---
Stan jumped at the sound of a heavy, wet thud hitting the outside door of the gift shop. He got up from behind the front counter, and walked over to the door. Frowning -- and fully ready to pull a 'grumpy old con-man' on some of the townskids, Stan unlocked and opened the door to find a half-open burlap sack sitting on the porch in front of him, filled with fish that were still flopping around weakly. He squinted at the piece of paper that was attached to the bag, then grabbed at a corner and tugged it off to read it.
[I didn't cook them so it's fine!]
Stan rubbed his face. It was like a cat bringing home a dead squirrel or something. (Well, the kid did act like a stray cat most days. He really shouldn't be surprised that this demon kid did, too.) He really needed to talk to Miz about this. Otherwise she'd probably keep trying to 'apologize' by giving him stuff without understanding anything. --Hell, apparently she'd even misunderstood that he'd only meant that he didn't want her trying to cook at the stove at the same time as him earlier that morning, because they'd get in the way of each other; the stove wasn't that big.
Stan stared down at the bag of weakly-flopping fish. ...The thing really wasn't going anywhere, was it?
...Well, free fish was free fish, he guessed. He just hoped the two demons had cleaned off the Stan 'O War when they brought it back. Fishing was always pretty messy, and fish guts started smelling pretty bad after a day or so; after two days it was nearly impossible to get the smell out of the wood. He'd be pretty annoyed with the kid if the boat wasn't cleaned up from their use of it; he'd make the kid clean it himself, to learn better. ...Heh, he'd cross that demon's screw-up when he had to, if he had to. Wasn't like the kid didn't like 'nose smelling' and whatnot; it'd serve the kid right if the kid hadn't thought that one all the way through, from what Stan had told him last time.
"Soos!" Stan called out loudly into the house. "Got something for you to carry!" Not like Stan wanted to handle all that fish himself. While he waited, Stan crumpled up the note and stuffed it into a pocket for safe disposal later; he didn't want to risk his brother going through the trash and seeing it...
---
Ford stared as Stan wandered in after Soos, who was carrying a sack of what appeared to be live fish into the kitchen. Dipper gasped. "What's with all that fish?"
"Dinner." Stan grunted. Melody helped her fiance set the sack down on the tile floor of the kitchen. She easily put two and two together (Miz's note about playing at the lake with this bountiful donation) and glanced at Stan. She didn't say anything though, knowing to keep quiet about it since Ford was nearby and perfectly able to overhear them and anything or anyone they talked about. She couldn't help but sigh, though. "I should look up how to cook fish," she noted. Fish was not one of the types of meat she was used to preparing. "What kinds are these?"
"Trout… bass… here's a salmon…" Stan rummaged around in the bag, moving some fish aside. They flopped weakly. Hell, they didn't have enough room in the fridge for all this even with the thing nearly empty, and there was no way they would be able to eat this all in three days, let alone one afternoon and evening. The goat wasn't gonna be able to handle all the leftovers from this, either. They were gonna end up with gnome problems at the house if those two pulled this again -- and the two of 'em had talked about going out there on the lake at least twice, which meant at least one more time. (Stan was starting to regret telling the kid when he'd taken him out there that fishing was an important human boating thing to do.) --Stan really needed to talk to the demon-kids.
"Put these in the fridge for now, we'll bring 'em out to the grill outside for dinner later," Stan grunted as he picked out three fish and handed them over. That should be enough to feed them. He handed the sack back to Soos. "Help me bring these upstairs," he grunted. Soos nodded, a cheerful smile on his face. Stan would have waited until later for this, but it was pretty clear that he had to tell Miz to stop giving him stuff right now before it got any worse.
Ford was distracted from the peculiar particulars of Stan's trip upstairs (and from walking over to determine exactly how many fish were still in that bag...) by Mabel practically crawling up into his lap to show him the latest sweater she was knitting. He adjusted his glasses and peered down at a pattern that consisted of a forest green backdrop with recurring stitched-in images of popsicles on it. (He still noted that there was something weird odd happening upstairs. But what?)
---
Stan dragged the fish sack behind him as he made it up the final flight of stairs and up into the kid's room. Bill and his sister were laying on the ground, on their backs, watching some kinda cartoon on the ceiling. "Why're none of the humans listening to the guy who clearly knows what's going on?" he heard Bill ask. Miz was snuggled up against the kid's side, pressing their arms together but not grabbing him. "Because they're scared and don't want to listen." She sighed.
Looking up at the white square screen-looking thing that 'hung' mid-air right below the ceiling rafters, Stan saw the image of a bunch of people in a boat that appeared to be sailing through some kinda… weirdness fog? They were all screaming and panicking aside from a colorfully dressed man who was calmly investigating.
Bill didn't look over at Stan but he clearly knew he was there -- Stan had only ever heard that kinda tone out of the kid when he knew Stan was listening to him complaining about how humans were so dumb, because the kid was annoyed that he thought one of the niblings hadn't been listening to him (...usually, because Bill had just gotten done doing something that was some kind of stupid, and couldn't freaking explain himself worth a damn to the niblings without yours truly as a demon-talk translator most times).
"Hey," Stan spoke up. "We don't have room for all the fish downstairs. So here's the extras." He set the sack down near the two of 'em, about a foot or two away -- closer to Miz, who had eaten a lot more than the kid the night before and had been a hell of a lot less picky about it -- and Miz reached for it, turning her head so she could see it. "Hi mister Stan," she greeted as she wiggled her fingers and made the sack slide towards her. Her tail was out, wagging back and forth lazily.
Stan took this time to ask a few questions. "Why're you a dragon again?"
"Because dragons are cool," she said simply. Well, Stan guessed he couldn't fault her for that. He was pretty sure that if Mabel suddenly got weirdness powers at her disposal she'd probably turn herself into a mermaid or something. He watched Miz take out a fish. It thrashed weakly before she pressed her hand against it and made a sweeping motion. The fish stilled. Then Miz opened her mouth up reeeeeal wide and proceeded to swallow it whole.
...Stan wasn't entirely sure he wanted to ask but he did anyway. "What did you just do?"
Miz opened her mouth, closed it and thought. "Would it upset you to know?" she finally asked. Stan sighed. (Well, at least she was probably doing the 'asking the memory of the sister in her head' thing.) "How bad is it?"
More thinking. "Kinda bad?" Miz sounded a little unsure. (Okay, definitely the 'asking the sister in her head' thing. Stan recognized that look from some of Carla's friends back in high school, along with the tone.) Despite that, Stan would rather know what it was than to not. "Tell me," Stan said.
She hummed. "I don't like eating things while they're still alive," she said, instead of what she was going to say first. "It feels cruel to me."
...which means she killed the fish before she ate it. Yeah, okay. Stan could fill in the blanks. He let out a slow breath as he thought over how she'd done it, how quickly it happened. All she had done was swipe her hand across it, and the animal had simply… died. No blood, no mess… in less than a second. Just alive one second and dead the next.
He held back a shiver. He was suddenly glad Miz wasn't hostile. He also wondered if the kid could do that too. Then he wondered how many other demons could do that. Was it something unique to Miz, and maybe Bill, or did all the demons out there have that kind of ability? ...If they did, then no wonder Ford was freaked the hell out by demons in general.
Miz was looking up at him. "Should I not have said anything?" she asked. Stan took a deep breath. "Does that little trick of yours work on more than just fish?"
Slowly, she nodded. "I… didn't want it to suffer. I could just… physically kill them but fishes aren't like most animals where I can just snap their necks to kill them quick and painless." She reached for another fish. "If you're worried about me using it on people, I have no desire to kill any person here or out there and I won't purposely try to do so."
Bill had looked over almost immediately when Miz had done what she'd done, near a member of his Zodiac. He'd felt the small ripples in energy across the spectrum, including magic. Bill watched closely as Miz took the life from the next fish. She pulled out and absorbed all its energy in a quick motion -- instant death, no pain, no suffering. She fed off its gathered life force first and then ate the body to break it apart for more energy. Interesting. Not quite the way he fed on things himself -- but then, she was used to having a body, and eating physical things in stable dimensions.
Once Bill had determined that what Miz was doing and the way she was doing it wouldn't disrupt the spellwork he'd put into place up here (death magic and sacrifices were a thing, after all), Bill stopped worrying about it. ...Yes, there was a little leakage, but she clearly wasn't used to saving every last erg of energy she got out of anything, and a little sloppy eating wouldn't hurt anyone here. (The spellwork would just pull in the rest of the free-floating waste energy.) Miz just as obviously had full control of the process, and could probably manage less 'slop over' if she wanted to put in the focus to do that much.
Stan was quiet as he thought. Miz said she wouldn't purposely try to kill anyone. "Is there a way you'd do this trick by accident?" He was prepared to kick her out of the house and away from his family if there was even a chance--
"No. It uses too much concentration." Stan untensed. Okay. That was some good news. He supposed he should be grateful that at the very least, she didn't like having her food suffer needlessly. (Didn't necessarily mean she felt the same way about people she didn't like, but, y'know, not like most people would be any better than that, in Stan's experience. Whatever. She didn't 'desire' to hurt them right now, or anything like that. Those were details he could work with.)
"That's good," Stan said finally. (He also tried not to think about the fact that maybe she'd gotten so good at this kind of killing because of what she'd said earlier about that jerk baby and…)
"It's the difference between 'efficiency' and 'style' with some theatrical flair," Bill told him casually, staring up at the ceiling at the cartoon again. And at the kid's two cents on this, Stan frowned, because he recognized that tone as the kid's 'instructive voice'. That meant that that wasn't just two cents that the kid was willing to toss out there, and Stan knew that he wasn't gonna like the next thing, because it was going to be something he'd missed before that was dead-true.
Stan wasn't going to back down, though. He wasn't gonna walk away with just a measly two cents when the kid was about to pay up something he owed.
"You wanna explain?" Stan said to the kid, and he didn't even try to brace himself, because he'd found out over the last couple of weeks that that usually just made it worse.
He saw the kid get a slow smile, and it wasn't even a very big one. (Shit.)
And then 'Bill Cipher' decided to make an appearance.
The kid's whole posture changed, just… shifted. He wasn't lazily lounging, relaxed where he was laid out on the floor. No, there was presence there, instead. Miz looked over with an awestruck expression.
Bill Cipher was grinning. His eyes were wide, his posture and gestures almost upbeat as he kicked up his feet a bit, to bend his knees and let out one of those 'HAHAHAHA!' laughs of his.
