didn't you?" He wasn't wearing one currently, because he hadn't wanted to scoop up as much material as he might need for that out of the surrounding area, to make one for himself here, beyond 'just' his vessel. Also, wearing that amount of armament on his person would have sent VERY much the wrong message to Seb, he was sure.

"Oh. That one…" Miz held out a hand and everyone stared as some kind of futuristic cybernetic suit materialized on her. Ford felt a tingle go through his whole body. "Ohhhh!" He stared her up and down. He wanted to study that!

"You don't have to use just-and-only the always-visible armband-gauntlet for it," Blue told Miz, reaching out and tapping a specific point on her arm to start up that interface and then activate it. Once it was up, he then began tapping out something rapid-fire into it quickly. "See?" he said, and Miz blinked as she now saw...

[Permissions to touch: Denied] [Please request permissions] Little pop ups over everyone, like some holographic display. "Oh. So… visual reminders." She noted. Ah, there was even a little arrow pointing at Seb's eye patch. "Ah… this is convenient… but I wonder if I'd feel too much like I'm in a video game…" Miz mumbled. Ford was almost frothing at the mouth to get a closer look at her cyber suit; Stan was holding him back.

"Yes? Blue said, "That is the point? That it works? Game interfaces are meant to be easy-to-use by design," He gave his sister an odd look. "Why would I make a thing that is not efficient or helpful? And then share it with you, when I could do something better for you, instead?" He largely waved off the 'video game' comment, with a, "This is an aid, just and only to aid you, for just-and-until you can do it all yourself without it - both properly and consistently. ...And a 'game' with 'scoring' on this would be a better way to learn for you, too, yes?" he asked her, because fun-things were always better for learning, weren't they? Always? Blue thought for a moment, then added, "...Prizes, for new high-scoring, and trying new things? Positive reinforcement, for wanting more to do it yourself on your own? Homework, for what to try to work on improving-upon yourself next? Maybe?" He was tossing several different concepts at her now, to see what she might like that might 'stick'.

"So… I should keep this on, to see the reminders, for when I forget?" Miz blinked up at the displays. Dipper kinda wished he could see it too, or get a closer look at the suit, it looked super cool. And by the looks of it, his uncle thought the same thing.

"And program it with whatever you know you don't want to forget in the meantime, that would cause the worst problems for you. -Remember to make it all situational," Blue noted, "You can also make the display show some things differently or unevenly, less 'in your face' for some things than others." He typed out a few more commands into her armband, and the pop-up in her view on Seb's eyepatch went away to be replaced with a glowing red boundary and a red cross-patching along it, then back again." Blue then asked, "Should I help you add the basic set that I've been using recently with my Zodiac? That I've mostly-all talked out already with my Stanley?"

"That would be very helpful, yes." Miz nodded. "Does your Stanley know your suit does this? Have pop ups and stuff to remind you of things?"

"I didn't tell Stanley my suit can do this," Blue noted, as he directed her over to a seat at the table, and sat down next to her in a nearby chair, right at her left arm (and the interface). (He'd need to concentrate a bit for this; having to also handle standing at the same time would take him longer.)

Blue's eyes lidded a bit and he reached out two fingers towards her suit's main armband-slash-gauntlet interface. "I don't use them for this; I use them for operational security issues and reaction-time things," Blue said to her a bit more slowly, as he concentrated on compiling up all the information and informational structures that he knew, that he thought she might ever need or want.

Then he flexed his energy a bit and transferred what he thought to be all the relevant data that she might need or want that he was most sure-and-certain about directly to her suit's dataport interface, all in one burst.

"You'll need to go through all that, and assign the proper priorities to the whole list," Blue told her, as he reopened his eyes, pulled back his hand a little bit, and looked up at her again. "Select loaded-unsorted here," he pointed with one hand at the appropriate point in her vision where she was currently looking, as he tapped the command he needed to pull it up with the other hand, "And help interface icon is here," he pointed again, as he brought that up into her visual view next, "And here," he showed her on her armband display, in the far smaller visible-by-all closer view that was hovering there just above it.

"I guess you can remember to remember stuff yourself?" Miz asked him a bit sheepishly.

"Yes," Blue said to her. "I remember everything. And I prioritize being able to prioritize everything both properly and effectively. Efficiency. I do not forget things EVER, and I do not let my focus shift too far away from the most-efficient use of my time, unless I have planned my own down time to do so and it is that time for it; you see? You can do this, too, in this way, easily also." He brought up a little specialized version of a calendar-timeline display in her vision for a moment for just that, then a task list, then tapped them both away again out of her view just as easily.

"Hey, where is everybody." Miz looked around, realizing only the two of them were at the table.

"They left?" Blue slightly raised an eyebrow. Had she really not-noticed? "...Operational security is a thing," he reminded her dutifully.

"Urrrgh… damn hyper focus…" Miz huffed.

"There is a time and a place for that," Blue noted pragmatically - because sometimes, he needed to be able to focus completely on some things of his own, too. (Like feeding. -He HATED getting interrupted while he was doing that!)

"You can program your suit to track them with its sensors, to know where they are, and when they did leave," Blue added, "...And make it display large flashing alerts to pull you out of hyper-focus, whenever you think or you know you will need it, before you need it, first?" he added next, at his little sister's continued pouting on this front.

"I'm just a little annoyed that they didn't say anything before they left." Miz frowned as she Flickered, more comfortable with using that as a method for information gathering. "...I think Seb's a little mad at me…" She sighed.

"You don't like it when beings violate your physical boundaries, either," Blue noted. "Yes?"

"...yeah. I feel a little mad at myself too, for hurting Seb's feelings."

Blue nodded once, paused for a moment, then asked her, "Does Seb do 'learning-lessons' and 'penalties' like my Stanley does, too?"

Miz blinked. "Wanda's more for stuff like that. Seb isn't very good at knowing what to do with me. He's not my dad, even if the papers say so. And I decided he's my brother as well, but he's never had a sister before I came along."

"Hm. You and Seb both decided this? That he is a brother to you, and you are also his sister?" Miz nodded. "HM..." Blue said more slowly. Then:

"...Do you feel bad enough that you want a penalty for this, to 'make it up to' Seb?" Blue remembered that Miz had felt that way about fighting with (and then 'breaking') that Stanford, and what that had meant she'd wanted to do for his Stanley - and neither of his Zodiac was even a brother to his own little sister, in any way, not even a little.

"Yes." Miz's tail swished behind her, conveying her discomfort.

"You will be working on your own learning-lessons with this suit interface," Blue noted. "I don't recommend trying to fix things with Seb by turning back time on everyone who is here." To do that to family would be beyond rude. "But... you could ask Wanda for a 'penalty' - that is actually 'a penalty' and NOT just 'a punishment', I will check that for you here," Blue quickly rushed to tell his little sister, not wanting Miz to get the wrong idea, "- if she is better at all of the 'stuff like that' for you, here?" he asked of her, as a true query.

"Ok. I'm… not a very good daughter, am I?" (Blue blinked at this, not sure how to respond. -That was NOT the sort of value-judgment that he had ever had to make.)

"You're a fine daughter, Miz." Said dragon squeaked when Wanda walked into the room. "Mommy!" Miz ran up to hug her. Wanda sighed, brushing Miz's hair with one hand. "You're just very excitable and once you get an idea in your head, you just go for it without always thinking first." Wanda chuckled. "Seb's the same way, and I love him don't I?"

"Ah," Blue said, standing up and turning towards Wanda a bit more slowly. "You noticed that, too! The 'Miz being excitable', and also the 'not always thinking first'!"

"Of course. I notice a lot of things. It's sort of my job." Wanda gave Blue a small smile. "I've been working on it with her. Reminders, mainly. Same with Seb. The two of them need a lot of reminders. In different ways too. I know Seb has ADHD, and I'm beginning to suspect Miz might have something as well."

Blue blinked at this. He looked down towards Miz as he walked over. "Should I make an armband-reminder visualizer and visual-interface for your brother Seb, too?"

"Only if he wants it." Miz purred lightly as Wanda pet her just right. "Oh, and Miz?" Wanda knelt down to be face to face with her daughter.

"Yeah?"

"You're not a bad daughter," Wanda told her firmly. "There's no arbitrary rule for what makes daughters good or bad, I mean, Zoe still tears her stuffed animals apart and sets them on fire on the sidewalk…" Wanda rolled her eyes. "And that doesn't make her a 'bad' daughter."

"But stuffed animals are for all of the clawing and frustration, which can also be fire-setting?" Blue noted, confused. (Sometimes he bit them out of frustration as well, but in most cases, he usually only bit them largely to make sure they weren't anything STUPID in-disguise, trying to get the drop on him stupidly - when they obviously were stupid if they were looking all disguised like that and thinking that they might catch him not paying attention in a room with a stuffed animal in it…)

"We have stress balls for that." ("Stress balls are for setting on fire?") Wanda sighed. "They're more durable and can last longer. Zoe's dolls break too easily. And yes, Miz, I know you could enchant them to not break, but that isn't the point, Zoe just likes to tear them open, and you know it."

"She's got all the makings of a dentist in her future." Miz nodded solemnly. "Oh please no." Wanda laughed. "She'd start singing that song and never stop if she did."

"Dentist?" Blue asked, looking between them. He'd thought the proper term for that was 'surgeon' or 'hunter', or 'serial killer' perhaps?

"When I was young, just a bad little kid~ my momma noticed funny things I did~" Miz started to sing before Wanda tapped a finger against her lips. "No. Not right now."

"Why not?" Blue asked her.

"Because she'd end up singing the entire musical." Wanda deadpanned. "She's done this with multiple musicals."

"Is it important that she not do that?" Blue asked Wanda next.

"It would take up the time that I wanted to use to talk to her about what she did today."

"HM." Blue turned to Miz. "Are you programming this into your interface as a situational-reminder yet, if you also consider this important for this same reason or a similar one? -Is the 'singing' always more important than the continuing-talking with your Wanda-'mom' to you?" Blue asked his sister almost leadingly.

Miz let out a put-upon sigh and opened her interface to type the information in. So annoying~ "Nah, mom is more important. I just like singing. I recently made everyone listen to a bunch of musicals with me. Zoe likes them. Zach… I dunno. I think he might be tone deaf."

"Noted," Blue said. There was a pause as he watched her input this. "You could also remind yourself to additionally ask if she wants to stop the current conversation and sing along with you, instead? With music added in, because you have external speakers?" he added with a grin.

Miz turned to Wanda with a hopeful look. Wanda raised an eyebrow. "Don't get distracted, this is serious time." Miz hung her head. ("This time," Blue noted.) "Do you know why Sebastian is upset?" Wanda asked. Miz wiggled back and forth. "Because I pulled up his eyepatch without asking?" Wanda nodded. "But do you know why that made him upset?" (And at this, Blue - who'd been looking away from her, around the room at everything - turned back towards her and started to pay a little more attention to her again. He was a bit curious about that one himself.)

"...because he feels embarrassed about his eye?" Miz guessed. Wanda placed a hand on Miz's head, not moving, just resting there. "That is part of it. Sebastian doesn't like talking about his past, at all. Especially not in front of his family, and especially not in front of his mother."

Blue blinked a few times, and then realized that he'd been talking openly earlier about- (Blue started twitching a bit. He hadn't been thinking all that clearly earlier, not having enough calories in him. -This impact-on-his-Mental state stuff was MUCH worse than he'd thought. -But he'd thought he'd managed to PAUSE everything there in his own 'set, relative to any- and every-where else! SO WHY-?!)

"He doesn't want them to know or see his scars. He's barely comfortable with me seeing them. He's self conscious and while he's okay with showing off his scars sometimes, like when he's trying to repulse Carol so she doesn't come near him, that's his decision to make, and his alone. Do you understand?"

Miz nodded. "I'm sorry," she said again. Wanda sighed and pulled the girl in for a hug. "I know. But it's not me you need to apologize to."

"...how do I make it up to him?"

"Well, you could go talk to him in private, see how he feels about it," Wanda told her. "And ignore Stan when he asks you to buy Seb's forgiveness with gold. He's just joking. Mostly."

"'Penalty', not punishment," Blue reminded Miz. "Not just gold; that's too easy for you, and then there is all of the cycling, that makes it harder to concentrate for you because needing food, so even worse," he reminded her. "-It has to help you not want to do the thing anymore again, at least a little, to not be a stupid useless punishment. ...It is only a learning-lesson if it helps you understand 'why not' or practice not doing the thing and doing something else different, instead."

Wanda raised an eyebrow at Blue now. "You also upset Seb. But as I'm not your mother or guardian, I can't deal out any 'penalties' to you for your behavior."

"Yes," Blue agreed neutrally, not quite looking down at her for even suggesting she had to think about that one in the first place, that it might even be a possibility for her to manage to pull off, because, "You can't. -Also, no more Deals for anyone EVER. I decided." He frowned at her, and when he blinked his eyes, he was looking over to the side, away from her instead. "I will talk to him directly about it, to know what and why directly from him," he told them both next.

"Alright." Wanda agreed. She really didn't know how to handle Blue. He was… more Demon-like in his behavior than Miz was. She almost seemed like a human child half the time. A very strange one, but then again, Zoe. Wanda was getting the feeling that she didn't know what 'normal' children were supposed to be anymore.

"Where is Seb?" Blue then asked her, pulling her out of her musings.

"He's in the gym room, stress climbing." Wanda sighed. It was pretty cool that Stan had a rock climbing wall. Then again, he apparently owned three floors of this apartment building, so… damn rich people.

"Gym room is where?" Blue asked of her next. "Down that hallway, the third door on the right." Blue nodded once, then glanced at Miz for a moment before walking off in a direction that seemed to be following Wanda's instructions.

Wanda waited a minute after he left before sighing. "Miz, your brother is… quite the character."

"...you can say you don't like him," Miz said miserably. Wanda grimaced.

"Well. He IS weird. And he upset most of the family and scared the rest. But," she added, when Miz's lips wobbled, "I don't dislike him. He's nowhere near Carol levels." Wanda said dryly.

"...No one is as disgusting as she is, mom. That's not a fair comparison." Miz chuckled softly. Wanda grinned before humming softly. "Also, I need to remember he is a demon, like a real one, and he's not like you, an adorable one."

"And I'm pretty sure that Zach is scared of him, but Zoe seems to respect him. Hasn't bitten him! Must be the demon aura he might have." Miz sighed.

"Seb?" Blue called out, as he entered the room that Wanda had given directions to for him. (And yes, he was deliberately NOT Looking at things right now - in ANY way, Shape, or form - for reasons.)

Swivelling his head as he entered the room, he found Seb's location in the room rather quickly. He stopped in place and just stared. "...Hi, kid. Just... chilling on the floor after I fell." Seb explained.

Blue right eye twitched. "I'm not a kid." Then the rest of what he'd said registered completely, and Blue blinked at him. "Are you damaged?" he asked Seb somewhat-neutrally next.

"I don't know? I can feel my legs though, so that's good. Just hurt my back…" Stan couldn't know that Seb didn't use the harness because Stan would beat him up for being stupid.

"Do you want me to Look over you to confirm the actual current-state of your current-body." Blue walked over, but didn't quite come within arm's reach of him. (Blue couldn't see anyone else in here with his vessel's current stupid almost-human-ish eyes, but it didn't mean that they weren't there, lying in wait, and ready to try and-)

"It's fine." Seb slowly stood up and groaned. He went back to the climbing wall and held onto one of the rocks again. "Are you looking for something?"

