At that, Bill looked over and up and saw that, yes, the Door Miz had made outside his mind was still there, in the Mindscape... except now it was HERE instead of back in the other dimension. Hm. (...So her Doors followed around the Bills they led to?) Interesting. (And good to know!) Bill turned his attention back to what Miz was saying.
"--so even if I took you guys through into my Doors, it wouldn't get you home. And you'd probably have more issues since you'd be leaving your bodies behind HERE--"
"WHAT?!" Pinetree rudely interjected.
"--since my Doors are part of MY Dreamscape, so you can only travel through them as your conscious soul/mind, and leave your physical body behind--" she waved her hands "--hence why I had to create a vessel for Seb to 'wear' while he was here with me last time--"
Bill tilted his head slightly. He had guessed that that might be the situation from what had happened last time (and this one) from what she'd said and done, and the confirmation was good. But, the fact that she was sharing the information with members of his Zodiac was even more interesting.
Stan was watching Miz closely. She really was a chatty one. ...Was it because she didn't care that they knew how her powers worked, or did she think it wasn't important enough to hide? (Or did she just have almost no brain-to-mouth filter, except for the idea of her sister maybe telling her not to share?) Stan watched her lecture Dipper and wasn't sure if he should stop her. It didn't seem all that bad, what she was saying, and the kids hadn't asked her to stop yet. And she wasn't talking about other dimensions, she was talking about travelling to dimensions. So it was technically still within the rules.
Stan sighed. While Miz distracted the kids, he kept an eye on Bill. If the kid really was the only one who could portal them back home… that wasn't gonna go over well with Ford, that was for sure. (Even in the dimension with the 'anti-Bill', the portal hadn't closed; Bill had set it up to stay open the entire time that they'd been... 'visiting'. Probably good that Miz hadn't done that; the thing had closed on them after less than a minute, pretty much right after they'd been spit out onto the beach. Ford had freaked out for a minute about it -- right after realizing that the demons had vanished on them, too -- but Stan didn't want to think about the mess they'd have had on their hands if a bunch of beach tourists had caught sight of an open interdimensional portal mid-air. Probably try to get themselves a ladder and...)
"How're you doing?" Stan grunted out at the kid. Bill glanced over at him before making a scoffing noise. He didn't respond with anything more than that, so Stan threw out a, "How long?"
Bill leaned back against the brick wall. "Mm. About two days," the kid finally said. Stan closed his eyes and breathed. --Okay. Okay. That was fine. (Demon wasn't playing games like Ford kept getting paranoid about, demanding things, tit for tat. You scratch my back...) Hell, they'd found the kids. The kids were safe. --the demons hadn't even been trying to hurt 'em; they'd really just gotten there first. And they just had to wait two days before Bill could portal them back home. ...So Stan just had to keep Ford from killing Bill before they could get home, so they could all get home, and everything would be...
...wait. Hold the phone.
"Hey, kid. There any reason you can't just let your sister portal us back?" Stan asked of him. That had the kid side-eyeing him.
"Well. I could set that up for her from here… tomorrow morning," the kid told him. "Unless you want me to risk permanently damaging my Eye?" Stan grimaced. Yeah, no. That'd be a recipe for the kid kicking him to the curb. "But even if I did that, I wouldn't be able to test it properly from here," Bill told him next. "She might be able to open a portal from here-to-there after that, but she might not be able to go through it with us. Not without tripping something… nasty."
Yeah, no. Stan knew what that meant: that wasn't happening. Kid wasn't gonna risk his little sister. Stan frowned at him though, still kind of pissed off at the kid's little problematic 'surprise'. (Because Stan had seen it right away -- there was also something of a loophole in there, for another way to do it, that the kid just wasn't bringing up. So was the kid playing games with him, here?)
Hell, now that he had his breath back and thought about it a little more, Stan was starting to feel more than a little suspicious about the whole thing himself, because... "You couldn't say anything about any of this before we left?" he asked of the kid, frowning.
"WELL." Bill leaned back against the brick wall behind him, and almost casually crossed his arms at him. "Someone didn't seem to have time for anything or anyone else other than leaving as soon as possible, now DID you?" Bill said lightly, giving him a long look. Stan clenched his jaw and really wanted to punch the kid for that one.
("--and that's why you should NEVER teleport while you're drunk." Miz finished, folding her arms and nodding solemnly. Dipper and Mabel were staring at her with their mouths hanging wide open. Mabel turned to Dipper and shivered. "I'm never gonna drink alcohol!" she declared. Dipper was nodding slowly with wide eyes. "How did you get your arms back?" Dipper asked. Miz sighed dramatically. "I had to regrow them. And I still don't know where my original arms went. They're still out there in the multiverse somewhere…" Miz gazed off into the distance. "I wonder if anyone ever found them… I made sure I was flipping the Shvoxian off before I teleported so wherever my hands are…" She giggled.)