Bill made a gesture upwards, gaining attention. "STANLEY," he half-drawled out, slowly turning his head towards him, eyes straightforward. "I'm surprised at you!" He twisted slightly in place, bending his torso more to face him, without actually moving his legs all that much or actually ending up laying on his side. His body looked far more rigid now. "Bringing up all that raw, LIVELY fish up here for my sister to eat." The grin he was giving Stan right now got a bit more wide. "The least you could do is SERVE IT to her PROPERLY!"
And then… then Bill made a sort of 'what can you do' gesture with his arms out to the side that looked almost natural…. except that Stan, a showman himself, knew that if Bill had gone any further with that then he had, that he would have ruined the illusion of 'carelessly floating sideways' by smacking his left hand and arm straight into the hard wooden floor.
"DEAD, DEAD, and MORE DEAD is the way to go, Stanley. Tsk tsk!" Bill enthused out.
And then Bill said, "I think I'm gonna KILL 'em all, JUST FOR THE HELL OF IT!"
And he raised his right hand.
And snapped his fingers.
...And Stan realized something was off.
Stan looked down.
And he realized that what was off was that every single one of those fish had stopped moving.
There was a long pause. Stan took in a breath.
He let it out again.
He looked up, and saw that Bill wasn't even looking at him anymore. He was looking up at the 'cartoon' again, and slowly, easily, letting all the tension drain out of that body of his, to look like he had before.
...Going 'low energy state' on him again. Shit.
Stan looked down at the bag of dead fish again. He closed his eyes for a moment.
It wasn't like he hadn't recognized the wording. He wasn't an idiot.
(Guess that answered the question of whether the kid could pull this shit off, too.
"So." Stan took a moment to breathe in… and it was a lot easier than maybe it should have been for him. "Probably a good thing that you like the whole 'stylish theatricality' thing, then, huh kid."
"Maybe," said Bill. Stan looked up at him, because what the hell… "It wouldn't really matter if I did it either way, though, now that I'm HERE."
Stan tried not to react to that. He was pretty sure he'd succeeded, but… this was something he was gonna have to talk to the kid about. Alone. He needed a straight answer about what the kid had meant when he'd said that, and he wasn't so sure that he'd get one out of him with the 'kid sister' around to interrupt them or listen in.
This was Zodiac stuff. It had that feel to it. Kid got touchy as hell about this stuff. Stan knew he had to be careful about this.
"...We're gonna talk about this later," was what Stan settled on saying, instead of what he'd wanted to say right then. He got a "Fine," out of the kid, which was more than enough. (It was already too much. Stan knew he was probably gonna have nightmares about this, because Ford was right. There was nothing stopping the kid from doing anything to them except the kid himself. ...which just meant that he was right, too. If he could find a way to convince Bill not to pull this shit on any of them, and make sure that the kid never wanted to, never had a reason to...)
Miz was gazing at Bill in awe. 'He's sooooo coool!!!!' She looked down at her own hand and flicked her fingers, not casting any spells or anything, just trying (and failing) to snap her fingers. Just a soft 'foof' sound that was NOWHERE near as impressive as that really cool sharp noise that Bill made. She flicked her fingers uselessly a few more times before giving up. Eh, wasn't all that important, she just wouldn't look as cool. She ate another fish.
Stan glanced down at the sound, blinking. His eyebrows went up slightly when he realized what Miz was trying to do. And when Stan did, it took almost everything he had not to laugh at the absolute absurdity of it (though it would've been a hell of a lot of horror instead, if Stan had been stupid enough to think that 'snapping fingers' actually meant a dead someone somewhere...).
But when Stan got a good look at the expressions on her face through all of it, as she kept looking down at her fingers, and then stealing glances at Bill...
Stan relaxed a little and huffed out an amused breath at the little sis trying to emulate the cool big brother. Because hell, some things were the same even for triangle demons, huh.
"You gonna teach your kid sister how to snap her fingers there, kid?" Stan asked the kid, slowly settling into place where he was sitting. (Moving past the horror of how Bill could have just as easily snapped his fingers when he'd been holding the kids in the Fearamid, without even saying anything or going through that 'eenie-meeny-miney' game of his… didn't really take much for Stan while he was awake. Because Stan knew that Bill not only didn't have a reason to kill them all right now, the triangle demon hadn't wanted to kill them all then. Because Bill had had a reason then -- they'd been attacking him -- and Bill still hadn't just pulled the trigger on the spot, 'efficiently', even after being threatened with the holding-hands circle.)
(--And that was how Stan knew this was Zodiac stuff. Bill didn't go 'wasting' time or energy when he didn't have to, ever. Came up too often when they talked about things, and the kid was too consistent about it. He'd tossed the rest of the Zodiac up into the rafters, trapping them in banners, but he hadn't killed them, either. Saving them for later. Stan was pretty sure at this point that the kid needed them for something. The kid would've gotten rid of them all by now, otherwise. Instead, the kid was trying to get along... Hell, Bill had even tried to do that before with the Gleeful kid, the whiny little waste of space. --The idea of killing Mabel 'not mattering' though, that didn't fit. Stan needed to lock down what that actually meant, real soon.)
Bill blinked and turned his head to look over at his sister, trying to snap her fingers just like him.
"...You want help with that?" Bill asked Miz slowly, almost like the kid was testing the waters.
"I'll get it eventually…" Miz muttered, staring down at her fingers again. How was it that EVERYONE could do this except her? Her sisters had both been able to snap their fingers just fine.
Bill seemed to shrug it off. "You can always cheat," he informed her, thinking of sound illusions. Miz laughed lightly. "It wouldn't be as satisfying." Bill thought for a moment, then looked up at Stan. "Watch someone doing it with your Eye, the next time we're outside?" Bill said, still looking up at Stanley.
Miz groaned. "I know HOW it works. I just… can't seem to get it TO work." She flicked her fingers again with a faint 'thup' sound. Bill let out a deep sigh. "Did you try watching the motion slowly?" he tried next, giving just a slight hint. He didn't want to give away too much; he knew how he'd always felt when Liam had just given him something instead of letting him figure it out -- he felt almost cheated, because then he hadn't been able to show that he could do it, figure it out on his own! Miz frowned at her hand and slowly moved her fingers for a bit before trying again. 'Foof' 'Foop' 'Thop' 'Thock' 'Pop'. She finally managed a quiet popping sound. Not quite a snap unless you squinted and turned your ears diagonal but it was close.
"Better!" Bill encouraged her, smiling. "You know what you did differently that time?"
"My hands are a little sweatier. I thought giving them some stickiness would help…" Miz blushed faintly. "Mmhmm," said Bill. "And what does having sweaty hands do that not-sweaty hands don't do as well? Or maybe too well?"
"Makes the friction different." Miz glanced over at Bill. "Yes," said Bill. "Now, where are you holding your fingers when you start?" Miz pressed her fingers together. Her thumb and middle finger pressed together, bent slightly. She flicked and got another faint popping noise. She tried it a few times, every now and then getting an actual snap (but very quiet).
"Good!" Bill said. "Now… you could feel where everything was relative to each other in that hand of yours when you were doing that, right?" Miz nodded. "What was hitting what when you got more or less noise?"
"My finger was hitting here--" She poked at her hand. "And it made the sound."
"Mmhmm," said Bill. "What was there right before that, when you started?"
"Um...I wasn't hitting it on the right spot. And my fingers were sliding instead of snapping." Miz continued flicking her fingers, getting more faint snaps here and there. Bill glanced over, and sighed as he realized at least part of the problem. "Your time sense isn't working right now, is it," he said, feeling a bit like an idiot now.
"...no… it's sealed." Miz admitted sheepishly.
"You can't track the relative placements, relative to each other properly with just touch, and you can't amp up your sight to catch everything slowly enough because your time sense isn't there," Bill told her, reaching up to pat her on the head. "You're effectively trying to train muscle memory by sound. That's going to take forever. You should wait until we're outside the barrier and away from people again, when you have the headband off, to try again."
Miz nodded. "Ok big brother." She poked at her headband, which Stan realized she had changed to a dark blue color with a small metal plate with a swirled design on it. Huh. He felt like this was a reference to something; it had that 'trying to be obviously a thing' look to it. Miz reached over to eat some more fish since she was done with trying to learn this for now. Miz swallowed the fish before she seemed to realize something. She wiggled, looking like she wanted to say something while glancing up at Stan shyly. Stan sighed. "What is it?"
"My human dad used to eat things while they were still alive," she admitted. "Like shrimp and stuff. Because he liked the way they wiggled inside him. But I never liked it personally, I thought it was mean." She frowned. "And my human grandma used to bring home placenta from her job at the hospital to made soup for my mom to eat." She threaded her fingers together. "So… even as a human… I… think maybe I don't know what was considered… normal."
Stan stared. Ok. A lot to unpack there. "Uh." What was she trying to say? And hey, "What's placenta?" Stan asked, and Bill didn't quite grimace. "Terminology issue," Bill told Miz. "--Human afterbirth," the kid put out there for Stanley.
Stan's eyes went a little wide. They'd made soup out of--
"That is a thing that I definitely do not need to know anything about ever!" Stan said with feeling.
Bill just shrugged it off. "--I told you kid," Bill told Miz. "Normal is overrated. And stupid. And doesn't exist. Weird is where it's at!" Bill turned his head towards her and tossed her a grin.
Miz nodded. "Weird is better," she agreed. (If 'weird' meant not eating… that, then as far as Stan was concerned, he wasn't gonna disagree!) "But if I want to get along better with humans…"
"Yeahhhh, don't do that thing," Stan told her. "Stick with the 'ask your little sister inside your head thing.' Maybe with a dose of 'would she do that thing to somebody who she liked who wasn't family," Stan added for good measure, just in case. (Families could be weird about stuff, and he was pretty sure that adding that wouldn't make anything worse, anyway. Should still be in-line with what the kid had told her earlier; Stan wasn't about to contradict him without a really good reason on this, especially since the kid had figured it out and come up with it to start with, when there was no way Stan would have thought of that on his own. Kid knew demons; not like Stan wasn't gonna take advantage of that when the kid was happy to help him out.)
Miz rolled back and forth on the ground. "I think… learning 'stop' and 'no' might be good for me," she said quietly. "And… if I mess up, please explain what I did wrong?" She paused. "Ax doesn't really care what I do so long as I'm not destabilizing the multiverse. And Jessie is more firm with me about not hurting people but Time Baby says it's fine to kill as long as it's for the greater good, and he just randomly kills his own men just for sassing him anyway, you can ask the twins, I think they've met your Time Baby… but they don't tell me that there are things I'm not supposed to say to people…"
Stan stared at her. ...Yeah, screw unpacking. Just toss out the whole fucking suitcase.