"No, not something; yes, I was looking for you." Blue watched him, slowly trailing him over. "Wanda said that I upset you. With my behavior. Is that true-and-accurate both?"

Seb eyed him. This was weird. He seemed a lot less… excitable, or something, right now? Definitely a little different than earlier. "Yeah, kinda. You ask too much, that's very uncomfortable. But that's also on me for letting it bother me like a kid. It's just a sensitive topic."

Blue frowned at him for a moment, before his expression smoothed out again. "'Me not asking' means 'me Looking with my All-Seeing Eye' instead, to be able to then help you out," Blue told him with an odd calm to his voice, and a level expression. He walked up closer to Seb, up to his side. "My Stanley has made it clear that doing that isn't something he wants me to be doing as much, for awhile. He gave reasons." Blue looked away from him for a moment. "And if you really are from another 'set, and you don't know which one," and at this Blue looked back at him, "Then I wouldn't be able to See what I wanted to know by looking at any of the dimensions I can see from here in this 'set; not without Scanning you here directly." Blue stepped in front of him, and met and stared steadily into Seb's one remaining eye. "I don't think that you want that. Do you?"

"Miz does that. I don't bother stopping her anymore, she's curious about knowing stuff. All the time." Seb groaned. "I don't think it's bad if she uses it to get information fast. I'd love to know stuff whenever I want like that too. But she gets impatient..." He heaved himself up a few rocks. "Sometimes, she gets it, the whole human interaction thing. Sometimes she gets it. But not always. I at least had time to learn, growing up."

"Of course she wants to know things, she is a me-who-is-also-me, just like you. We all want to know things, all three." Blue sounded a little irritated as he said that, like he thought he shouldn't need to say this to him, and looked away from him again. He paused in his speech for a moment. "My Stanley has explained the importance of 'stop' and 'no' for humans to me, you know." Blue frowned. "You have been living around humans and trying to conform to all-the-things here for too long, if you don't remember how to handle other beings pushing on 'too personal' things anymore, though. -You should have said something," Blue noted, "Or at least threatened to destroy me if I went any further, since you didn't like it. We were talking about..." Blue quieted abruptly.

Blue looked up at him, then away from him again. "And what I was asking wasn't something I could just See easily, the way that you are used to with Miz. I would have to See enough to be able to predict you internally, without having to ask you, and that would require Scanning you, if I wanted to do that. -Scanning you is different than just Seeing you, if you don't know that, or if it means a different 'thing' in the 'set where you are originally from," Blue called up to him next, as Seb climbed up a little farther.

"I usually don't try to Scan other beings, for reasons," the blue-and-black haired demon called up to him, as Seb continued to climb, "And the last time I tried Seeing another Bill Cipher, I got… confused... for awhile," Blue told him, with very little expression in his voice. "You are at least one trillion years old, yes? ...Last time, it was a LOT less time I was Looking at, there." There was a pause. "I don't think I will get confused like that, ever again, but I ALSO don't want to do that to you. So you don't want me to be doing that," Seb heard Blue say kind of firmly, the words floating up to him from where the younger demon was still standing on the climbing room floor below him, feet firmly still down in place on the ground.

"Hum. I guess…" He climbed to a seat-able part and stared down. (Blue was staring back up at him.) "Why do you want to even help me with… things? I'm ok," he told him. "I'm going on with my life, my family is here with me, we're together and happy-" Seb sighed. He didn't want to go back to his days of being utterly depressed all the time. Seriously! He was moving on!

"You are a me-who-is-also-me," Blue called up to him. "And you are not fine. I can tell. Why would I not want to help you?" Seb saw his confusion even from up where he was sitting, and also when Blue's expression suddenly darkened a lot. "-I'm NOT anything like that stupid lizard," Blue told him next. "I WON'T refuse to talk to you, not listen, or not help you. All you have to do is tell me WHAT YOU WANT, to get it."

"I just want to be with my family and be happy," Seb snapped. "I want to raise my kids and make sure they're happy and loved and SAFE! I want-" His voice cracked. "I want to not lose anyone I love, I want us to just… live together and be happy."

"Yes," Blue said. "And right now, things are still broken in all of the wrong ways here, and have not been in any way fixed yet. You haven't done anything here, to make sure-and-certain that you will have that forever. Right now," Blue told him, almost patiently, what the fuck, "They are going to die, and stay dead. And so is Wanda. And so are you. Which is not 'living together' or 'not losing anyone'." Blue stared up at him hard. "And dying before they do and staying-dead means not being able to 'make sure they're happy and loved and safe' either, any of any-of-those things, not even ONE of those three," Blue called up to him next.

Sebastian stared down at him.

"Right now," Blue called up to him, "You are not doing anything to fix that, to make sure you get what you want. To keep it all, what you have now, as a start. THAT is how I know something is wrong," Seb was told. "You are not fine," Blue repeated.

And Blue wasn't grinning at all. He wasn't smiling, or grinning. He hadn't been, not once since he'd walked in here. And it made Seb wonder if something was wrong with Blue, too. Because that wasn't very Bill Cipher-like, was it? Not when he was trying to make some sort of Deal. Was he trying to make a Deal? Well, Seb hadn't taken the Deal with Bill2 or Bill-Jerk all that well, it had him wary of any offers from other Bills now. Miz was the exception. Not that she offered him any serious deals, aside from the immortality thing. Speaking of...

And Sebastian… sighed. "Miz already wanted to make us immortal. We've said no."

"Why did you say no," Blue asked him next, just staring up at him pointedly.

"I'll make sure they're fine during our life. Living forever is not living. Just grow up." He started climbing up again.

"Living forever can be living," Blue called up to him, to Seb's irritation. "That's one of the things that I'm going to fix. Did you think that was something that a you-who-is-also-you would overlook?" Blue's voice traveled up to him from below. "When that you-that-is-also-you has been thinking about and planning out how to do everything to do with this for one trillion years and counting? How to make everything finally work, the way it was all supposed to, that every last stupid lazy lizard out there in existence all REFUSED to get right, right from the start?"

Seb almost fell again because he tried pinching his nose. "Dying is still dying. No matter how many times you move souls from body to body. Like me." Seb looked down. "You die and you can come back, but you still aren't the same."

"The problem isn't dying, it's not coming back at all, or coming back but not still being you, yes. But you can still be you, after. And being the same for no reason would be stupid," he was told by Blue next. "The source of the problem with 'living forever' leading to 'not living at all' is a lack of all the choices you could ever want and then some. And not being the same eventually isn't a problem. Everything changes. And everyone also changes, too. Eventually. Unless they refuse to change, want to not-change... -which is also a decision and a choice. -Like me; I refuse to change. And if they do their changes right, they become more themselves over time, not less-of-themselves, that's the whole point."

Seb rolled his eye, hard. It didn't work like that. Who the fuck would want to live forever just doing stuff? Miz was immortal, she hated it, and she could do practically anything she wanted.

"You are being quiet, but also not agreeing with me," he heard Blue call out. "What are you thinking?"

"That you should keep your stuff to yourself. If you want to live forever that's fine, but you don't know what I want, or what other people want."

"That's why I'm talking to you, communicating, to learn and then know what you want. Feedback is important; of course I'm going to listen. I want to hear you. I'm also going to talk back to you, too. And then do something about all of this next. -Your imagination is lacking, if you don't see what I'm talking about and wanting it for yourself and everyone else you've ever known just yet."

"God, you're more insufferable than I remembered! You know what I want?! To not live forever fucking again! I said no, already!" Seb shouted. Bills Ciphers and their annoying persistence with their own needs.

"You haven't lived forever yet. One trillion years and change isn't even close." And then he heard that Bill Cipher smile in Blue's voice. "You can't say no, when you haven't even heard what I'm OFFERING you, yet. The complete thesis, the entire argument; the full proof, beginning to end with the whole Q.E.D. and everything; the 'whole ball of wax'," he heard Blue drawl out to him. "I've already pointed out all your current logic errors in your thinking to you already," Seb gritted his teeth, "You can't take a few minutes, or a few hours, to hear me all out? To maybe try and convince me otherwise instead, because you are SO sure that what I should do is 'just grow up' instead?"

"I am. Now can you leave me?!" Where was Miz? He Searched for her nervously. God, Ax, help.

"I can leave you," Blue said, "But you saying 'no, you don't want this' doesn't stop anything, because I'M NOT CONVINCED." And then Blue's voice took on a hard tone. "I'm not about to let you dictate a doomed and unfixed existence FOREVER for the lives of every last being in every last dimension in this 'set that ever was, is, or will be living here at some point, forever. Not without a VERY good reason. And you certainly haven't given me one here today. -I'm going to fix things. Impatient little me, who's too 'happy' with what he has right in front of him right now to even so much as consider actually TRYING to maybe even keep it," Blue scoffed out at him almost sing-song, before turning away from him and starting to walk out of the room. "Maybe your Wanda will be more convincing to me than you," Blue called back to him. "Or maybe she is more reasonable in her reasoning, and I am the one who will be convincing her, instead!"

(Blue almost added a 'HAHAHAHAHA!' at the end of that, too, but managed to stop himself from doing it. If Seb's Stanford was around anywhere nearby and listening, it would probably be a 'mental attack', because six-fingered Stanfords who had made a Deal at least once with a Bill tended to recognize that laugh. ...Probably.)

Seb was relieved that Blue left. He reached to try climbing some more, but realized he wasn't tall enough to reach. That was a terrible oversight for whoever had built this wall.

"Sixer? Fez?" Sadly, they couldn't hear him.

So Seb had to carefully, super carefully, climb his way back down. The rope for lowering back down was up at the top of the wall, another oversight. He would have to tell Stan about this later.

Then Seb realized (read: finally processed) that Blue had said he wanted to talk to Wanda to convince her to convince him and- hell no! "Dammit Blue! Stay away from my wife!"

Unfortunately, Blue was already long gone by then, and Seb knew it.

WELL. If Seb was fine with Miz Looking around at things here, and all of the other Pines here knew that Seb did that sometimes, then Blue didn't have any reason not to do that himself. If Seb and Miz weren't considered 'rude' or 'spying' to be doing it, then he shouldn't be thought of that way when he was the one doing it, either.

So Blue walked down the hallway for a bit, turned the corner, and stopped.

He let his eyelids drop low, and he pulled his hands up into a meditative triangle-gesture in front of him.

And then he activated the 'looking-spell' that he'd added to this vessel when he'd first made it, feeding into it a little energy. ...And if anyone had been watching him, they would have seen the outline of a closed Cipher-eye made of a dim barely-there light flicker into existence right in front of his forehead, where his own eye was located.

The spell flickered from 'closed, not Looking' to 'open', and the look of the Cipher-eye 'looking-spell' did the same.

He wasn't Looking for Seb's Wanda, though. He was Looking for Kari instead. (For reasons.)

It didn't take him long for him to find her.

Blue deactivated the spell, lowered his hands, and strode off.

Kari wasn't a stupid woman. Despite her choice of partner and the years spent together with him. No, Kari knew she wasn't stupid. She'd been a coward, yes. But not stupid. After all, who was it that taught Stanley how to do what he did? Who was it that raised her children on her own? Sure, Filbrick might have given her the funds, what little he was willing to part with, but she'd been the one to raise them.

Kari knew stuff. And she was good at learning stuff that she needed. She was also a liar. A good one.

That Blue. Kari hadn't lied when she'd said she liked him. But she hadn't said that she was also rather angry at him for hurting her dear Sebastian. Sure, it wasn't directly, and Kari could tell Blue hadn't realized that was what he did. But that only meant Kari didn't have a full excuse to put the fear of God into that little demon. It was fine. Kari had been able to tolerate Filbrick for years. She could tolerate this.

For now.

She was going to set him straight, so he knew what was what. And how to not mess with her babies.

Speak of the Devil and he shall come, Kari almost rolled her eyes when Blue waltzed right into the pool room, where she was relaxing with some tea beside the water. Really, she was a good Jewish woman. And yet, she found herself not caring as much as she probably should have, over the literal demon grandchildren, and former demon son.

"You have tea!" he said, as he walked over to her. "'Great minds think alike', yes?" He took a seat next to her, but didn't reach for the pot.

Kari secretly approved of that. She took out another cup and filled it with tea before sliding it over to Blue. "Here you are, dear."

Blue looked surprised at this gesture. "Not yours? Mine?" he said, looking to confirm this as politely as the gesture-made.

"Yes. This cup. Right now. After we finish, or when you're finished drinking, and it goes into the wash, it will be mine again. But for now, it is yours." Kari could cold read people simply by their voice, so having someone here, in person, and having had all of breakfast to observe him, of course she'd been able to pick up a little of how this demon thought about things.

Blue nodded, then tapped the table once, almost absently. "And the tea itself inside it?" he asked next.

"The tea is for anyone who wants to drink any, there's too much for an old woman like me to finish on my own after all." Kari refilled her own cup as she said so. "And Stanley isn't much for tea. Neither is Stanford. Or Shermie. Coffee people, the lot of them." She shook her head lightly. "Where did I go wrong? At least Sebastian appreciates tea."

Blue nodded to her. "This tea is mine, and the cup will be yours again once any of those conditions you have just mentioned have been met; I am only borrowing the cup." He only then reached for said cup. "No idea why the other two of them don't like it. Unless your Stanford has 'bad associations' with it from the local Bill liking it too. ...Maybe they are lying to you, and hiding all of the terrible tea from you for themselves, because they can? Unless they aren't." Blue took a sip of it. "Mm."

"Hm… well, from what I've heard, Miz has been demanding tea. I do hope she gets Stanford to incorporate more tea into his diet. It's better than that coffee he keeps trying to replace his blood with." She tutted.

"Miz has good taste! ...And all those Stanfords think they can live on that other stuff," Blue griped out good-naturedly to her as he sat back in his chair, sipping more of the tea, "No matter how many fingers they have. Annoying. Also: untrue! They really can't live on it," he grinned out at her. "Why, one time-" and then Blue's face seemed to warp a bit, with several emotions flying across it quickly, almost in conflict with each other for a moment, before he slowly closed his mouth on what he'd been about to just say and stopped there. He stopped himself, and took another sip of his tea.

"I'm guessing your Stanford isn't…" Kari paused. The idea of another version of her son out there…

"-Not that one," Blue waved off. "He never- Wasn't the one I was going to talk about," Blue ended again, then he grimaced. "Not mentally attacking humans while talking about all of the things is hard," he said at the last, almost frustratedly. "Can't hardly talk about anything interesting, when I'm supposed to be 'worried' about that," he said with an exasperated eyeroll. It was clear that worried wasn't Blue's preferred word choice there in that sentence, either.

"Many people are quite sensitive. My dear Sebastian for example. He's a delicate one." Kari sighed. "You upset him." There was no hostility in her tone, none whatsoever. It was almost unnatural, how non hostile her tone was.