Stan pulled in a breath, forced himself to count to five... and then sighed it all out and rubbed a hand over his face. Well, whatever. He had to get 'em a place to stay and food to eat for the next few days. And find Ford. ...Well, meet up where he expected to find Ford, anyway, and let Ford find them. Wasn't like it wasn't gonna be obvious to his twin where he'd gone. Shouldn't be a problem.
"C'mon, the lot of ya," Stan told the gaggle of kids, demonic and otherwise. They gathered around him and then followed after him (like a little group of oversized ducklings) when he stomped off. --First off, finding and/or meeting up with Ford. Hopefully his brother hadn't gotten himself arrested. (Ugh, that would just top off the whole day...)
He led the kids towards the beach; he'd told Ford to meet him by the boat earlier if they got separated looking for the demons. ...Well, Stan was pretty sure that this still counted. Stan groaned. He was too old for adventures!
...Except for the Stan o' War II. The boat didn't count.
----
"Where are we even going, Sixer?" Stan grumbled as he followed his brother. Sure this was an adventure, but… they were just wandering around town and getting weird looks for playing hooky. Ford was peering into all the alleyways, looking around. Stan thought they were just wasting their time, doing that. Why search randomly when they could just make one of Sixer's 'estimated guesses' instead?
"Shouldn't we be checking down by the pier?" Stan complained, and his brother turned towards him, to adjust his glasses and look at him curiously. "I mean," Stan said, rubbing the back of his neck, "Those cops were the beach cops, right?"
"Were they?" Ford asked, then his eyes lit up at Stan's nod. "Ah! So you think that perhaps our strange visitors were chased away from the beach!"
'Strange visitors', right. "...Maybe?" Stan said. He wasn't all that sure about it. He just figured that was a good place to start. ...That, and, y'know, it was more fun over there, so even if they didn't find the guys looking for them, they could still have a little fun skipping school that day, and get some grub from one of the food stands.
...aaaaaaand Ford was already racing off. Stan groaned and followed.
It wasn't long before they saw the trash-covered beach. (It was called Glass Shard beach for a reason, okay?) "Stanley! Stanley!" Ford grabbed his brother's arm and pulled him down behind a large rock. Stan stumbled and barely caught himself against the rock's surface. Geez, poindexter. the heck? "--What?"
"They're… they're here! By our boat!" Ford hissed, peeking up over the rock and seeing the group of potential dimensional travelers. All of them very were near to each other and either standing or seated by the side of the boat, on the same side of it.
Stan looked over as well. Yup. That was them. (Y'know, probably.) He squinted at them. "I can barely see them from here," he complained. (He wasn't wearing his glasses; he wasn't a nerd-bot like his twin. He left 'em at home when he could get away with it, and most days he had boxing after school.)
Ford gasped. "Binoculars!" He grabbed Stan's shoulder and shook it. "--Stan! Go get some!"
"Huh? Why me?" Stan grumbled out at his twin. "Well, I need to stay here to keep watch on them," Ford said simply, as if it were obvious.
Stan rolled his eyes, and let out a sigh. "Yeah, whatever." Sneak back into the house without their parents noticing and grabbing the binoculars before sneaking back out? ...Yeah, he could do that. He huffed out a breath when he realized that Ford, the nerd, had already turned back to stare at the group of people on their boat, who were all… talking about something. Yeah, 'talking'. (It must have been important, 'cause it sounded like the two old men were yelling at each other.)
Stanley sighed as he got up (then sighed again as his brother hissed out at him to 'stay low!' and 'don't break their cover!') and made his way back across the beach, past the boardwalk, and… back to the pawnshop. (Hell, at least it was close by.),/p>
Stan snuck around the back of the house and peered in the window to check for his Ma. She would lounge around the house as she made her calls, but she usually sat by a window when she did it. ('For inspiration.') To Stan's surprise though, his Ma wasn't there. He glanced around, cupping his hands against the window. Near as he could tell, Pa wasn't there either, even with the closed sign on the front of the pawn shop. ...So his parents were out? Weird.
Well, if they weren't there to stop him... Stan scaled the back of the house and slid the window to their bedroom open. He easily found their binoculars (they'd actually wanted telescopes, but the ones they'd tried out at the shop had made their eyes hurt after a while), slung the cord over his neck, and slipped back out of the window and down the side of the house without too much trouble. Stan briefly wondered where his parents had gone, but decided it wasn't all that important.