"Kid. If you ain't sure, just don't say anything until you've talked to me about it, whatever it is," Stan told her. "We can work on what is or isn't okay to say later. The whole thing with the 'stop' and 'no' is that, as long as you actually stop when we tell ya to, we'll tell you to stop before it gets too bad, and tell you what the problem is, okay? You just gotta listen and go along with it, is all; same as the kid does." Stan rubbed his face, feeling old and tired. Miz nodded, watching the discomfort on his face.
"...do you want that back massage?" Miz asked quietly. "I'm very good at it. My human parents taught me how to do it ever since I was a kid."
Stan sighed. "Kid, you gotta stop giving me stuff just because you want me to forgive you." Now he wished he'd gone to his bedroom and grabbed the gold necklace before coming up there, even if it woulda made the room smell like fish for a couple hours.
"But I don't know how I'm supposed to apologize."
"You don't do the thing that hurt him again," Stan told her, because words were cheap, and actions were more than good enough for him -- especially that action. "When you understand what you did wrong and feel bad for it -- not for hurting me but for hurting Ford -- then you can apologize. Until then..." he trailed off.
Miz rolled onto her side. "My existence is what's hurting Ford." she said in a small voice, and that left Stan taken aback a bit. Frowning, he glanced over at Bill. "And I can't apologize because I'm not supposed to let him see me?" Miz continued. "Even though I'm not mad anymore?" ...Yeah, that was the other problem. Stan still wasn't sure how to handle it. That wasn't gonna last forever -- they needed something better that actually fixed stuff, instead of running away from it.
Bill didn't say anything. Stan started to frown a bit more over at the kid.
"Hey mister Stan?"
"Yeah?" Stan grunted, redirecting his attention to Miz again as Miz played with her tail, tugging at it and tracing the brick shaped scales. "Would going into Ford's dream and… making him see happy things… help or make things worse?" Stan winced. "--Stay outta his head, no matter what," Stan told her, because if anybody had asked him what he was absolutely sure would only make things worse... that kind of thing would've topped the list, along with 'Here! Have another Weirdmageddon!' (Ugh.) Miz nodded. "Ok…"
She frowned in thought. "If Ford is just scared because other Bills who aren't as nice might come here, would he feel better if he had his Quantum Destabilizer back?"
"That ain't the problem, kid," Stan told her. Because it wasn't. Not really. Stan was pretty sure it had to do with the fact that his brother was convinced that he needed Bill to die and stay dead, because Ford was too scared of what Bill would do if he didn't. Having more than one of the triangle demons around had just… made things that much worse, probably, because if there were infinite Bills and their circle maybe only worked on one of 'em… yeah. His brother wouldn't handle that well.
"And I don't think giving Ford another weapon is gonna help at all," Stan deadpanned to her. Ford may have said that using that on Bill would kill the triangle demon for good, that he wouldn't come back after, but Stan was about as sure about that one as he was about the kumbaya circle right now -- which was not very. Stan glanced over at Bill again. --Still nothin'. Kid was almost deliberately ignoring him; he had his eyes closed.
Miz continued to think. "What if… I rolled back time on Ford to yesterday morning? Before he found out stuff he doesn't want to know about?" Stan froze. "--NO," Stan told her. "Absolutely not," he said, as soon as his mouth could move again, because the sheer horror that had shot through him at the idea had been--
...Oh, hell. Rolling back time to fix a problem was something the kid had suggested for that planet full of people that morning about the thing with the 'baby' time-jerk, and it had sounded like Miz didn't usually do that kind of thing (what with her Time Baby guy apparently being upset if anyone did that). And Stan didn't think Miz would have even thought of that if Bill hadn't brought it up earlier -- but Bill had, and now she had, and because the kid had brought it up as a possible solution for a different problem before and he hadn't disagreed with the kid then, here she was talking about doing it here now. --Shit. He had to be more careful about this stuff. Shut it down early. Because if he didn't...
...They were learning from each other. Stan wasn't sure if that was a good thing or not.
"Don't go doing things to my Zodiac without their permission, sis," Bill drawled out easily, like he was discussing the weather and not Stan's brother, and that just set Stan off.
"--I want you not to mess with my brother," Stan told them both firmly in triangle-speak through a clenched jaw. Rolling back time on his brother… no. He refused to let the demons UNDO his brother, for any reason. Hell, no! His brother was fine the way he was, even if right now he was--
Stan almost flinched in place as Bill immediately sat straight up and swiveled his head towards him. "WHAT DID YOU SAY?!" Bill demanded, wide-eyed and halfway to irate already.
Stan squared his shoulders. "You heard me," Stan said with a quiet intensity, staring the kid down.
Bill's whole expression just twitched. He did that weird head bobbing forward on his neck thing, that wasn't exactly leaning forward, but sort of looked like it almost.
"He isn't your brother," Bill said, and as he stared at Stan, realizing that Stan wasn't giving in or agreeing with him, his voice shifted upwards in tone. "He isn't 'your family'!!"
"Yeah, he is," Stan told him, and he knew right then that this was bad, with the kid trying to meet him more than halfway by using his own definitions of terms like 'family' back at him.
"DON'T LIE TO ME," was what the kid said next, and Stan told him firmly, "I ain't lying."
And now Bill looked like he was about to go incandescent and have a meltdown, and how was this news to the kid now? "--You said he wasn't family anymore!!" was the thing the kid said next, and… oh. Shit. Oh shit. The triangle had seen that; well, of course he had. Except… Shit! --The kid didn't know. He'd thought Ford wasn't part of his family not to mess with, his line not to cross?! Then that meant-- Shit.
Stan pulled in a breath. It was harder than it should have been.
"I was fightin' with him," Stan told the triangle. "He said somethin'; I felt hurt. I never should've said that back," Stan told the kid, who looked both startled and blindsided. Miz spoke up quietly, "Humans sometimes say things they don't mean, lie to each other, because they're angry…" She sort of understood what Stan was worried about here.
Bill was still tense, angry and confused, looking frustrated.
"--No," Bill said, "You aren't listening to me--"
"--Kid, you aren't listening to me," Stan interrupted him. "Ford -- that Ford downstairs? Is my brother. My family, the way I talk about it. Get it?"
Bill looked at him uneasily.
"If…." Bill began very slowly, looking at Stan. He stopped, then started again. "If your brother wasn't…"
"--He's here now, my twin's not going anywhere, and neither are you," Stan told Bill firmly. "I told you; I'll make it work." But the kid just sat there, staring at him with no expression on his face.
"...But..." Bill began again. "If he wasn't here--"
"--He's here," Stan said, starting to get angry with the kid for a hell of a lot more reasons than one, and the kid shut up. (...And it was in that moment that Bill knew: this was going to be a problem later, if he didn't do something about it to fix things.)
Bill looked at Stan for a long moment.
"...He's your brother," Bill said, finally. "You decided this."
"Yes," said Stan, feeling more than a little relief that at least the kid wasn't gonna keep fighting him on this anymore.
"...You're not going to change your mind," Bill asked next.
"No, I'm not," Stan confirmed.
Bill was quiet again for a moment.
"...What's the priority order," Bill said after another long pause.
"Dipper and Mabel, Wendy and Soos, then Melody, all in the agreement," Stan repeated. "Then Ford. He's still outside of it." Bill was giving him that long look still. (And yeah, the kids needing the demon not physically or mentally attacking his brother for their own mental well-being was one thing -- a set of 'strings' of the agreement, sure -- but that didn't completely explain the look Stan was getting from the kid on this, still.) "--It'll work," Stan repeated to him. "The kids come first. Ford agrees with this. That's why it'll work."
"...Fine," said the kid, and Stan blinked, because he'd expected a lot more pushback on that one than the kid just agreeing with him and sounding really grim. (Heck, he'd at least expected the kid to say 'this is going to cause problems', or start saying 'it's not going to work' again. Both of which the kid had done before. --Not that Stan was complaining that he wasn't!
"Fine," Stan said. "Good. Yeah." He slowly let out a breath as the kid seemed to be thinking about something while watching him -- but the kid didn't have that 'probably going to be changing my mind unless you convince me otherwise soon' look going on, so, yeah, Stan figured he was probably good for awhile?
Bill finally looked away from him.
Stan let out a heavy sigh, and ran a hand over his face.
"You get enough to eat and drink for lunch, the two of ya?" Stan asked them next. Might as well make sure they don't go hungry up here, would suck if the kid started screwing up thinking even worse than usual, making bad decisions due to not eating, again.
"I'll open another box of crackers and eat some," the kid told him, before looking over at Miz and glancing at the bag of fish. When he saw the long pointed look Stanley was giving him, though, the kid got up and walked over to his 'food corner' to grab one of said boxes up right then, along with three bottles of water, before walking them back over and sitting back down again.
Stan didn't miss how Bill passed two of the bottles off to Miz, only keeping one for himself, and Stan only relaxed once Bill had opened the box and started choking down a cracker or two.
"--Is the agreement off?" Bill asked him next, in between crackers while side-eyeing him, and Stan let out a long, drawn-out, and very tired sigh. "No, kid. As much as I want to punch you in the face for messing with my brother… no. You didn't screw up that badly, yet." As much as it made him sick to say that, Stan had to do it. He wasn't about to give Bill any excuse to have free reign with the kids -- breaking the agreement himself, or saying Bill had broken the agreement instead of 'penalizing' him for it, would do that. Stan didn't want to sacrifice Ford for the kids' safety and well-being, but if it really came down to it… Ford would understand. (If his brother was in his right mind, at least. And if not... well...)
(Ford was his brother, but Stan would do what he had to do to protect the kids. And Bill wasn't the worst thing out there; at least Stan had a handle on him, and at least a little leverage. But when it came to every other demon out there...)
At least the kid was mostly trying to get along. "You got pretty damn close to breakin' everything," Stan told the kid, "But you didn't know that I meant Ford was part of the family I didn't want you messing with," Stan noted out loud to the kid, crossing his arms -- showing the kid that he'd noticed that, really, and would fess up to having noticed it when he did. Because hey, it had been pretty damn obvious that the kid hadn't known, given the kid's reaction to him saying it outright. (And hell, Stan had avoided really getting into the details of that himself when he'd been first working on coming up with the agreement with him. At the time, he'd thought he'd stolen a march on the kid a little bit before, when the kid had understood and remembered what 'his line' was -- don't mess with my family -- when the kid had said he 'could accommodate that'.) The kid not realizing that Stan considered Ford part of his family, though, just by how they all acted towards each other? Was completely…
Stan grimaced. --After all the things they'd talked about by this point now? The kid should've realized it. So the kid needed to learn better. So... "You get a major penalty instead."