"I just talked to him. He didn't say he was 'upset', he said he was uncomfortable," Blue contradicted her firmly, his eyes narrowing at her a bit, while also going a little more cat's-eye slitted. Then he paused. "And also that 'letting it bother him' was 'on him', which is idiotic to say. I don't know why he said that." Blue frowned, looking away from her, his eyes narrowing further. "And he said 'it was just a sensitive topic', but that isn't right either. It wasn't 'just' a sensitive topic. It was-and-is a VERY sensitive topic. He should have gotten angry. I wasn't thinking clearly again, because I went too long without eating any of all of the food," Blue muttered out. (Because yes, he'd eaten something in Miz's set, but it had been something made out of energy that had come from him; as far as Blue was concerned, that was a net energy loss that he'd taken for his sister's happiness, since she liked cooking for him so much.)

"Yes. Because he doesn't like to admit when he's been hurt." Kari looked down at her hands, wrapped around the teacup. "Like how he never told me how much Filbrick had hurt him. I admit, I wasn't a good mother for him. I should have noticed. I'm sure I did. But I just didn't want- was too…" She sighed. "Well, Sebastian grew up hiding his pain. Or blaming himself for it. So," she looked up at Blue with a flat stare. "He wouldn't admit to being hurt by people, even when he is. And when he does admit to being uncomfortable with something, it means it was something that upset him badly enough that he couldn't even lie to hide it anymore."

Blue frowned at her.

And then he said, "Seb said that he doesn't mind when Miz Sees things about him anymore, and implied that he'd rather have me do that instead than talk to him. Do you think I should See what you're talking about here, or should I just tell you to clarify what you just said by you talking to me more right now instead."

"I'd rather not have to talk about all my failures and mistakes. If you really can See what it all was, it would save me from having to do so." Kari's response was even. She sipped her tea.

Blue sat back in his chair slowly, watching her with hooded eyes and thinking.

"And while I am doing this Seeing here next and oh-so-distracted," Blue began, "Are you going to try and destroy me, because you think I 'hurt' your child, by putting him in so much inferred-pain that he isn't 'lying in front of you about it anymore'?" he asked her lightly, watching her over the teacup, as he took another sip of her shared tea, now his.

"Well," Kari allowed a slow growing smile to grace her face. "If I had any inkling of belief that you had said all those things on purpose to hurt him, then you'd have already had hot tea thrown in your face." She sipped her tea again, looking perfectly at ease with the casual threat of violence. "But I'm certain you didn't mean to hurt him. And I know Miz hadn't meant to, either. So, no. I won't have to destroy you. But I will ask that you kindly do not do that again."

Blue slowly straightened up in place through all of this, his eyes slowly growing slightly wider.

And when she was done talking, Blue grinned as wide as she'd ever seen anyone do it, all-teeth, before tossing back his head and LAUGHING, both loud and long.

Not an actual laugh. It was one of those 'HAHAHA!' sort of almost-fake ones.

...except she'd heard something like this out of Seb before.

What she hadn't ever heard out of her own dear child before, was what this 'Blue' did next.

Which was to keel forward a bit, with his 'laughter' turning into a series of chittering-giggles.

"OH," she heard Blue say, once he seemed to have gotten a bit more control of himself again. "Oh. I 'hope' I got that perception filter up in time," Blue told her with a grin, as he put a hand on the table to try and shove himself a bit more stably back up into his chair again, still grinning. "I couldn't hold that one back and, wooo, that Stanford of yours, hoo boy," he told her, shaking his head, before collapsing back in his chair again. "Really didn't come here to start a fight with him, though I don't expect any of you to believe me," he told her almost sing-song. He looked over at her. "I like you, you know." He straightened up in his chair a bit. "And now I know where my Stanley gets it from, too," he said to her next, with a little too much amusement in his voice. "So-to-speak." He let out a long breath in almost a whoosh, then looked back up at her, straight in the eye, and said clearly, "-Yes, I was not trying to hurt that Seb of yours. And 'hot tea in my face' would NOT be enough destroy me 'for the offense'. ...And yes, I didn't do 'that' again; he clearly didn't want to talk about Liam any further," the demon's expression slipped into a frown, "Though that doesn't make any sense to me why not."

"Like I said, Sebastian is sensitive. My little Stanford is a sensitive one too. And Stanley, even if he tries to pretend he isn't. Shermie's the only one of them who has any emotional defenses." Kari shook her head, just thinking about it made her want to go back to Filbrick to knee him in the groin so he could never have more children to ruin. "I wonder what you mean by your Stanley. What's he like over there? Or me?"

"'Sensitive'," Blue repeated, with a bit of an eyeroll. "Well. HM. Starting with you," Blue said to her, "The version of you over there is- not alive, currently," and the jarring pause there left her wondering what he'd been about to say that he'd suddenly decided to veer that hard away from. Dead? Wouldn't that have been fine to say? And what did he mean by 'currently'? "My Stanley is my Zodiac. One of my 'Zodiac Ten'," the demon told her next. "And I say that he's mine because he told me he wants me. That makes him mine." Blue took a sip of his tea. "And he's very like you, or you are alike to him. -You picked up on the whole meaning of how to do all of the claiming

properly almost-immediately, just like he did. Almost exactly the same," he then told her. "Also: all the threatening," Blue continued, his eyes gleaming with something that wasn't just amusement. "He calls it his line. HA. 'Don't mess with my family', he says. VERY consistently. -And then he explains!" Blue let out a bit of a sigh, and then muttered, "Still hasn't finished explaining yet what-all he means, though. Things. Keep. Happening. That keep getting in the way of us finishing that off completely, finish his explaining, finish working that all out. Priorities," Blue grumbled out, taking another sip of his rapidly-cooling tea.

"Yes, life tends to do that." Kari gave him an amused look over the top of her cup.

"Maybe for YOU," Blue noted. "But I'M used to having ALL THE DEAD TIME I WANT, TO-" Blue stopped, then physically shook himself, then seemed to pull in a deep breath almost meditatively, and slowly let it all out again. It was a little like watching a bird slowly unruffle its feathers, resettle its plumage again.

He reopened his eyes and looked at her. "Keeping myself low-energy and low in my body, or a vessel like this, can also be hard," he then told her. "Also: I don't really like time constraints. For reasons. -Part of what makes human lifespans annoying. You all just up and DIE on me, whenever things ever start getting really interesting with any of you. Almost makes it not worth the effort. Almost." He took a final sip of his remaining tea to finish it off, then set the cup down on the table.

"I may have pulled a little 'trick' on your 'sensitive' Seb just awhile ago, just so you know," Blue told her next, settling back a little bit. "-Nothing TOO terrible, though!"

Kari narrowed her eyes. "Oh?"

"Mm," Blue said. "Well! He wasn't really listening to me, and he told me he wanted me to go. So I did. I left the room when he told me he wanted me to leave. But he WASN'T 'listening' to me, and that always PISSES ME OFF. I don't like being IGNORED," he told her, looking downright irate, before settling back down again. "So I also told him that I was going to 'maybe' talk to Wanda about what I'd been talking about with him, too. Since he wasn't being very convincing," Blue told her next, with an eyeroll. "And I do plan on talking to her - it would be rude if I didn't!" he continued, "But your Seb wasn't in a very good mood with me at the time, and neither was I by the end of it, and I didn't exactly give him a timeframe for when I was planning on talking to her. So he might have thought I was about to talk to her next, almost immediately, instead of going off and looking for, say, YOU to talk to, instead," he ended, with a short encompassing gesture towards her, and the slightest of smiles.

Kari sighed. "He's probably beside himself with worry."

Blue nodded, that barely-there smile fading away completely. "Bad of me, yes. Didn't let myself think too hard on it until I was mostly down the hallway! Suppressed most of it, as much as I could. Because I really wanted him to misinterpret that badly. Still do. -Which he likely would-and-will do, because the way that I said it might have reminded him a little bit of something the both of us did at least once before. Though I am 'educated-guessing' a little bit on that 'both' part," he admitted to her with a bit of a shrug. "Not my fault if there's a possibility he thinks I'm planning on doing something stupid to her, right? I told him MULTIPLE times when I arrived that I wasn't planning on murdering anyone while I was here, or trying to get into any fights. -So if he wasn't listening to me then, right at the first, as much as he wasn't listening to me right before he told me to leave right then next..."

"That was very unkind of you," Kari fixed him with a look.

"I don't like being IGNORED," Blue repeated. "I can't think that we're all that different, that he cannot possibly not-know this! Or how to handle it differently, and a LOT better than that. -The LEAST he could do is say, 'not now, later' and give me another different time and time period for it!" he groused out at her next. "Though why he would want to put ANY of this off is completely BEYOND me!" Blue fixed his gaze on her then, wondering if she knew.

Kari sighed. "What is it that you want here? What's your goal for all this?" She didn't understand anything about magic, but she understood people. And this boy wanted something, that was clear as day.

"Get my brother back; fix everything for everyone everywhere," he told her succinctly, with a drop into a relaxed posture so suddenly that it practically screamed at her 'FINALLY!'. "And yes," Blue noted, "'Everything' is A LOT OF THINGS. Everyone is a lot of people, past-present-and-future. And when I say 'everywhere', I DO mean EVERYWHERE."

"And what if the people who are part of the everything don't want to be fixed?" Kari was sure Sebastian didn't want to go along with the 'fix everything' route, if his response to Blue was any indication.

"Education, obviously," Blue told her. "Inspiration and enlightenment! ...without actually doing either of those things, yet, just for right-now, for a bit? Because Stanley says-" Blue stopped,and waved something off with a hand. "Anyway. Almost no-one has enough imagination to think of it all by themselves - either not enough time for it, as a 'timing issue', or just totally lacking the creativity for it, I guess? So they just don't see it on their own. And what they can't visualize somehow, of course they don't want. Because they can't see it themselves, for themselves or anyone else. -Feedback is also important, of course," he told her. "Don't want to leave anyone out. -That's the WHOLE POINT of the whole thing, really."

"And what if, after getting that education, they still say 'no'?"

"They won't say no, because I'm not wrong," Blue shrugged off, then blinked and grimaced. "AH. -And I'm not fixing people, I'm fixing everything else. Stupid 'modern' human American English language, deficient in almost all of the most-necessary ways for actual communication to even have a 'snowball's chance in Hell' of occurring. -People don't need fixing; that's also THE POINT! The very FIRST point - the very first axiom that I started working from, really," he told her. "The whole system is not broken enough yet, currently. It is a whole-system problem: none of it is in any of the right ways the right-wrong kind of broken. And all of the Rules are just stupid, and also need complete-breaking, too."

Kari observed Blue for a while. "And what if you are 'Wrong'?"

But at this, Blue just grinned at her that wide grin at her again.

"Lady," he told her, slipping into a bit of a showman's lilt, "I've been working out the math for this one for one trillion years and counting, and I'm not stupid," he ground out at her at the last, dropping the 'act' and getting fully serious with her again. "I've made myself smarter several times over the course of this whole one-trillion-years-and-counting Plan of mine, I'M NOT WRONG, and I'm not stopping. I've NEVER been wrong about this." But then he made a palms-up gesture towards her, not quite a come-hither, and not quite a 'come at me' sort of thing either, "But if you think that I am, WELL, you're MORE than welcome to try and prove me wrong-otherwise! -Think you can convince me of that, before I end up convincing you to come around to MY way of thinking, instead? -I LIVE for the DEBATES!" His grin got that much wider. "That's how I get the BEST converts, you know!" he told her brightly, almost bouncing on the end of his chair. But then he pushed his grin back down to a smile, and seemed to calm himself down a bit again, carefully.

"Probably shouldn't get too far into it this time that I'm here with you, though," Blue told her next, "Even if you think you're really up for it with me, all that talking and debating and working things out. My Stanley doesn't want me 'accidentally' enlightening people until he's talked how I usually do that whole thing out with him further - because sometimes they all go a little TOO far over the edge when I do that with some of them, not doing all of that eating and sleeping that they currently need to do, once I really start explaining things, and they really start getting into it; which is a bit of a problem currently, at least while nothing has really been fixed at all yet around all the parts where they are - and I don't know how mathematically inclined you really are, to know if you'd be one of the ones to be more-inclined to do that sort of thing yourself, just yet. Which my Stanley wants me to avoid doing to people. Don't know how much you might be like that Stanford too, in that way. Haven't even tried to Look at you, yet. -Though I certainly will some-time in the future largely-forward from the here-and-now NOW!" and the boy-demon was still grinning at her largely with glee. The strange demon child was practically bouncing in place, right in front of her, the silly loon, making next to no sense as he was chattering away at her. Really reminded her of Sebastian as a child.

The only parts of what he'd said that she'd been able to pick out of that, that had really made any sort of sense at all, were that this demon liked getting challenged on whatever this fixing thing was, he hadn't thought he'd had himself proven wrong yet, and... another Stanley she didn't know thought that talking to this demon for too long was something dangerous enough that he'd tried his damnedest to talk the demon out of doing it to anyone else, and largely succeeded at it for the moment.

And when the demon had admitted before that he thought she was a bit like this other Stanley of his, she'd bet her bottom dollar that this brother of Miz's wasn't lying about that.

"Well," Kari started. "What exactly does your 'fixing everything' entail?" Might as well see what she was working with here. And Blue lit up, bouncing like an excited child, if which he WAS, and grinned madly. "WELL, first off-!" Kari settled in to listen; she got the feeling it might take a while.

"-nd that's how it'll all go!" Blue finished his long explanation. Then he grimaced slightly and waved off: "For the most part, really. -As well and as-accurately as I can explain it to you in this highly-deficient language of yours, in such a short period of time, anyway." Then he brightened up again and looked at her expectantly, waiting to hear what she thought of it all. The child was actually sitting on the edge of his seat; expectant indeed, and not even trying not to show it. Kari took another sip of her tea, taking her sweet time.

"I can think of many people who would agree with, and want to go along with your plan." Kari said at last. "But there would also be those who don't." Dying and getting to choose what, who, to come back as? Choosing your life, being reborn as an adult as the norm instead of first growing up as a child? Living with everything you chose that you wanted for yourself? Not having to ever worry about dying of starvation, or thirst, from a lack of any physical need? It was very much like a fantasy, or some sort of very odd idea of what that 'beyond the pearly gates' paradise should be like, if the half-yearning (half-excited) expression on the demon's face at times while he'd been explaining it had been anything to go by…

...if that paradise could still have wars and death in it and everything else in-between. And that's what it all was. A demonic paradise; one that was closer to a 'false heaven' than anything, not that she believed in heaven (or hell), but she knew there were many who did, and would probably equate this to that, if they were just as insane as the demon thought himself (and also her, apparently) to be. "And what if those who do go along with it, have people they loved, who didn't go through with it?" Because she knew of many people who'd find a problem with leaving their loved ones behind in such a way, it wouldn't be any different from dying for real if that were the case.

"If someone loves a being who goes through with it, then they will go through with it, too, because they want to be with them forever," Blue told her. "If they don't, and refuse to instead, WELL, then they just didn't ever really love them then, now did they. -You understand, yes?" Blue added next. "Because you were a 'mother' before, who would not kill for your children before, and now you are a 'mom' who would do even-more and destroy for them if they are even so much as 'hurt' by anyone else again ever. -Choice, decision; education, choice-again, then a different decision moving-forward." The demon said it quite simply to her, but she felt like she'd just been slapped in the face.

"And what if someone goes through this a few times, dying, remaking themselves and dying again, and then they don't want to do it anymore?" Kari questioned next.