--Well, back to spying on people with his brother. Definitely not illegal.
Stan got back to his brother and just rolled his eyes at the way Ford practically strangled him with the cord, getting the thing off of his neck, and immediately started peering through them closely at the strangers. ...Well, as long as they learned anything interesting about those people who might, possibly, maybe be from another dimension. Or time? Or whatever. Then…
Well, either way, Sixer had better share the binoculars with him, too!
---
"--ou cannot possibly expect us to stay here for who knows how long--!" Ford raged. Stan had to hold himself back from punching his brother. Ford getting mad about normal things was a hell of a lot better than him being weird in the brain. Hell, Stan would even take it over what Ford had done before, when he'd first gotten back to them at the boat -- his brother had dropped to his knees like he had no strength left in him, looking lost and stunned (and kind of like he maybe thought he was hallucinating them again, like they'd never been real), and when the niblings had run up to him, Ford had grabbed them both up in a hug that... well…
Ford had been holding onto the niblings like the world was ending around them, while shaking like a goddamn leaf.
Stan blew out a breath, because in the face of that... Ford being a little (hell, a lot) mad at him about all this was fine. "--Two days," Stan told his brother. "That's it. --It's not a big deal." Because to Stan, it wasn't. Not like he didn't have skills. Worst-case... "We're together, we can hit the motel strip, find a room," Stan was pretty sure he could sweet-talk somebody into letting him have a room for 'two nights' (and skip out after just one) if he had to, find somebody who'd take pity on 'an old man who'd gotten mugged' and lost his wallet, waiting on the bank for new ID or some kinda stupid sob story... "-and just wait for Bill to recover." Said demon was sitting in the sand, watching his little sister build a sand castle. Mabel had joined in to help Miz with it after a while, smiling. Dipper was leaning up against the side of the boat, twitching and tapping his fingers against this arms and doing his best to not start pacing, trying not to stress out. (Stan appreciated it. Dipper getting any more twitchy would probably just set Ford off even worse.)
"We should have a moat." Mabel declared. Miz shrugged. "We don't have any alligators though." The girls tossed ideas back and forth at each other. During this, Dipper looked up and finally said what he'd been wanting to say for awhile, as he stared at Miz's headband: "Why are you wearing that?" It looked weird; something was off about it.
Miz poked her headband. "It's a Seal that cuts off my senses so that I don't get affected by your emotions anymore." She pouted. "It's annoying but if it makes everyone feel better about being around me..."
Dipper straightened up a bit at getting an actual answer, and was about to ask how she'd made it; Great-Uncle Ford had always said that cloth was too flexible for spellwork because the deformations would shift the stitched-spellword around. But then Dipper hesitated for a moment as the implications of what she'd said hit him, and that had him changing what would have been his next question, to something else instead. "Cuts off your senses?"
"That thing that my powers naturally do, without my control, which apparently doesn't count enough as 'magic' to get blocked by the Weirdness barrier you've got around the Shack." Miz scooped out some more sand, strengthening it and making a large tunnel into the castle. "That thing that my powers do makes it so I get bombarded by other people's emotions." She sighed.
Dipper was quiet for a bit. He wanted a pen to bite on. He'd had a day to think it over, now. When the dragon girl had said she was feeling 'angry waves' at the breakfast table yesterday, both Great-Uncle Ford and Bill had looked… upset. (And that had been a big red flag right there. They never agreed on anything!) But with Bill rushing the dragon girl out of the Shack so quickly, and Great-Uncle Ford getting messed up by the two of them somehow... no-one had really told him or Mabel what it had all been about. Grunkle Stan had told them later that it wasn't something that would hurt them (and hadn't been angry about that, the way he'd talked about Bill and the dragon girl, so that meant that that hadn't been what had happened to hurt Great-Uncle Ford so badly). But… based on what Miz was saying, and how Bill had reacted in the kitchen (since he did seem to act like he cared about her, even if they fought sometimes), and that headband she was wearing…
"...It hurts you, doesn't it?" Dipper asked. Her feeling their emotions had hurt her somehow. Miz shrugged. "It's not that bad, unless the emotions I'm feeding off of are the type that make rational thought difficult. Though any type of emotion in excess isn't good," she shrugged. Dipper frowned.
"But, was it hurting you?" Dipper asked her again. He wanted a proper answer.
For a while, it seemed like Miz wasn't going to respond. Finally she brushed some more sand aside and answered, "Yes." Dipper hissed in a breath and clenched his hands, knocking his fists lightly against the side of the ship behind him.
Mabel was looking back and forth between Dipper and Miz. "Dipper?"