Miz looked back and forth between them. She wasn't sure she wanted to get between this (how awkward) so she swallowed another fish. Ah… should she try and change the subject? But this was obviously a major misunderstanding they still needed to finish clearing up?
"You got any questions for me, kid?" Stan asked the kid.
"No, not really," Bill said, not looking at him, focusing more on his cracker eating.
"Then repeat it all back to me," Stan told him, and he caught the kid's eye roll.
"Priority order's the same," Bill said, restating it, because he knew Stanley didn't want it back word-for-word when he asked that; Stanley wanted it in Bill's own words, instead, to 'check for translation errors'. "That Stanford is 'your brother' and 'your family', as verified by you." Bill didn't bother to try to suppress his annoyance at this having been dropped on him out of the blue in this way.
"And messing with him?" Stan prompted the triangle kid.
"Don't do it unless I want to get punched again, or worse," the kid said almost by rote. "'Stop' and 'no' apply, strings from Pine Tree and Shooting Star apply -- not that that matters all that much, since you insist that Stanford's 'your brother' and that takes precedence to those strings," the kid put out there, waving a cracker-filled hand haphazard-casually at the air like he was trying to brush away those words as worthless and getting in the way, almost. "'Not messing with him' applies -- which means not trying to make anything worse or kill him, and stopping if I think, or you think, it looks like it's going that way."
Stan clenched his jaw slightly as he watched the kid stop there and continue to eat. That left a lot out of things that Stan really wished he could put in there, but it wasn't any different than the baseline for the kids. Stan didn't like that all of it fell so short, but he also knew that trying to demand it out of the kid just wouldn't work. Stan knew full well that wanting to do better than that had to come from the kid, or they'd never get anywhere. (And Stan was working on that, it was just… this junk with the other-universe internet blogs hadn't helped as much as Stan had thought it might at first, so he needed to keep on the lookout for something else that would. He just needed a reason he could hand Bill -- or dangle out in front of him -- it was the easiest way to get buy-in from the kid. But it took time to do this junk; it had barely been a month...)
So for all of these reasons, Stan said, "Fine," and left it at that. ...Or, at least, Stan tried to. Except the kid opened up the whole damn can of worms again by flicking his eyes up towards him and saying, "...Is it?" And when Stan glared down at him, the kid lifted his head to look at him dead-on and followed it up with, "Is it, really?"
Stan clenched his jaw.
"No," Stan said. "It ain't fine. But I'll take what I can get." The way the kid's eyes lit up, glittering hard in those fairy-light ball things around them, wasn't good, but Stan wasn't about to start lying to the kid's face now. He'd made that promise about the learning, about 'schooling' the kid (and oh boy was he ever!), and Stan was damn well not gonna screw anything up by not keeping it, now. "It's fine, but it ain't fine," Stan repeated, because he knew that one from the kid -- that wasn't a contradiction, that was 'there's more to this than just a couple of words that you ain't getting the whole picture of like this'.
It was the first time Stan had tossed that particular one of the kid's techniques right back at him, and it left Bill blinking.
"...Fair enough," said Bill easily, his expression going a little smooth, and then the kid turned back to his box of crackers and continued his eating.
Damn, but this 'mostly an adult' shit from the kid was gonna be the death of him one of these days, Stan was pretty sure. Stan sat back and let out a breath, looking away from the kid as he tried to work his shoulders a little bit to get the tension out of them.
"So… um…" Miz mumbled, feeling a little less stressed herself, now that this misunderstanding between her big brother and Stan seemed to finally be over. She turned to Bill. "Ok… oh! Right, I just thought of something." Stan blinked at how Miz seemed to jump from tense and worried to bright and happy so rapidly back and forth. "I could have most of myself in my energy form inside the Nightmare Realm while the other fragment of myself is out and about inside a vessel! Since my problem is overloading my vessels until they explode, if I send all the excess energy back to my energy self inside the Nightmare Realm, I won't have to worry about that anymore!"
Stan blinked, then realized that this must've been from some other conversation the two triangle demons must've been having earlier, that he was coming in on halfway. (Maybe when they'd been out on the lake?)
Bill grinned at her. "Look at you! Finding solutions!" He ruffled her hair as she preened under his praise. "--Though I would do that the other way around," Bill added, wanting to be thorough. The way she'd described it… "Leaving the small piece of yourself in your 'Nightmare Realm' instead, that you could self-destruct or pull back at need, means no getting trapped in there, ever," Bill told her, mindful of the potential of someone trying to trap her there, like he'd been trapped in his own decaying dimension here. Miz grinned. "That's another good point. Also! Now I won't have to-- ah…" She paused and glanced over at Stan, then to the old man's surprise, she moved her gaze onto Bill as well. She frowned in thought. "This would be one of those 'upsetting to other people' things, right?" She asked.
Bill pressed his lips together before responding. "Splitting yourself… maybe? Depends on how you explain it, and if people think either piece of you is or could get stuck someplace or not, and what would happen if it did. Consciousness-splitting is disturbing," he told her, thinking of Seb. Bill was fairly sure that Miz wasn't talking about making actual 'copies' of herself when she'd said what she had, though, and as long as anything she left in her 'Nightmare Realm' could be left to drain out and 'die' without any issue -- part of what they'd discussed earlier -- then that was fine. (He didn't want to think of the stupid lizard maybe trying to lock her in there on a whim, since hers apparently DID THINGS sometimes.)
Bill tilted his head. "If you were about to talk about your past methods of dealing with excessive energy… then, yes." Bill looked at Stan before glancing back at Miz. "Self-harm is upsetting to humans," Bill said firmly. Stan blinked. Oh, shit. So that junk Bill had asked him a couple days ago had been something to do with her? Stan looked over at Miz, to see her wilt in place, and Stan's eyebrows shot up. Well… fuck. There was his confirmation for something he'd been suspecting since this a while back. --When a frowning Bill had come to him with questions about 'what it meant when humans damage and bleed themselves to feel better', Stan knew that had had to come from somewhere. It wasn't the kind of question the kid would come up with on his own.
"It's not like I cut myself." Miz mumbled. "Just… hitting myself and… stuff…"
"Until you bleed. You mentioned tearing yourself open and bleeding out until you 'felt better'," Bill said slowly, and Stan felt a chill go down his spine as Miz looked down at her hands in her lap. "Well I have a better way of relieving the pressure now…" she shrugged, "And it's not like I wouldn't have healed any damage I sustain."
"That ain't the point kid." Stan ground out. Shit. Even Bill hadn't argued with him (much) about this one, when he'd told the kid that hurting or damaging himself -- sticking forks in himself, tossing himself down the stairs, whatever -- was attacking himself, a member of the agreement, and Stan would have to step in to stop him from doing it to himself because of the agreement. "If you were human, shouldn't you know better?" Stan asked her, though Stan was beginning to get the feeling that this kid really hadn't been all there, even as a human. His suspicions were confirmed when she refused to look at him. "...did it when I was human too ...but for different reasons…" she told him, and she couldn't look at him as she said it, gripping her arm and sounding… tired. Hell.
Stan grimaced, and rubbed a hand over the back of his neck. "Kid," he said, "You, uh, you need help or somethin'." Then he winced and had to follow that up with, "I ain't so sure I can help you with that," for Bill's benefit, because it wasn't like he didn't want to help the kid with his kid sister exactly, he just… was not the guy who could talk somebody down from suicide. "But that ain't right."
"I dunno. I just deal with it," she murmured.
"That ain't dealing or any kind of handling," Stan told her adamantly in tones of gravel. Miz shrugged. "It's not like I can die from this." Which just made Stan wonder if she'd actually tried to... to… Shit.
Stan looked at Bill. Stan pulled in a breath.
"Kid," he said, "I gotta ask some things now that are maybe gonna sound real bad to you, but they're human-things, okay? You think I need to stop, you tell me, but you'd better think real hard about it, first. I ain't trying to hurt her," he told the kid, "I'm gonna be trying to get her to maybe think about stopping hurting herself."
Bill looked very uncomfortable, and gave Stan a long look for almost a minute. But then Bill looked away for a moment and nodded.
Stan pulled in a breath. "Okay. Miz," he said, "If you could die and stay dead, would you?" he asked, and he forced himself not to flinch when Bill sat bolt upright, looking like he wanted to reach forward and tear him limb from limb. (The fact that he didn't? Meant the kid was keeping it together though. Stan knew that, because the kid could do that to him from across the room, up here, with magic, same as he'd be able to outside the barrier, but the demon hadn't. So.)
Miz looked a little uncomfortable but responded anyway, "...there was a time when I wanted that… but I've been doing better now. Ever since I met my friends. Because they make me feel like I have something to look forward to." She pulled her legs up to her chest. "So I don't want to lose them. No matter what. Even if it means keeping them with me forever."
Stan saw Bill clench his hands in his lap, but his posture and expression didn't change. ...That wasn't good. That meant the kid had known about this already; what his kid sister had said just now hadn't been a surprise. Stan looked up at Bill, and held his gaze. He was starting to see why the kid had thought about the 'they could kill themselves to get away from you' thing had been a thing, and why the kid had sounded a little… off when he'd said it. If Miz lost them, then...
Oh. Hell. --Okay, yeah. Stan suddenly started to get it.
"Bill," Stan said, and Bill jolted in place just a bit. "You ever want to kill yourself?"
"No," said Bill. Stan nodded. "Ever want to try?" "NO," said Bill, shaking his head. "Planning on ever dying and staying dead?" Bill glared at him. "NEVER." Stan nodded. "Right, Good. --Miz," Stan said. "You think you're ever gonna lose your big brother here?" he asked her.
Miz looked over. "I don't know." She said quietly. "I don't want to lose him, though." She stared at Bill with wide eyes
"--You won't lose me," Bill told her, looking down at her. "I'm not going anywhere." He put a hand on top of her head and leaned down, nearly touching his forehead against hers. "Are you?" he asked her. "Are you going to leave me alone?"
Miz took a deep breath and smiled. "I don't want to leave you alone. I want to stay as long as you'll let me." Because she could recognize that Bill was lonely. Just as lonely as she had been. She didn't mind staying until he wasn't lonely anymore. Time in her own world was on pause after all. Her friends were safe.
"I'll let you forever," Bill told her boldly, and without reservation, with a smile. And Stan saw him shiver slightly in place. "Forever and a day, and forever again, as many times as I can have you stay with me. Always." Because Bill considered himself a realist. He knew that he couldn't always keep her with him, and that she would need to leave sometimes. He knew that, just as he knew that he couldn't always go everyplace with her, either. That was just… how things were, when people weren't trapped-forever. (He'd left the house sometimes to get books for Liam, and to learn how to work in the store…) But whenever he could have her presence with him, Bill wanted it. He'd want it even when he didn't have it, but he would try not to be jealous about it. Big brothers weren't supposed to jail their little sisters just to keep them close to them, he was pretty sure, and even if they were… then he'd just have to break that rule, because he didn't want her restricted like that when she could be free instead.
