12,000 words in, and we're finally getting around to a bit of the actual plot! Hopefully it's worth the wait, because you guys are strapped in for a long ride. Thank you so much to everyone supporting this story! Remember, favorites, follows, and especially reviews make my world go 'round.
Nights in Amity Park were usually considered among ghosts a prime time to pick a fight with the infamous Danny Phantom. Tonight, though, was quiet. It was far out of the norm for a ghost to venture into the city without creating some sort of ruckus, so even a person without a ghost sense would have little trouble noticing when a phantasmic menace was out and about.
If Nocturne didn't have a purpose that night, a purpose which was the only thing on his mind and had been so for the past three nights, he probably would have leapt to participate in this nighttime tradition. Or he would at least have taking the time to swing by Fentonworks, perhaps take a peek at the boy's dreams and throw in a few alterations of his own.
But not tonight. Tonight, instead, took him to a neighborhood at the far west side of town, to a rental home on a street of houses that would have been nigh identical had this one not already displayed signs of having been inhabited: the old convertible and the station wagon parked in the driveway, the threadbare sofa on the front porch that spilled out handfuls of stuffing and had a spring poking out through one of the cushions, the glittering decals pasted onto a bedroom window, the custom weather vane on the roof.
Nocturne glided silently into the house, following his instinct that pulled him toward one of the upstairs bedrooms, and found his target asleep in his bed, tangled in his faded comfortable and mumbling softly in his sleep.
The ghost made his entry in a dive, finding himself landing in the child's dreamscape. He peered around once he'd entered, acclimating himself to the surroundings. This subconscious had manifested in what looked to be the main street of a small town, except for the fact that it appeared to be the only street; beyond this road stretched a blue-tinged forest of pines, infinite and acting as the mindscape's boundaries. The buildings along the street seemed to readily serve the functions of the subconscious. What looked to be the display of an electronics store projected memories from dozens of TV monitors. A library, probably the boy's storage of knowledge and information, sat across from it. A small building declaring itself a bank stood with its doors barred, an attempt to seal its contents, the boy's secrets and doubts, away from intruding eyes. Several more buildings were dotted up and down the street, leading to a courthouse on one end, no doubt the center for morality, judgment, and, more likely than not, self-loathing.
The building on the other far end of the street, however, was what interested Nocturne the most. A rather dilapidated house stood proudly, an archway stretched over the entrance across two totem poles. A multitude of signs led to the front door of the house pointed toward it, declaring it wondrous and must-see and worth the cost of admission. And in a sign across the roof, enormous wooden letters spelled out "Mystery Shack" – or, they would have, if an "S" wasn't missing and leaving its outline against the sign's faded background.
It was this building that had the ghost's attention. This was the source of the sensation he had tracked all over town, and he was finally going to get to the bottom of it.
He began gliding down the street toward the house, ready to explore this "Mystery Shack", but just as he passed under the archway, he found his path blocked, as another entity dropped in front of him seemingly out of thin air.
"Well, well, well!" the being said. "It's sure been a long time since I've had a visitor!"
Nocturne stared at the creature before him. He had been certain during his pursuit that he was looking for a ghost, but this thing wasn't like any ghost he'd ever seen. For one thing, the being looked practically two-dimensional, a flat isosceles triangle floating off the ground of its own accord. The creature met Nocturne's gaze, it with only a single eye that seemed to take up a third of its body. Stick-thin arms and legs dangled from its edges, a curved-handle cane resting in one of his hands. The entire look was completed with a black bow tie on its chest and a narrow top hat that floated inches above what must be the top of its head.
"What, you're not gonna talk?" the creature asked. Its voice was grating and adenoidal, with a sharp echoing quality that almost made him seem louder than he was. Nocturne had no idea where the voice was coming from, since the thing didn't seem to have a mouth. "My first guest in like a year, and he doesn't even wanna chat? Hot damn, do I have the worst luck!"
Nocturne narrowed his eyes at the being. "I'm not here to chat," he said. "Your presence has been causing a disruption, and I am here to put an end to it. Who are you?"
"Name's Bill," the triangle said jovially. "Bill Cipher. You must have heard of me before, right? Dream demon, all-seeing eye, basically the most powerful being in the universe?" He watched Nocturne for a reaction, and when he didn't get one, he sighed and rolled his eye. "I need a new agent, I guess. For now, burn in me into your memories, all right? It should be easy, I'm a lot less complex-looking than all those curlicues you've got going on there. Want a picture? It could help."