"So you can feel our emotions?" Dipper pressed. He knew better than to go with a simple 'yes', from some of the stuff he'd practically tripped over at previous meals in the kitchen with Bill. (Grunkle Stan had caught him, kind of, but… he couldn't just depend on that all the time, and he didn't want to anymore.) "And they hurt you?"
At that point, Bill spoke up and said: "She can. The headband stops that for now, as long as she's wearing it." Bill looked over at her. "If she doesn't…" Bill trailed off, and Miz sighed and picked up the explanation again. "Then I feel your emotions, and then I start feeling your emotions. And if I don't filter them out, I can get a little overwhelmed." She looked down, wiggled her fingers, and made the sand castle build up a bit larger all over, moving sand with weirdness. "I don't want to make excuses for what mean things I said about Ford. I know it was mean, and hurtful, but I was annoyed, angry and offended and I just wanted to make him hurt."
Dipper breathed in slowly, while rubbing his face with his hands. "Okay. So that's going to stop happening if you keep wearing that thing?" he asked her, after dropping his hands. "And you'll stop taking stuff out on Great-Uncle Ford?" A lot of the stuff she'd been yelling two nights ago in the kitchen had been really nasty. Dipper still didn't like it at all, but... if she'd been feeling as angry as his Great-Uncle could get about some things -- like Bill -- and hadn't been able to calm down and stop feeling them because she wasn't the one who'd been angry… that was messed up. Dipper wasn't so sure that he could handle something like that himself, if he was feeling somebody else's anger and being hurt by it.
And maybe that explained why Great-Uncle Ford had stopped looking so defensive and mad yesterday morning, and instead jumped straight to alarm and worry instead when the dragon girl had talked about feeding on emotions -- Great-Uncle Ford must've realized what had happened and known that maybe she couldn't help it? ...But that didn't make it okay that she'd been talking about his great-uncle like that. And it definitely didn't give either her or Bill a pass for hurting their great-uncle in the woods, whatever they'd done. (The worst part was, Grunkle Stan wasn't doing anything about it. What had happened to their Great-Uncle when he'd been alone with them in the woods. Grunkle Stan had gone upstairs to talk to Bill and the dragon girl that morning, sure… but nothing had happened. They'd gotten away with it. ...Mabel had even gotten a text from Pacifica that Bill had been spotted out on the lake afterwards in Grunkle Stan's boat, running around doing stuff like it was nothing -- and that wasn't okay! So he and Mabel had left their great-uncle with Melody and Stan and decided to handle things themselves. ...Except their two great-uncles had come after them, with Bill, because they'd screwed up and tried using Blendin Blandin's old broken time-tape before Old Man McGucket had finished fixing it. Pacifica had paid a bunch of people to find the pieces of it for them, and then have those pieces mailed to them; the package had arrived as super-top-express-priority mail at the mansion a couple days ago. McGucket had said he'd work on it for them, along with the rest of the stuff -- and he had. It had looked fixed, and okay to use!)
Dipper and Mabel had thought they could fix things by making sure that their great-uncles had never fought in the first place: if Stan and Ford had never had a problem with that science fair project… maybe they would have still ended up in Gravity Falls, or maybe they wouldn't have -- but wherever they were, Stan would've been with him, and Stan would've seen Bill for what he was and stopped anything he was trying to do to Great-Uncle Ford cold! ...At least, Grunkle Stan would've done that for Great-Uncle Ford back then, when they still treated each other like twins, both Mabel and Dipper were pretty sure. The stories Grunkle Stan told sometimes had sure made it sound that way... even if Great-Uncle Ford had sometimes looked a little uncomfortable when their grunkle had told those stories to them over the video chat. (Mabel had figured it was probably just seasickness, though it didn't make sense to Dipper that Great-Uncle Ford might still be getting that after weeks out at sea...)
Well, that plan was sure sunk now, especially now that Bill knew about it. (Dipper was going to have to ask Great-Uncle Ford about that whole 'time locked' thing later. Maybe there was a way to unlock it?) But what Dipper really wanted to know, at the end of the day, was how likely it was that this dragon girl (who Bill kept calling a sister) was going to hurt either of their great-uncles -- especially Great-Uncle Ford, who'd already been hurt by the two of them really badly. "If you keep wearing that thing, you won't get mad at our Great-Uncle Ford again?" Dipper pressed.
Miz thought about it. "I can't promise I won't get mad at Ford for any other reason." When Dipper looked about to protest, she continued with: "You know he physically assaulted Bill when he realized you and Mabel were missing?"