Stan let out a quiet breath. He'd thought the kid was being too fast with the whole 'little sister' thing. Now he was starting to think that maybe the kid had thought that he'd already almost been too slow. Giving her somebody who wouldn't leave her all alone, and maybe wanting to die again… shit.
"Still think you should talk to somebody," Stan said to Miz. "Ripping yourself apart ain't supposed to feel good. ...Dunno where we're gonna find somebody who specializes in triangle demons, though." Stan was pretty sure that different headshrinks for different people was a thing.
"I… had considered finding some kinda therapist or something… but they don't really exist out in my Multiverse. They got Mind-Healers instead. And I'm not gonna let someone inside my Mind to move things around to… 'fix me' the way they think is correct." She shivered. "So I mainly just talk to Ax or Jessie about how I'm feeling. It… helps a little. Even if they don't have anything to say back to me."
"Yeah, uh…" Stan glanced at Bill, who looked grim. "Letting someone else poke around inside your brain or whatever sounds kinda…"
"--Wrong," said Bill. "It is wrong. YOU choose what is correct. Other people do NOT get to make that choice FOR you."
Stan side-eyed Bill. "This ain't one of those 'pot kettle black' things, is it?" Stan pointed out, and Bill straightened up in place and turned his head towards him. "No," said Bill. "Everything I did to 'your brother'," Bill drawled out in an odd tone of voice, "I got permission from him to do to him first. Boundaries of the Mind are a thing. So is consent." And for some reason, Bill looked almost offended that Stan had thought otherwise. ...And how exactly was this a thing?
Stan narrowed his eyes at the kid, frowning. "You go into… used to go into people's dreams all the time," he pointed out, crossing his arms. Bill looked vaguely frustrated with him at that, giving him his 'you've been talking to that idiot Stanford and getting wrong information from him' look. (Yeah, whatever. Like the kid didn't get stuff wrong all the time.) "The 'personal Dreamscape' isn't part of a person's Mind, exactly," Bill told him. "It's separate. Separated? --Separable," Bill finally settled on. "The loss of it won't destroy a person; it's a shared space. Like… hair," Bill told him, gesturing at his own, referring back to how Stanley had cut it for him several weeks ago, now. "Only not-hair," the kid said, the same way the triangle demon always ended every analogy he tried to use.
"Dreamscapes are connected but not ACTUALLY their Mindscape. Like… the front lawn as opposed to inside their house?" Miz pointed out. "That's how it is with me and the Dreams I've been inside at least." She hummed. "So, like… I can mess with their lawn, dig up stuff or plant flowers or add a swimming pool, but it doesn't affect the inside of their house." She wondered if that metaphor made sense.
"--Not directly," Bill elaborated upon. "It doesn't affect them… the 'inside of their house'... directly. THEY decide how they want to react to it. It's indirect! --If you look out the window and stare at the sun with your eyes open, do you close your eyes and look away? Or blink and blink and scream about how you're blind now as you keep on staring?"
"--or put those flamingo lawn ornaments everywhere. For some reason, a lot of people freak out when I do that…" Miz mumbled. "And then they come out of their house and they can take things to bring them inside. Or water the new flower bed they have. Or just ignore my changes."
"--Or take a chainsaw to it!!" Bill enthused, grinning. "That Stanford used to do that all the time!" Miz scoffed. "How rude." "--I know, right!" Bill huffed out, crossing his arms. "I even made things brown. He likes brown! ...And he NEVER liked ANY of the crocodiles I put in," Bill all but pouted. "Or the moat!"
Stan clenched hid jaw. He wasn't sure whether he wanted to stand up, walk over, and smack the kid upside the head, or just run a hand across his face and then get up and go downstairs to do the same thing to his brother. (...Yeah, no. that was a lie. Stan was pretty sure he wanted to do both.)
"Why would my brother need a moat with crocodiles inside his head, Dreamscape, thing, --whatever?" Stan asked of the demonic triangle. And in response to this, Bill turned his head towards him and said simply, "To keep everybody else out."
Stan stared. Then he rubbed a hand across his eyes under his glasses. --Right. Sure. Of course the triangle demon hadn't wanted to share 'his friend Ford' with anyone else who might be able to get into Ford's head when the deal had been on. Of course he hadn't.
"Protection." Miz blinked. "To keep other people out?" She tilted her head. "That's a good defense really." Big brother was so thoughtful.
"Especially if you refuse to allow any more floating, because you turned up the gravity," Bill said. Then he got a sly smirk. "Like there's only one way to keep 'floating', HA!" he added, then got a grin.
(Definitely. Stan definitely wanted to smack both these two idiots upside the head. But especially the triangle right now. Bill was definitely in the lead on the number of times Stan wanted to smack him upside the head right now, over Ford. Stan was keeping score. --It was one of the few things that helped keep him from actually hauling off and doing it, thinking about stuff like that. Keeping score. ...And, y'know, thinking up penalties for when the kid tripped up badly enough. Not like he had to make any of 'em nice to be keepin' the agreement going, just… y'know, educational. And about as damn annoying as he could make 'em, so the kid wouldn't do those stupid things again. Wasn't half if what he wanted to haul off and do to the demon, sometimes, but... Yeah. Wouldn't do any good to just hit him again; not like that had worked the last time. Stan would take what he could get.)
"Right, yeah. --Maybe you wanna knock on the door next time and ask if he really wants that moat?" Stan told them both, letting out a breath of annoyance and anger. "Or maybe something else?" Then Stan winced internally, just realizing how the kid would hear what he'd just said. "--I mean, for anybody else, not him. Don't go inside Ford's head or his Dreamscape-whatever for anything without permission. From him. Again," Stan added for good measure. He didn't want Bill counting the original deal as a workaround for that one, or any later deals he might make with anyone else -- because according to Dipper, apparently that was a thing?
Miz nodded. "I still reserve the right to plant gnomes all around the premises, staring at the house, for mean people though." She huffed. "They're jerks." The creepy, foreboding nightmares were her favorite. So much better than just the blood and violence stuff, that was just lazy.
"Whatever you wanna do in your own chunks of dimensions or whatever, to people back home? I ain't stopping you," Stan told her staunchly. "Here? I want you two sticking by the agreement. 'Stop' and 'no' and permission when you aren't in the middle of a fight." Not like he'd know what they'd ever get up to anyplace else, anyway, unless they brought the fight back home here. "As long as you're the only ones doing the door thing, and trouble don't end up coming our way here? I don't care." And he really didn't. Wasn't his callout. He'd keep on saving his battles for the stuff that actually mattered, thanks.
Miz nodded. "Ok," she agreed. It's not like she was planning to mess with people's dreams while she was a guest here… aside from that Cooking show that she and Seb had made… er… should she tell Stan about that?
Bill shrugged. "Fine."
Stan let out a breath. Damn, but he hadn't realized the kid actually thought permission was a thing, let alone boundaries and consent. ...Then again, guess the kid would need to know what they were in order to cross those lines and break them, like he talked about breaking rules, deliberately. --Then again...
"--We're gonna talk about the definitions for 'boundaries', 'consent', and 'permission' later," Stan said flat-out, groaning a bit as he stood up. "I need to get back downstairs before Ford tries to come up here lookin' for me." Because that was a thing. Ford wasn't exactly more clingy than usual right now, but he definitely noticed each and every time that Stan left the room, when he left it. (Ever since Ford's 'crack up' in the woods, Stan always heard Ford not so quietly ask one of the kids where he was going, or what he was doing, every time he left the room.) He turned towards the staircase, then stopped. "You two good with staying up here until dinner?" Stan figured he could find an excuse to shoo Ford out of the kitchen for an hour or two to bring the demon kids downstairs; having no mealtimes in the actual kitchen was too much like house arrest, even if the two demon kids were okay at sneaking out during the day whenever they needed to, instead of actually being stuck up in the attic all day.
"I've got 4 seasons of Digimon saved up here--" Miz pointed at her head "--and we will take snack breaks every 5 episodes."
"I have a better idea," said Bill. Both of them turned towards him, for very different reasons, and with very different looks on their faces. "Miz, you like music. Yes?" Bill asked. Miz lit up. "I love music!!" she squealed.
"--Not in the house," Stan said staunchly. "Ford will hear you downstairs."
"Not in the house," Bill said. "Over by the cemetery."
Stan frowned slightly. Then he nodded. "Alright. --Sneak out up here, and sneak back in up here, but expect I'm gonna come up to bring you down to eat downstairs, later. Yeah?"
Bill gave him a long look that Stan couldn't quite read every last bit of, but Bill nodded.
Stan sighed; not like he hadn't gotten most of the picture. "Not an order, kid," Stan said. "Just less risky to have you go out up here then tryin' to use some weird science thing to sneak down the stairs and through the middle of the house, openin' and closing doors. --Not the kind of challenge I want you to try and do right now, yeah?" Stan told him. Then he got an idea and added, "Besides, Ford don't know you're here right now. Kinda a bigger challenge to do it after he's feeling better, and looking for you to try and catch you at it, yeah?" Stan said, not quite teasing the idea as a compromise; he had a feeling that Ford might actually be up for something like that, later. (Hell, might give the two of 'em something to try and beat each other at that maybe didn't involve shooting and punching each other even, just a lot of sneaking and watching instead. Something like that oughta be right up the kid's alley, and keep Ford out of too much trouble, too. ...Maybe get Melody to referee the damn thing?)
Bill tilted his head at him and gave him an almost thoughtful look.
"We'll sneak out now, outside the house," Bill confirmed. Stan felt mildly smug that the kid had went with it, despite clearly knowing that Stan had been playing him.
"Good," said Stan. And with that all squared away, he walked back downstairs. He had a lot to think about.
---
Sneaking out was a little smoother this time. Bill was more comfortable with Miz holding onto him, this time. She'd also gotten better at using her powers inside the bubble the cuffs made for her. The girl was practically floating, holding onto the back of Bill's shirt as he climbed down. In fact, she would float away if she let go. Her weight went back to normal once they got close enough to the ground that she could drop down safely.
Bill gestured her to the outhouse again, and they went over so he could pick up his usual lantern-rod. Miz was starting to suspect it was his walking staff, or second security blanket, or something, because he seemed to relax a lot more once he had it in his hands, every time so far that they'd talked about going out farther than the clearing around the Shack.
