Illusion is Reality
Chapter 118
-There's a message somewhere-
(Several months later, with Sebastian's Ford)
Sadly, Ford probably should have foreseen this occurring at some point. After all, it hadn't been as though he hadn't been in the room, aware, and paying at least some attention, when Miz's big brother had talked to Seb and their mother about guidelines for the next time he came back. But he hadn't thought it would really affect him; since Blue wanted to be with his sister, and since summer was over now and Miz was back with Seb, Ford didn't think it would be an issue.
At this point, he was starting to think that not requesting that Blue 'check in' with at least one of them every time that he visited their dimension, had not been a very good idea at all. Perhaps they should have been a bit more crazy-paranoid about it, knowing where he was and was not while he was here, or whether he was even here or not at any point in time. But no one had had the energy to really deal with Blue at the time and, over the summer in Jersey, during which Blue hadn't bothered them at all, they'd sort of forgotten about it.
That may have been a mistake, Ford thought, as he stared up into the face of a grinning Bill Cipher, because it would have been rather good to know that Blue was in the area again before planning out this study trip with the interns today.
(Ford noted that Blue was in his 'younger' form today, female and teen-aged, but otherwise blue-and-black haired as usual, decked out with those odd black tattoos that fully-covered his arms and legs, with that brick pattern up his neck to and across his chin. Blue was floating there in place in front of him, hands and arms crossed behind his back. But what he was wearing was…)
"...What…" Ford hesitated to call it witch's clothing; the Handwitch might have something to say about that, if he did. The scientist tightened his hands around the straps to his backpack, continuing to stare up at Blue with a bit of worry (for the interns milling behind him, accompanying him) and no small concern. They weren't very far from the Institute, only a five-minute or so walk into the cool autumn woods, but...
...he didn't quite like the look of that grin, or the look in either of Blue's eyes, nor did he understand what the potential implications of the clothing he was wearing today might be. (If it had been Seb, or Xin, the clothing choice might mean something, maybe? Either way, he knew Seb well enough to know when clothing was meant to be making a statement, and this was certainly meant to do that.) Ford was getting a very 'Bill Cipher' vibe off of him today, almost comparable to when Blue had visited them all the first time in Stan's New York apartment home, and offered to kill the president for Miz, and-
Ford forced himself to pull in a deep breath. (This wasn't Bill. This was Blue. Blue was a different Bill Cipher. This wasn't Bill...) And then Ford asked-
"Ah, hello Blue. While the surprise visit is nice, I'm rather too busy to play with you at the moment. If you're looking for your sister, she's with Sebastian and his family a few towns over." Ford was trying to be civil. Perhaps Blue would do the same.
"Yes," said the demon. "I know where she is." And his grin and the expression on Blue's face didn't lessen at all as Blue leaned his face in just a bit closer to him and said, "I came here to see YOU!" ...Oh dear. "-Among other things that I am doing here, of course," Blue added, as the demon backed off, straightening in place and floating away from him, just a bit.
He could hear the interns coming down the path now. Ford sighed. Ok, well, the upside is, he WAS planning to show them proof of magic, so he could explain that magic itself was actually just another form of energy that could be harnessed and manipulated, like other forms of energy, for science! So… maybe this wouldn't be… all bad. (And even as Ford thought this, he knew he was pretty much lying to himself.) This semester's Interns were another boy-girl pair. Terrence and Estania, who got along well (to Ford's relief) and (if the rumor mill was correct) were getting to be more than just friends in the two weeks they'd been here. (Ford thought that was moving much too fast, but young people these days always seemed so impatient to him.) But more than that, Viola had returned to work at the Center part-time in-between her continuing online classes, and she'd come with them on this trip.
Estania gasped first. "Is that a witch?!" she blurted out, which made Ford want to bury his face in his hands. It begins. "Not quite, but not wrong either." He sighed. Well, it was only polite to introduce them all. "Everyone, this is Blue. He's…" Ford paused, unsure about how to describe him. "...a little dangerous. But if you're respectful and don't make any bargains, you should be fine." ("HA! -Yes! Fear and respect are exactly what I deserve as my due!" Blue grinned out at him, looking pleased.) Ford realized suddenly that while he and his family were offered a modicum of protection against Blue, on account of being his precious little sister's beloved human family, Ford's interns had no such protection.
"Would sh- er… HE, turn us into frogs?" Estania asked (sounding much too happy about this).
"HM." Blue raised his head (and floated slightly higher at this). "Do you WANT to be turned into frogs?" the demon asked them slowly, still-grinning.
"-Only if you turn us back afterward!" Estania was thrilled to meet a REAL witch! Oh my god! This was so cool! (And Ford breathed a sigh of relief that Estania had actually responded to him with that caveat so very quickly, and that Blue actually seemed to be considering this instead of just snapping his fingers and calling it a day. Xin, or Miz, tended to be a bit more freely undiscerning about their transformations of others…)
"Oh! What kind of frog are you going to turn her into?!" Viola asked next, sounding even more happy about this. Ford wanted to cry. "No frogging, please. We still have a whole day of hiking to do." Ford turned to Terrence, hoping the boy would give him another vote in 'no turning into frogs'.
"...Hopping WOULD take longer than hiking," Ford heard behind his back (from the demon), to his utter surprise. The girls "Awwww"ed in disappointment (!?) and Ford straightened up, trying to get back in control of this field trip. "Miss Se, there will be frogs at our destination. We're going to visit one of the magical springs hidden deep within the woods."
"Woo! Frogs!" Viola cheered. Estania joined in, and the two began chanting "Frogs! Frogs! Frogs!" Ford sighed. Their enthusiasm was great, but sometimes he worried about the youth of today. He turned to Terrence, hoping the boy would be the reasonable one. But the boy was rubbing his chin, contemplating. "If Estania turned into a frog, could a kiss turn her back to normal?"
Ford saw the way Blue's grin widened at this (as he floated a bit forward into his peripheral view at his left side), and he knew he was going to be getting a headache before long.
But then Ford saw that Cipher-eye spell flicker into being right at and in front of Blue's forehead, and Blue jolted upwards, letting out a curse in Galactic Standard as he twisted in place and lost the grin. His expression dropped into something stormy, as he raised a hand suddenly full of blue light and shoved said left arm past Ford's face, aiming at and past him towards the right side of the path while looking downright furious at-
Ford reacted instantly, ducking down not just below the level of Blue's arm, but even lower to the ground, less of a large target, and rushed towards the interns to tackle them to the ground, get them out of the ray of fire or magic or Frog-Beam-
-and hit all three of them unimpeded, taking them down with them.
Silence.
...except for a few groans from his various interns, who had not moved to dodge out of the way. (But at least they were all still human at this point in time?)
"HM." Ford heard the demon say.
Ford glanced up and around, looking up and over at the demon.
Blue was still floating right where he had been before, left arm still outstretched towards the woods, perpendicular to the interns and himself (not that Ford was dumb enough to trust the directionality of just that!). Blue's right arm was held behind his back, and the demon seemed equal parts amused and vaguely surprised.
Both hands were still glowing, and-
Ford blinked. Both hands?
Ford's gaze followed the trail of light from left hand trailing up the left arm, lost sight of the thread, except there was another one flowing straight down to the ground from his right hand to pool there, trailing towards-
Ford's eyes widened.
"Oh no, a tree." The sides of Blue's mouth twitched upwards in amusement, and he quickly clenched-closed his left hand to a fist, like springing a trap. And Ford flinched hard as-
-the line on the ground jerked and shot upwards taut, something dark-aqua in color flying towards Blue-
-and snapped into his open right hand at his back.
Ford blinked. (For a second, he'd thought Blue had stuck a frog spell to him from that trailing line of energy, somehow.) Still wrapping all three of his charges in his arms, he slowly got up from the ground. ("Whoa Dr. Pines! You've been working out-")
He stared as Blue pulled his right hand away from his back, around to his front again, and the glowing blue light at his hands faded away to nonexistence once again.
"What spell was that?" Ford asked cautiously, placing the interns back down and putting himself between the demon and them. If that protection bracelet meant anything, perhaps he could shield them with his own body if worse came to worse.
(...assuming that the demon hadn't put something into the bracelets that he himself had created, in order to get around them rather easily. Ford was regretting not making his own now… At least Miz had checked them…? Still, though.)
Blue's eyebrows went up, and he waggled the book he was now holding in his right hand at him.
"What, you can't tell?" was the rather laconic and sardonic, not-quite-grinned back reply.
Ford sighed. "Summoning?" Or… "You…" Ford blinked. That book looked familiar. That blue cover- "Is that my JOURNAL?!" He squawked. He reached out, jumping to try and grab it, but Blue immediately shot up skywards in altitude, floating much higher, as he grinned down at him maniacally. The interns were still a little startled, but were watching the proceeding with bemused looks. They weren't quite as wary as Ford would have hoped they'd be after seeing Blue literally doing some magic- actually, Estania looked THRILLED by it.
"Give- that's MINE!" Ford huffed as he shook his fist up at Blue. He didn't know what Blue was planning, was he going to destroy his journal? Keep it? Sell it to the internet(?!)
"What," Blue called out down to him, as he casually floated on his back (as if lounging in the air like it was a foam mattress), and began to crack open the cover ever-so-slowly... "Don't 'Authors' want people to read their stuff?" He was still grinning, Ford could hear it in his voice, and see it in the lightness of his eyes, the tilt of his eyebrows...
"Are you still mad about the brussel sprouts?" Ford groaned. "I already admitted you were in the right and I was wrong."
(Brussel sprouts?" Viola asked. Estania was taking out a notebook of her own to jot down 'Witches hold food grudges.')
"Oh, yes you did," said Blue, "And you absolutely MEANT IT when you 'admitted' that I'm smarter than you, too, no? Very convincing. VERY." Blue was circling overhead, as he opened the journal proper and slowly began paging through the contents, one page at a time. (Ford clenched his fists at this.)
"Well, you're over a trillion years old, logically speaking, you'd have more collective knowledge than me."
"Knowledge is not 'intelligence', 'smarts', 'skills', 'thinking-skills', or 'savvy'," Blue noted. "All of which I am…. drumroll please! -MUCH BETTER AT THAN YOU. Not that you'll ever admit that. Shatter your fragile little human ego to do it, oh no."
"Yes, well- I know that. You've made it very clear." Ford wasn't very happy about that, still.
"HM." There was a slight pause. "Is this supposed to be a journal, or a picture-book?" Blue held it out a bit above him from where he hovered at a good thirty feet up, not quite turning it this way and that at arm's length; he seemed to be frowning at it slightly. "Not very many WORDS in here so far…"
Ford paused for a moment, himself. "I happen to be very proud of my sketches, thank you very much." He sighed. "I split the journal into sections, drawings in the front- William enchanted it to have technically infinite pages if you flip through them…"
"...Oh?" Blue sounded intrigued at this. He glanced down at Ford, then flipped himself forward into a loose cross-legged position in the air, pulled the journal in towards his chest (setting it down in his lap), and then Blue started flipping. And flipping. And flipping. Through the pages of his journal. (The demon was wide-eyed, pupils in cat's-eye slits, and seemed rather fully and wholly engaged in whatever he was looking at. He was flipping through at a rate of about a page every half-second without blinking; it was rather disturbing to watch.)