"Sleep for a few years; take some time off," Blue told her, "Or talk to me about the WHY of it and I improve things for them, fixing whatever perceived deficiencies any further. Probably just an education issue by that point in the process. -You saw when I showed Miz how to use her suit's visual interface better, so that she could make less problems in the constraints you all are trying to impose upon her, by being constantly reminded of where they all are? -She wasn't happy in that moment because she didn't know how to use what she had to best-effect, in order to have less 'accidents' that would make her unhappy shortly-thereafter, ruining the experience of being here for her. Education. -In this case: understanding what is available better, to get what you want. 'Read the manual'."

"And what if they don't want anything to do with it anymore? If they want to die and stay dead?" Kari questioned next.

Blue blinked at her, then laughed a short "HA!" and tilted his head at her, "You just asked this. -That only happens 'permanently' if I didn't do all of my fixing right the first time," he then told her, then let out a sigh and looked away from her. "I'm not going to be able to convince you that easily-and-quickly here-and-now, am I," he noted almost ruefully, propping his chin up on a fist on the table.

"I very much doubt you'd be able to convince everyone, everywhere, of this plan of yours. And then where would you be?" Kari leaned back in her pool chair. "I don't know about other alien species, but I'm sure that any human going through this enough times would get bored or go insane."

"I can convince everyone everywhere, because I am right. It's an actually-workable concept of an 'afterlife'," the demon told her, looking back at her, "One that would exist everywhere for everyone once I was done. -And be their primary-first-life for anyone born after I've finished fixing things, right from the start! HA! -Because why wait?" He kicked his feet back and forth a bit under the table, head still propped up on a fist. "Not the point, though - and wrong besides! -I could send people a 'vision' in their dreams, to let them see what it looks like. Or a form of 'waking dream' instead. Let them try it out first and actually see. Do it in waves; that's one way to transition them, once everything has all been worked out," he told her. "But also- not the point. And a 'enlightment thing' that I am NOT doing currently besides. -I wasn't expecting your Seb to not absolutely jump at the chance to start fixing things NOW," he told her next. "AHHHHH- and I really didn't want to have to do this…" he said, stretching out his arms across the table a not like he was stretching, then pulling them back and dropping his head down onto the table to pillow it in his arms. "Guess I'll have to shift to 'Goal B' as the main focus of this little visit for a little bit then, instead."

"No messing with my family." Kari drawled before refilling her cup.

"Yes, well," Blue blinked up at her from where he'd laid his head down for a bit. "That's the problem, really. There isn't a good easy way to warn you and do this, without at least ONE of you feeling a little bit 'messed with', in the here and now. Not without tiptoeing around the whole thing 'very carefully' with almost-all of you." He let out a huff of breath that was almost a sigh. "Would've been easier if Seb had just agreed to fix things with me and started in on all of that with me immediately; this wouldn't be a potential 'problem' anymore, once everything is all fixed here just like it should be." He eyes her a bit. "You are probably the best one to say this to, out of all of them. After all," he slowly pushed himself back up to sitting upright by his elbows and arms, "You are a 'mom' now, and not just a 'mother'. -MOTIVATION!" he said to her next with bright eyes and the slightest of smiles - one that looked more like a grimace, by how very tense he looked now.

"Ah huh?" Kari wondered where he was going with all this.

Blue straightened in place, and all at once he seemed to go from looking to being in his 'late teens' to his 'early twenties' instead. It was mostly the posture and how he was carrying himself now, and it wasn't any sort of putting on airs. Kari's eyes narrowed a bit at this.

"Let's start at the start, and ease our way forward rather close to the boundaries then, potentially without having to actually steamroll past any of them, tripping off all of the oh-so-'sensitive' problems that would entail," Blue then told her. "My Stanley is good at making leaps and jumps without me having to say all the things outright, just confirm them with me after. And I'd rather not cause a panic by saying this outright and being overheard. -So keep it to yourself for a bit and come see us over here if you are Seeing this, o' little sister of mine, if you are watching us, yes?" Blue said, raising his eyes up slightly towards the sky, before dropping them down to look at her again. "Did Seb or Miz or any of them tell you who I am? -My 'interdimensional username', in some parlances," Blue asked of her next.

"No one really explained much other than you being Miz's older brother from another dimension."

Blue looked a little grumpy at this. "WELL. THAT makes things a little more difficult," he complained. "Telling you that I don't normally go by 'Blue' then - and why I do it, when I do it - will mean NOTHING to you even a little bit AT ALL! Because right now I'm not calling myself here what I normally call my own Self back in my own 'set, for a reason - a rather singular one, in fact," he said, rubbing at the right side of his head vigorously for a few seconds, "And it's NOT because of Seb or Miz," he told her next, dropping his hand again and looking straight at her. Then he flicked his gaze away from her again, quickly. "Means that I'll have to try starting in the 'middle', instead. -What do you know about Weirdmageddon? Did they at least tell you about that?"

Well there wasn't a lot Kari knew about that. In fact, that entire summer was… glossed over. Even when she asked about it. "The end of the world almost happened, but they stopped it." Kari sighed. "My boys never want to tell me anything. They say it's because they didn't want to worry me, but damn, being left in the dark doesn't really help at all." She sighed. And then, she wished she could know more about what had happened to her babies growing up. None of them wanted to talk about it. At all.

(Somewhere else in the house, where Miz and Wanda were trying to calm down a protective Seb who was circling the room, hissing at everything in case Blue was hiding somewhere, Miz looked up when she Felt and Saw, that Wish. In fact, it popped up on her display as a Side Quest. [Enlighten Kari] it said. Miz tilted her head. Huh.)

Blue tilted his head at the spoken part of Kari's wish, also distracted a bit from where he been going with that, by the force she'd had behind her words there. "My Sight can't help you See anything for yourself," Blue told her, "It's not transferrable," then he paused and tilted his head back slightly. "Would you even want to see it, anyway, if you could? Might be a mental attack, to see something that you might think is worse than watching that Filbrick that you married actually doing all of those 'hurtful' things to your children, as if it was all happening right now, with you unable to reach out and do anything to stop it." He glanced a little sideways. "As for the actual Weirdmageddon-here itself… I'm not using my Eye right now for too much, and trying to Look backwards in time at all-that myself by using a 'spell' to do that instead might catch that Bill's attention, back then. NOT a good idea, to try 'spelling' a look at that directly."

Blue frowned, and closed his eyes, sitting back in his chair. "...But I could try to catch the old-travelling light moving outwards from this Earth from that many years ago, however many light-years out from this planet that all of it is now, and reconstruct it all from that, instead. That would take a while though, and the significant amount of my focus, thought, and energy. Not a very efficient use of my time or energy here, either. HMMM…" He opened his eyes again slightly and looked at her again, to say, "Is that something you want, 'not being left in the dark' anymore about it, or is that just something that you idly mused of just now, for no reason?" and one that she didn't really mean. "I could probably reconstruct most of it and project it visually in the air for you here and now, if you think that it's really that important for you to know this, right now, before talking with me any further on any of the rest of this, in order to continue on with me, both moving forwards."

(Admittedly, Blue was almost always up for sharing information and knowledge - especially when he knew it wouldn't come back to bite him badly later in some way - but he didn't exactly trust his ability to explain things in a way that a human would consider as following the 'right' priorities of explanation, detail, focus, or anything else. Not after everything that that Stanford back in his 'set had spent a great deal of time yelling at him about, over the years and decades. So that would lead to needing to do a more-direct show-not-tell for her, if he did it.)

Kari looked at Blue and sighed. "I do want to know. But I don't think you're the right person to tell me." Because she wanted Sebastian to tell her. But knowing him, that wasn't going to happen anytime soon.

"HA," Blue said. "I wouldn't be telling you; I'd be showing you. Like an image, up on a screen. -I KNOW I don't have the same priorities or interests as most humans," he told her agreeably, then abruptly slapped his hands down on the table. "-Do you KNOW that most humans don't know and never-even-thought-about the double-fuzzy!?"

Kari blinked at him before laughing, he sounded so serious. (Blue blinked at her as she did this, not understanding why she was so suddenly laughing.) "Well then, I guess you could show me a little of what happened during this 'weirdmageddon' like… a television?" she suggested. "And if I need to stop, we'll stop."

Blue nodded. "My Stanley has explained the importance of 'stop' and 'no' for humans, yes; just say the 'stop' or the 'no' if you think that you need to," he told her, as he turned his chair away from facing her across the table, and pulled it a bit farther around the table while turning it to be more in line with the same direction her chair was also facing.

"Need to go 'looking-spell' up all the light I will need to parse for the 'seeing' of all of this first," he muttered out next, sitting back down in his relocated chair. "Do you know the time period? When was this Weirdmageddon here specifically, and what date-and-time is it now? Year-month-day, hour-minute-second?"

Kari thought back. How could she forget? It was the summer when her sons came back. When she found out they weren't dead and that Sebastian had somehow managed to LIE to her for 13 years… to HER! Her voice was even as she told him the date. It was even. Despite her hands trembling in her lap.

"And today?" Blue said, his eyes closed as he pulled his hands up into a triangle shape in front of his chest.

Kari told him that date too, closing her own eyes and taking a long, calming breath.

"What, really?" the demon sounded a little off, somehow, then she heard a rustling sound, like clothing shifting. "Fine, yes; fine."

"Yes? It's only been 6 years." Kari seemed confused.

"Not what I meant; think you're missing a whole generation of Pines, there," she heard the demon mutter out at her.

Because, now that Blue was having a chance to be thinking further on it, the Stans here being rather young had other consequences here, too. He'd seen Shermie here, and the Mason and Mabel, but no-one else in-between. The visual body-age and the time period they were living in just didn't match up to what he was used to Seeing at all.

"A generation?" Kari hummed. "How could I?"

"In my dimensional set," Blue told her, as he started spinning off the first parts of his 'looking-spell' and automating the process of 'seeing' the light from all that far out, gathering all that information up for him to memorize in one burst before processing it himself, "It is standard that in a dimension with Pines in it, any Stanley or Stanford are born in the late 50's, and any Shermie is born in the early 70's."

Kari raised an eyebrow. "Well, move my whole family forward a few decades." She steepled her fingers together and gave Blue a long stare. "I suppose we're different. Something you've never seen before." She almost sounded smug.

"-And then remove the Shermie's children, from the two times that a Shermie actually had them and they all survived long enough for a Mason and Mabel to then exist later as children-of-his-children next; that's only happened twice so far," he noted, correcting her smoothly, because: "It isn't a full 'just move it all forward'. My Weirdmageddon needed to happen in August of 2012 in the Dimension 46'\ of my own dimensional set, too. Pine Tree and Shooting Star are both Shermie's grandchildren there. -And yes. You all are something I've never seen before: a different configuration of mostly the same parts that is all still VERY familiar and mostly 'to spec'." (Blue still had his eyes closed and was concentrating at this point, his voice sounding slightly more remote, less inflection, just a little bit slower as he worked his 'great Work', as some magical practitioners might put it, had they been aware at all of what-all he was doing…)

That made Kari pause. The hypothetical other children that could have existed. That was so… weird to think about. Just thinking Shermie could be his kids' grandfather somewhere.

"I think I'll start us off with one of the 'worst'-parts, make sure you can handle it-" she heard the demon half-taunt at her from where he was sitting near to her, eyes closed. He lowered his head, shoulders flexing outwards slightly, and she was about to respond to that when she was startled by the chair at her side clattering down onto the ground as the demon practically LEAPT up and out of it abruptly.

Kari frowned up at the demon, who was now standing unsteadily upright on his feet, in a bit of a balanced fighting stance, his hands still held out in front of him in that triangle-pose. He was bent over slightly, breathing heavily, and he looked rather suddenly pale now, beginning to sweat. If she didn't know better, she might have thought he was drunk.

That Bill Cipher was using knives on Seb. A chained-down Seb. Knives, one after another. A cut. A STAB. Another wound that healed almost immediately. Laughing and laughing/ and LAUGHING AND- A knife plunged so deep INSIDE Seb that Seb's body healed around it, trapping the foreign object inside-

"Are you alright dear?!" Kari stood up from her chair and stood beside him, not touching him, but nearby in case he fell over.

(Blue was panting at what he'd just looked at from the outside of things, and he was barely able to hear her. There was an odd high-loud-ringing sound in his ears making it hard to hear anything at the moment, and he didn't have any idea at all where it was coming from.)

Blue quickly turned in place at the movement he saw out of the corner of his eye at his side, though - and twisted away from it, took two quick skittering swaying steps back - backing away from her - expecting an attack - quickly pushing his arms out away from his sides to rebalance himself (among other things he was preparing himself for, as per his 'boxing lessons' with Stanley). He nearly fell over.

"What?" Blue said, coming to a stop when he realized that Kari had stopped moving towards him. "What do you want. WHAT?"

"Are you alright? You look very bad off. Do you want to rest? Please sit down."

"I- I-" What? And as Blue tried desperately to parse this reaction from her to him properly in the moment (because really, it made no sense to him at all, in the context of him)... he finally realized that he was currently swaying in place for some reason. He blinked at this thought, and then hesitated a moment as another thought finally caught up to him (once he'd finished processing Kari's comment, and realized it had been in no way sarcastically meant, just a completely straightforward question as it had originally been posed directly to him as: did he want) …'Rest'?

He flicked his eyes down, and slowly pulled one of his hands back in and over in front of him, to stare down at it for a while. And what Blue realized next was that it was shaking. ...He was shaking. He flexed his hand, and relaxed it, a few times, the way Stanley had told him to do it, in order to figure out-

"Oh," Blue said, at something of a hollow remove. "I need to sleep." He swayed slightly in place again as he slowly straightened back up. "Iiiiiiii needed food, HA. GUESS I NEED SOME 'REST', TOO!" he said next, a maniacal grin spreading widely across his face as he reflexively forced himself - his being of pure emergy self - up much higher in his vessel, into more of a 'puppeting' arrangement in order to keep staying awake in the here-and-now present, to not let his state in this vessel drag him right under, and-

Kari frowned. There was a sound in the air. No. Not in the air. It was coming from Blue. A strange dual-toned note that continued rising and rising-

"-BUT," Blue said, the smile slipping into something of a flat expression, "That doesn't makes sense, THAT DOESN'T MAKE SENSE-" He turned towards her, but wasn't looking at her. "He was torturing him with KNIVES, why was he doing that," Blue leaned back so far Kari didn't know how he didn't manage to topple himself over on such unsteady feet, "THAT isn't RIGHT. Torture is for- that- because-" Blue pulled himself mostly upright again, "-but he was- THAT DOESN'T-"

"Who was tortured?" Kari almost demanded. Worry was filling her now.

Blue finally looked over at her at this point. His cat-eyes were wide open and completely cat-slitted.

"SEBASTIAN!" was what exploded out of him, in exasperation no less, "But THAT ISN'T RIGHT! -He, he shouldn't have been using KNIVES anyway, they're too forceful - just downright BRUTISH, they don't WORK. CAN'T get ANY REAL information out of any-being like that, not like THAT, they only try to tell you ANYTHING they can think of instead because they want it to stop; anything that they THINK you want to hear, no ACTUAL INFORMATION content there in any of it, THAT isn't useful," he told her. "-Electricity is BETTER!" he told her next, brightly, with a large grin and wide-open eyes and a flourish. "HIGH voltage, low AMPERAGE - THAT'S the TICKET! -No damage to that big beautiful old brain of his, what with that lovely plate of mine in there conducting it out and away from anything SQUISHY, and no lasting damage to any-of-the-rest-of-him, either! HAHA! -Show 'em you mean business, and then go-forward with the business from there; don't DISAPPOINT THE VIEWERS, EITHER!" He made an ongoing chittering sound next as he swayed side-to-side over his feet; it almost sounded like a series of hysterical giggles.