Then again, since Bill was here, anchored down without being able to use most of his powers... having something that could give him comfort was only to be expected. Miz's hands twitched. Ah. She wanted her dolls. A part of her missed cuddling with Xanthar. But she didn't want to leave. Not just because she wasn't sure if it was safe yet, but because Bill might need her. Or at least, she felt so. May have been projecting but she didn't feel this was a bad thing in this case. She wondered if she could make a little stuffed doll of Xanthar later. Little dolls of her friends would help ease some of the 'missing them' feelings.
Bill tilted his head at her a bit, catching the twitch of her hands. He'd used to do that when he was younger, still try to grab at things from the Mindscape, even though he knew he couldn't. (He'd broken the habit early, but it had been a very hard habit to break. ...Sometimes, in very bad times, he still forgot and had to catch himself, now and again.) He wondered if he should ask...?
She was pulling her headband off and rubbing her head. Her Eye blinked a few times and she Looked around. Oh, the cemetery was... there, and... She snorted. Robbie's parents were shoving the dead back in their graves again. Huh... reanimated dead were so... gross. All icky and rotting and probably tasted awful. And now she was cursing her default of wondering what anything tastes like. Ew. Undead. How gross.
"Now, this is very important," Bill stressed, as he turned and started walking -- not flying, actually walking, carrying his lantern rod up against his shoulder -- down the road and towards the town. Miz gave Bill her full attention, like a good girl. "We are NOT going into town," he told her quite seriously. "If anyone asks -- ESPECIALLY Stanley -- we are only walking down the road and going to the cemetery, which is not the town. It is the cemetery," Bill said firmly. "They are two totally different things. People live in town. The dead don't-live in the cemetery. Very important not to get those two confused." Bill looked at Miz expectantly.
Miz nodded. "Not town. Cemetery. Got it." She paused. "The Valentinos are there right now. Latest undead rising. Do we avoid them?"
Bill's shoulders dropped a bit. "What, again?" he said irritably. "Thought I taught them some proper manners last time," he grumbled out, turning away from her, eyes narrowing. "Clearly I did not hit them enough, the rude grabby little undead things." The last time he'd been there and laid down on the grass to stare up at the sky, he'd gotten grabbed quite a bit... and then found out after the fact (and a lot of screaming, yelling, and stomping things down) that apparently this was the norm these days. --Well, it wasn't going to be after HE got through with the place! "Manners are a thing, you know!" Bill exclaimed broadly, straightening up a bit as they walked.
Miz nodded before she shuddered. "Ew... they're all slimy..." She hated the undead. They just... rubbed her the wrong way. She hated walking corpses, so twisted and awful to Look at. "Yes, slimy," Bill noted. "Stomping works best, but so do..." he gestured at his rather long lantern-rod, "...other things." Miz nodded. Long weapons, keep those icky things away from yourself.
It didn't take them long to walk up to the short wall at the base of the cemetery. They came to a stop for a moment, and Bill frowned up the hill at all the gravestones, and all the unruly undead trying to stick arms and legs out of the ground and wave them around.
"Stitched-Heart and his parents shouldn't cause you much trouble emotions-wise," Bill told her, by his estimation of what he knew about most empaths. "So it's your choice, on or off," he told her, gesturing at the headband. Miz left it off. She wanted the warning in case any of the gross things in the ground tried to reach for her.
Bill nodded. "I'll only be a minute or twelve," he told her. "Wait here." (His little sister CLEARLY did NOT like the idea of mixing it up with any undead herself, so Bill wasn't about to force her. He would take care of this for her instead!) And with that said (and thought), Bill made the short hop over the short stone fence and started stomping up the hill, slamming the bottom of his lantern-rod into the ground like an actual walking stick as he went, while yelling out, "ALL RIGHT, YOU IDIOT-UNDEAD!! CLEARLY YOU DID NOT LEARN YOUR LESSON THE LASTTIME! --SO PREPARE FOR MORE STOMPING!!!"
Some of the hands and arms started pulling back a bit, but most of them just waved around more. --Bill attacked those ones with the S-hook of his lantern-rod first, slamming them into the ground. "DOWN! SHOO! DOWN-DOWN-DOWN! --I DIDN'T TELL YOU IDIOTS TO COME UP, SO GO DOWN!!!"
"Hello, Bill!" Stitched-Heart's mother called out to Bill. (Bill mostly ignored her, opting instead to yell "RRRRAAAH!!" out loud at the top of his lungs and stomp a different arm into the ground next to him with a foot.)
Miz peered over the fence as her brother went to town on the maggot-filled creatures. She shuddered. Gross. She tilted her head as she felt the energy in the area, seeping into the ground and sparking the bodies in the ground until they could move. Ugh. Why wasn't anyone regulating this shit?
"RAH! RAHR! RRAH!" Bill went, and it took him about ten minutes until every last one of the undead on the hill were pretty much all underground again, and Bill was panting and leaning on (read: practically hanging off of) his lantern-rod at the top of the hill.
Finally, after Bill had caught his breath back again, he straightened up a bit, turned around, and called out, "You can come come on up now! They should mostly behave themselves now--" Bill glared and yelled down at the ground, "--OR ELSE!!!"
Miz climbed over the fence. "Shouldn't someone set up a ward to make this stop happening?" she asked, as she picked her way among the gravestones, wary of the loose dirt and holes. "Eh," said Bill, shrugging. He thought a lively cemetery like this one was better than the dead one he'd basically been living in for one trillion years. (He hadn't even had any gravestones there, or corpses that had survived the fire as even so much ash, or anything.) "They make good guard-dogs? Guard-zombies? ...Early-warning system? --They just need a little training, is all," Bill told her practically, looking down at the ground with another not-quite a glare this time.
"I guess..." Miz squinted at the dirt where she could feel one of them trembling as she walked past. Mrs. Valentino came over with a wide smile. "Hello Bill-dear. Thanks for the help. Who's this sweetie?" She smiled down at Miz, open and friendly. Miz blinked. Oh. This was quite a pleasant (if too sweet) taste.
For a moment, from Bill's expression, he looked like he could go either one of two ways -- completely-fake and cuttingly-rude 'politeness', or how he really felt.
Bill went with the latter. "My sister," he told the human woman in short, almost clipped words. He didn't look well-pleased to be having Stitched-Heart's mother speak to him, or to be speaking to her.
"Oh. It's very nice you meet you sweetie," Mrs. Valentino didn't even hesitate. Miz looked up and gave the woman a shy smile. "Hello ma'am. I'm Miz," she said. "Oh you're so cute. I'm Janice, and this is Greg, my husband," Mrs. Valentino said, introducing them. "Are you going on a walk with your brother?" Mrs. Valentino asked.
"I am here to join Stitched-Heart's band," Bill told them straight-out. "We are going to be auditioning using your piano in the wake room." Miz looked over at him. It seemed a little odd, how he was talking to Mrs. Valentino. He wasn't smiling, or grinning, or anything. He was mostly... not neutral-faced, exactly. He literally had no expression on his face. And he wasn't being enthusiastic or cheerful or excitable like she was used to seeing him get about things like music.
Miz blinked. Was Bill shy? She wasn't quite sure what this taste was.
Wait.
"We're joining Stitched-Heart's band?" she asked Bill. Huh. That... might be kinda cool? It would be an interesting experience at least.
"Oh, that sounds just peachy-keen!" Mr. Valentino said, walking up to them, to wrap his arm around his wife's shoulder. "Go on in, Robbie should be up in his room practicing," he told them, giving them both a smile. "I'll make cookies!" was Mrs. Valentino's contribution to the 'good news'. "What kind would you two like?"
Miz lit up. "Cookies?" She seemed to bounce in place. "Shortbread? Or... or almond cookies?" Mrs. Valentino gave her a happy laugh. "Of course! Haven't made either of those in awhile." Mr. Valentino glanced over at her, looking happily interested, and said, "Hm, why don't you take the shortbread, and I'll help make the almond ones, dear?" He got a light slap on the arm from his wife for his trouble. "Oh, you! You know if you make the almond ones, you'll eat them all yourself," she teased. "I'll make those, don't you worry, sweetie," she told Miz with an upbeat smile.
Bill didn't comment on any of this, he just turned away and started walking back down the hill, headed for the house. He glanced to Miz and slowed down as he walked by her. Miz followed him. As soon as they got out of earshot, Miz brought up, "They're... very happy people."
Bill grimaced slightly. "Yes," he said. Miz paused and thought about it. "Is it... normal?" It didn't feel like it could be normal for people to be so pleasant.
Bill barely kept back a snarl. "There is no normal," he repeated. "But." He had to fight to keep back another snarl. (Maybe he really was down in his stupid human-ish body too far, even though Stanley still said that he wasn't down far enough...) "They live off of people dying, and they are happy about that." His lips started to curl up in almost a sneer. "When people stop staying dead--" Bill stopped himself and pulled in a breath. (Calm, calm, and all tamped down. While his little sister had her headband off…) "They should hate me," he told Miz. "More than that Stanford does." Bill was dead-set on destroying anything resembling their current state of life and living. And yet they treated him 'nicely'?? --He'd even stopped time during Weirdmageddon, so no-one could age, and not one single solitary human had died at the hands of himself or his Henchmaniac demons. (Even that stupid time squad had only been a bunch of holo-projections that he'd fritzed out.) They were all HIS. NO-ONE got to die without his say-so! --Why didn't they understand that?!
Miz tilted her head. Never thought about that. Then again, they probably had to stay happy to keep from getting depressed about their jobs? Or maybe they were just as insane as anyone else in this world.
The two demons approached the house, and Bill didn't even stop walking as he not quite slammed the base of his lantern-rod into the ground twice and muttered out two words that matched a set of mandala images he drew up his head quickly. The double-doors to the wake room -- on the side of the house -- unlocked and then swung open in response to Bill's magical commands.
They both walked right on in. The piano was off to the side, near the front of the room.
Bill walked directly up to it, flipped up the keyboard guard, and set his lantern-rod against the side of it. He quickly played up the scale, low-to-high, from the lowest note to highest scale in a rapid two-handed test of the timbre and pitch of the instrument. He looked almost disgusted when he was done.
"Perfectly tuned -- as far as I can tell in THIS stupid thing, anyway," he added at the end, gesturing to his head (ears) and body in general. He felt almost offended that a pair of people who lived off of the death of others actually had the audacity to keep a piano like this in proper shape for people like him to be able to use. It annoyed Bill to no end that he couldn't find any fault in their treatment of it.
Miz hummed, looking around. The Valentino couple kept this place neat, clean and spotless. They really cared about their job, morbid as it was. She wondered if that was why Robbie had ended up the way he did. What would it do to a kid to grow up like that?