Ford sighed again, lowering his arms and resolving to just wait this out. Blue didn't seem like he was going to destroy his journal or anything, and frankly, this was starting to feel almost like the demon was 'teasing' him. So he decided to stop getting riled up and giving Blue the entertainment he so wanted.
...though if the entertainment was supposed to be him, Blue was doing a good job of acting like he wasn't. He didn't seem to notice that Ford wasn't talking anymore; the demon just stopped talking himself and kept on flipping through his journal like… like he was...
...was he actually reading it?
Well, whatever then. If all else failed, he would text Miz later and ask her to ask her brother to give it back. Ford turned to the interns and told them that they were going to continue hiking.
"Oh yes, do text my little sister for 'help' on this one later, I'm certain I won't have her 'chase me off' to then get ahold of the thing and look through all those pretty little sketches of her that weren't poses." Blue 'kicked' himself back to that half-reclining posture of almost floating on his back, again. "-Thought that through to completion quite well for yourself, didn't you," Blue absently called out to him in (what passed for the demon) almost a murmur, to Ford.
Ford paused at that. (And not just at Blue seeming to read his mind a bit there; it was likely just a guess as to his next potential move forward on getting his own journal back.) Well, there were quite a lot of sketches of Miz/Xin's various forms that Ford found himself sketching over the summer… Xin in his bathing suit- Miz eating twice her own weight in fish steak- Xin's disheveled appearance after their volleyball game- Miz's dragon form sleeping- Xin's dragon form when he was in heat- Ford's face turned bright red and he wanted to jump and grab for his journal again, but held himself back. (Thirty feet up. An absurdly futile attempt if he tried it.) "T-that-" He took a few deep breaths. Then he deliberately turned away and addressed the (very curious) interns. "A-anyway, we should hurry along. Need to get to the fairy taverns before it gets dark. Otherwise we'd get back to the Center and realize we've lost a week of time."
"...you draw pictures of his little sister?" Estania raised an eyebrow at Ford. Terrence coughed. "Um, sir? That's… ah… kinda weird?"
"It's not l-like that!" Ford shook his hands. Even Viola was giving him an even stare. "...how old is Blue's little sister?"
Ford buried his face in his hand and sighed. "She's like 700 billion or something, now." That made the interns relax a little. ("Wow, witches are old." "Wait, little sister is… then how old is Blue?!" "Didn't Dr. Pines say he was over a trillion?" "That's so cool!")
"...He draws pictures of almost-anything and anyone," was Blue's slow and slightly-drawn out absent response, as he continued his page flipping, "...Including all-of-you."
"Wait, you drew US too?!" Estania turned to her 'boss'.
"...'Experiment numbers' and everything, too. ...Slightly more writing there; not much, just slightly," Blue just as absently noted next, as he kept on going with his page-turning.
"Hey, they're listed as Interns! Not experiments!" Ford corrected. And sure, he didn't always remember the intern's names and referred to them by number in his head but-
"...they have numerical identifiers for their listings, that do not conflict with any prior entries as-given," Blue said next, slightly more colorlessly and no less absently as he continued on through with his reading. "...No conflicting entries post-entry as-of-yet; same schema, same formatting and layout; same basic set of characteristics-covered, with no significant difference in vocabulary-set for classification-parameters used between these two entry-types. 'Intern' and 'Experiment' are clearly interchangeable keyword-identifiers here, QED."
Ford sighed, giving up on this, it was like trying to argue with Stan whenever his brother thought it was a 'tease Ford' day. "Anyway, hurry along children." Ford began to continue on the path. The interns followed, giving Blue curious looks from time to time.
...which did not stop as they continued onward, not least of which because they were not actually leaving Blue behind. He was floating along well-behind them, yes, but… he was floating along behind them. Still reading. (And wasn't dropping too many feet down as he went, maybe from thirty feet down to twenty five over the next handful of minutes.)
If anything, it almost seemed like the demon had someplace to go - where he was going, in fact - but that he was clearly taking his own sweet time about it, reading as he went. (Or maybe the wind was blowing him along, except it was entirely the wrong direction for it, given the way the leaves in the trees were moving.) ...And it seemed to just so happen to be in the same direction that they all seemed to be going. Apparently.
Ford continued ignoring him. He didn't seem like he was going to start slaughtering his interns out of nowhere, so Ford tried not to let the demon's presence stress him out. "Now here is the border," Ford pointed out, having been naming the various landmarks they passed. "These mushrooms here. Past this area is the magical groves. Now, be respectful, don't step on any flowers, and don't stare too hard at what the Gnomes do with squirrels…"
"...or what the squirrels do with gnomes…" carried down to them from above and a bit farther away laterally, a la the casually floating-by demon. "...ever see a squirrel stay in a small tub when it doesn't want to be in one? Critical thinking skills; use them well…"
Ford ignored that too. It wasn't bad advice, critical thinking and all. "If you're all on good behavior, we might even visit the Unicorns-"
"UNICORNS!" Estania squealed, hugging Terrence as she jumped up and down. "This is the BEST INTERNSHIP! AAAAAHHHHH!"
Ford adjusted his glasses. "I don't wish to dash your hopes, but unicorns aren't anything like in cartoons. They're…" He paused, thinking about how Miz had once explained them, "Have you seen the movie 'The Last Unicorn'? The unicorn in that was a bitch. All unicorns are kinda… bitches. Pardon my language."
"...Only if you think arm-wrestling is a good way to 'make friends', and have the social interaction skills of a Stanford," was what drifted down to them next (and had Ford forcing himself not to start gritting his teeth). "Unicorns are just… annoying." (Not that that would've helped any of them; Blue called everything and everyone varying degrees of 'annoying'.)
"My social skills are NOT that bad." ("...No, they are.") Ford grumbled. He took another breath and then relaxed. Whatever, if Blue wanted to be like this… "Now, there's the tavern that way, the snail races in that direction.. Or we could simply go and introduce ourselves, say hello to the locals, as it were."
"...hope you brought along a good several flasks of warm milk, if you really want to make friends," was Blue's next contribution to the matter at hand. "...don't let anyone blow a handful of that sparkly magic fairy dust in your face; you'll regret it," he ended almost sing-song.
"Yes, lots of things like that." Ford waved off. He pulled out a thermos and a jar of honey. "Didn't think we'd need these, but they're more for emergencies than anything else." Ford rolled his eyes. "Ah, hello Shmebulok." He waved at a Gnome walking by. The tiny supernatural waved back, "SHMEBULOK!" He greeted before continuing on his way.
Estania and the others stared. "Wow. That's… a real Gnome?" (A short pause, then: "Yes.") And they startled when some more magical beings walked around them, seemingly not caring about their presence here. A fairy flew by, gave Ford a stern look, and then continued on. A satyr waddled by with a sack of groceries. A couple more fairies flew by.
Then: "Reality is an illusion." And Blue was floating down, hands behind his back, right at Ford's left side. (His booted feet were only inches off the ground, and his Cipher-eye was flickering into existence for the span of a few moments.)
His eyelids were drooping low for a moment, before they blinked open more fully (as the lines-of-light depicting a Cipher-eye at his forehead vanished). He was looking over at Ford almost expectantly.
"...the universe is a hologram?" Ford added, hesitantly. That was a thing his own Bill liked to say a lot.
Blue let a single, almost delighted laugh at this. "This is in-question?" he said, not quite floating a bit farther into Ford's personal space.
"I have yet to find the projector for this hologram that is our universe." Ford shrugged. "The closest I can think of to fill such a role would be the Axolotl."
Blue rolled his eyes at this. "Define: a hologram," he said, before making a fluid gesture and trapping a bit of dirt (swirling up from the ground) in a ball in one hand, as he pulled some moisture out of the air with another. Combined the two, and...
"A three dimensional image formed by light, lasers and other light sources, interfering through each other," Ford said, then blinked. "Though, you could also say that all reality is merely what our minds perceive it to be. With the universe being the 'hologram' that we see from the interpretation of light through our retinas..."
"Hologram: a projection of something in one space onto something-else in another-space, through a differing medium," Blue said, not quite rolling his eyes as he finished his quick makeshift work. "Don't be so literal-always. Far too constraining. -Holograms and 'projections' aren't only of light; you humans just understand those better when grasping at any straw you think you can reach." Blue held out a small odd ball-like shell of a shape, then flicked another ball of light into existence inside it, and pointed downwards at the ground. "Look."
The humans all looked. A pattern of shadowy triangles across the ground, in a grid-like tesselation of shapes. This despite the fact that it was grass below it, not a perfectly-even surface; this likely accounted for some of the more-bizarre twists and cuts in the spheroid Blue was holding, floating in place.
"Shadows on the wall of a higher existence," Blue said, as he snuffed out the light spell, and let the dirty water drop to the ground. "What goes down, can come up." He twirled a finger around, and the 'splash' reversed itself, twirling up into a tree-like shape, branching upwards from the ground below it.
...And the 'branches' were twisted oddly, and showed spirals and old loops below it, as Blue froze the dirty water into an ice sculpture in place, for further review - lit by the sunlight alone.
"So it's like Plato's Cave or something?" Viola blinked, "Wait, so, are WE the ones in the cave?"
"You're the paintings on the wall, and sometimes you move across it like a shadow-play, almost," Blue told them. "But that's not all that you are," the demon said to them next, straightening in place to touch down on the ground by one foot, then the other, now standing. "You just can't see your own fire and flame, your color and your light and your reflection; that from which 'you' sources YOU. Most of you have trouble seeing and feeling out the edges of even your own shadow, let alone anyone else's. -It's a common human failing," the demon told them all with a shrug.
"Cool." Viola grinned. Ford was rubbing his face, right, his field trip had been hijacked. But he wasn't even mad, because the topic was quite interesting. "And if we're the shadows on the wall, someone must be casting them?" he asked Blue, almost rhetorically. Terrence raised his hand, almost like they were in class, "Then who're the people in the cave?"
"YOU are casting the shadows, 'you' just don't know it; the rest of 'you' doesn't know this, I just told you that," Blue said with no small irritation to Ford. (Even though he hadn't made that point of it clear at all.) But when Blue turned to Terrence: "-No-one is 'the people in the cave'," Blue told him, without irritation. "Almost. -When you're that high up, why bother with letting yourself remain trapped? Or if you ARE trapped, why pay attention to the shadows when you can pay attention to the other things inside-yourself, which clearly are so very-much-more interesting," Blue said, but given the accompanying eye-roll the demon did along with that… and the way he put, "And if you don't even care that you are 'trapped', are you even 'trapped' at all, if you never-ever will work up the drive to attempt to hit the boundaries of your restraints-ever?"