The twins froze, eyes wide with horror. (They knew that an attack against him was not something that Bill would just let go, and neither of them had been around to see and complain if he--)
Dipper tossed a glance Mabel's way at the same time she did him. Great-Uncle Ford wasn't a complete basketcase, and he wasn't, y'know, missing any limbs or anything. Bill obviously hadn't attacked him back. (Not that Dipper was complaining, but why…?)
Slowly, the twins turned their heads towards the dream demon, to stare at Bill. The demon wasn't looking at them, though he had clearly been listening to their conversation. Bill didn't say anything in reply; he did shrug though. Dipper pulled in a short breath and frowned at the demonic dorito, wanting to ask, 'What's your game, Bill?' And what had Grunkle Stan done so that Bill and Great-Uncle Ford--
"They were worried about you," Miz told him first, before Dipper could ask. "Ford immediately blamed Bill. I can understand why he was worried, but I'm still a little upset about that." Miz continued shaping the sand, making the entrance to the sand castle larger. She paused. "So I can understand why you and Mabel are upset that I hurt Ford, too. So… I'm sorry." She sighed. "I don't know if Ford will accept my apology though. And the thing in the woods… I didn't realize it would break him like that. Brother and I were just talking and he never told us to stop." She continued building up the sand castle's entrance, taller, wider and rounder. (There had to be weirdness in play because there was no way normal sand would be able to hold up in that kind of shape.)
Dipper looked at her, feeling a little horrified -- because what had they been talking about? Other dimensions, again? --Bill knew he wasn't supposed to do that!! (...Oh no, hadn't this dragon girl been talking about another dimension when she'd been explaining about bad teleporting problems when drunk? --Was that what had happened in the woods? Had Miz started talking about dimensional stuff, and then Bill had--!? --Aaah, Dipper needed to be more careful! He wanted to know more about what things were like out there, but not if it was going to hurt his Great-Uncle!)
(But before Dipper could really begin to freak out about that properly, let alone respond to that out loud…) Miz crawled inside the sand castle, vanishing from view. The twins gasped while Bill blinked and tilted his head. It took Bill a moment to recognize, since he himself would never use something as impermanent as shifting sand to try and anchor something like that (too much extra work to stabilize), but that was…
"--What?!" Dipper was distracted from freaking out over asking about other dimensions, by… freaking out over a completely different thing, as he ran over to crouch down and peer inside the huge doorway to the sand castle. He tentatively put his hand in and pulled it out with no issue. Then he yelped and fell back in the sand when Miz poked her head and shoulders out, right in front of him, nearly in his face.
"Hey, I made a place for us to stay until Bill can get us home," Miz told them all simply before she ducked back inside. She had reinforced the sand so it wouldn't be changed or shifted without her say so; she wasn't stupid.
Mabel paused in thought for a moment, and then a wide smile spread across her face. "Oh my gosh! Magical sand castle!" she squealed out, before crawling inside after Miz as well. Dipper screamed: "MABEL!" as she vanished into the sand.
That got the attention of the older set of twins.
"Dipper? Where's Mabel? --What happened?" Stan asked, jogging over the few feet of distance he and Ford had taken, to try and leave some of the arguing out of earshot.
Dipper was breathing quickly as he pointed at the sand castle. "T-they both--!" (He was having deja vu feelings that were just one step removed from a full flashback to Weirdmageddon and Mabel's prison bubble.)
Mabel poked her head out. "Dipper! You've GOT to see this!!" she squealed out at him in excitement, before ducking back inside again.
"Mabel --wait!" Dipper, fully panicked now, tried to follow his sister inside this time, but was scooped up at the waist and held back by Stan. Yeah, no. Not letting any more kids disappear inside some magical sand castle thing.
Stan glanced down at Bill -- who was frowning slightly, but seemed mostly calm about all this racket. Stan actually wasn't too worried since they'd seen Mabel looking all fine and dandy, but he did want to know what this thing was. "Kid? What did your sister just build?" Stan asked, looking over at Bill. This thing wasn't just your run-of-the-mill sandcastle, like that bouncy castle had been.
It was Ford who answered. "It's a subspace pocket! H-how?!" (From his experience, these sorts of things were…) Ford stared at the sandcastle as if it would come to life and eat them. (And if this dragon-demon was a Bill Cipher, it just might do just that!) Ford flinched when they heard Mabel's delighted voice from inside, cheering: "There's a jacuzzi!"
Everyone else was still staring at the sandcastle at her pronouncement, while Bill rolled his eyes and said, "Stay here. ...Need a minute. I'll get them," Bill half-grumbled out at them all before he himself bent down and crawled himself inside. Despite his best efforts to NOT touch the sides, the entrance reacted to his entry, seeming to stretch farther open to accommodate his slightly-wider form.