Bill hooked a foot around one of the piano bench legs and dragged it out of the way, so that he could stand right in front of it and play standing up. Then he seemed to hesitate and change his mind, dragging it back again to sit down on top of it.
Bill tapped his foot against the ground, then pushed himself forward to the edge of the bench and began to play at a quite fervent and loud fortissimo... Bach's Toccata and Fugue in D minor.
He let himself get into it, starting to smile. (He was looking forward to seeing Stitched-Heart's face when the music drove him out of his room to see what all the 'horror music' racket was about here downstairs, loud enough that was almost certainly going to interrupt any quieter practicing that Stitched Heart might be trying to do with his own guitar upstairs. --Sound, in Bill's experience, traveled.) Miz sat down on the bench beside Bill and enjoyed the music. It was lovely. Dramatic. Very much Bill's style. ('I should ask if he knows any songs from Phantom of the Opera,' Miz thought. She could give him the music sheets for it, if not.)
By the time Bill was done with the Fugue, he was grinning, and he didn't stop. He moved right on into the next piece, one that was very thematically similar -- the Overture from Phantom of the Opera.
Miz blinked. Oh! Bill knew it already. She grinned. Oh, she couldn't wait to sing along, even if this wasn't the vocal version of it. The tune was still there after all. She opened her mouth. "Ahhh~ahhh~ahh~ahh~ahhh~"
Only a few more minutes into the song, there was a sound of stomping feet, and one of the side doors to the room swung open like it had been kicked open. "--Dude!" Robbie exclaimed, looking kind of mad, but also very uncomfortable -- it was pretty clear that he knew it was pretty dangerous to risk getting Bill mad at him.
"In sleep he sang to me~in dreams he came~" Miz sang, eyes closed as she let the music wash over her. "That voice which calls to me~and speaks my name~"
When Miz started to sing, Bill continued the phrase, but pulled back greatly, so that he wasn't overwhelming her voice.
Robbie looked a little taken aback. He stared at the little girl kicking her legs as they dangled off the ground, sitting on the end of the piano bench. "And do I dreeeeeam again~For now I fiiiiiiind~the Phaaaa~tom of the Opera is there~inside my mind~"
Bill quieted the piano further, then let it trail off into silence.
"Your parents are baking shortbread and almond cookies," he informed Stitched-Heart.
"Ugh," said Robbie. He still looked really uncomfortable. "Why are you here?" Last time, they'd run into each other up in the cemetery, on top of the hill, not in his house! This was not cool!
"I'm auditioning for your band," Bill told him, sitting back on the bench beside Miz. "And my little sister wanted to sing." Miz looked over and waved. "Hello mister Stitch-heart~"
"Stitched-Heart," Bill corrected absently.
"Dude, my name is Robbie," he repeated, shoving his hands in his hoodie. "Don't go telling people your crazy nickname-thing for... wait." Robbie stared at him, then at Miz. "...You have a sister?"
"Yes," said Bill. "--Since when!?" complained Robbie, 'cause why did nobody ever tell him anything, huh? They all talked to each other, but did anybody think about going off and warning him when Bill was coming over?
"... since I came into this world and we agreed on it?" Miz tilted her head. She didn't see why he was so surprised. His parents had accepted it easily.
"Two days ago," Bill added agreeably. This was day three of his having a little sister!
"Dude, you can't do that. That's not how sisters work," Robbie complained. At least, he was pretty sure it didn't. Jumping through crazy holes in the sky to get here shouldn't count as becoming a sister! "Wait." There hadn't been another apocalypse-thing. Did demons have parents? Two-day-old demons didn't look like teenagers, did they? "Is this some crazy messed-up demon thing?"
Bill looked at Miz, and Miz looked at Bill. Then they both looked back at Robbie. "Yes?" they both told him at the same time, with eerily similar expressions on their faces. Robbie groaned and dropped down, to sit -- well, sort of collapse -- against one of the pew-like benches in the first row at the front of the room. Why did Bill keep coming here, anyway? The demon was supposed to be staying with the dumb Pines. He didn't sign up for this! "--We're not holding any auditions for my band," Robbie told him.
"I don't care," Bill told him. "I like playing the piano, Miz likes singing, and we're going to make music anyway." Bill also liked singing, but he wasn't going to take that away from her. This was supposed to be fun! (Besides, his voice was really terrible right now. His range was stuck at 'human', which was almost-nothing compared to what he'd used to be able to do.)
Miz looked over. "I know some duet songs, if you want?" Singing together was always more fun. She had many fond memories of Hamilton-ing with her sister and human friends.
"Don't tempt me," Bill said. He really, really liked singing too, but... "I'll sound bad to you." She had her All-Seeing Eye open. He'd just embarrass himself.
"It's not about sounding good. It's about sounding bad together!" Miz insisted. Bill eyed her sideways. "And yes, I know that's a Shooting Star quote, but I agree with it." Miz kicked her legs.
Bill looked down at the keys in front of him. "...I've never tried to play in a human body like this and sing at the same time," he said, almost uncertainly. His body had already proven itself to be 'defective' in a few ways that left him tired too easily, in his opinion, and unable to concentrate on nearly as many things as he was used to being able to 'juggle' at a time. (He still concentrated on one thing at a time, always, but he could switch and choose between them with ease. ...Or he'd used to be able to.) Miz scooted over to press their arms together. "If you never 'try', you'll never 'do'."
"...Ah. Practice in front of an audience." Bill grimaced slightly, but he also had a slight smile going.
Then he glanced up at Stitched-Heart.
"Dude," Robbie said, "I'm not gonna tell anyone."
"...Or laugh," said Bill suspiciously. "--Hey, not unless I want my head bitten off, and I like it where it is!" Robbie grumbled. Miz rolled her eyes, "Heads don't taste good anyway," she muttered. Luckily, Robbie didn't hear her, and wasn't real inclined to ask what the heck Bill's "sister" had just muttered at him(?!) -- not with Bill Cipher sitting right there in front of him, too.
Bill half-shifted, half-bobbed from side-to-side where he sat.
"--I should do another thing first," Bill said, almost abruptly. He glanced up at Robbie and said, holding his gaze, "It's not the same."
Robbie made a face, remembering their sort-of argument from a couple days ago. (Bill didn't care about the face Stitched-Heart made at him now. He was right, and he was out to prove a point. His Zodiac member would see...)
Bill stood up, closed his eyes, and pulled up a memory of his of what he wanted to show them -- he knew how Miz did it; this was similar. He drew it all up in his mind, and... offloaded a copy of it, like a self-contained recording, as he murmured out the spell to cast it. (That way, he could just let it 'run' while he focused on everything-else he needed-and-wanted to do himself during it.)
An almost-ghostly image of an older, smiling woman sprung up into being by the side of the piano. It was full-color, but slightly see-through. And there was the sound of footsteps as she walked forward, holding a microphone.
"Let me introduce to you, the Goddess of Music, Ms. Vera Lynn!" Bill proclaimed with a half-bow and a marked sense of (seemingly uncharacteristic) respect.
And then he sat down and started to play.
And the woman swayed back and forth a bit, smiling a bit more and obviously getting into the beat. Background sounds of other instruments -- accompaniment to the piano part being played by Bill -- filled the air. And then the woman began to sing. Miz swayed to the music with a wide smile.
Bill was careful about the piano playing. It was still fun, but he had to match what he was doing to the memory of what he was showing them or the effect would be ruined. The 'recording' he was playing wasn't just the normal sound -- he'd been in the Mindscape, in the same room, when he'd heard her sing this, and he'd captured every tone and note along every scale in existence in his memory -- the etherics, the subvocals, the wavefronts of the various overlapping morphic fields, and everything in-between.
It still wasn't quite the same as having her actual presence in the same room with them (to be reacting to and interacting with THEM, in particular), but... as Bill wound down his supporting playing with a bit of a sigh of relief at having made no major blunders, limited as he was in his current body form at present, the look of stunned surprise on Stitched-Heart's face as the image of Vera Lynn faded out at the end of the song was more than enough. Miz was clapping.
"That, uh..." It took Robbie a minute. "That... didn't sound like the recording."
Bill propped up an elbow on the edge of the piano. "Of course not," Bill told him. "It's different when you're in the same room with them, feeling their energy."
Robbie looked up at him from where he was sitting, and sort of blinked. That… was kinda cool. He was used to rock concerts being like that, and... "Hey, that Woodstick festival is kinda like that, too, right?"
"Only if you like the 'Love God's brand of noise better than the stylings of the Goddess of Music herself," Bill told Stitched-Heart with more than a little derision. Then Bill stopped and considered that for a moment. "Actually," Bill put out there, "Cupid does owe me a favor, and I think he still talks to her." Cupid was musical enough these days that they both still intersected the same circles occasionally. "I might be able to get her here in person." He'd have to catch Cupid at the festival though -- and even then the 'Love God' might not be able to pull through. The favor would, at most, probably only cover Cupid trying to pass the message-ask along to her, and maybe putting in a good word for him, so... "--No promises," Bill added. If Cupid asking her wasn't enough, then Bill wasn't about to try and take liberties with her time by calling on her directly -- not when she had so many more important sets and scores to create and do! He liked her music! He didn't want to interrupt that, and since Bill didn't know her schedule...
Miz tilted her head. "I'd like to meet her. I wonder how she feels about the modern songs?" She had only met a few musical deities in her multiverse. And a few musicians that she felt would be able to ascend into godhood once they built up enough power.
Bill didn't quite let out a laugh. "She's the Goddess of Music!" he told Miz, with a knowing smile. "She likely inspired every last one, if she didn't help write them directly."
Robbie's eyes went wide. "Whaaat?" Hey, he wrote songs sometimes. Did that mean that lady had helped him out, once or twice somehow? He wasn't sure how he felt about that... was she some kind of demon-mind-person like the triangle was, too? Did she... pretend to be human to record songs for people?! What even?! (Robbie didn't realize she was apparently a real magical person -slash- goddess, having no context for what that actually meant. He didn't even know about the Love God being more than a singer -- he thought 'Cupid' was just the guy's stage name, and that he was just an overhyped overrated overweight loser.)
Miz sighed dreamily. "That's so cool!"
"Dude, this is so messed up," Robbie groaned, sinking down in his pew further. Miz gave him a pout. No appreciation! How rude.
Bill was hardly offended by Stitched-Heart's reaction. (Unexpected things in music could be a bit overwhelming at times, in Bill's experience.) Instead, Bill began to play a bit of Pachelbel's Canon in D lightly. "I do take requests, you know," he said, the mathematical progress of notes soothing him. (He'd used this piece as one of those to help retune the energy flow of his energy-self a few weeks ago.)