Bill clapped his hands together, and with a puff of smoke, a large, glossy photograph appeared in his hand, which he tossed to Nocturne, who caught it and stared at it in disbelief. It looked like some sort of glamor shot, with Bill lounging in front of a fireplace with a glass of champagne in his hand. The photo was even signed, in a deep crimson ink: "To my adoring fan! Pmvvo yvuliv nv! Buy gold! XOXO – Bill"
"What is – I don't want this!" Nocturne snapped, tossing the photograph aside. "Look, I am here because you have been interfering in my domain. The ghosts who grace the city of Amity Park have sensed the presence of a new demon, and as a dream demon, you have encroached upon my work. The half-ghosts dreams are already being affected by your arrival, and it's only a matter of time before the full humans pick up on it as well. My whole energy supply will be tainted, and I will not stand for it. Have you any idea who you are dealing with, Cipher?"
He finished in his most imposing tone, but Bill looked thoroughly unimpressed. The triangle's pupil widened and transformed into a yawning mouth before the creature fixed Nocturne with a bored stare. "Of course, I know who I'm dealing with, Nocturne. And you're not exactly a huge threat to me."
"I'm a big enough threat for you to know my name."
Bill laughed, a shrill, wicked chuckle that irritated Nocturne to the core. "Oh, don't flatter yourself, Curly, I know everyone's name. Everyone's name, their past, I'd know your blood type and social security number if you had them. I know lots of things. I'm sort of a big deal that way."
"Is that so?" Nocturne growled. "Well, do you know what you're doing here in Amity Park, tampering with my energy source?"
"I sure do," Bill said, the corners of his eye turning up in a facsimile of a grin. "Bit of a long story, you may want to settle in. Can I offer you something to drink in the meantime? Tea? Coffee? Beer?" A pitcher appeared in his hand, and he tilted it so that the beverage poured out in a steady stream, transforming itself each time Bill named a drink. "Milk? Lemonade? Hot chocolate? Blood?"
"Nothing."
"Suit yourself." Bill snapped his fingers, and the pitcher vanished. Another snap, and plushy red chaise lounge appeared floating in the air beside him. Bill draped himself across it on his back, an arm flung dramatically across his forehead. "Now, this is the story all about how my life got flipped, turned upside – "
"Get to the point," Nocturne snarled.
Bill sat up on the chaise. "All right, Curly, you want the low-down, here's the low-down. You already figured out that I'm a demon, right? Not hard for us to detect each other, I know. Well, you should know that I came to this dimension to make it better. I spent eons figuring out a way to bring some of the joys of my home here, teach this dimension how to party. And about a year ago, I accomplished it. I was top of the world, and it was a grand world, a world of fun and entropy as far as the eye can see. But just as I'm trying to figure out how to take the fiesta global, some goddamn wet blankets get all pissy about it, decide they want their old milquetoast nine-to-five lives back. So what do they do? They kill me! Some clown in a fez straight-up erases me from existence! The nerve, huh?"
"Erased you from existence?" Nocturne repeated skeptically. "Then how are – "
"How am I still here?" Bill finished. "Good question, big guy, you get an A for the day. I know, I couldn't believe it either, but it seems the the old schmucks didn't quite finish the job. This kid we're in, the guy who made this?" He gestured at large to the dreamscape around them. "Name's Pine Tree. Cute kid, real mule-headed, though. Thin-skinned, too, you barely have to press to get a fork into his arm. And his stamina leaves a lot to be desired, I gotta say.
"Anyhow, about a month before my big party, I get the opportunity to take Pine Tree out for a joyride. And, well, when I play with a toy for hours on end like that, I guess I tend to leave a bit of residue, see. Sixer knew about it, trying to do a little malware scan on the kid's head. I'm lucky Pine Tree's got the attention span of a gnat and didn't let the scan finish, or there wouldn't have been any of me left at all. As it was, though, when the old guys tried to zap me out of existence, I thought I was a goner, but next thing I know, I wake up.
"And it was a hell of a rude awakening, let me tell you. Do you know how powerful you are when all that's left of you is a teeny-tiny little sliver? Not very. I could barely even move the first few weeks I was here. It's been a year of bed rest and willpower, and I'm still just a ghost of my former self." At the look Nocturne gave him, he hastily added, "No offense."