---
...Well-well-well, the transition didn't tear him in half or screw with his anchored-down energy form. That was a good sign! Still not enough, though.
Bill stood up and looked around, hands on his hips. There was… a lot of human-looking stuff in here, but he didn't see either of them right away.
So Bill brought his hands to his mouth, cupped them, and he called out, "MIZ! SHOOTING STAR!"
"We're over here!" he heard Miz call back, seemingly from down another hallway.
Bill sighed. "'Over here' needs to be 'out there' in less than thirty-two seconds, unless you want to risk that Stanford breaking himself all over again!" Bill called back to them.
""Awww…"" Bill heard both girls whining, then a worried "Wait, breaking--?!" from Shooting Star, before the quick pitter-patter of their feet echoed down the hallway towards him at a very rapid pace.
When they turned the corner, Bill saw Shooting Star hugging a large stuffed animal; Miz held one as well. They seemed to be… animals but not like any creature Bill had seen on Earth. It also seemed like they were another reference to something. A round pink creature with little dark pink feet and stubby arms.
"Shooting Star first, Miz second, myself last," Bill said, shooing Shooting Star out the entrance-that-was-also-an-exit first. He gave an almost apologetic glance to Miz for the interruption. She pouted but accepted.
"We're keeping the Kirbys though," Miz said as she hugged her own, yellow colored version of the creature. Just 'cause she was jealous of how popular Kirby was, didn't mean she didn't find him absolutely adorable~…
"That's fine," Bill told her, "As long as they're made of stable matter-- ah, matter that is at least as stable as the external jug you cloned was," Bill added, realizing that he should probably give a touchstone-metric-example for reference, rather than spend a great deal of time verifying the definition for 'stable' at that particular moment.
Miz nodded. She made sure her creations were stable enough they wouldn't fall apart. Even her vessels stayed while she was unconscious.
Bill waited as Miz handed her Kirby to him briefly as she went out next (to help keep the sand off of it), before he passed it through to her and then followed her out (as, quite deliberately, the last one out).
---
By the time both Miz and Bill were out, Ford was already down on one knee in the sand, hugging Mabel to his chest like he'd truly thought he'd never see her again, and the Kirby plushie Mabel had been holding had been relegated to the sand. (...Not that it looked like Mabel had wanted to let go of it, for the mournful look she was giving it, but it was pretty clear that Ford had been freaked out enough by something to do with it that she'd decided that letting go of it was better than holding onto it.)
Bill sighed as he leaned over and plucked the discarded plushie up off of the beach and actually took the time to brush off a bit of the sand from it, before holding it out to Stan.
"Kid?" Stan asked him, as he took the stuffed toy from him. Bill sighed, and turned to his little sister.
"Miz," Bill said. "There is no way that that Stanford is going to walk into that, EVER," Bill gestured at the sandcastle, "And he is going to panic if any of them," Bill waved at his other Zodiac members, "Go inside where he can't see them."
Miz pouted, squishing her yellow Kirby in her arms. "So we can't stay in the sand castle?" She was quite sad about that. She'd always wanted an excuse to have a magical sand castle.
(Dipper was waving his hands at it. "What is this?!" He looked frustrated as he walked around it in a circle, because he was really really curious, even though he was definitely afraid about putting himself inside anything that might be anything like Bill's bubble (which had been way bigger on the inside than the outside, too). But Mabel had gotten to go inside and he hadn't! Just like the tears left over from Weirdmageddon; she'd gotten to see the multiverse, then! Dipper wasn't jealous exactly, but part of him really wanted to see what was inside, even as the other part of him really didn't trust it. He was glad Mabel was alright though.)
"Well," said Bill. "You have to understand, Miz…" Bill began slowly, rocking back on his heels and getting an almost 'grade-school teacher'-like cant to his tone, as Pine Tree and Shooting Star looked up at him almost suspiciously. "You really don't want to set up a competing bit of 'bed' real estate of your own," Bill told her. "Sadly, it just WON'T compare to the alternative."
Miz blinked up at her brother with an innocent-seeming look. "What do you mean, big brother?" she said, picking up on the fact that he had something going on here, and wanting to set it up for him, to help him out. She hugged her doll closer, playing up the 'sweet, innocent child' thing she liked so much.
"WELL," Bill said, putting his hands on his hips. "Really, little sis, you SHOULDN'T be putting up your OWN skills against the great Stanley Pines and his home-making skills!" Bill stopped for just a moment, for just the right amount of dramatic pause, as the four members of his Zodiac behind him stared at him, starting to tick over what he meant in their minds… before Bill said: "--Which we are going to pirate like the WANDERING DIMENSIONAL HIGH-SEAS VAGABONDS that we are, HAHA!" and with that, Bill smacked the palm of his hand right up against the side of the boat next to him, hard.