Kari covered her mouth with her hands in horror. Her baby Sebastian was tortured?! And in WHAT way would electricity be better!

"Don't- don't know why he did it to SEB, though," Blue said next, eyes wider now but less slitted. "Seb wouldn't- wouldn't… Oh." Blue stopped in place and his head fell back on his neck a bit. "'Why do you even want to help me with things.'" Blue dropped his chin again, to perfectly-level. And then Blue's expression turned into one of absolute RAGE.

"WHY DIDN'T HE HELP HIM!" Blue screamed out next, fists clenched at his sides. Because he'd just been looking for some images of the local Stanford getting tortured; that would be the worst of it for someone who wanted to destroy people who hurt her children who was a lot like Stanley to see here-and-now, right?! But INSTEAD, he'd gotten THIS, and- "SEB IS A ME! -HE SHOULD KNOW BETTER, KNOW WHAT THAT IS LIKE-"

But then the demon stopped abruptly again, his face twisting into something else, caught between disgust, horror, and an unexpected confusion.

"But… but KNIVES, though," Blue said next, almost slowly. "That Bill shouldn't have-" he stopped again, raised his fisted hands to the sides of his head, and shook his head repeatedly, teeth clenched. "NO NO NO! -WHY would he DO that to SEB? It doesn't make sense it doesn't make sense- I- I need to-"

Kari was putting two and two together. So the local Bill Cipher demon had tortured her baby. Well, he was lucky he was dead or Kari would have taken him on herself!

And just as suddenly, Blue dropped his hands, went completely expressionless and the tension he was holding in his body began draining out of him slowly. And then turned towards her.

And then his visage went completely furious instead.

"I need Seb to tell me WHY he didn't HELP OUT that other Bill R͎͈͓̠͈̲̰̞ͤ̇ͤ̽̆͠͝ͅI̭̝̓̓ͦ̓̕G̷̣̙̳̻͈̤͇̽́͂͛̌ͪͯͫ͘͝H͇̥̣̼̙̬̦̖͎͗̉ͬ̐ͦ́͑̒͘͝T͖̣ͣͥ̑͞ ̻̭̳̮͙̼̆̄̋͑ͩ̉̌͗͞Ñ̞͙̞̝̗͋ͦ̒̽̔͒̕O̵̘̮̙̹̰͎̟͙͗̒͠Ẃ̛̰̝͂ͅ," Blue just about hissed out at her, eyes unfocused as he did it, chest heaving, hands moving down into fists at his sides again. (He needed to know WHAT had happened between them - EVERYTHING, all of it, NOW - even the things that had happened in the Mindscape, all those things that Blue couldn't otherwise get without performing a Scan on Seb, and- he wasn't going to do that, he'd MAKE Seb tell him if he had to-)

Blue started to stomp his way past her-

"Wait!" Kari called to him, reaching out and wrapping her hand around his arm. (The demon stopped in place abruptly and whipped his head towards her, as if rooted to the ground by her touch.) "If you leave now, you're going to upset him…" If her son was tortured… she could see why he didn't want her to know this...

"Upset? UPSET?!" the demon hissed out at her glaring. "UPSET HIM? HAHAHA! -He was TORTURED already," the demon laughed out at her, grinning, then irate all over again. "We're already WELL WELL WELL PAST that point NOW!" He bared his teeth at her. "I need to know WHY he deserved it!"

"He doesn't need to relive that, Blue… Sebastian doesn't deserve that… Why does it matter if it was knives or electricity?! He still was tortured and went through something horrible and traumatic."

"'Traumatic'," Blue sneered out. "Having your whole DIMENSION BURN DOWN AROUND YOU is 'traumatic'. Knives-stabbing is PEANUTS, compared to that," he told her. "-And of course he deserved at least SOME of it!" Blue hissed out at her next.

"You're wrong," Kari told him firmly. "Why would he? Because-because he was a demon before?"

"Because what? -No! What would deserving it POSSIBLY have to do with 'being a demon'?!" Blue demanded of her next, completely irate, "He deserved to be tortured - at least SOME of it - BECAUSE THAT WAS AFTER HE SAID NO!" Blue hissed out at her next, yanking his arm out of her hold, even as he swayed in place again.

"No, to what?!"

"He SAID NO TO-" But then his angry expression froze. "He SAID NO to…" and Blue's expression slowly began to drop. "He said…" and Blue's expression slowly morphed into one that was more and more uncertain. "He said that… that…" then Blue paused. "That… was after he said 'no' to helping let him out of the 'Nightmare Realm'... and then 'no again' to helping let him oit of the 'bubble' that was surrounding that stupid hick town next…... wasn't it?" Except Blue was slowly realizing that he wasn't actually sure of that yet. He lifted a hand to clutch at his forehead as he realized that had no reason to be sure of that, yet. Not yet. Because he hadn't gone back and tried to parse any earlier part of it, not yet. He hadn't checked yet. He hadn't tried yet, to try shooting for 'looking' at things around the timeframe that Bill would have- MUST have asked Seb to do first, that Seb must have said 'no' to, rejected and refused to do in some terrible and beyond-offensive way COMPLETELY. Seb must have done SOMETHING like that to him first, before that local Bill had-

Because there was no way that a Bill Cipher of any sort would do that to a living-breathing someone for no reason at all... right?

But… KNIVES... and… and...

-what did Seb DO? (Blue couldn't CONCEIVE of something another-him could possibly DO or SAY to him to have him actually pulling out KNIVES and-)

"I- I-" Blue swayed so hard on his feet that he almost fell over. -His legs folded under him instead.

He blinked down at the ground below him stupidly.

"...right, yes," Blue said, as his body reminded him yet again that... "I'm TIRED." Then he grimaced, and not-quite attacked at his head with his hands, and that sound in the air that had been coming from him was slowly starting to get quieter. "Nonono," he muttered out. "I'm not that idiot Stanford, I do all of the sleeping, Stanley is right, I'm GOING to GO to sleep FIRST," he muttered aloud next, and that sound in the air slowly got quieter, and quieter, until it died out entirely.

Kari looked down at the demon. He looked simply exhausted, arms and hands lying limply in his lap, breathing hard, still very pale and sweating a bit from whatever he'd seen…

...and not shared on a 'TV screen' with her in front of her yet. Oh, the little brat had been planning on showing some horrible scene of her boys getting tortured to her and it had backfired on the little demon instead, now, had it? He'd gotten more than he'd bargained for.

"Well… You look exhausted, dear. Why don't you go take a nap?" She looked around and got one of the pool towels. "You can sleep on the pool chair? I don't know if this works as a blanket but-"

"NnnNNNnnn… fiiiiine-fine WAIT -not-fine THAT IS NONE-OF-THE-FINE-THERE NO BLANKETS," Blue whined and then outright demanded out of her next, looking up at her, sounding so very much like a young child that Kari had to hide a laugh. Demon or not, it seemed little Miz's dear big brother was still a child himself. He didn't move though, continuing to hunch over himself on the ground.

"You don't like blankets?" she asked, somewhat amused. Blue shook his head multiple times at her, "NO! TOO MUCH PRESSURE!" he complained out at her. Kari folded the towel again and placed it on the chair as a pillow instead. "Come on, go lie down. Poor dear, you look exhausted." He might even be speaking nonsense right now. God, it reminded her of Stanford in his teen years, refusing to go to sleep to finish books or homework. And then he got so delirious he walked into walls and almost fell down the stairs once.

"-Not like that Stanford, not like him, I'm not, I'm SO not, Stanley is right, I'm better than that, I am SO much better than him, I am NOT doing the STUPID thing and not-sleeping, I am putting it all on hold and doing all of the sleeping I need to do first," Blue muttered out. "Not like that Stanford, not like him, I'm not, I'm SO not," he began again under his breath like a mantra, one he was trying to either convince or reassure himself of, as he slowly pushed himself up, and got himself back up and onto his feet. Kari watched him as he did this, re-orient himself slowly, and then stare numbly at the nearest pool chair that she had set up for him with a pillow, before he finally slowly started walking over to it...

-then Blue STOMPED his foot into the ground abruptly and-

*CRACK!*

Kari was shocked for a moment at the loud booming *crack* and the accompanying bright blue-white flash of light - almost like a bolt of thunder and lightning all at once, right in front of her - but once she'd blinked her eyes clear again, she saw an odd series of symbols and squiggles burned black into the pool deck in several ever-widening circles, encircling the chair where Blue was standing nearby it-

...and said demon himself toppling over onto the pool chair like a downing tree, face-planting right into the towel-pillow she'd put down for him, even if the rest of his body didn't quite make it with the way his legs and his feet were both hanging off of the sides... He looked to be out like a light though, from the way he was sprawled over it limply. The epitome of grace and dignity. Kari must have been around her grandkids too much, as she pulled out her cellphone and snapped a photo.

Right. With the new demon in the house now taken care of for the moment, Kari thought it might be high time she had a word with at least one of her sons. Not least of which to reassure Sebastian that the demon wasn't planning on doing anything to Wanda anytime soon.

"Seb, I told you, Blue's not gonna mess with Wanda. She's my mommy and I love her." Miz huffed. Really, and Ford was the paranoid one in the family?

"He said he was gonna convince Wanda of his crazy plan." Seb huffed, arms wrapped around his wife as she sat in his lap. Not that Wanda didn't enjoy it, but this was getting ridiculous! "Seb, I am a grown ass woman and I can handle a demon wanting to 'talk'."

"Mommy's a lawyer. She knows better than to get pulled around by convincing or non-convincing stuff." Miz added. Wanda sighed. "What you just said, made no sense." To which Miz simply giggled, "It does to me." She paused. "Is… is Blue's plan… really that bad? I mean, it's got a lot of issues and I can see it not turning out how he wants it to go… and it can be abused horribly by bad people-"

"Yes. Yes. All the above!" Seb grumbled. "And it's-" he growled. "It's not his business how things are run here!" Miz winced. "He just wants to help."

Seb pinched the bridge of his nose, rubbing his fingers up to massage himself. "I know. But his idea of helping is going to give me an aneurism…" Wanda kissed his cheek. "Have you told him this? To get him off your back, figuratively."

"I mean… he'd probably keep trying to 'convince' me." Seb grumbled. "You could just tell him to stop. He listens to 'Stop's." Miz pointed out. "Yeah, I don't think he's gonna stop on this. He seems really hung up on this." Seb leaned his face against Wanda. "Even if he's just trying to help, I don't see how any of this would fix anything."

"I'm still rather lost, what exactly is all this about?" Wanda wondered. She looked to Miz for an explanation. "Well, brother wants to make it so that when people die, they can come back. And they'd get to choose what they come back as. All the specifics. They can choose their race, sex, social standing, wealth and etc." Miz sighed. "But I've told him there are gonna be problems with figuring out how to create a society like that. I mean, if everyone made themselves rich, and not have to work to sustain their wealth, then who's going to be doing all the jobs?" Miz rubbed her face. "I mean, I could automate it. But… wouldn't living like that… get… boring? I mean, you can only have wild drinking parties or go shopping for all sorts of stuff you don't actually need for so long before you get bored, right? And if you're already rich and don't do anything then… what's the point?"

Miz sat down beside Seb and Wanda, leaning over to rest against them. "I'd see a world like that as everyone choosing to be rich first, getting bored and killing themselves just to try again. And then killing themselves to try again, again. And… I dunno. It would be cool that people couldn't die and stay dead and you wouldn't lose your loved one forever… but what if someone doesn't want to come back? Or doesn't want to come back as themselves again and have to remember being themselves and having to start all over? Then you'd lose them anyway…"

"Yeah, that could happen. And that's why Blue's idea isn't gonna work," Seb concluded. Wanda rolled her eyes at all of this.

"Hey, so… can't you just let me go now? My legs are falling asleep." Wanda grumbled.

It didn't seem like Seb was going to do that, so Miz got Wanda a foot stool and left the two to work this out. She was gonna go watch Those Little Ponies with the twins. She'd invite Blue to come with, but he was asleep…. Ah, looks like Stanley found him. Ah… looks like Stanley is trying to play with the barrier Blue set up to keep people from messing with him while he slept…

If there was one main difference between the Stanley here and the one in Blue's Set, it was that Sebastian's brother didn't have as much caution. He was, for lack of a better way to put it, a hilarious little twerp.

Blue woke up. It took him awhile. (It usually did when he was waking up from the eight, sometimes the four, and almost-never when he was "out" for less hours than that.)

He stared up at a 'ceiling' he didn't recognize.

He blinked, and stared, and blinked again, then let out a Flatlander *cliiiiick-chirp* that was the equivalent of a human 'what the fuck…'

...not so much because he didn't recognize the 'ceiling' he was staring at here, for what it was. It was more the fact that he realized and recognized that he must have rotated his current-vessel at least 180° degrees in his sleep, because he was absolutely certain that he'd started out this whole particular sleep cycle completely face down.

That said, he was not particularly thrilled that someone had saw fit to try and throw a blanket over him, and somehow managed to get it to stop and stay "stuck" in-place on top of (really, more directly above) the top-curve of the outer surface of his completely frictionless barrier, because he wasn't entirely sure of the reasoning process behind doing this...

...though the high-stacked and teetering piles of mysterious offerings that he woke up to as surrounding him (read: his barrier-spell) didn't seem like too bad a start, if they were trying to worship him, here!

Yeesh, who was he kidding here. This was a grouping of Pines; getting worship out of these people was the LAST thing that was going to be happening to him here, especially not after the initial reception that he'd gotten at breakfast. (They hadn't been trying to share food with him, only his sister and that Kari did. Neither of them would be worshipping him like this, if either of them had been in some way inclined to do that - which they weren't; he was VERY sure of this.)

It wasn't exactly the construction of a 'bedroom' around him for him out here, either. Not enough walls. So it was all probably just some local stupid human ritual going on here, or something.

Blue groaned as he forced himself to an upright position on the completely-flat pool chair. Ughhhhh… his 'head' was practically trying to kill him, here.

He slowly, painfully pulled himself into a cross-legged meditative position, set his hands in a triangle pose at his chest, and activated the passively-held 'looking-spell' marked on his vessel again.

...Right. Scratch that - make that a half-human half-demon ritual-game of some sort when it came to the 'walls' that had gone up there around him, and he didn't particularly like the way that Stanley of Seb's had been grinning while he'd been working to get that blanket up there. And then the smallest humans, Seb's spawn and Stan's children, had begun bringing more pillows and toys and started trying to build some sort of wall to box him in… Blue wasn't quite sure what they had been attempting to do. Even his little sister had laughed when she saw the ongoing construction and placed a few bottles of shampoo and some pool toys, herself.

Blue sighed. He paused the reverse-'look'back he'd been doing, started back at the continuing-on present, and - once he had confirmed no listening or measuring devices were in place anywhere nearby (suspicious, with a Stanford and a Mason known to be on the premises) - he took a slightly wider spell-'look'-around, a bit farther out than the actual current premises he was presently sitting inside.