Ford was about to respond, but Blue started talking again before he could (much to his irritation). "-That was a rhetorical question; the answer is yes, restraints are restraints and being trapped means that you are trapped. -Reality is an illusion; constraints that must be broken-or-surpassed for freedom are not," Blue told them all quite grimly, looking over them all, hands held behind his back, standing tall but very still. "Also," Blue continued, looking away from them and down at the frozen-mud tree of dirty ice, "'Navel-gazing' is stupid. Forgetting why you even wanted to ascend in the first place, losing sight of everything that mattered before. Yeesh." Blue was frowning as he said this.
"So, is this spiritual ascension or…?" Estania asked.
"It can be," Blue said. "Define: 'spirit'?" He tilted his head at her and smiled. (Not grinned. Smiled, with no teeth.)
Estania blinked. "I'm not really sure myself, but people make all sorts of debates about whether Souls and stuff are real-"
"They are." Ford told her. "Real, that is."
"But if you don't know WHAT they are, then you don't know what you're asking," Blue said with a casual shrug. Then the demon suddenly slapped his hands together. "SO!" Blue said next, grinning brightly. "Gnomes get to ride squirrels; humans get to ride frogs! Yes?" he said, turning to Ford. "You DID bring all of the much-needed-crystals for THAT with you today. Didn't you?" Blue said next, wrapping his hands around his arms and elbows behind his back again, and not quite bouncing on his heels next.
Ford rolled his eyes and took a much smaller, modified version of the size-changing crystal flashlight out of another of his man pockets. He'd made a new casing for the crystal, to keep it protected, along with a lens to adjust the concentration of the beam for focusing its effects.
"I want to ride a frog! Can we ride frogs Dr. Pines? Pleeeeeease?" Viola almost begged. Ford sighed. "Well, I'm uncomfortable with the idea of shrinking any of you small enough for such a thing, what with how dangerous it would be for you all to be so small. And making frogs that big would get out of hand if any of them got away before I could reverse it…"
"So split the difference, you loon," Blue told him next. "Doesn't have to be just one or the-other. Hit both sides with it; bigger-dog-of-a-frog, smaller large-dwarf-sized human. Take turns, with the corralling; all of it." Blue shrugged, rocking back on his heels. "Could go even-bigger for the humans on corralling duty, waiting their turn? Ten-foot-fall-human sized, each?"
"I wanna be TALL!" Estania roared, Terrence flinched at her enthusiasm. "Ma-maybe just the half size- wait, why do we have to ride frogs?" The boy asked, completely confused as to how this topic even came up.
"What," said Blue, "You want to ride beetles or caterpillars instead? Or all of one of the single-fuzzy spiders? -Might as well go with a duck then," Blue told them all next, crossing his arms across the front of his chest.
"...no bugs please." Terrence winced. Estania laughed loudly and smacked his back. "Chicken~!" She teased. Viola was sighing as she thought about making frog friends. "Those cute eyes~ and adorable croaks~" Ford had no idea how he'd lost control of his interns so quickly.
"The crystals should also work on all of one of the chickens, too, yes!" Blue said next, of the aforementioned species of fowl, to a set of giggles out of at least two of the interns (both female; Terrence pouted a bit).
"...do you all want to ride on forest animals?" Ford finally deadpanned. Estania and Viola nodded quickly (and far too enthusiastically for Ford's own comfort). Ford sighed. "Alright, I suppose we can do more field trips at a later date." He held up the flashlight. "Frogs or chickens?"
They had a vote. They got frogs. Ford sat back once he led them to the magical springs (after a quick warning not to drink from them), and he spent that time watching Viola and Estania splash around chasing the green and brown amphibians. for a potential riding partner-slash-beast.
Blue, oddly enough, sat down right next to him. (Not quite within arm's reach, but most certainly close enough nearby him to be considered sitting next to him.) Ford kept sneaking glances at him, unsure how to feel. While he was very annoyed at his plans for the day being hijacked in such a way, Viola and Estania were having fun, if the delighted laughter meant anything. And Terrence was carefully taking plant samples from the flora nearby, marvelling over them, "Looks like Trillium kurabayashii, but I've never seen a blue one before… it smells just as spicy as the normal kind, perhaps even more so-"
...yeah, the interns were having fun, and learning too, if the various amphibian facts Viola was regaling them all with was any indicator.
"What were you trying to do today?" Blue said to him, apropos of nothing. "Out here. In the woods. With them. -'Remind' me," Blue said without looking at him, "And remind your own self in doing so." The demon pulled an apple out of his pocket, along with a knife (out of somewhere), and started to cut it up into slices - eating them one at a time, and charring them each a little bit beforehand.
"We were going to introduce the new interns to the locals, so that they'll know to leave them alone if they wander this far into the woods. We had a problem with an intern getting lost in the woods a few years back, if the local residents knew who they were, I was hoping they'd be able to assist them if such a thing were to happen again."
"Mm," said Blue. "You wanted to visit 'the magical springs', where the locals do not go? And took your interns across a well-used path to the gnome tavern, where many of the local residents do go, but did not take them there instead? And introduced them to no-one as you went, only said 'hello' to one gnome who could only say one word in reply to any speech?"
Ford sighed. "I was planning to go to the tavern, but Viola wants to catch frogs. We can try the tavern another time." He shrugged. "Plus, I'd been hoping to show them proof of magic, so this works out in the end."
"Mm. Could have said that to them, to get all of their buy-in: tavern-first so a week is not lost, then all of all-of-the-frogs for as long as they want up to a week-after later." Then, "Tell me: are the crystals science or magic?" Blue paused, looking out at the scene of the interns before them. "Or both," was the note the demon ended on. "Do you know?" before popping another apple piece into his mouth.
"Both." Ford answered. "How exactly the crystals have their anomalous effects is magical in nature, but the effects themselves can be explained by science." He'd studied them a lot more once Dipper showed him how to make them into a usable beam. "They aren't simply shrinking and growing objects, there's a real change in Mass. Otherwise, large objects wouldn't become heavier and vice-versa." He was in 'lecture' mode now, especially since the interns had heard the two of them start talking, and came over to sit in a half-circle around them like it was storytime. Viola had two frogs in her hands, Estania had one. Terrence raised his hand, "And where does the extra mass come from, or go, when you shrink?"
"That's the magic of it." Ford grinned. "Light." He held out the flashlight. "Much like how the original crystals take in the sunbeams to display their anomalous effects, these small shards still require light in order to convert that light into more mass, or to take mass away, in a type of mass to energy conversion that somehow still allows for the changed object to function with no harmful stress."
"Think 'catalyst', but with a light-to-mass-volume-space seeming-bio-change via crystal-as-catalyst instead of a chemical-to-other-chemical bio-change via enzyme-as-catalyst," was Blue's contribution to the discussion, as he popped another piece of lightly-charred apple into his mouth.
"Exactly." Ford nodded. "Like, if a real person suddenly had their hand grow to ten times the size it normally should be, they'd die from blood loss as their engorged limb sucked up and used up their whole body's supply, but, that doesn't happen!" Ford grinned at them all.
"Oh, yes," Blue drawled out. "And an 'imaginary' person could not have that happen to them too," Blue rolled his eyes, then finished off the last slice of apple. "I've seen both, but this method does not do that to anything: animals, humans, other sentient-sapient people, or sentient things. Or things-in-general that cannot and have no way of thinking."
"I meant that scientifically speaking, if one's mass outgrew the volume in such a way, it would cause health issues. But the crystals stabilize and enforce the objects and people under its effects so they can still function, healthy and whole."
"And how does that blood pressure work out," Blue drawled out next, taking the apple core and 'tossing' it via overhand throw a few yards away. "And all the stress on the heart."
"The blood cells itself grow and shrink as they enter and leave the altered area! As do the tissue, muscles, bones- everything changes in the affected area, a larger hand would be much heavier, a smaller person would weigh less, and their internal cells change as needed."
"Hence the term: 'space manifold adjustment with continuous-space boundary conditions'," Blue said to them with something of a half-sigh, then pronounced the single word for it in Galactic Standard next, for further edification. "No discontinuities allowed." Blue made a gesture with his hand that his own Sixer would have recognized, and the apple core dropped suddenly into a small hole, only to be filled over with the original displacement of dirt. He then made a second gesture, and a sapling suddenly sprouted out of the hole, which quickly grew into a tree, flowered, and then burst into multiple fruits (all apples, not a bunch of different sorts).
Blue stretched a bit in place after this, then slid down the tree he was slumped up against, to pillow his arms under his head, and draw up one of his knees a bit, while leaving the other leg sprawling. He hummed a bit as he stretched again, then let out his breath in one long and somewhat substantial deep sigh.
The interns were staring at the tree. "Damn, witches are COOL!" Estania was swooning. Terrence was fanboying over the tree as well. "It's got fruits! Which means fertilization- but how? No bees, no time, unless you set it to get fertilized as part of the spell?!" Ford raised an eyebrow at it. "Is this what you did on the Island as well?" He'd seen the changes on the Island, but he didn't get to see how Blue did it.
"More or less," Blue not quite mumbled out, as he topped his floating hat to hover up over his face instead of at the top of his head. "Had the kids dig the holes and plant the things themselves, though. Put a little more 'style' into the presentation, you know, the whole 'Bill Cipher' drill." Blue said it like he was lazily waving it off - and did, leaving his one (left) hand laying across his chest, the other hand back and still pillowing his head.
"I suppose that's one way to teach them about working to plant things." Ford smiled. "I never thanked you for that, for helping out with the island and its people. So, thank you."
Blue opened one eye to eye him with.
"Why would you?" Blue said. "It was them that should thank me. It was their prerogative, and their choice. And they did do that, when 'thanks' were necessary." And, at that, Blue seemed to settle a bit further into place, closing both eyes again.
"Why shouldn't I thank you for helping, even if I am not the one directly affected by it? You did something that is worth being thanked for."
"It made you slightly less safe, for putting them in your own backyard, and then you chose to make yourself even less-safer, by feeling a need to 'get involved' after that. Because science and magic in your own backyard. Yes?"
"The health and safety, and happiness, of those children is more than worth it."
"Well. Yes." Blue cracked his eyes open just a little bit. "But I wouldn't expect you to think so."
Ford seemed taken aback. "Why not? Have I… somehow left you with an impression that I didn't care about that…"
Blue flicked his eyes over towards him, looking almost amused all over again.
"You were talking about how just-as-impossible doing anything-about-it would be, just like the rest of those Pines-of-yours and Seb's who wouldn't listen," Blue said to him. "And you clearly did not care about that, because you weren't thinking about that as a problem to solve before I came, I and my own six-fingered hand here." Blue's smile widened a bit. "And I've gotta say local-'Hand, you're really failing your latest test here damn miserably. Low marks all around."