There was a pause at what Bill had just said sank in.
And it really only took the kids a moment, before they both turned towards the side of the boat that was sitting right next to them, and they both lit up. They'd both been so stressed out and distracted from everything that had happened in the last half-hour that they hadn't realized--
"No way. No way. This is the Stan 'O War…?" Dipper breathed out, completely overwhelmed, as he took a step forward and placed his own hands against it.
"The ORIGINAL!!" Mabel giggled out excitedly.
The younger twins both turned their heads to look at each other, and they both began to smile.
They looked up at Stan next, turning a twin pair of practically begging and very-expectant starry-eyed looks on him, and Stan rocked back on his heels and rubbed a hand against the back of his neck. ...Well, at least they were asking first? It was sort of… his...
"Uh…" Stan looked up at the boat. It wasn't really in shape to live in, yet; that was why he'd been thinking about hotels… He supposed they could make do with using it, camping out on deck, if it was just for the one night…?
And then something really occurred to Stan, and he had to stifle a wince.
"It ain't… really mine. Right?" Stan said. He glanced over at Bill.
"It's all but identical," the triangle demon told him. "It just wasn't made by you, personally. --Hence, pirating!" the kid grinned at him enthusiastically. Stan let out a heavy sigh, then turned back to the niblings, who were still looking up at him with those hero-worshipping, expectant looks on their faces.
"Yeah, okay," Stan told the kids, but he wasn't through the first word before Mabel had grabbed her brother, pulled out her favorite tool of choice, shouted out "GRAPPLING HOOK!" -- and up they went! It startled a chuckle out of Stan.
Ford winced and jumped forward to move under them on their ascent, not entirely sure the railing was meant to support that amount of weight (he hadn't helped Stan out with any of the repairs to their own since partway through middle school…). He relaxed a bit and let out a breath as they made it to the deck without issue.
Miz made an "Ohh~" sound as she heard Mabel laugh out loudly. She watched for a moment, as the twin girl and her brother scrambled up over the railing and ran off (presumably to check out the rest of the deck), before nodding and turning to Stan. "Do you mind if I moved my sand castle?" Miz asked him.
"Better to move it up up onto the deck," the kid told Stan, adding his own two cents. "Keep it out of the way of any prying eyes, and any inquisitive heads and grabby fingers."
Miz nodded. Even if she had a perception filter up, it would be safer if it was out of the way. Stan looked between the two of them, then nodded at her, giving her his okay. At that, she wiggled her fingers and floated the sandcastle up and onto the deck, using her Sight to help her locate and then figure out a good path to push it into a corner so it would be out of the way.
"Stan! If someone sees--?!" Ford looked around with no small concern, dropping a hand to his holster in reflex as (initial panic past) he belatedly tried to determine if anyone had been watching earlier when three people had crawled inside of a sand castle that really should not have fit even one of them -- or when the other 'human' (triangle? Bill Cipher??) demon had floated said sandcastle up to the deck just now. In Ford's experience, people in other dimensions generally did not react well to seeing things they did not understand.
Miz scoffed at Ford's reaction. "I put up a Perception Filter. No one even realizes we're here except the other Stan and Ford."
The two older twins turned their heads towards her and stared at her. Stan glanced over at Bill after a moment, reaching out and laying a hand on his brother's shoulder when Ford gritted his teeth and seemed to be about to object to something at Miz. "Kid?" Stan asked.
"It's a simple spell," Bill informed them. "Mainly visual with a hard line of what can and can't be seen past a boundary, with a few exceptions. Though this one has a bit of an audal modifier, too, since cutting all sound would dampen the sound of the waves and the water from the beach," Bill glanced over at Stanley, "Which apparently some humans notice very quickly."
Right. So this was something like that thing the kid had done around his bed for the second time a couple nights ago, that had netted him am attic room the kid could 'sleep' in, if the kid wanted to sneak out of it instead. And Miz had set this filter thing to allow 'Stanford Pines' and 'Stanley Pines'. So, technically…
Stan groaned. "Any particular reason you allowed the other versions of us know we're here?" he asked the two demon kids.