"...Senbonzakura?" Miz asked quietly. "I can do the singing and guitar part, unless Robbie knows it?" She looked over, unsure if Vocaloid songs existed here. She hadn't quite Looked for them. She squinted at Robbie. "Can you read sheet music?" she asked.
"Uh, yeah I can read sheet music," Robbie said, pushing himself upright a little. He felt almost offended. What kind of songwriter would he be if he couldn't do that?
"Then go get your guitar," Bill told him. Robbie looked like he was going to protest, but then he seemed to realize that Bill would just keep pushing -- or insult his guitar skills -- until he did. He got up and left the room. "I will need a copy of the sheet music as well," Bill said, turning to Miz. Scanning through his memories, he didn't remember ever Seeing that particular song performed -- or if he had, it had not been named within range of his Sight. Miz held out her hands and sheets of paper appeared, little black spots appearing until they became the scales and notes. She held it out to him. "There's the ballad version or the normal version," she said. "The ballad version doesn't have guitar though."
"Normal version, then," Bill told her with a smile, holding his hand out for it. Miz passed it to him, and he began setting it up on the piano in front of him. He started reading through it, and by the time a grumbling Robbie had come back with his guitar slung over his shoulder, he'd gone through it three times and had it thoroughly memorized. He started working his way through finger exercises, motions that corresponded what he needed to play, with his hands held about three inches above the keys. (Practice made perfect, and Bill wanted to be sure that he was going to get everything RIGHT for his little sister to enjoy.)
"This better not be lame," Robbie not-quite threatened, as he held out a hand to Miz for his own copy of the sheet music. Miz bounced up to him and held up the papers. "Here you go!" she said cheerfully. Robbie took it from her and sat down on the pew bench, starting to page through it. He took a different approach than Bill; he held his guitar and strummed out a few parts here and there as he made his way through it, frowning. After only half a page, he looked over at Miz and raised an eyebrow. "It's pretty fast," he said finally.
"That's what makes it FUN." Miz insisted. "I even gave you the version with a guitar solo, you know?" She thought that was very thoughtful of her. Robbie sort of grumbled at her for that, giving him the difficult part.
They were all done looking through it and almost ready to start playing when the Valentinos walked in carrying two trays of cookies and milk. "Oh, how cute. You're playing with Bill's little sister, Robby-kins?" Mrs. Valentino cooed. Robbie groaned. "Whatever." The couple placed the cookies down on a table and smiled at them. "Could we listen too, dear?"
Bill twitched in place and hesitated at the ask. He didn't say anything though, and didn't raise his head to look at Stitched-Heart, instead keeping his head (and his mental focus) on the music score, and what he would need to do to play his part.
Miz looked over at Robbie. "I personally don't mind," she tossed in her two cents. Robbie let out a put-upon sigh. "Ugh, fine," he told his parents. "Whatever. It's not a big deal." He strummed a few more notes on his guitar, trying to ignore them for being so... embarrassing.
Robbie looked over at Bill. "So, starting in three, two..." Bill didn't quite look over at him, but they both started playing a beat later at the same time as if he had. Miz nodded along to the music and waited for her part. "With a bold and sudden calling~ Western Revolution's starting~ Let our hearts be open to it~ Pacifist nation~" She danced a little, twirling around the free space as she went. "Riding on a penny-farthing~ it's the flag of our sun rising~ Warding evil spirits like an ICBM~"
Bill slowly started to relax and get into it, getting used to the rhythm and beginning to trust that they were each going to keep up at the same tempo as he was, as the musical score dictated to them.
"On the train tracks, running along the line~ let us move forward. Don't look behind~ Boys and girls becoming like samurai~ just like those from our previous life~" She paused as the music led up to the chorus, a wide grin on her face. It's been forever since she got to perform with other people.
"Thousands of cherry blossoms dwindling in the light~ Though I can't hear your voice, keep what I say in mind~ This bouquet that surrounds is iron poison, see~ Looking down at us from that big guillotine~" Robbie was glancing over at her as he played, confused about the lyrics. Bill was nodding his head to the beat as he played along, beginning to smile.
"Darkness has just engulfed the universe we know~ The lament that you sing can't reach ears anymore~ We are still far away from reaching clear blue skies~ Go ahead, keep shooting, with that ray gun, fight~!" Miz sang as she danced around the room.
The Valentinos seemed to be enjoying the performance. Robbie begrudgingly admitted it was an okay tune, as he and Bill made their way through the first longer instrumental bridge. He was unsure how he felt about the lyrics though, as Miz picked up singing again. Was this song about war? Still, they made it through the song, there was BOTH a piano solo and a guitar solo, even a dramatic upshift in key at the end that was more fun than just challenging, and Robbie found himself smiling a little despite himself as he played. (Unironically, even.)
Finally they struck the last notes and Miz bowed them out. Robbie's parents applauded enthusiastically. Miz was clapping too, beaming happily at both Bill and Robbie. "That was AWESOME!" she squealed.
Bill let out a long breath, working his hands a bit, and so did Robbie. Robbie looked up at Bill, and this time, he saw Bill glancing back at him. ...It was really weird. The demon had actually played along with the band-- uh, the group of them. The other two of them. He hadn't tried to drown them out or anything -- which was, y'know, kind of what Robbie had thought that apocalypse thing was supposed to be all about? Drowning other people out? And yeah, none of them had stumbled on their parts, but with the way Bill had been holding himself (herself?) at the keyboard, he'd actually seemed ready to change tempo if they'd needed it -- Robbie knew what that posture looked like and meant, from some of the other people he'd played with. It was weird.
He'd really blown the demon off when Bill had brought up his band before, because he didn't want the crazy demon taking over everything -- he'd just wanted to be left alone, okay? And that was what that demon did, right? -- take over stuff! But the demon didn't just seem to like some of the same kinds of music as he did (which the demon could've just been lying about maybe), Bill could actually play, not just solo, and now Robbie didn't know what to think of him, her, it, whatever. --This wasn't what he'd gotten out of what Dr. Pines had said a month ago, before they'd all gotten sent home instead of trying to do that really uncomfortable holding-hands thing again, and now Robbie was feeling confused.
Miz smiled to herself. Maybe if she could get Bill to make friends... of course, she wasn't going to force him, but she was hoping he'd be able to find more people he could hang out with. She knew he already played with Soos and Melody. Friends were the best thing. Real friends. She wondered if she could show him how to play with other humans nicely.
Then she skipped over to the table to grab some cookies, thrilled that she could TASTE them. She hummed in content. Cookies~ some of the few things she couldn't cook well was anything involving baking. She decided she would spend this time here in Bill's dimension learning how to bake. She wanted to make proper cakes instead of cheating and just... creating them. "Thanks for the cookies, Mrs. Robbie's mom and dad," she said with a partially-full mouth.
"Oh, you're very welcome, sweetheart," Mr. Valentino told her with a smile. He missed how Bill fiddled with the cuff of his long-sleeved shirt a bit over by the piano. (Not that he would have realized that Bill had just surreptitiously used a piece of tech he'd built into his currently-'invisible' bodysuit, to scan the food and see what its composition was, to find out what had been put in it, even if he had seen Bill do it.)
"We hope you three like them," Mrs. Valentino said. "We tried to bake it with love!" Robbie groaned ("Ugh...") at his parents being unbearable. "I don't eat anything with milk or added sugar in it," Bill told them very straightforwardly, as he took his time sitting where he was and stacking the sheet music back into a neat little pile, not looking at any of them.
"Oh dear," said Mrs. Valentino. "I'm sorry, I didn't know." She walked over to the side of the piano. "Would you like some apple slices instead?"
Bill stopped moving, his hand not quite frozen in place, hovering in front of the last piece of sheet music. He flicked his eyes over to the side to watch her, and then slowly turned his head towards her. Once he was facing her, he said, "I don't like you."
Robbie shot to his feet, panicked. He'd seen what Bill had done to Pacifica's dad in the town square, the last time the demon had been running around alive. "Hey!" Robbie said, his voice cracking on him. Even if they were embarrassing, they were still his parents!
"Oh, it's all right, Robbie-kins," Mrs. Valentino said to her (still-panicking) son. "You know how most people feel about morticians and what we do." She turned back to Bill. "Bill, it's alright to feel uncomfortable about death," she told him quite pleasantly and kindly. "It's only natural--"
This time, it was Bill who shot to his feet. "I don't like you," he repeated again. "And death is NOT natural!" Miz twitched slightly.
Bill didn't wait for a response from Stitched-Heart's mother. He just turned on his heel, grabbing up his lantern-rod as he went, and stormed on out of the room, out the door to the outside. Miz grabbed a handful of cookies and bowed to the couple. "Thanks for the cookies! Sorry about big brother," she said quickly, before she hurried after him, surreptitiously grabbing a few more cookies before she left. "Oh, dear," came the soft echo from the room, before Robbie stormed right out after them, hot on their heels.
Bill jumped the low stone wall and stomped his way all the way up to the top of the hill and all but threw himself down onto the grassy ground to lie flat on his back, staring up at the sky.
He was shaking slightly and breathing heavily.
Miz fluttered over, opting to float instead of walk. She didn't say anything, just settled down to sit on top of a gravestone beside him, nibbling on her cookies as she waited for him to calm down. Close enough that he should knew she was there and would know he wasn't alone.
Robbie almost turned around with a 'nope, nope, nope' when she saw Bill's kid sister float her way up that whole hill. He didn't want to maybe have to take on one demon, let alone two of them. He was a coward, and he knew it. He wasn't some fated-hoodie-wearing zodiac-whatever. Or, if he was, it was the hoodie that was fated maybe, or… --Look, it wasn't him. Okay? (He wasn't some kind of a hero like those two old guys were, or the shrimp and his sister, or anything.) Not really. This wasn't him.
... But that demon had also threatened his parents. That wasn't okay! Okay? So Robbie shoved his hands in his hoodie pockets and stomped his own way up the hill, shuddering a bit and muttering to himself about how stupid this was and how he was being and how he was probably just going to get himself killed...
Miz was humming a soft melody, calm and soothing.
Bill was starting to calm down at Miz's singing, almost, and Robbie was almost at the top of the hill where they were, when Bill angrily kicked his heels down at the ground hard and yelled out, "I HATE PARENTS!!!"
Robbie almost had a heart attack, and he definitely jumped in place -- "Aaaah!" -- and almost fell over.
Bill spat out a few curses in Galactic Standard and covered his face with his arms. He was shaking again. --Stupid human-ish body! He kept trying to do the deep breathing like Stanley had told him to when it did things like this and It. Wasn't. Working!