"...I wasn't aware I was being tested." Ford sighed. "I'm aware I've been… distressingly complacent. To the things happening in the world nowadays. Life is all messed up." And he'd wanted to close his eyes to it all, ignore it and focus on his own life. It wasn't his responsibility, right? He had enough things to deal with, his own stress, his own mental health- he didn't want to take on anything more, for his own selfish sake-
"There's always a test; just expect it. Judging occurs between-and-around people always," Blue told him, turning onto his side to prop up his head with a fist. "Self-judgment for humans is rarely ever good; you LIE to yourselves-always too damn much." ('You idiot things.') "And yes, I know that things here are 'all messed up' - I do remember telling you all that, several months ago by your own personal timeline," Blue said to him next. "Shouldn't you be taking up those issues with Seb?"
"He's rather busy. As is everyone. But we are…" ("'You are…' what?") Ford sighed. "We don't want to take over the world, or even America. We want to find a way to fix things without having to break the law… and yes, I know that's a ridiculous notion." He rolled his eyes.
"How many laws did you break out in other dimensions?" was Blue's next question to him, as the interns pulled out field testing kits from their backpacks, and notebooks, and pencils, and started in on the magicked-up apple tree a few yards away from them.
"That-" Ford started to protest. "That's… different, I… we were trying to stay alive, and-" But even as he said it, Ford groaned and ran a hand through his hair. "I can't run away through a portal to escape the consequences here. I can't just-" He was home, here. Finally, home and had his life back in order-
"You could," said Blue, pulling both arms under his head and flicking his 'witch's hat' around to hover back up atop his head again, kicking up his heels behind him, now lying flat on his stomach, "If you had a working portal device of any type. Which you are not prioritizing working on. At all." ('Or trying to borrow from Seb, or beg-and-steal-from my little sister or Kari.')
"I could." Ford sighed. "But I can't. My life is here. I live here- I am NOT going to fix that portal. It's too dangerous, I can't risk it." Couldn't risk losing either himself or anyone else through it, couldn't- "Even IF we made safety features, I can't simply leave my entire life behind!"
Blue started to open his mouth to say something, then closed it again.
"'Sensitive'," the demon intoned, almost like he was saying it to himself. He lowered his head down sideways in his arms, slowly closed his eyes. "All-or-nothing for you six-fingered hands, isn't it. All-of-you, or none-of-you. Give it your all, or run away and leave it all behind while never-looking-back-again, always. Always all-or-nothing, and no shades meant for grey between you. Not between you, not around you, or within you. Let alone any other color in the whole mess of things, that is you. -Gold-or-nothing, that's you."
Ford blinked. "I'm… unsure what you mean?"
"Mm," said Blue, eyes still closed before him.
Ford frowned at this. Blue's breathing was… rather even.
Well, at least he didn't seem… angry about this? Ford sighed. "I'm a coward, and selfish." He admitted. "I know there are things I'm supposed to do, should be doing- but I'm too afraid to do it." He didn't even care if the interns were listening. He never wanted to admit this to himself, but it… was true. He was too afraid to risk what he'd built for himself, this life where he had his Center, his dream, being able to study and publish papers, and get respect and admiration from people, from the scientific community- of being able to make money off it- he was successful, he was respected- He… didn't want to lose all that. Even if it meant keeping his head down, so as not to get any backlash that would affect and compromise his life. He knew Stan felt much the same, he was a successful businessman and retired sports star. With a penthouse apartment and all the luxuries that he could only dream of back when they were children. Stan didn't want to lose that. None of them wanted to lose the wonderful life they created for themselves. And he knew… this was wrong.
"Stay in your cage then, if you like it so much," Blue said - half-breathed-out really - his eyes closed. Ford flinched at this, his head jerking upwards. "Encircled and trapped by the thickest of brush. Fast heartbeats at guns drawn, caught on a vine; tear yourselves apart, line after line. You little birds there, were never meant to fly. Stay down in the dirt, then; don't soar through the sky."
Ford clenched his fists. But he didn't refute it. Blue was right, after all.
Blue didn't say anything else. He was flat on his stomach, legs lying down on the grass now, breathing slowly and almost silently.
The interns were quiet, almost timid. Viola bit her lip. "What… what would Dr. Pines even be able to do… about…" She didn't understand what exactly they were talking about. But it sounded… important.
But Blue didn't respond to this. (He was asleep.)
Ford sighed. "What… would…" He paused to think about how he would say this. "The state of the world at the moment is… for lack of a better word, awful." He told the interns. Viola frowned. "...yes." The chinese girl held her frogs closer to herself, as if hugging them. Estania winced, thinking about… literally everything that had been happening in America, what things had been happening to- she blinked. Then she put together what Ford had been saying. "Wait, the missing children, from those-" She was almost too afraid to continue out loud, as she glanced between Blue and Ford. "Did… you guys have something to do with-"
"...I didn't do it." Ford admitted. "A good friend of mine did. Because she could, and had… only held back on account of our… permissions." He rubbed his eyes. "But yes, the children and their parents, those whom were still… around, were teleported to safety." He winced. "She could do even more, I could do even more, I could amplify a mind control device to control the government, I could switch bodies with politicians and use their political power to enact sweeping policy changes in laws, heck, Fiddleford could build a giant robot to raid all prisons and release the people being unfairly kept- or rebuild his memory gun and use that to alter what people know and think-" Ford sighed. "But that… I can't… we can't..." He shook his head. "I don't… know… how… to… I can't-"
"...those sound kinda terrifying. To be honest, sir." Viola told him simply. Estania grinned, "Like a mad scientist!"
"...yes, Miss Gabarra, like a mad scientist." Ford sighed. "I don't…" he winced. "Doing that… wouldn't it… I don't think it's the right way to do things. Just because I can, doesn't mean I should."
Terrence nodded solemnly. "Like how in the old days people would riot and kill people an' stuff, and nowadays we're not supposed to do that." (He sounded rather odd about that statement, even as he said it.) Ford winced at that too. "I don't… I don't know what I'm supposed to do." Ford looked between his interns, the youth growing up in this broken world. And he felt… bad. Bad that he couldn't think of how to fix things in a way that didn't feel wrong to do so.
"nrrmmmrrrMmMmm- tr-trIPLE-FUZzz-RAH!" And suddenly Blue's eyes flew open and he shoved his hands out to full extension (which had his head and torso up at an odd angle for a moment), before the slickness of the grass had his palms sliding forward and his chin coming back down on his arms with an, "Oof!"
Ford glanced over at Blue and rolled his eyes. "Blue here, thinks that hostile takeovers are fine."
"Nnnnnn…" Blue grumbled out, forehead looking crumpled up like he almost had a headache going. "NnnnnwhatI'mawakecourseI'maa'wakewhat-what. What." He slitted his eyes open, then slid them back down to the barest of slits even further and made a hissing sound - at all of them, presumably. (Or, perhaps, the sun.) "What. There was a thing. What."
"Nothing much, just discussing the hole we're all metaphorically trapped in." Terrence shrugged.
Blue made a sort of 'ugh' sound, instead of his usual expected 'yeesh', and slowly pushed himself to sitting upright again. He was not quite holding his head, sort of scrubbing at the side of it slightly while putting on a wincing expression still.
"What hole," Blue said, "There is no hole. -What digging did you think you were doing; straight-up?" he asked of the boy intern, squinting up at him from where he was sitting.
"I said, metaphorical." He shrugged with a grin.
"I know what a metaphorical hole looks like, kid," Blue informed the cheeky young thing, shoving himself via hands and legs a bit sideways, to slump up under the nearest tree again. "I'm a being of pure energy; spent one trillion years living in the Mindscape - and I'll spend another three trillion years more, rate things are going on MY end." Blue told them all, grumbling. "There IS no 'metaphorical' hole here," Blue repeated, scrubbing a hand at the side of his head again.
They stared at him. Then the interns looked to Ford, who raised a hand with his index finger extended, pointed at the side of his head and made a circular motion. The kids nodded. Ah, right. Crazy witch, got it.
"Well, Dr. Pines…" Viola sighed. "I… don't know what you should do either." She pet the frogs gently, and of course, she was wearing gloves. Never handle a frog with your bare hands, your skin oils would hurt them.
"Do about what- yeesh, forget it, I'm gonna just-" Blue said, "You can't stop me-" and tilted his head back, eyes sliding closed again and his Cipher-eye spell flickered...
His expression shifted to a frown rather quickly, and then to something Ford couldn't read. But then-
Blue's eyes flew open and he grinned wider than Ford had seen from him yet, eyes wide and wild, and he slapped both his hands down onto his thighs as he proclaimed-
"TRIPLE-FUZZY!" Oh, demons should not look so excited; this was bad for Ford's heart. (And frankly, Ford almost half-expected Blue to suddenly grow a tail on the spot and start wagging it back and forth like Miz sometimes did, with how very excited and delighted he looked just now.)
"...Triple fuzzy?" Estania asked, to which Ford made a face. "What's inside the duck besides spiders?" Ford asked Blue, very afraid of the answer.
"I DON'T KNOW yet, but I'm GOING to FIGURE IT OUT!" Blue said, sounding overly-excited as he not-quite bounced (bobbed?) in place. "I HAD A VISION," he intoned to them next, tilting his head back a little bit. "Was just having… mmmm… a little trouble finishing-coalescing it upon waking. -Almost got away from me there, but it DIDN'T! HA!" He snapped his fingers across his chest, like he was capturing something for good.
"That's… great dude." Terrence nodded slowly.
"YES!" Blue enthused, turning towards him. "IT IS! I-" Then Blue's expression froze a bit, and then fell slightly, as he began blinking rapidly.
Blue turned towards Ford again.
"WHO -told you about the double-fuzzy?!" was what Blue said to him next, staring.
Ford blinked. "I… kinda figured it out myself, my Bill kept sending me nightmares about tarantulas bursting out of ducks- I… sort of put it together over time." Then he shuddered. "They were so fuzzy…" he sounded horrified.
"Yes! They're all so fuzzy!" Blue said brightly, in the exact opposite of horror. "He gave you nightmares with them in it? I thought he didn't like you or Seb very much at all. Except for torturing," Blue not quite shrugged off.
"...I don't think those nightmares were meant to be pleasant for me."
"But if they had the double-fuzzy in them, how could they be 'nightmares'?" Blue seemed rather stuck on this point. Then he got a look of slight horror. "Did… did the double-fuzzy become not fuzzy anymore?" he asked of Ford next quite seriously, leaning forward a little bit towards him where he was sitting in almost a kneeling posture.
"Because I don't like watching the ducks explode into spiders." Ford deadpanned. "You might think it's cute, I don't." Then he paused. "But yes, the ducks did lose their feathers, if that's what you mean."
Blue blinked at him next, then frowned furiously.
"They're not supposed to explode," Blue said, sounding thoroughly offended, drawing himself up in place. "They're just supposed to cough the tarantulas all up a little bit. Exploding them is- that's- That's doing it ALL WRONG!" Blue declared.
"No offense mister Blue, that still sounds kinda scary." Estania pointed out. Terrence was shuddering, having to be hugged by the girl as he stared, eyes wide.
"What? Nooooooo," said Blue, "Not scary. Fuzzy! -Who doesn't like ducks and tarantulas?" Blue said next (he thought) quite rhetorically. Then he paused again. "Wait." He turned back to Ford again. "Do they not have the-" Cipher-eye flicker at his forehead again "-you do! You do have the stomach-ducks here; double-fuzzy is BETTER-" Blue began, making his case.