"You're still not completely bereft of power though," Nocturne said. "You're strong enough for me to track you."
"Yeah, but I know how it works between demons from different dimensions. We show up in the same city and you're like a dog tracking a truck full of T-bones. It used to be you would probably detect a disturbance in the force even if I popped up a hundred miles south. Now? Well, a year, isn't that long to get back into tip-top shape. If I had been in this mindscape before, the whole place would be home-away-from-home for me, I woulda redecorated like a pro. But now, you wanna see how much damage I can do?"
He swooped down to the ground to pick up a pine cone, and it burst into flame as he held it up for Nocturne to see. A raging fireball sat in his hand for nearly a minute, before Bill blew the flame out and handed the pine cone to Nocturne to examine it. The ghost held it up, turning it over in his hands. The edges of some of the scales looked to have been blackened, but otherwise, the pine cone seemed pristine.
"Pathetic, huh?" Bill said. "A toddler with neglectful parents can set a pine cone on fire, but me, I can't even accomplish that, not even in a dreamscape. It's a real tear-jerker, Curly. I'm all powerless. Helpless. Impotent."
"Yes, well, you have my pity," Nocturne muttered. "But really, I'm more concerned about your presence's effects on local dreams. I came here only to ask you to lay low, not to listen to your sob story."
"Ah, you want me to lay low, huh?" Bill asked. He thoughtfully rubbed a spot above his bow tie that would be a chin on a normal face, then, the lid of his top hat popped up, and a glowing light bulb emerged from it and floated overhead. "Okay, okay, I'll hide out, I'll see if I can keep my aura or whatever under control. Put perhaps in exchange, you wouldn't mind doing me a little favor, wouldja?"
"What sort of favor?" Nocturne asked, narrowing his eyes.
"Oh, a teensy one, I assure you," Bill said. "Now, I know quite a bit about you, Curly, and one of the things I know is that you're a pretty powerful guy, huh? You've got that endless supply of dreams to power you, not to mention that whole Sleepwalker army at your beck-and-call." Cautiously, slowly, Nocturne nodded in confirmation. "Those Sleepwalkers, those don't just come out of nowhere, do they? You power them. You basically feed them. Bottom line, you've got a means of sharing your power if you so choose."
"Where, precisely, are you going with this?"
Bill laughed. "Damn, I thought it would have been fairly obvious. You and me, Curly, we both operate on the same fuel, we both thrive off dream energy. And here I am, helpless and vulnerable and alone, without enough power in me to even collect the stuff. So, here's what I'm thinking. What would you say to making a little… business arrangement? I don't need much, just a cut of the supply, enough to get me back on me feet again."
Nocturne set his mouth in a thin line, thinking it over. "And what would I get in exchange?"
"What wouldn't you get? Pal, do you have any idea what I'm capable of? When I'm at full capacity, the world is at my fingertips. I can make it whatever I want, make anyone do whatever I tell them, turn the universe into my playground. And you, my friend, would be my right-hand man. I know you, Curly, I know how much you'd love that omniscience you've got over dreams to carry out into something real, I know you crave power like a drug. And I'll make sure you're right at my side. You will get all the power you could ever need, all as thanks for giving me a kick start."
The offer did sound tempting. Nocturne stared at Bill, trying to read his expression to detect exaggeration or lies, but that was a difficult feat with only a single eye to go off of. "And how do I know you'll live up to that promise?" he asked coolly, trying to keep his genuine interest out of his voice.
"I guess you've just got my word," Bill answered. "But you can ask anyone I've done business with over the years, and they'll tell you, my word is as good as gold."
Nocturne didn't reply, still turning the offer over in his head. "Come on, Curly, what do you have to lose? I just want to share a little bit of your power, it won't set you back none. And in exchange, all the power you could ever need. Sounds like quite a bargain to me."
The demon approached the ghost, holding out his hand. A thin blue glow outlined his edges, and a blue flame appeared in his palm, quickly spread to engulf his hand and wrist. "So whattaya say, Nocturne?" he asked, his voice lower, graver, bolder than it had been before. "Do we have a deal?"
Nocturne look back and forth from Bill's hand to his inviting eye, and then, slowly, deliberately, extended his own ghostly black hand to shake. The blue flame moved to encircle both hands, and Nocturne noticed that it didn't burn, but instead floated against his hand like hot steam. It wasn't an unpleasant feeling.
"Deal."