Not outside the dimension, just at and around the local city here itself. -Because he wasn't an idiot like Sixer. He'd just woken up and checked his surroundings, and now he was going to get himself some 'breakfast' (and dinnertime now, here).

And he wasn't going to go begging to any of those Pines for it. He refused. He didn't need them to get himself more food.

He slowly stood up from the pool chair, turned a bit to his side, and took a 'bracing stance'. He prepared himself mentally, for what he needed to do.

And then Blue punched forward with both hands in tight fists, with a "-RAH!"

And a 'short-distance' more-limited (and fully-stable) portal opened up right in front of him, for his efforts. It was a 'pure math'-based portal, one of the same type that he'd been able to set up his suit back home to be able to create for him using a series of scientific-based power circuitry and super-advanced tech - one with a green event horizon, rather than blue.

small(And, these sorts of portals being made of pure math, he hardly needed something else to make these things for him; he could do it himself from wherever he was standing, and it would maintain itself and its end-point for the duration that he'd set, so long as each of the points he was connecting between were both located in a stable dimension.)

He came out right in front of a little old hole-in-the-wall Indian food restaurant, and only paused briefly to grab the top metal cover off a nearby city-owned trashbin - crumpling in up in his hands down into a metal far more dense than black-painted steel, then lighting it up with cleansing fire for a moment to remove all the paint and impurities - before turning back around, and marching his way right into that restaurant.

The little old man from India who was manning the cash register wasn't stupid; he took one look at the large lump of gold Blue was holding out in his palm, recognized it for exactly what it was, and took Blue's order of three dishes and three drinks with a smile on his face, one than turned into a very happy grin when Blue handed him the whole thing as payment and told him to 'keep the change' right before leaving.

Blue exited the restaurant, bag of food and drinks-carrier in hand, and reopened the portal with a 'click' in the back of his throat; he'd left it dormant, not closed it completely.

Once he was through, then he closed it finally and more completely, with finality, and sat down on 'his' designated and just-slept-on pool chair to eat.

He ate his food and drink inside his barrier's protective wards by himself and in relative silence, and he liked it that way, just then.

It gave him time to eat, time to breathe, and time to finally think without getting interrupted from the majority of his own thoughts every two or three seconds.

And when he was done with all that, he burned the containers and garbage to ash, ripped the molecules of the ash apart on top of that (just to help himself burn off a little extra aggression), and then pushed and rearranged his body-like vessel back into a cross-legged posture. He still had a lot of work to do.

...starting with finishing his parsing of all that light that he'd looked at to memorize, as it had been traveling its way farther out into the galaxy: out and away from the Earth, all that visual information that he'd just spell-sought out only a few hours ago, of this dimensional set's own Weirdmageddon.

"Ah!" Miz looked up from dinner, facing a wall that was in the direction of the pool. "He got Indian food!" Then Miz pouted. "Without me!"

Wanda looked over. "I thought you hated spicy food?" Miz huffed. "I do. But Tikki Masala is something I will brave the burning pain for!" Wanda laughed and placed a hand on her head. "Well then, we can order Indian food tomorrow night." Miz let out a 'Yay!' and went back to her mashed potatoes.

"So, Blue's awake?" Seb didn't look all that happy about this. Miz rolled her eyes. "Just tell him you're not interested in his idea, and list why."

"Uuuugh~" Seb nearly face planted into his own mashed potatoes. "But he's so… obnoxious about it!" "You're going to have to talk to him properly. He's a kid. He needs a proper explanation." Kari told her son lightly. Seb groaned. "I already have three kids, I don't need another…"

"It's fine. I think Blue's Stanley is already dad-ing enough for him. Even if he doesn't call it that." Miz patted Seb's shoulder. Zach swallowed his food and opened his eyes. "So we're not getting a big brother?"

"I mean, if you want Blue as a big brother, and if he wants you to be a little brother…" Miz started to say. Zach bounced in his seat, a… big brother… that idea… it… it resonated inside him. He couldn't really understand why. His chest felt a little tight at the thought.

"Well I think Blue would be a super cool brother! I mean, you're my big brother already, But having more would be cool. Even if Miz is a big brother half the time." Zoe pointed out. "Also! Blue's like you!" She poked Zach's nose. "So he could teach you all sorts of stuff!"

Zach hummed. Then he turned to Miz. "Does that mean I'm gonna get those lumps on my chest when I get older, too? Do you think he's gonna teach me how to deal with that?" The adults at the table spat their food and began coughing. Because human throats connected both to their stomach and respiratory tract, because intelligent design is bullshit.

"Well, if you take hormones, you wouldn't. Probably." Miz leaned back in her chair in thought. "I confess, I don't know too much about this subject. I just swap out my entire DNA and structure when I shapeshift." Miz tilted her head as she thought about it. "Never tried to go slowly for that sort of thing… I was gonna do that to Carol… but you all said 'no'."

"That's a bit too much." Wanda sighed. "Even for Carol."

"...I thought it would have been a good learning lesson though…" Miz grumbled. "I mean, the stuff we're doing to mess with her right now doesn't seem to be making her learn any better. So why can't I just make her grow a dick?"

"Because you can't." Wanda repeated. "But why?"

"Whhhhy?" The twins asked too. "Whhhhhy?"

"Because it's invasive, and altering her body without consent." Wanda told them. "But that's why I'm doing it! It's meant to show her what it's like to have a body different from what she wants!" Miz whined. Everyone else was finishing up their dinner and Carla was bringing out desert. Fresh sliced fruit. Miz suggested it, since it was healthier than ice cream.

"You can't just go around using your magic on people all the time." Wanda scolded lightly. Miz huffed. "You didn't object to me making Carol bald."

Wanda blushed at that. Yes, that probably wasn't setting a good example for her daughter.

And it was about that point that Blue finally walked in.

He looked over at Seb, then looked away again and over to Kari. He was a good 'lip-reader', both visually and from studying the vibration he could see through the air (by the impact of the slight changes in air pressure the sound waves would make, which changed the refraction rate of the light moving through it, and…). He'd finally seen what Seb had said to that local Bill during that local Weirdmageddon, and more besides.

-"No dumb Brainiac, I'll give him my body, just like he wanted since the day he knew I used to be Bill. He wants to enter my mind to get my body, because that way he'll be able to cross the magic barrier, and it's double prize for him because he could fusion our powers together, becoming even more powerful and stuff."-

Wanting Seb's body was bad enough. Wanting to 'fuse their powers together' was worse. -That Bill hadn't been a 'Bill Cipher' like them; he didn't DESERVE the name. If he'd tried to pull ANY of that shit on Blue, trying to take any of that away from him? Blue would have killed that demon himself. That local Bill was no me-who-is-also-a-me to Blue. He wasn't even a me-who-is-not-me-at-all. NO. Not with everything that he had done and wanted to do, that Blue never would have done or wanted himself.

The final straw and determining factor for that little damning realization for him had been the way that the local Bill had glitched when Seb had brought up Liam to him. The clue, really. -That demon had been a broken-'Bill' like the one that had wanted to eat his little sister in her Void of Doors there. And Blue was trying very VERY hard not to think about how that broken-Bill had been unable to remember his own brother. He didn't like the idea of what he himself might actually be like if he ever messed himself up that badly, and managed to forget or lose track of why he was doing all of this in the first place.)

So when Blue walked into the dining room where the rest of them were, he looked directly at Kari and said, "You are right; he didn't deserve it. I made an assumption to begin with at the beginning of things, and I just got done checking it. The assumption I had been making was grossly incorrect. I... apologize for saying otherwise earlier." Blue didn't like saying it to her, but Stanley had made a largely-workable point on why it was important for him to say something like that and also mean it, while letting that being know that he meant it, in certain cases like this, when they'd both talked about it last. "I won't make that mistake again."

"Good. My Sebastian doesn't deserve to be hurt. Not when he was a child, not now, not ever." Kari's expression wasn't a glare, but it was rather firm.

Blue nodded once to her, before adding on a shrug (and an "I didn't look that far back,") at the last bit of that, then turned and looked over at Seb's two half-demon half-human spawn.

"Your 'almost an offering' of goods surrounding my place of rest was mostly appreciated, but now are scattered across most of the floor," Blue informed them. "I did manage not to break any of them that were not already broken. Probably."

"Aw… we should have used breakable stuff next time." Zoe grinned like a maniac. Zach patted his twin, "But then we'd get in trouble if any of them broke." ("That's what makes it FUN!")

Blue's eyebrows went up for a moment. "Noted," he said with some appreciation, then he looked over at Seb's Stanley next. "Your 'contribution to the effort' was NOT appreciated at all," he said to said-Stanley, with something that was approaching a glowering-glare. (Blue barely held back the 'I'm not impressed' that he wanted to slap that particular Stanley Pines with, next. But he didn't. Because apparently, all of the older ones of them were 'sensitive', except for maybe the Shermie who was here also.)

Stan, completely unabashed, bellowed with laughter. "It took a while to make it stick. Was real fun!" Carla slapped his arm lighty. "Really. Stop messing with him."

Blue got a slightly odd shift in his expression at both of their reactions, then seemed to shake it off roughly.

And then Blue turned to face Seb.

"What?" Seb groused out, not looking forward to another confrontation. Ford rubbed his face. He had to admit, this Blue was too much like that evil-Bill for his liking, but… he was Miz's brother. And she loved him, clearly. So Ford was willing to put up with him. To a point. If Blue made Seb upset again...

"I am tired of you pushing against me, and having to push back against you," Blue told Seb quite firmly. "I made some assumptions about how you would react to the idea of help, and certain suggestions of the direction-or-directions said help could take. -No," Blue said next, crossing his arms at him and narrowing his eyes. "I'm NOT making that same mistake again; I learn quickly. -We are going full 'meta-level thought' on this problem, RIGHT NOW," Blue informed him. "And you are GOING to listen. To the whole thing. Because I have to do this at least partially out of order right now, or risk enlightening your 'mom' right now while she is listening in."

"Oh no," Kari said sarcastically, "How ever will I survive?"

"Perfectly easily, since I have just eaten three times what I usually eat for a meal, and gotten eight hours of sleep immediately before I did that," Blue told her quite seriously, not quite picking up on her too-dry sarcasm without being in the Mindscape just then. "No logic errors from me this time, only all of the clear-thought in straight-lines that I usually-do always. -Though if I do have to go off and drag my Stanley back here to fix you if you start going too far, he's not going to be very pleased with me at all," Blue informed Kari next.

"Well, here's some apples." Miz held up a plate to him. Blue eyed this, then said, "...Fine. I will hold them for you for later," before reaching out and grabbing one apple per hand to stuff each piece of fruit into a shorts pocket.

Blue looked over at Kari, and back over to Seb.

"NOW," Blue said, "I don't particularly like this situation that your ongoing and willful BLINDNESS is putting me in here," Blue told Seb, ("An' we don't like you makin' Sebas all stressed out!" Stan interjected, just waiting for this demon to mess up and make him have to try punching him.) "Because what I do next is going to get me attacked by your Kari next-after-that, almost-definitely, even if she agrees with my reasoning on WHY I am doing what I am going to do next. Because time is probably short, and risking 'hurting' an oh-so-'sensitive' you-and-your-brothers even a little bit NOW is supposed to lead to her trying to 'destroy' me," Blue told him, flicking his gaze back over to Kari. ("Wanna borrow my brass knuckles, Ma?" "It's fine Stanley, I have my old knitting needles.") "BUT, I don't think she'd be all that happy with me NOT saying anything to 'not hurt' you now, and you all ending up DEAD later, as a trade-off for not doing that instead."

"...is something going to kill my babies?" Kari frowned.

"Death in its many forms here currently, as a start. Whether they can-will-or-should come back from it or not is not the topic of what I am putting up for debate right now, though," Blue told her. "But there is a HIGH likelihood of SOMETHING ELSE happening, that has been staring Seb right in the face, that he has been slapping his hands over his eyes on and refusing to think-or-do ANYTHING about." Blue turned back to Seb. "Which is the HEIGHT of stupidity!"

"...everyone lives and dies. But are my babies going to be killed?" Kari stressed.

"Almost-definitely yes," Blue told her succinctly, "STATISTICS. DON'T. LIE." Blue added, biting off the words, before turning back to face Seb. "And neither do facts. -YOU, Seb, are not a local Bill. Miz is not a local Bill, and likes you. I am not a local Bill, and you've been trying to get on my very last angle-" Blue grimaced and forcibly stopped himself from continuing any farther down that line of thought, pulling up short and merely limiting himself to only say: "And I have some suspicions now about why that may be." Blue flicked his gaze down for a moment, to look at both of Seb's hands on the table, before looking up at him again. "The local Bill 'liked' you so much it involved knives," he said next, but stopped right there before Kari could protest and went no further than that. (Yes, he'd picked that up from reviewing his memories from earlier; he wasn't stupid.) Blue didn't lean in, but he seemed to slowly begin to emit a slight menace as he said next, "How good would you call those odds you've had so far, and how lucky do you think you will be with the next Bill that you meet here, with your children now in the mix?" Blue hissed out at him angrily.

"He's dead," Seb hissed back.

"I came back to the VERY SAME dimension with ALL of my powers INTACT within LESS than A YEAR!" Blue shot back at him. "AND YOU KNOW THIS ALREADY!"

Ford's heart rate picked up. What?!

Seb groaned and rubbed his face. "WELL, he isn't coming back anytime soon, I asked the Axolotl to let me live with my family, when he brought me back here, and I'm pretty sure even HE isn't stupid enough to let that asshole Bill come back and mess with my family."

"-So what," Blue told him next. "I can control time and space, THAT lizard is DERANGED for what it did to you-" Blue shook his head roughly, "-One point in particular on which we will immediately get into LATER after we are done talking about THIS," and he was glaring at Seb now. "But those lizards CAN lie, so even if it told you that, you STILL, by your own admission of not having your Knowledge anymore, DO NOT KNOW THAT FOR CERTAIN. -And this still isn't the point," Blue snarled out at them all next. "Were you even paying attention out there in that Void, to see how many Doors there were, that are out there?!"

"Miz made sure nothing can come through her Door here-"

"-Even IF that is true, Miz's way ISN'T the only way to get to places out there, between 'sets," Blue cut him off. "At least one lizard was able to get to what is now Miz's dimensional set by other means, so that's one other method right there. There could also be another Bill out there, like her, who has an equivalent Void of their own to use to get around to all of these other places. Including here," Blue told him next. "And there IS another method that exists that I know and AM SURE about, that I am currently looking into right now. NOT a lizard thing; a human-made thing," Blue told him. "One that a trio of human idiots managed to make almost-all on their own, by a confluence of 'natural' factors in addition to what they were doing 'artificially' themselves, that lead to a connection with SEVERAL other dimensional sets right now, including mine, and I have ALREADY verified that it is a method that bypasses Miz's Void of Doors COMPLETELY," Blue informed him in all seriousness. "I didn't know about it at first, and I was actively Looking for something like it. I almost didn't See it, even when I was Looking for it," Blue repeated.

"That… That can't happen… Right?" Seb looked at his older triplet. "Besides, Miz wouldn't let it happen."