"That stomach faced duck still haunts me…" Ford whispered.
Blue frowned. "That can't be right," said Blue, straightening in place. "They're too stupid to turn into ghosts. -Are you sure it isn't some 'Dream Hipster' on a drunken bender who keeps forgetting to show himself to you after, because you keep not-sleeping under a mystic barrier, you idiot?" Blue said to him dryly. "That bracelet should help with that, you know. Unless you MESSED with it." Blue eyeballed his wrist rather darkly.
Ford didn't quite have the mental patience to explain this misunderstanding at the moment.
"DID you mess with it?" Blue said next, looking up at Ford again, rather suspiciously.
"I studied it, and it somehow got into my house… and startled me on many occasions with its sudden appearance."
"...I meant the bracelet," Blue said to him next, almost deadpan. (The 'you idiot' there was implied.)
"...I've looked it over, haven't changed it, aside from scanning it into my Center's database."
Blue stared at him for several long moments. "...Fine," he said finally, leaning back a bit and relaxing somewhat where he sat, arms crossed once again.
Then he looked up at the three interns and said, "What. Weren't you going to do any of the riding-of-frogs today?" He tilted his head at them. "You haven't done any of all of that yet; I saw that you didn't."
Viola looked down at her caught frogs. They'd fallen asleep in her grasp, peaceful and relaxed. She didn't want to wake them. "Nah, they're sleeping." She paused. "Could catch more, but I kinda like petting them too."
"Hm." Blue paused. "Could take them back with you, and do the riding 'experiment' in a more-controlled setting? And keep on petting them many times along the way." Blue put out there, sounding almost like a reasonable adult there for that one. Viola turned to Ford with large eyes and a pout.
Ford sighed. "Yes, you can keep them, you'll need to get your own tank, and you're in charge of caring for them."
Viola cheered (quietly, so as not to startle the sleepy frogs), "I'm gonna name you SiuLok, and you'll be Shuei!"
"You didn't try to 'steal' your journal back," Blue noted to Ford, as he pushed himself upright to standing. "And you didn't try to trick your little interns here into doing it for you, risking them instead of you for it, either."
"...I figured it was pointless to try. You'd outsmart me either way." Ford shrugged. "Either you'd eventually give it back to me, or you wouldn't. And then I'd be forced to ask Miz, which would be… unwanted, but if it came to that…"
"Liar," said Blue. "You didn't even think to try or not-try. Not really. Why?"
Ford groaned. "...because part of me thought you were only trying to get a rise out of me. And I'm not going to do so."
"It's a test," said Blue. "Either you rise to the occasion, or you fail-and-fall by not even really trying in the first place. -Minus three-thousand points," Blue said to him next, turning away from him breezily, blue-and-black ponytail swinging.
"..." Ford was going to ask, 'out of how much', but thought better of it. He wasn't up for playing with Blue. He wasn't one for confrontations, not anymore. Perhaps he'd gone soft, but the rest of him was fine with the mellow life. He had to save his energy for more important things, like science, or handling Miz when she inevitably stopped by.
"What makes you think Miz can talk me into giving it back to you, anyway?" Blue said without turning around.
"Because that journal was a gift from her to me. It'd be quite rude of you to steal away a gift she worked so hard on, to give me." Ford said airily. "Might even make her sad."
"Would it? Maybe I'm jealous of such a gift and stealing it would prompt her to give you a better one." Blue eyed him. "One which can't be stolen away so easily."
"Ah, but then she'd give you a journal too, since you want one so badly." Ford allowed a smile onto his face, imagining the cute little pout Miz would have.
"I don't know why I'd give it back then," Blue said quite breezily next, as he walked in a bit of a half-circle around them as the interns finished packing the rest of their things back up. "If I kept it, then I'd have TWO gifts from my little sister, one of them stolen from one wholly-undeserving of it, unable to even keep it from harm."
"Fair point." Ford let out a laugh at that. "Well, are you going to harm my gift from your little sister?"
"I might," Blue said. "If I decide to claim it, then it's MINE to do with as I please."
"Well, it's mine. I've claimed it, and William gave it to me." Ford shrugged, still rather calm about all this.
Blue turned in place and grinned at him.
"You don't know how to claim things properly," Blue informed the young scientist. "And even if you did, I know how to steal things away from people properly, too."
"...is that why Miz continues stealing food from Dipper and my's plates?"
Blue blinked at him, before switching to this other (and in the demon's Mind, completely different) topic. "You aren't giving her enough food for her to be eating enough?" was Blue's bristling response to this, and the demon began to get a bit of a dark glower and a stormy glare.
"No, she just finds it amusing to take our food because we don't protect it well enough." Ford chuckled. "And it's her way of teasing Dipper."
Blue blinked at this, suddenly neutral-faced.
"Are you both eating enough food when she does this," was Blue's next question to him.
"She only does it when there is more food nearby for us to take to replace what she took." Ford confirmed. "And in my case, she gives me too much food for me to comfortably eat. I do not go hungry, and neither does Dipper, when she takes food from us."
Blue seemed to relax marginally at this.
But then Blue frowned and looked away from him, saying, "That is a bad behavior for her to self-reinforce. I will talk to her about it." Which was surprising. "Very dangerous, to make that a habit and then do it in front of others. Someone might try to take advantage of that, by claiming food-things she tries to take from them, in a way that she does not expect to then have to undo."
"...if you feel it's necessary." Ford wondered if this was some sort of demon thing.
"Very," said the demon. Then: "If you cannot express enough desire to keep a book that my sister has given you, or muster the motivation necessary in order to get it back because it means so little to you," Blue said to him next, as he turned away from Ford, "Then you are failing, completely and utterly." He looked over his shoulder at Ford with one eye rather blandly. "If you cannot hope to secure a simple book that was gifted to you by her, that you obviously do not appreciate enough to keep or protect, or even fight for," Blue tilted his head at him slightly, "Then why would I ever trust you to appreciate anything else more valuable that my sister may deign to give you some-day in the future." Blue lifted a hand palm-upwards. "Like a very small piece of her trust." And the demon made a gesture, as if whatever ephemeral unseen thing he was holding, had just fluttered away, fragile, fleeting, and now suddenly out of reach.
And then Ford reached out, quick as can be, to snatch the journal from the demon - he could see it where it had been slid down and held in place, between the 'dress' at his back and his belt-
-and Ford's hand phased right through the book and the demon, who suddenly seemed to waver away into thin air, vanishing up into powderless smoke (that didn't even sting his eyes or hurt his lungs to breathe it in - truly an illusion then, as expected).
And then, Ford's other hand, from his pocket, clicked on the size changing flashlight, pointed at another spot entirely, and shone out, the beam focused on his 'real' target-
-high up in a tree-
-the apple tree that Blue had made-
-and the top of it grew, and grew, and bent over double, splintering to fall over, crashing down to the ground there below it.
...And up in that tree, on the other side of the trunk where Ford was still diligently shining that light at him, was Blue, floating in place, with an inch-thick field of blue energy surrounding him, seemingly splitting the beam, warping it away from him and around him.
"Idiot," said Blue, and he turned sideways and stretched out a hand.
-The beam slid along the field, past the outer edges of his clothing and everything-else he had on, surrounding him, and the entire beam spiralled inwards, began to pool into a ball of light he was holding just a bit out from his right hand.
It didn't take more than the space of a moment for that ball of light to go from nothing to basketball-sized, collecting up that beam of light, and Blue traced an arcing line from his left hand (pointer finger), over and out and held twisting down, to then shoot outwards and down towards-
-Ford! But the man seemed to have been expecting this; his other hand, which had reached into his pocket, pulled out the bottle of honey, and flung it out to intercept the ball-
-except the beam corkscrewed in the air around it (at an annoyed 'tch!' from Blue and a jerk of his hand), separating from the initial burst of light and shooting down closer to follow along and just above the grass, straight towards his feet.
Ford had his eyebrows raised, ok, that should have been something he'd have expected as well. Nonetheless, he twisted and jumped out of the way, flinging more things from his pockets, of which he had quite a lot of knick-knacks. A few pens, some feathers, balls of wadded up scrap paper-
Blue clenched his fist, and the beam exploded in place - despite not being connected by a tracery of light to him anymore. (It did nothing; nothing grew larger in its aftermath, not that Ford could see.)
The ball of crystal-transforming light at Blue's fist, the demon snuffed out by tossing it outwards and clenching his right fist. It exploded in a light almost as bright as the sun, and by the time Ford's vision had cleared again, he realized that he was floating.
-and he could feel Bill Cipher EVERYWHERE AROUND HIM-
Ford tried very hard to breathe.
Blue casually kicked off the newly broken off 'top' of the tree where he'd been, and the demon took his time floating over and down to him, while flinging all the little odds and ends Ford had thrown out, out of his way (read: slamming them all down into the grass to lie there flattened down there against it, with a single imperial blast-wave from a hand with impunity).
(Blue was pissed off. He'd had to reach out and lock down the whole area to handle this jerk, in this way. He'd been more tired than he'd thought, from his experiment in bringing matter with him through to this dimensional set, today. He'd tried it out with all his clothing, everything he'd been carrying on him currently, but perhaps he shouldn't have tried bringing through quite so much.)
Ford wheezed, gasping in ragged breaths, not his Bill Cipher, not his Bill Cipher, the mantra repeated in his head. He wasn't in the Fearamid- this was not-
Not- not-
...not...
Ford breathed in, and he breathed out, as Blue floated down right in front of him. He breathed in, and he breathed out, and he-
-began to feel calm. He actually calmed down. Because this didn't… feel the same. There wasn't the same flavor of malice in Blue's hold, not like his own Bill's had been (and oh, how Ford had gotten used to feeling that malice). Bill's had been sharp and grating, like knives digging into every inch of his skin- this was… different. Still a bit grating, oh yes, but more like rough leather than anything, with a tingly feeling of controlled lightning underneath it, the heat of a bonfire trying to escape it below that… but not quite sharp, not glass. Not-
"Ÿ̸̛̻̙́͑̾̚Ő̖̜̣ͨU̵̸̻͚̗̪̗̘̙̙͈̿͆ͯ͞ ̦̝̞̳̻̮̮͔̄ͥ̋D̴̡̠̏ͦ̇ͨÓ̡̧̺̙̥̟͌̉̏̒ͯ̚N͕͗ͥ͝E̶͇̙̯̪̰̠̽̈́ͮ̂?͉ͣ̑̑̍ͯ" Blue thundered out at him, and oh, the triangle demon looked pissed.
Ford relaxed. Then he actually grinned up at Blue. Oh, that had been… exhilarating. He hadn't gotten into a fight in years. "Yes, I do believe I'm done. Aside from throwing more things at you, if you wish to keep going?" he said with good humor, nearly laughing from the giddiness he was feeling.
Blue's face twitched, right near his right eye.
"YOU-" he began furiously, shoulders coming up and hands balling into fists, eyes going wide and pupils slitted almost to the thinnest of lines.
But Ford didn't hear the rest of what Blue was about to say, or had been saying. He was too distracted by Terrence barrelling into his (Ford's) side - who was yelling a bit as he slammed into said scientist, as the two female interns below them cackled with glee. (They had teamed up together to launch Terrence upwards and away from them - once the gravity in the area had seemed to give up the ghost and give out - to get themselves some downwards motion, to be able to grab onto some of the lower branches below, to be able to maneuver themselves around better.)
"-is NOT the time to be messing around with MY altered physics! UNDERSTAND?!" Ford heard (and then saw) Blue half-complaining, half-scolding his two other interns, hands on his hips, as the scientist managed to right himself and his male charge (who was clutching him like a lifeline at this point). "I was RIGHT in the MIDDLE OF SOMETHING over HERE!" Blue was waving his hands and arms around now.
"Wooo! We're floating!" Estania cheered, spinning through the air. "This is THE BEST DAY EVER!" She twisted in place and spun, "MA-GI-CC IS AW-SOOME!"
Ford literally heard the smack from Blue's facepalm from halfway across the clearing, floating away from him none-too-slowly.
Testing his luck, Ford (gently) tossed Terrence downwards towards the edge of the forest (where the intern could hopefully grab onto something far more secure) and pulled out his magnet gun, modified to be much safer, where it wouldn't actually pull out the fillings from someone's teeth. Ford clicked it at Blue - specifically, at his Journal, which had small bits of metal mixed into some of the pages from when Ford had experimented with grabbing it to himself whenever he was too lazy to get up to grab it from the shelf-
There was a jolt, and Ford swore he saw Blue start to move as he felt the jolt of the gun switching on - he definitely heard the *cl'k-cheep!* - and he started to move towards the journal at Blue's back, up until Blue whirled in place, making a quick, sharp chopping motion downwards with his hand (as if cutting through the magnetic field lines from the gun's pull?), and-
-the magnet gun seemed to die like it had never had a charge to begin with, going completely dark. (Oh.)
Ford's eyes narrowed. Because he still had some momentum going now, though, and he almost grabbed Blue on the way over and to him-
-except the demon went up, and he felt himself suddenly yanked and pulled down and sideways abruptly, completely unexpectedly and out of nowhere that he'd expected. He felt the dead(?) gun ripped from his grasp as his arms were roughly yanked to his sides, and-
-Ford stared down at himself in disbelief, at the inch-thick green vines that were now wrapped around him several times, that had yanked him back towards the broken-boughed apple tree - and were still doing so. He lost a bit of his breath as he felt himself slam into place, back against the trunk, and even more vines wrapped into place around him once he was there.
Ford coughed once, but managed to pull in a new breath and the next one just fine, far easier than he'd expected. He stared up at Blue, who had an arm raised, hand outstretched, and the demon was panting.
And, Ford grinned, still rather hyped up on adrenaline, and (in a clear case of how hanging around Miz had corrupted him) said quite cheerfully, "I've seen enough hentai to know where this is going!" (A quote which Xin never tired of laughing over, and once Ford had looked it up himself, well, after he died of embarrassment for a few hours, he acknowledged it was quite funny.)
(Viola and Estania choked. Terrence burst out laughing, "Oh my fucking god, Doc?!")
"WHAT?" Blue said, his expression going a little blank. And then Ford saw him lower his arm slightly, just a bit, and the Cipher-eye at his forehead flicker...
He watched as Blue blinked. And blinked again.
And then he heard Blue say, rather slowly, "...Is that what you WANT me to do to you?"
Blue was staring down at Ford without any real expression on his face. Ford stared right back up at him. "No, no I do not. I was simply attempting to make a joke." The scientist deadpanned.
There was a pause. Then; "For an asexual idiot, you seem to focus far more on the 'idiot' than the 'asexual'. You idiot." Blue muttered this out at him, as he floated down closer to him again.
It was odd, Ford realized, that Blue wasn't actually getting too close to him still, despite his being tied up to the nines and not going anywhere anytime soon. Because Blue wasn't coming within what would be arm's reach of him, even if he'd had both arms free.
"Well, Miz likes to make jokes like that. I've picked up quite a few from her." Ford explained simply. The interns were very curious as to who this 'Miz' was.
Blue let out a breath and… looked even more tired at hearing this. (...Or was it from something else?) Ford felt gravity slowly kicking back in for the area, and while he felt himself sag against the vines only slightly (he was rather well tied up at the moment), he saw the interns (and a few other assorted items in the area) slowly fall towards the ground.
Blue didn't touch down yet himself, but he looked like… maybe he wanted to? He was grimacing slightly, and bobbing in the air where he floated, just a bit.
"...are you alright?" Ford asked, a little worried about how tired Blue seemed. (It was also a bit interesting that the rough leathery feeling of this 'Bill Cipher' had begun to fade again as gravity had once again begun to take effect.)
"I'm fine!" Blue snapped out at him next. "Of course I'm fine! Why wouldn't I be fine!? -That's a rhetorical question, I'm fine," Blue grated out at him next in (two-toned?) annoyance, glaring (figurative) daggers at him for… daring to ask?
"...I do believe we should head back now." Ford said carefully. "I'm sure Miss Se and the others are quite tired and need to rest." He gave the interns a 'look', "Right?" They caught on quickly, as Blue rotated in place to look at them. "Oh yeah, so tired. We should start hiking back now, and then rest. Yup." Terrence yawned.
...Which was apparently a bit of a mistake, because after Terrence yawned, Blue yawned, and then the demon's whole body went full extension rigid like an exclamation point and he started attacking the sides of his head with both hands at his hair, snarling out dire curses and exclamations in Galactic Standard right after doing so (completing the yawn).
Everyone blinked at Blue. Then, loudly, Ford called out. "Oh my! What is that there, let's all go look over there and not see or hear anything that definitely did not happen, which we didn't see!" They all looked away from Blue, trying to hold back laughter.
"-Shut it, you idiot, I don't need 'HANDLING'," Blue grumbled out at him, after another final scrub of hands at his head. (He still looked pretty pissed off, though.) "Stupid yawning. Stupid..." He held a bracing base of his palm up to his forehead, and made a quiet odd sort of quick series of clicking-chirping sounds under his breath, mouth nearly closed (that Ford was fairly sure that only he'd been close enough to hear), and...
...the demon seemed to slowly settle down to the ground again, toes then heels, and slowly lowered his hand away from his forehead.
-then made a downwards-cutting sort of motion with his other hand behind him, at Ford-
...and every vine that was holding him split apart all at once.
Ford got up easily. Looking at Blue rather helplessly.
He watched as Blue pulled his journal out from the back of his belt.
And held it up as if showing it to him for a reason.
And the whole thing crumbled to dust in his hand.
Ford stared. And then he twitched. There was a deep pain in his chest as he stared, his mouth went dry. He hadn't actually thought Blue would-
Blue reached up and pulled off his hat.
He stuck his hand inside it, as he marched forwards towards one Stanford Pines, as if with a purpose in mind, one in every step.
And Blue pulled out...
Ford felt the top of his blue-bound Miz-gifted journal hit solidly against the front of his chest, as he looked down and saw it.
He looked up into the eyes of the demon who still wasn't yet letting go of it, and he heard the demon say, "Ask. Nicely." Ford stared at him. "If you want it back."
"Can I please have it back?" Ford was so relieved, he didn't even mind (sort of) begging if he had to."
"Can you?"
"...Could I? Indeed, I'm beginning to wonder that myself now." Ford laughed weakly. "May I please have it back?"
Blue let go of it all at once at his chest, pulling his hand back just as quickly, and unexpectedly, and Ford barely caught it before he'd have had to dive down to catch it instead, to save it from impacting down against the dirty ground below them.
"You don't deserve it, or her; not her time, not her trust, or anything else she may give you," Blue told him, eyes not leaving him as he did so.
"...perhaps I don't. But I'd like to be." Ford admitted, flipping the journal open, checking to make sure all his notes were in their right places.
"Not with that brain that you use like a paperweight, you're not," the demon told him. "And maybe not even then." Ford looked up at him. "You're going to want to kill her someday," the demon told him. "And then I'm going to come here and have to kill you."
And with that said, the demon seemed to vanish abruptly into thin air.
And the interns slowly came up, still a little amazed at everything that'd happened today. And with what Blue had just said to Dr. Pines… and the gentle way the man was holding that journal of his… a journal that had apparently been gifted to him by Blue's little sister, whom the scientist had apparently drawn many sketches of into it… and putting that all together...
"...you like her don't you, Blue's little sister?" Viola asked softly. Ford sighed. "Yes. She's a very dear friend. But… Blue believes I will betray her. Attempt to kill her…"
"...why?" Terrence asked, frowning at the idea, it didn't make sense to him, what with how soft Dr. Pine's expression was when he trailed a finger along one of his sketches within the journal. The girls were confused as well, to them, it very much looked like Dr. Pines was quite smitten (and it wasn't only because they were very much up for gossipping about whatever potential romance their boss could have).
(Besides, the idea that Dr. Pines held some romantic feelings for a witch, because this Miz girl must be a witch to be Blue's little sister, and was being tested by the overprotective brother- a forbidden romance! It made the girl's hearts go out for their poor Dr. Pines. Yes, they shipped it. And the two looked at each other, catching eyes and communicating without any words, on how they were going to help their teacher in his endeavors! This ship must sail!)
"Bad experience with his own…" Ford trailed off. "Anyway, we must be getting back now." Ford cleared his throat. He closed his journal, after tracing one of his sketches of William; he had a soft spot for that form, a shame Miz didn't use it more often. He had drawn William as the first entry into that journal… had found himself gazing at the sketch during his years behind the portal time and time again, finding some comfort in that entry. A Nice Bill Cipher. It had helped him go on, after bad nightmares from his own Bill, the knowledge that as terrible as Bill was, there was a kind one who had been patient enough to help him and Stan, even with how much Ford had been simply the worst guest. Ford patted his chest pocket, where he'd slipped the journal into, right over his heart, once again. William… Miz… the name didn't matter. They were an existence that was special to him. One he treasured.
Ford sighed, unaware of the three youths watching the bittersweet expressions come across his face. The girls were going crazy over the yearning they could see. Terrence just felt sorry for the man. Finally, they began the hike through the woods back to civilization. The girls resolved to find out more about this 'Miz' girl, so that they could help their teacher in this. Well, they couldn't help it, the idea of Dr. Pines being in love was simply too adorable.
(Back to MizBill POV, finally)
I yawned, listening to my summoner drone on. Why was I even here again? Oh right, needed them to sign over their property rights, then I could hand it over to the person that it truly belonged to. Could just take it. But I was going to make an attempt at diplomacy (is that what this counted as?) before I went with force. (I'm used to going at things with force, but I'm trying to learn to not just exert my power over other people all the time.)