"You CAN'T count on my sister to be able to keep them all out for you," Blue repeated. (Frankly, Blue didn't like the idea that Seb was currently planning on letting his little sister stand in the line of fire for him, as Seb's first and only defense, no, not in the least. It made him want to MURDER Seb for even suggesting it, right on the spot. -And if he hadn't been female-human-vesseled just then, and male-human-vesseled instead, he probably wouldn't have been able to grab onto and strangle that urge in time to stop himself from doing it.) "-You have no defenses right now. No offenses to fight anyone off right now, either. NONE. -You haven't thought about it, and you haven't even tried-"

"Because there's nothing I can do about it! The planet is supposed to last a thousand years more before Time Baby comes back and destroys everything anyway. Those years will be boring as well, nothing will happen. I won't be there to save everyone and I certainly don't care about them!" (Ford frowned a little at that.)

"-You CAN do something about it WITHOUT wrecking the timeline of this dimension here in the process! You could EASILY evacuate anyone and everyone you want to take out of here using portals BEFORE that happens first, YOU ALREADY NEED TO MAKE SURE THAT NOTHING STOPS THAT FROM HAPPENING to KEEP what you ALREADY HAVE - AND ALL of this IS FIXABLE! I've ALREADY THOUGHT of all this, you JUST AREN'T LISTENING to me! -STOP MAKING EXCUSES!" Blue yelled out at him next. "This changes NOW," Blue told him, just about seething, "Because the very LAST thing I will put up with when it comes to you here is having you continue along in this way blindly, and have Miz come back to visit with you only to then find you all DEAD one day, and some other 'evil Bill incarnate' lording it over this 'set with everything on fire and in-flame. -I REFUSE to let YOU put her through THAT, due to your sheer and willful continuing IGNORANCE, for no reason at all other than your 'sensitivity' on not wanting to think about this yourself. -Do you understand what I am telling you so far."

Sebastian stared at him wide-eyed. He just wanted to stay away from his past as much as possible… Was that making him... ignorant? All these years complaining about how stupid some things were and how he had to respect these 'laws'… And now… He wasn't going to come back, he couldn't! But if he did?! "...Yes." He nodded, tense. But his plan of 'solving things' was still just madness, just like local Bill, just like his own plan back in his old dimension. "I understand what you're saying."

Letting people do whatever they wanted wouldn't work. Heck, even he could recognize that a complete freedom with EVERY SINGLE BEING would destroy everything.

Blue nodded once back, acknowledging Seb's own acknowledgment, though he didn't look any less grim, and his glare, directed at Seb, hardly diminished one bit. "I thought that you would just want to start fixing things here yourself, once we talked even a little bit and I offered you my help in starting things off." Clearly not, if this Sebastian was going to be so difficult-

"If you do things my way, then it wouldn't MATTER if any demons came in here, or not," Blue told him, "The new system in place would be able to handle it for you, because of the new setup. -Because no matter what that demon did here, they wouldn't be able to have any real impact on anyone living their lives here anymore."

"I don't want this potential... invasion of demons here… And even if your plan keeps people from harm… it's still stupid to think people will just want to live a life where they're just doing the things they want. And getting to just breeze through it without issue. It gets boring."

"I KNOW you don't want them here," Blue ground out at him, "But you can't keep them out, I can't keep them out, Miz can't keep them out, NONE OF US KNOW HOW TO KEEP THEM OUT, so suck it up and LISTEN TO ME, already! -Because the ONLY reason you don't want them here is because of and for a small set of particular REASONS. Because you don't like the idea of what you think they will do, and what impact they will have on you and everyone else you care about, here. -There is a want BEHIND your stated-want, and that is EXACTLY what I'm PLANNING on addressing with what I have planned!" Blue told him next. "But you don't want to do that," Blue said next, "YOU don't even want to HEAR about it. YOU just want to IGNORE ME and say that I'm wrong, without LISTENING to me and letting me EXPLAIN to you what I haven't TOLD you yet already, because YOUR priorities on what you want to hear first are more like a human's now, and oh boo hoo, that I didn't GUESS RIGHT at all of what you wanted to hear about FIRST. -WELL, that's FINE," Blue gritted out at him next, though the 'FOR NOW' was heavily implied by the glare that Blue gave him right then as he said it. "-You still don't get to get away with risking my little sister or her own happiness with your stupidity, because you aren't doing your job as a parent to keep her siblings here SAFE and ALIVE," Blue glared at him outright (and if he'd been in his exoskeleton body just then, Seb would have been fried on the spot).

Seb growled at him, eye red and fire flickering on his palms. Wanda hugged his arm as Ford's hand kept him grounded, but he was still trying hard not to glare. How dare he say Seb wasn't being a good parent just because he wasn't taking the absurd responsibility to fucking rewrite the universe just to please Blue's whim?! Fuck him.

"Because of this, you have two options left here," Blue told him. "Either you handle this yourself - which frankly, is MY preference for you to take IF I thought you would ACTUALLY DO IT, I have ENOUGH on my OWN plate to handle as it is - OR you let someone else handle it FOR you WITHOUT getting in the way," Blue told him. "For the second one, you can either pass the responsibility for this all off to Kari," Blue lifted a palm to point it at her roughly as he declared this, "And let HER handle things FOR you moving forward, with my help and potentially-also Miz's own help, towards her own ideas on how to set up defenses against this from happening, since she is a 'mom' and motivated to keep her children safe, and will do what is necessary to be ready to ACTUALLY destroy anyone else who tries to hurt or kill any one of you here," Blue told him. "Or you shut up and let me do it MY way, with Miz backing me up. -Because my little sister AGREES with me on this," Blue informed him, (THAT had Ford looking over at her. Miz… agreed with his crazy plan? Miz caught the look and shrugged. "I was more for transmigrating anyone who wants to be part of such a system into a privately owned dimension and seeing how they like it. I'm still working out all the bugs in making this actually work.") "The only thing I'm debating with HER right now are all the little finer points of all the means and methods for doing it. She KNOWS it's a good idea overall." ("...I just don't want to lose the people I care about...)

"If you want to do it yourself, then you have two choices there also, as I see them," Blue told Seb next. "You can take the information from me, memorize it, understand it all - which I can help you with - and then pass it all off to Kari, and have her 'take point' on all this," Blue said next, "Or you do that, and then handle it yourself instead of letting Kari do it for you. -This set of options will work better for you if you don't trust me, especially if you don't trust me to not turn Kari over to my way of thinking in a way that will be completely disregarding your own," Blue noted. "Because if you decide to do it yourself, you will be able to check all of the things I give you yourself, and ask others to help you with it all, too. Like Miz, still. -You DON'T have to do this alone," Blue told him, "But you DO have to let SOMEONE step in and do SOMETHING here, if you want to KEEP what you have, and are any sort of real brother to my sister at all."

Seb massaged his temples. "Dude, you aren't doing anything in this dimension. First of all, from the way you talk about everything, I'm pretty sure our worlds don't work the same. At all. Two. You aren't getting my mom involved in any of your crazy plans or eternal life with demons or whatnot. You can go mess around yours if you want… but I already said No," Seb sighed, running a hand through his curls.

"You think I might not be able to protect my family… And I think that you're right on that one." Seb stared down at his six-fingered hand and watched it glow softly. "I haven't been exercising it much, neither have the twins and I don't want to lose any of it. I don't want them to lose control of it because of me. What if I make my powers grow. Because I ain't messing with the universe's order or whatever because you think it's better. You're still a Bill Cipher, who caused Weirdmageddon, and part of me can't fully trust your judgement. Because I know what I had in mind when it happened… What I can do though is protect my family," Ford gasped softly, staring at his brother wide-eyed.

Ford didn't think Blue's idea could work. There had to be order, letting people do whatever they wanted would destroy that. But if Seb trained his powers… Maybe he could even become closer to the way he had been during Weirdmageddon and that was in and of itself, amazing.

Blue slowly let out a breath. He still looked a bit angry, but he was looking significantly less angry and tense than he had been before Seb had said what he'd just said. (Blue had almost interrupted Seb at the start, but the look Miz had given him had stopped him long enough for him to realize that Seb was actually talking about doing things now, when he hadn't been at any point at all before this as far as Blue could see, not just saying 'no' to him and not listening.)

"Yes," Blue said, "I am not doing anything in this dimension; no, I AM doing something in this dimension right now - I am talking to you," Blue clarified as well as he could, for completeness. (And part of the reason Blue was more calm now was because he felt that Seb was finally not ignoring him anymore and actually had Decided to do something.) "Point one: the structure of the place itself isn't that far off, but yes," Blue told him next, "Nothing in your 'set here is a Game." And Blue grimaced at that, how uncomfortable it all was here in that way. "Point two:" Blue rolled his eyes a bit, "Too late, your 'mom' is already involved, because I already told her about what you refused to listen to earlier; we talked over tea, before I fell asleep. She agrees with me about it as much as my little sister does right now." ("Really?" "I think it has many problems, but I can see where Blue thinks it's a good idea. But the issues inherent within it just wouldn't work for long term.") "We're talking about ways and means and methods as well, and I want more of her input; I think it will be helpful to me, to make sure I am covering everything of what everyone wants properly and fully." (And as far as Blue was concerned, he thought she wanted to try and prove him wrong, and he wanted to see her try and then end up agreeing with him, instead.)

Kari looked unimpressed and Stanford narrowed his eyes at her. "It's fine Stanford, I'm a grown ass woman. I can take care of myself."

Blue looked away from Seb for a moment. "You saying 'no' means…" Blue grimaced, "Would mean completely losing your 'vote' on the whole situation, if you were going to continue not doing anything at all." But then Blue looked back at him and said, "But you're not planning on doing nothing. You are still trying to do it yourself here, if you're planning on trying to find another way to make everything work here, yourself. -And if that's different from the way I am currently planning on doing it, because you 'don't trust my judgment'? So what. I don't care what you do here, as long as it WORKS. -Chaos, I'll even take notes," Blue told him, with a wave of his hand, "If you manage to come up with anything better that I have in… what, your fifty more years you have left? -If you think you can come up with something better in that amount of time, than I have so far in my one trillion and counting - since right now you plan on dying after that - then have at it. Go ahead and try and prove me wrong, and I'll sit back and take notes while you do it." But even a year or two of thinking about it all properly should have Seb realizing that he, Blue, was right on at least one front - on living forever being better than dying-and-staying-dead - now, shouldn't it? Blue let out a sigh, and his shoulders sagged a bit in relief. (He really hadn't wanted to have to take this 'set on himself, too. Getting Seb to do it would be so much easier... and at least he was planning on moving forward on some things right now.)

"I can't think of how you'd do more than protect your family here by making your powers grow, but that's a start. -Point three: maybe you can protect them, and maybe you can't, but you DON'T have to do it ALL BY YOURSELF, because you are NOT alone anymore. And if you want help with that..." Blue shrugged. "I can give you that help, if you trust me enough for that, or trust Miz to help you check it for 'judgment' or anything else you have 'trust issues' with your idea-of-me with, maybe, if-and-when you take it! Just got done with helping her fix her Deals with all her 'friends' in her 'set, so she should have no more can't-be-thinking-on-this problems that could possibly get in the way of anything anymore now, at least," Blue muttered out next, rubbing the side of his hand against his right temple.

("Your friends?" "Apparently my original Deal with them didn't mess with their minds, but it messed with mine.")

"-But yes, I'm right on point three, and yes exercising it to not lose it is a good idea, but you're going to need something NOW that you can rely on while you're getting yourself up to speed again on your powers, just in case you have to before then, for defense of Miz and her siblings and 'mom' and you in the meantime - and NO," Blue said a little peevishly, "I am not just handing off a working quantum destabilizer to your probably-wants-to-kill-me-now 'local warlord' over here," he tossed a thumb Kari's way.

"Warlord? Now that's a title I can get behind." Kari sipped her after dinner wine with a grin. Ford hung his head. "Ma, please don't agree with him-" "What? You think I won't make a good warlord?" "Ma!"

"As much as I would like to be able to just hand off several-somethings PROPERLY lethal to you," Blue gestured at Seb, "For you to use here and call it a day, no, I'm NOT stupid. I don't trust you all that much with something that lethal - or anything worse than that, either - because I have NO guarantee that you will be able to make sure that anything physical that I give you won't ever be stolen away from you by somebody else who would use it on either Miz or myself while we're here." Then Blue got a really 'ugh' look on his face. "...which means I'll have to come up with something properly 'non-lethal' and better-safed for the two of you-both to have for your use here instead," he said to both Wanda and Seb. And the 'ugh' look persisted, as he scrubbed a hand through his hair, closing his eyes for a moment. "And that one better not get his hands on ANYTHING from me; I refuse to let him accidentally blow up the whole planet," Blue said next, blindly pointing completely accurately in Ford's direction. "Ugh. I hate having to make things that are Stanford-proof. SO ANNOYING."

"Hey!" Ford complained. "I wouldn't blow up the planet!" He crossed his arms and glared. (Well there was that one time on planet Jw23 with that exploding sandworm that was lodged inside the planet's mantle-)

"ON ACCIDENT," Blue complained at him, "BECAUSE IDIOT." Blue scrubbed a hand through his hair roughly, before turning back to Seb, who was grinning at his brother. "-You should also time-lock your dimension to prevent any more time travel to the past than what already happened," Blue told Seb next, "And any to the future that would happen during that Time Baby span, at a minimum. -I don't want that broken-'Bill' that you killed getting out of dying any more than you do. THAT would cause PROBLEMS." He didn't want that thing anywhere NEAR his sister! Not to mention what that would do to this dimension's timeline. "Miz had taken a Look around at how I did it in the Dimension 46'\ in my 'set, the whole time-lock thing, and she's adapted things effectively that she's seen there before. If you trust her to explain it to you properly, what she's Seen, then you don't have to trust 'my judgment' at all on that one - just the FACT that there's NO way I would EVER endanger my own escape from the 'Nightmare Realm' being undone on me EVER, so OF COURSE I would handle that properly." Blue paused. "Ah…" He turned to Miz. "...You did also Look at it again, after I finished fixing that little problem with the broken time-tapes sometimes leading to new-and-more dimensions being created for travellers to be shunted into, instead of disallowing that travel of even beginning to try and start in the first place there, yes?" he asked her next almost weakly, sounding vaguely embarrassed and twitching slightly in place as he said it. Miz nodded, and Blue suddenly looked very relieved.

"I can make it so that the people get bounced back to when they first attempted to time travel, it'll just send them right back, maybe a second after they disappeared in time originally. So, no travelling and no accidentally creating new timelines," she confirmed with words.

"Right, yes. -Were there more than the three points you gave that I need to address here-and-now before continuing?" Blue asked of Seb next. "Because my Stanley said that I should only talk about and offer the 'no strings attached' want-to-give-you things after a 'negotiation', and never-before. -Because that makes it clear that those things are-not and were-not-ever contingent on the outcome of the first-things-done-first? And could not be used as possible-leverage, in the course of getting those things?" Blue let out a breath and looked at Seb expectantly.

"Look," Seb rubbed his head, this Goddamn headache was killing him, "Protecting this dimension from demon invasion from other Bills who aren't as nice as Miz is a good thing. I agree with that. But handing out effective immortality to everyone here is gonna cause so many problems and I just don't think it's a good idea. -For now," he added quickly, not wanting Blue to go off on him again. "This is something that requires way more heads thinking on it, than just us."