My bowtie buzzed. I held up a hand, stopping the Hularian from their speech. "Hang on, got a summoning on the other line." They gave me a (hilarious) incredulous look as I waved goodbye, quite cheerfully, and Blinked away from there. They could afford to wait, this deal wasn't time sensitive. I Looked into what this next summoning is. My newest summoner, oh joy~ it's the mob! Yippie kai yay motherfucker, let's do this!
"Heeeey Indugno~ my man~" I popped in and wrapped an arm around the slug-like alien. "Calling me up again? So soon?" I laughed maniacally. "Here I thought you were SMART!" To be fair, this particular man was one of those smarter ones who knew how to actually keep his end of the Deal to prevent anything too awful as a side effect. He mainly asked me for materials. And he paid quite well. And by pay, I mean he had some of the greatest chefs in the multiverse on his payroll and they experimented. Ah man, that deviled eggs dish they made the last time I was summoned was so gooooood~
It helped that Indugno wasn't actually scum (ironic considering the amount of slime he oozed everywhere) and his enterprise's main mode of illegal business was on the production and sales of non-lethal weaponry. Bit of an odd idea, now isn't that? But no, his people manufactured slime guns. Sticky and quite good at capturing people without killing them.
How then, was it illegal? Why that's very simple. Their slime had a side effect of causing an overabundance of… how to put it? Honesty. People shot by it would babble out all their deep dark secrets. Of course, such a thing made many people quite scared. And what they feared, they outlawed.
Oh? And as for me? Well, I was very careful around these guys. Though, as a non-biological creature, the slime didn't really work on me. There were other species who were immune to its effects as well, elementals and crystalline creatures for example. But there were enough species in the multiverse that COULD be affected by it, that it was still outlawed.
And how did I feel about it? Well, I liked that they made a non-lethal weapon. Quite brilliant in fact. They used their own slime as one of the ingredients for the ammo. But their slime on it's own only numbed the areas it touched, it wasn't sticky enough. So they experimented for many years to add in ground bone for stability and various other chemicals for stickiness. And boom! You got yourself a sticky slime truth gun!
"Hello Cipher, I apologize for the haste, but I don't have much time." Indugno said quickly. "My child was kidnapped earlier today. I don't know who they are or where-"
"Say no more good sir." I patted his head, having fun with how squishy it was. "I rescue your kid, and you get me another of those three course meals?"
"Deal!" He was normally more cautious, but a missing kid was very urgent. I shook his eyestalk, he didn't have hands, obviously. The Deal burned and I Looked around to find his kid, right at the moment he was kidnapped. Taken to another dimension. Perfect. I popped into there, in the past, because it was safer (these kidnappers wanted to harvest the child to make their own truth serum) and plucked the kid up. I thought of doing something awful to these child kidnappers, but hesitated. (First thought was to turn their hands into feet, because that'd be funny. But I had an image of Wanda's disapproving look. My mental Zyun-Kei was all for it though, which… probably wasn't something that my mental Wanda approved of either.)
Then I wanted to simply turn them to stone or something, that was brother's main method of doing things- but… I'm… what about something else? Not copying my brother. Not copying 'Bill Cipher'. What… did I want to do? Which wouldn't involve doing something mommy disproved of. To stop these people from harming children again in the future?
(It would be a good test, to see how effective things worked here, to then try out on Earth in Seb's dimension.)
...I Cursed them all to get violently ill at the thought of personally harming a child. Perhaps that'd do? I made a note to check up on them later.
And I took the kid home. Blinking back into the 'present' time in front of Indugno, I presented the alive and safe child with a, "Ta-Dah!"
"Motoya!" Indugno slid forward (these guys were fast, for slugs-like creatures) and examined the slugling (what were baby slugs called?) and slumped in relief. I hung back to let the father and child snuggle. How cute!
"Thank you Cipher." He thanked me profusely. Awww you're gonna make me blush dude. To keep things from getting mushy (hehehe 'cause they're slugs) I quickly reminded him that he owed me a feast. He laughed simply. "Yes, yes, very much so."
I delighted in the food, saving their layout to make for my Friends later. I bet Kryptos would like this pudding, oh~ it looked good. Sad that I couldn't fully taste it right now, but that's what the copy-pastes are for! Ah, has my life just become nothing more than eating? I'm gonna get fat at this rate… wait, that doesn't happen to my triangle form- ehhhhhhh still?
Huh… can I even exercise? I doubt I can build muscles like this. These noodle limbs are cute, but not very intimidating. (Though the idea of me with swol ass muscles was rather disturbing.) Anyway, I had lots of fun and kinda sorta forgot about my other summoner, who got too annoyed and just cancelled their summoning! Which was fine with me! I didn't want to Deal with them anyway!
I got home and knocked on everyone's doors. "Guuuuuys~! I brought snaaaacks~!"
"By snacks, you mean an entire spread?" Keyhole chuckled as he came out of his room, he patted his belly. "Which is great, I was just about to get hungry."
"I've already tested for allergies and digestional matters, also!" I grinned, wrapping an arm around him, "I really liked the idea of color coding the dinnerware! So rejoice!" Keyhole rolled his eyes. "You didn't… make food like… your brother did… right?"
"Of course not!" I patted his large head. "You guys actually enjoy more traditional looking aesthetics for food." Which was still pretty out there, by Earth and human standards, but nowhere near as… amazing… as Blue's cooking. Pyronica was bounding down the hall. "BILL!" she screamed, throwing her arms wide.
"RONICAAAAAAA!" I screamed back. We body slammed into each other, tumbling down a flight of stairs. I heard Keyhole groaning, "Do you two have to keep doing that?!"
We landed at the bottom and Pyronica triumphantly held up my hat. "HAH! This means I get to pick what the next meal is!" She turned to me with a smug look but I cackled and held up her cape. "Nope! It's a tie!"
Then the both of us yelped as wind tore through around us, sucking the clothing out of our hands. We turned to look up the stairs and PaciFire shrugged, holding them both. "I guess I win this time. Around him were a swarm of Eyebats. "What? Since when could the eyebats do THIS?!" I gasped. He petted one. "Since I started training them." The demon-imp told me, quite proud of himself.
"This is the weirdest game." Hectorgon sighed. "I still think it's way too dangerous."
"You're just mad that Keyhole snagged your hat the other week." PaciFire took this time to tilt his head and another Eyebat flew at Hectorgon, snatching up said hat. "Dammit! I'm not even competing today!" Hectorgon sighed.
"That puts my points at three." PaciFire ran off with his ill-gotten goods. Pyronica huffed. "Not fair to the rest of us since he doesn't even WEAR clothing."
"That just means he needs to steal more to win." I dusted my bricks off and floated up, feeling kinda naked without my hat. I've changed the composition so it wasn't part of my body anymore, it got too weird the first time we played this game, when 8-Ball grabbed ahold of my hat and- ah… well…. It was very embarrassing for everyone involved. Ahem.
Anyway, the reason why I've started these little games with my friends is because things have been too… routine recently. I guess, with everyone being on good behavior so they didn't get in trouble with the law, we kinda fell into doing the same things everyday. So little games now and then really lightened the mood.
PaciFire raced down the hallway, clutching his prizes. Then he tripped when a leg stuck out from the ground. Despite the stone floors of the Death Star, falling didn't hurt at all. No injuries here, despite the incredibly unsafe architectural layout based on impossibly large expanses of stairs and drops and were totally not inspired by platforming video games I used to watch playthroughs of- definitely not! I've been expanding and adding more and more sections like this all across the Death Star over the years. Made things fun. (And dangerous for intruders who couldn't find their way around.)
So the demon-imp tumbled and dropped the clothing items. I watched Ammy rise up from the ground and snatch them up. He plopped them down into different blocks before he gave us a salute, folding inside a block and vanishing. Pyronica stomped her foot. "Fuck a truck with my foot!" She screeched. Keyhole sighed. "It's always unfair when Ammy joins in."
I looked around. "Well, I can't find him unless we let ME cheat."
"I guess this means we're going to that seed tasting place again." Pyronica dragged her legs as we made our way back up the stairs to get to the dining room, where I'd left the feast. Between one step and the next, I was William, brushing my hair away from my face and I salivated at the thought of the food.
"...you've got more clothes now…" Pyronica pointed out. "Huh?" Was all I managed before she pulled off my suit jacket, and pants and was making off with my shoes. "Ah come ON!" I complained. Just for that, I waved my hand and she shrieked as she toppled over, one of her high heels flying off and into my hand.
Keyhole rolled his eyes. "You and Ammy cheat because you have super powers. And Pyronica's big enough to lift me with one hand." He noted. I shrugged, holding Pyronica's shoe. "That just means you have to outsmart us." Keyhole thought about it. "Hey Bill."
"Yeah?" I put Pyronica's shoe on my foot, it clearly didn't fit. Keyhole leaned in. "Help me win, and I'll pick a seafood place."
"Oh ho ho~!" I narrowed my eye at him. "Bribing me?"
"Just doing what it'll take to win." He answered, smug as could be. Well, I liked it! "You got yourself a deal Keyhole! Well, not a real deal, but you get what I mean-" I cackled and Blinked away, looking for Ammy and where he'd hidden the articles of clothing. It was like a scavenger hunt!
Wow. His blocks were really scattered around. They were in different dimensions even!
A family of Smorfs were having a picnic under the shade of a large rocky outcropping. They screamed when I materialized in front of them. "Hi! Sorry, I just need to grab this, thank you byyyyeeeee~" I reached down, snatched up Pyronica's cape, which they'd found and had placed aside, thinking it to be a lost item to be given to the park rangers later- and I gave them a grinning salute before Blinking away. One.
I dove deep into the oceans of Ashemash, shuddering at the terrifying deep sea creatures. I loved fish, but dear spud these things were so BIG and that terrified me. "Hey! Asshole!" I kicked at a transparent fish with long trailing tendrils that went on for a few dozen meters behind it. "That's my hat! Gimme!" And I wrestled my top hat out of its mouth. Geeze, how the fuck did Ammy even get one of his blocks down here?!
Hectorgon's hat was precariously balanced on the very tip top of a Federation Prison. The alarms blared around me as people ran around, screaming about an intruder. Geeze, they act like they've never had someone break in before. (Also, what the hell was Ammy getting up to whenever I was gone, that he has a block HERE of all places?!)
I got back home and handed Keyhole my hat, Pyronica's cape, shoe, and Hectorgon's hat. "Now to wrestle my own clothes away from Ronica." I sighed, loosening my collar in preparation for the fight ahead of me. I wasn't very strong physically speaking, I usually cheat. I could make my vessels stronger, depending on how I felt at the moment. William's baseline form… wasn't strong. Not at all. But I knew Pyronica's weak points and I wasn't afraid to exploit them.
I climbed up the side of the wall from the little hand sized outcroppings and crawled through a few of the smaller tunnels. Pyronica was… currently in the dining room, eating her fill of the feast I brought home today. She had a hand clenched around the outer shirt, pants and both shoes she took from me. I grinned and crawled out, climbing across the beams up near the ceiling of this room. I saw Xanthar and Toobie being fed by 8-Ball. The ogre was ladling the soup against Xanthar's bread face and taking a bite of his own roast meat, regurgitating a little bit for Toobie.