"Mm, for now. 'Way more heads thinking on it' is always a good idea - that's fine. I'll give you the help you need to better-protect your dimension from outside-invasion in the meantime, from anyone, so you can get those heads thinking on that fixing-things problem, instead of all of them tied up with the short-term defense and the protecting in the meantime," said Blue. The demon looked almost completely relaxed now. "SO!" Blue clapped his hands together. "I have a LIST of things so far, from what I have seen and talked about with you here. -Five things, that you can say 'yes' to? If you want them. -You can say 'yes' to all of them; that's fine," he told Seb. "And there may be more things to add later."

"Joy." Seb muttered. Stan was paying attention, he was a businessman, he was used to hearing out people's proposals and then shooting them down if he thought they were bullshit.

"First thing, unrelated to previous: teaching you how to turn Seen things into knowledge, because lizards, and on principle - that stupid thing tried to screw you over by giving you that Knowledge 'power' before, and then ripping it out from under you without letting you realize it wasn't an intrinsic part of you, first, and that OFFENDS me. TO HELL WITH that lizard, and whatever plans it has for you," Blue told him huffily, with a dark gleam in his eye. "-Second thing, also unrelated to previous: teaching your half-demon spawn here how to control their powers, and how not to make bad Deals. -Third thing, also unrelated to previous: Wanda said that you might want an ambrace-reminder visualizer tool like Miz has, and to ask you first if you want one, not just make-and-give one to you, for you to use. -Fourth thing, that is… somewhat related to previous, but only because it is part of my own sister's continued-safety here: general information sharing on the state of things between 'sets, in case I find out about something problematic-coming, and can give you a 'heads-up' about it so you are ready for it first. -Fifth thing, mostly related as a 'fix' as a big brother to my little sister, who won't have to worry about a boundary there if there doesn't need to be one: getting that other eye of yours back for you, regenerated / recovered / replaced / upgraded-new, one of these?" Blue pointed at his eyepatch at distance from him.

And then Blue paused. "WAIT." He frowned.

"...that IS just an eyepatch-of-cloth-and-string, and not-also your HAT in disguise, because stupid lizards are not funny and like to hide things on people without telling them what-all they ALSO are, IS IT?" Blue said almost suspiciously, squinting at it and wondering if he had yet another thing to be offended about regarding the local DERANGED lizard, on this Seb-him's behalf.

Seb was going to get mad about wanting that hideous yellow eye back, but then the rest of Blue's sentence hit and he just got confused. "No, it's just an Eyepatch. I… look, maybe getting a cybernetic eye would be cool, but I don't really want that gross yellow eye back. It…" he paused. "It doesn't work with the aesthetic I'm going for."

"...the heck does that mean?" Ford complained but got shushed by his youngest triplet. "You don't get to say anything about my fashion Mr. I-wear-turtlenecks-in-the-summer-" Seb turned back to Blue. "So I don't need your help in regrowing my eye."

Blue blinked at him. "Why not? You clearly can't do it yourself, if you haven't done it yourself yet…?" he asked Seb. "You are a me-who-is-also-me, yes? -Why wouldn't I help you out, when I can do that? Miz is also a me-who-is-also-me, and I help her out, too. That's fair," he said simply, like it made no sense for him not to do that. "Binocular vision is great!" He paused. "...Unless you don't 'trust' me with doing that for you." Blue paused again. "WELL. It IS very close to your current body's brain. -Miz could do it for you, instead?"

Seb groaned. "I… Get that you just want to help. I get that you think you're right. But… You're insane. You know this. Your judgment isn't something I can trust. You're a kid. Your plan is… childish." Seb blinked at that train of thought. Of course. Blue's plan was childish, naive almost, because Blue's a kid. A world where people didn't die and could be whoever, whatever they wanted to be- that was a child's fantasy. It was the sort of thing from Mabel's old cartoons as a child, the type of thing from Zach and Zoe's little baby shows… where everything was simple and people didn't have all those complex issues of the real world-

"Your plan's great as a thought experiment, but it wouldn't work in the real world. With real people. They'd just go crazy," Seb realized. And actually, wouldn't insanity for everyone just be what a Bill Cipher would want as an end goal?

"Yes, I'm insane. -How is your point 'my judgment must be off because of this' - what is your proof of this? And what's wrong with everyone going crazy? That's a FEATURE, not a BUG! -An IMPROVEMENT!" Blue shook his head, and glared at Seb next. "-Everyone is already nuts to begin with, 'crazy' in stupid ways that make no sense at all, and my 'judgment' isn't off, my judgment is BETTER than everyone-else's! -You can tell this, " Blue told him "Because I'm NOT trying to MURDER everyone I see in all of existence who is by definition Irregular! -I'm trying to, and going to, be doing the OPPOSITE of that!" Blue complained out at him. "Don't ACT like you're not insane, too! -I KNOW that you are!" Blue was frowning at him again now.

...is THAT what insanity was considered, for a Shape? Ford glanced over at Miz and Seb, feeling bad for them and anyone else that had to live in a society like that. She'd told him about it, but he hadn't realized it was quite so bad. That having the decency to not want anyone different looking to die, for looking different, was considered insane- was considered-

"Yes I am insane." Seb nodded. (Blue relaxed almost-fully again at this immediately.) "And I don't trust my own judgment half the time. That's why I've got Wanda and my family to give me their input as well." He nodded to them all. Wanda squeezed his hand.

"And I have my Zodiac for that, on the few things I am not yet sure about, because I am winning and have won now, with them. And I will not just 'win', but 'win' and 'own' them too, that much further," Blue told him with a firm nod. "I seek more input from them as well, because they are SUPPOSED to be helping me." Blue's expression darkened at the last, and he shook it off slightly. "...It's fine," he muttered out, looking away from Seb. "I think I know where my Stanley is going with all this, now. Mostly. The same direction that I was, really, but now it's going to be easier with him as the key leverage point now, instead of Sixer. -He should be able to pull them all along with him without too much trouble. Sixer's just being stubborn again-and-always, as usual." Blue huffed out a breath and rolled his eyes, looking up at the ceiling. "We get him started and finally moving, and the whole rest of the lot of them will just come right on with. Then everything will just be perfectly-imperfect, the start of how it's all SUPPOSED to be."

"Look, Blue," Seb found some comfort in his realization that Blue really was a kid (he'd made this realization before but it hadn't really sunk in just how MUCH of a child he was), because once he realized he wasn't debating with an all-powerful demon, but arguing with a stubborn child… And of course Miz might like Blue's idea, she was a kid herself, and a naive one too. Heck, she often got swayed by TV commercials selling products that no one in their right mind would want- "Things and people, aren't simple. Giving everyone the chance to come back to life is pretty cool in theory, but it wouldn't work out. Sure, some people would enjoy it, and many would abuse their power over others- it just wouldn't work. I am not going to use your idea as the solution here. Let the dead rest. At the most, I might allow for making it so that people only died of old age, so that accidents, violence or illness-" he thought back to Matsuda, "-wouldn't take people away before anyone was ready to handle it." He glanced around at his family. "Miz already made a Deal with Wanda that my family wouldn't get killed through accidents and violence, or disease."

"Unless it's self defense, like if any of the Pines attacked someone else, they're allowed to fight back." Miz clarified. "Self defense should be allowed."

Blue looked at the two of them with frustration.

"Little sis, there are SO many holes in that, it's hilarious," Blue told Miz, completely deadpan flat-voiced, then his eyes narrowed. "I'm GOING to have to check this Deal you have here with them for you, too." (Miz pouted.) Blue turned back to Seb again. "...I could hammer you with this forever, but you'll just dig in your heels and get single-mindedly single-eye-focused STUBBORN with me on it, won't you, you little kludged-in 'let's make him a six-fingered-Hand here'," Blue said to him, waggling the fingers of his left hand at him, then let out a sound like a snort. "Whatever. Stupid deranged thing. -You said that you're going to think about it, that you need more Minds on it? Fine. Get some more man-hours in. Stack them right up, as quickly and thoroughly as you can. -If I take the pressure off, and you think about it, you'll come over to my way of thinking on your own. You'll see. -The FIRST thing you'll do is add 'not dying of starvation or thirst' to that list; adding a corollary/ of 'not doing that' as also 'having no detrimental effect on any being's body' to then come in at a close SECOND after that; THIRD is realizing that the loophole with 'dying of old age' is changing your lifespan to 1 day less than infinity - which is still infinity, but not 'living forever'." Blue shrugged at him. "-HOW LONG do you want me to keep going, now that you're actually listening to me, now?" Blue said almost leadingly next. The demon looked and sounded perfectly calm, almost relaxed… and maybe a little amused too, given how he was bouncing on the balls of his feet now, and also the gleam in his eyes.

Wanda looked over at Miz, who suddenly looked way too innocent to be so. "Miz…" she said slowly, "-were you planning on altering our lifespans?"

Miz gasped, a hand on her chest. "Whaa? However did you come up with that crazy idea- I am offended that you would think such a thing of me-"

"Miz…" Wanda narrowed her eyes at her. Miz pouted. "...modern medicine has been improving and extending humans life expectancy for a while now, they might even suddenly get inspired to get the cure for cancer… and the effects of aging on a human body, and organ damage from aging, and Alzheimer's… and other things…" Miz looked away. Then she flushed and protested, "-which are all GOOD things for people to learn how to prevent! It isn't a bad thing-" (In the background of this, Blue was grinning as he gestured at "-MY LITTLE SISTER!" like he was showing her off. "Good job! VERY good set of plans!" Blue looked immensely proud of her, for what she'd just said.)

Wanda sighed. Of course. "Well, they aren't bad things," she told Miz first, because she didn't want her getting the wrong idea. "And I think it's good that you-" at Miz's expression, Wanda corrected herself, "-that people will come up with those treatments to make life better for everyone, but…" And here, Wanda paused, realizing the trap she was in. There was nothing she could say to shoot down Miz's plans. All those things she listed were stuff people were already trying to do. And none of them were bad ideas.

"VERY good set of plans," Blue repeated, his grin growing even wider, as they both kept on waiting for Wanda's continued response. "WELL WITHIN their current definition of almost-flat 'morality', yes?"

"...it'd be too expensive for people to afford, what with our healthcare being absolute SHIT." Dipper drawled from where he was munching on some apples. He'd stayed quiet for nearly all of this, but he had to speak up.

"Oh look," Blue said. "Another thing that just needs a little fixing! Which many other human countries on this same planet have already tackled better than this one has currently," Blue said smoothly to them, still-grinning.

Miz groaned. "That asshole that I warned your Stan about, got elected President here. And unfortunately, mom won't allow me to kill him." "Murder isn't good, even if Slump's a terrible person." Wanda sighed.

Blue blinked at her, all expression dropping off of his face momentarily.

"Should I smite him for you?" Blue asked, then suddenly, there was PRESENCE and a Shepard's tone buzzing in the room, and he was grinning so wide-eyed and slit-eyed and widely, bobbing and gesturing about with a wild theatrical high energy just like- "WHY, I'M HAPPY TO PLAY THE VILLAIN ANY DAY OF THE WEEK! HAHAHAHAHA!"

-And it just as abruptly went away in the span of a moment as he settled right back down, right by Miz's shoulder, wrapping an arm around them to let a hand settle down onto her opposite shoulder gently, and said, "I'm VERY good at it, and I'm not local. -You can blame it on the visiting demon, if you want!" He nodded down at her happily, with a small smile on his face, and an inquisitive expression. "I don't mind." (Stanford, in the background, was not quite gasping for breath upon seeing this, as his heart rate was having trouble calming down. Stan reached over to grip his arm. "Breathe Sixer, don't go haven't yer PTSD flashbacks right now-" He stopped when he saw Blue's head come up towards them like a shot, staring. Aw, shit...)

"He's an issue, but he's just a symptom. America's tainted, it's fucked up and killing Slump wouldn't change that fact that rampant racism, classism, ignorance and prejudice is what even allowed him to come to power in the first place." Miz grumbled. "So killing him, while satisfying, wouldn't actually change things, not when so many people agree with his ideals."

Blue looked down at her, then back up at Ford. Then back down at Miz.

"WELL," Blue said. "Probably just as well. I'm probably going to be a little busy for the next few hours as Kari tries to pull off murdering me for doing too much of the laugh!" He was grinning a little bit again, but it was kind of fixed and twitching. (Because OOPS.)

Said woman was at Ford's side, hugging his head to her chest and whispering soothing assurances that he was ok, while stroking his hair. Ford's breathing was haggard and he was shaking. Miz glanced over, looking distressed at his state.

"Yeesh." Blue walked over and said, "Does he have the metal plate. -He probably has the plate." And the side of his palm came down sharply with a *twang!* straight down on top of Ford's head. (The abbreviated shock of which should disrupt any currently-ongoing runaway thought processes.) "Hey," Blue said, dropping to a crouch down in front of him, "Nobody is dying. -I'd have to try and remove Miz's protection for that on all of you first, which would be hard, and you didn't see or feel me do that first. Yes?"

Ford jumped and Kari snarled at Blue. "Don't touch him-!" She was reaching out, her long painted nails almost clawing in Blue's direction. "N-no, I'm fine mother. It- doesn't hurt-" Ford quickly assured her.

"Of course it doesn't hurt, I don't break things that I don't want to have broken! He won't even bruise," Blue said as he shoved off his knees to get himself back onto his feet and standing again. "'Not touching him' would have been more likely to apply the wrong amount of force-pressure to properly disrupt the runaway brain firings he had going on there. I needed the on-the-flt force-feedback of touch for that, to do that properly. You wouldn't want him to feel that way longer..."

Kari was still glaring at him. "You also made him panic."

"Yes, yes, 'penalty' for me because I didn't fix it entirely by rewinding time on you all, just-and-only stopped it from going any further and helped push recovery back from it to happen that much faster, no relapses due to me; what'll it be." Blue crossed his arms, looking annoyed, both at himself and with this Stanford. "I get veto on it if it's too far," Blue told Kari next.

"No rewinding my human family, brother." Miz spoke up, going over and hugging Ford's arm.

"Yes, I just said that," Blue agreed. "Bad idea."

"...no mental attacks on them either." Miz reminded him.

"I wasn't trying to!" Blue complained. "'Sensitive'. -I just misgauged the timing a bit. I don't know him that well. -And-don't-want-to," he added next quickly, eyeing Seb's Ford with a glare. Then looked away from him a bit as he muttered, "'Sensitive'," again. "Sensitive to WHAT, just-and-only, exactly."

"Fordsie? Do you wanna go to your room and rest?" Miz asked, nuzzling him and purring comfortingly. Ford closed his eyes and breathed for a bit. "Yes, I… I think I need a break…" He got to his feet, shaking, and Stan slung an arm around him to help his oldest brother walk.

"Miz, make him- think it's a good idea to sleep- by talking at him about it for awhile… please?" Blue self-corrected twice in a row, there. "Sleeping time for him is now."

"I can do that on my own, thank you very much." Ford ground out at him. Blue eyed him at this, clearly not believing this pronouncement in any way.

Miz followed the Stans as they left the dining room, worried about how Ford was feeling. Then the three were gone and Blue turned to face Kari's glower. Well. It looked like he was going to have to handle this now.