I climbed down, reaching. I could see how everyone else saw me behind Pyronica, but they kept quiet, watching out the corner of their eyes. Keyhole came in, hoarding his stack of clothing in a metallic mesh cage, so that Ammy couldn't take them back. My son was playing with his food again, not caring about losing. They all hid smiles as I crept ever closer to Pyronica. PaciFire seemed to have forfeited as well, as he wasn't trying to snatch up anymore clothing from anyone.
I waited for Pyronica to put down and finish her latest bite of food before I acted. I waved my hand, pulling her and her chair far back, away from the table. She cried out and nearly fell over. I snatched my clothes from her and rushed for Keyhole. "Take them! Take them!" I cried as Pyronica screeched, slamming her chair back and rushing for me. I saw Keyhole turn pale and begin running in the opposite direction. We chased each other around the table, screaming and laughing.
Wow, I'm surprised Keyhole was still going, he must have been working out. I was cheating to keep running, but Pyronica was gaining on us. "Don't lead her at ME!" Keyhole wailed, scampering under the table. Everyone else sighed as Pyronica tackled me with a screech. We tumbled and I reached out to begin tickling her. "AHAHAHAHA BILL YOU BITCH! AHAHAHAHA!" I pulled off her other high heel while she was gasping and tossed it, along with everything else, over to Keyhole, sticking his head out from under the table. He gave me a thumbs up and I laughed. And then Pyronica picked me up in a hand and lifted me up to be eye to eye with her. "You always cheat." She complained.
"AH~ but I didn't cheat to win for myself." I told her, quite cheeky, "Keyhole's got all the points."
"We're going out for SEAFOOD!" Keyhole cheered. Pyronica groaned. "So that's how you bribed him."
"So… as long as fish is involved, are we allowed to have any kind of restaurant or meal type?" Hectorgon sipped his soup. The others all glanced at each other, a glinting in their eyes (if they had any). Pyronica groaned. "You're ALL planning to bribe Bill to let you win, aren't you?!"
"What noooo~" Hectorgon twirled his mustache. "What ever gave you that idea?" He asked, pulling out his Com and looking up seafood resturants, or any grilled meat places that had seafood options. Teeth was already saving down a few places on his own Com.
"Am I the only one who's NOT gonna cheat?!" Pyronica whined. Ammy tilted his head. "I don't bribe my mother to win. And Xanthar's not even playing."
"If Xanthar joined in, we would never win against him." Kryptos, surrounded by a bubble, noted. (The bubble was my own way to allow him nearby. I felt bad about him being forced to stay so far away, so Hectorgon allowed the bubble as a way to keep him from being able to touch me and vice versa.) Everyone nodded. Xanthar looked pretty smug about that, leaning over to snuffle against my side. "Aww~ ya hear that Xan-Xan?" I cooed. "You're the best~!"
"More like none of us would be able to fight him, not without feeling like an absolute dick." Teeth sighed. "If we ganged up on him and just… took the points from him without upsetting him…" 8-Ball suggested. PaciFire shook his head. "All it would take is Xanthar looking sad and Bill would just take all the points back and give them to him."
"It's good that he's not competing then." Ammy didn't see the issue here. Everyone nodded. I just ignored them all so I could spoon feed Xanthar some more soup. I preferred salty, savory soups but Xanthar liked sweet and this particular dish was sweet. Lots of plant nectars boiled into the broth base. Cooking at a high enough temperature denatured the proteins in most plants that were toxic. Not all plants, but it worked well enough to make these ones safe for consumption. It was wonderful to have people working to find ways to eat things without dying.
Why, most aliens just gave up on certain plants because of the poison, eradicating that particular species because of their toxicity. But I made an effort to inspire people to keep working at it to find ways to prepare things to make them edible. It required a lot of work, and help from other species as they all worked together to check for what parts are toxic to what species and how to go about cataloguing what substances reacted with which species in what way. The fact that I had to introduce that idea into the multiverse was headache inducing. The fact that people gave up on trying certain food just because they were poisonous was sad to me.
(Ok, I know that I could eat anything, and not die, and other people can't, but STILL!)
There were so many foods that would have been lost if people hadn't put in the time and effort needed to see how it was possible to prepare them. Maybe it was the human part of me that wanted to find ways to eat anything and everything, but it helped a LOT for getting many species out of starvation by finding all the ways they could get nutrition from the plants and animals around them. Why, one of the biggests industries in the multiverse were restaurants and those ranged from high class establishments, all the way down to small food stalls run by a family that simply figured out how to bake a toxic lizard encased in a type of clay for a whole month to draw out all the toxins from their skin and then heat to perfection-
Ahem.
I liked food, a lot. And more ways to eat food meant less starving people!
Tina's mom had put in place a regulation where anyone who travelled across dimensions would be given a complimentary Translator, which had a built in scanner for detecting if things were safe for the user's consumption. She was currently trying to make it so that such a thing was given to ALL people, regardless of their station or travel practices. A little something me and Tina had been working on to get through. Tina was still considered too young to run for any governing position, and was pretty much going to have to rely on her mother to get her foot in the door. Because that's how it worked (unfair as that was). Getting into any position of power required connections. And for what the two of us planned to do, we were going to abuse the shit out of her mother being a seated council member.
It helped that her mother agreed with a lot of the sorts of things I also wanted. The only issue is her strict view of the law, and how it should be followed, but she was open enough to recognize when a law was unjust and needed to be changed. The problem was that there were so many different cultures under Federation rule that there were some laws that LITERALLY couldn't be followed and it was stupid to try and enforce them. Frankly, Tina and I both agreed that the problem with the Federation was that it was too widespread. And it kept trying to make all the dimensions it had power over follow the same laws, which was just stupid.
Any government, no matter how well intentioned or put together, would fall apart when it got too big. That… there was simply no way to have control over such varied groups and cultures under one rule. What we needed was a stop to the Federation's expansion and a sectioning off, and even cutting loose, of factions and branches. Maybe keep a certain position of power, but delegate or even allow the separate states and regions to self govern. I was for self governing. Letting the people decide for themselves what they wanted without having to rely or obey a higher authority. But Tina brought up what to do about criminals. I suggested local court systems, but she rebutted with 'what if the locals choose to let someone off even if they know that person did wrong?' and I replied that places already did that. So we were back at square one. Well, there were too many things to keep track of...
"-ill? Bill?" I blinked as Teeth waved a hand in front of my face. Right, back to the present. "So, Keyhole wins this round, yes?" I glanced over to see most of the food was gone. No matter, I could Paste it and eat it myself later if I really wanted to. "What were you thinking about this time?"
"How much work it'd take to completely remake a governmental system from the ground up. All the separate branches that would come from that and how self governing impacted with and against actual persecution of criminals and whether or not that should be something allowed for the people to decide on their own or if a higher authority should be allowed to exert their power over the final judgment…"
Everyone stared at me. Teeth winced. "Ok, forget I asked."
"Already forgotten!" I laughed, sitting down to grab the leftovers that no one else was eating. "But if you guys have any advice on how to do that, I'm open to ideas!"
"Not touching that." Most of them muttered. Ammy raised a hand, "What if all criminals get sent to you to judge?"
Everyone looked over at Ammy and then turned to me. "Well, you DO know pretty much everything, you'd be able to tell if someone was really guilty." Hectorgon pointed out. I groaned. "There's a law against psychics in court. Something about memory modifications and stuff compromising the legitimacy of testimonies. Which is bullshit." Sure, the aliens here don't have that thing that humans do where they can rewrite their own memories and believe something entirely false with a few leading words- but still! I kinda get that they didn't want people purposely modifying memories, but any of that would have occured LONG before anyone even went to court! No psychic's gonna fuck with someone's head right there in front of everyone!
"Well, what if they just have you on as a consultant, to show what you've Seen?" Ammy continued. I groaned. "I mean… I guess? But they could just make everyone in court take a Truth-Telling potion or something?"
Those could be EASILY made. Why people didn't fucking use them in trials was BEYOND COMPREHENSION. I bet it was just 'cause the people in charge of it all didn't want to risk their own deep dark secrets being let loose by mistake. Seriously though. There were MULTIPLE different truth-enforcing substances. "I don't want to be involved in that kind of thing anyway…" It was just too annoying.
We dropped the subject after that, mainly because I didn't want to talk about it.
A new kingdom was growing in Africa.
It was cool to see an empire powerful enough to rival my beloved Kemet (Egypt). It meant more people were learning, and developing and that meant there were more people for me to observe and learn from. They built beautiful burial mounds, lined with stones and earth. Great cities with vast agricultural plots where they grew everything they needed. Watching them work was lovely. They raised goats, sheep and cattle. Wild to think of how those animals all came from the same ancestors. Humans were great at breeding animals into domestication and specialty. Sheep for their wool, cows for their milk… goats for their ability to eat up all the trash(?) Well, they had milk and meat too. But their voracious appetites and hilarious screaming seemed to amuse the humans as much as it entertained me.
Oooh! They even had entire sections of their community devoted to the creation of art.
And how wonderful it all was. They had gold smithing! All human civilizations, entirely independent of each other, gravitated toward gold as something 'special'. Some used it for currency, most used it for jewelry or ornamentation. Regardless of the culture, all humans, without any sort of discussion with each other, used gold. (Don't you love convergent invention? People coming to the same conclusion despite never meeting each other!?) They had other metals as well. Those who knew how to work with metal tended to gain more power. With metal tools, you could more easily cut wood. With metal weapons, you could more easily kill prey. Or other humans. Wars and raids happened always. I wanted to stop them. The fighting and killing was such a waste. But they needed resources, they took it from others. That was how humans worked.
But whenever the fighting ceased, they turned to art. They carved out statues of their leaders, commissioned by said leaders as a way to preserve their image, to prove that they were there. Everyone wanted to leave something of themselves behind. A way to prove that they had existed, long after they died. Humans were so hung up on that. But it was wonderful. Their need to keep their stories alive. Every pot and bowl was proof that someone had made them. Every statue was proof of both ruler and artist. And so I watched the humans create and create. With all their might, with what little time they had on this Earth, they spent it creating things. Watching this all… I was left wondering how humanity could degrade to what they'd become in modern day over in Seb's world.
Sure, we still had creators. Artists and storytellers. But they weren't valued as they should have been. They were all taken for granted, if not dismissed entirely. EVEN AS the masses relied on those very same creators and artists to entertain them! Ah… I hoped I could change things here. This was MY Earth. To do with as I wished. And I wished for a world where people could create to their heart's content.
...though...
...what WAS it with all human cultures I've observed… with making porn?
I'm serious. No matter what culture it was, they created porn. I watched the artist before me sculpt the stone into a clear feminine figure with smooth curves and large proportions. I mean, I didn't mind. It was amusing, and I've created an entire planet for porn so it's not like I had any right to criticize. But seriously. Humanity is, was, and will always be, horny as fuck.