Bill smiled enigmatically, and Miz blinked too innocently to be believed. Even Ford was able to tell, if the way his brother tensed at his side was any tell for that. "Well~ I didn't want to disappoint them since they seemed so interested in us…" she toed her foot in little circles in the sand. "And I wanted to see the funny looks on their faces." She blushed. "...like the faces they're making right now…"
She and Bill turned in a too-perfect-to-have-been-choreographed unison, to look off into the distance directly at where she'd Seen the two teenagers huddling behind a rock (and where Bill had simply seen the telltale glint of binocular glass in the sun). Their local counterparts were still slapping each other's shoulders in excitement over the magical sand castle. Their excited faces were so adorable! They looked so young and… happy.
Stanley turned (and Ford whirled in place abruptly) to look in the same direction, and they all heard a pair of muffled exclamations and saw one of them grab the other one of them to duck down behind said large rock.
Stanley couldn't help but let out a soft laugh, even though he did try to cover his mouth with his hand. Ford just ran a hand over his face in consternation.
"We're being WATCHED," Bill said creepily, with a grin, then stopped. "Or should that be, 'Someone's WATCHING YOU~!'...?" he tried next, looking to Stanley. Miz sang out "I always feel like~ somebody's waaaaatching meee~"
Stanley let out another "Heh," and Bill rocked side-to-side on his heels a bit, before glancing down at Miz.
"Little sis," Bill said, "It's not that I don't trust you enough to try and convince my Zodiac to stay in your sandcastle," Bill said -- getting back to the earlier point he'd been trying to make, now that Pine Tree and Shooting Star were effectively out of earshot. "It's that there can be a LOT of things that can go wrong with dimensional pockets, and you aren't me. If you're in there with them," Bill told her, "Then you could probably fix anything you needed to from inside it, but if Shooting Star or Pine Tree went inside when you weren't there?" Bill noted. "Or someone attacked the outside of the sandcastle and it collapsed?" (Ford gave Bill a long expressionless stare.)
Miz pouted. "I mean, it should be fine. I made Pyronica's twins a little playpen just like this when they were babies."
"I know," Bill told her. "But these are my Zodiac. And you are you. I'd be happy to sleep inside it with you myself, without checking it over myself, but… I don't know how you do things. And the way you do things…" Bill frowned slightly. "The way you don't do things sometimes…" Bill frowned at her slightly and lay a hand on top of her head. "You've been living for six-hundred-billion years and NEVER tried to find a way to keep other people's emotions OUT of your insides, even though they HURT you." Bill looked down at her seriously. "Maybe you'd make it safe enough for my Zodiac, because you care about me," Bill told her. "But I don't know anymore if you'd make it safe enough for YOU." Bill sighed and leaned forward and down, nearly touching his forehead against the headband cloth encircling her own. "So I don't want you going inside it without me. Understand?"
Miz nodded. "Ok. I understand." She'd just… never really thought about her own problems in such a way before. Hadn't really cared if she got hurt, since she wasn't gonna die anyway and didn't feel like it was something to worry about. Her friends had never said anything since they didn't really know, but Bill DID and he was… worried about her. It made her feel all tight inside… but in a happy way.
Bill let out a slow breath. "Good," Bill said, patting her on the head in that not-quite-awkward way as he straightened up a bit. And then Bill grinned down at her instead and said, "SO! ...Ever stolen a Stan 'O War before?" very leadingly.
Miz grinned. "Nope, but I'd love to try!"
"WELL!" enthused Bill. And with a wave of his hand he made a wave of sand, which spiraled upwards under her feet and pushed her up until she was just about level with the deck.
Bill waited until his little sister was safely on board, before making a small gesture with a mutter to let it collapse again. He stared upwards for a moment before turning to look at Stan, with an uncharacteristically odd look on his face. Ford realized that Bill's posture was just a bit off, as well, with the way he was holding himself.
"...Did I… do that right?" Bill asked of Stanley. "Human encouragement?" The old man stared. Kid really was trying to be a good big brother for his 'human' sister, huh. Stan wasn't sure how to feel about that. It was good, right? But Stan wondered if Bill would ever be able to pay attention to or care about anybody else in the same way, if he didn't think of them like they were some kinda brother or sister to him. Stan wasn't exactly counting on that ever being a thing, but… he hadn't even thought it was on the table before. Stan had never even considered it.
...And he probably shouldn't. Stan didn't want to think about what 'sibling betrayal' would look like on the kid, when (the last time Stan had talked with the kid about it) the kid still thought nothing of killing most people outright for even 'challenging' him to a simple verbal fight.
"Yeah, kid," Stan told him, of how he'd handled his sister. "I think you did that right."
Ford felt uneasy as he watched Bill untense a bit at Stan's response, looking almost relaxed (...or relieved?...) at what Stan had told him. Ford glanced over at Stan as his brother said, "Go on, get up to the deck and hey, maybe toss down that rope ladder when you get the chance, yeah?" Ford had to hide a flinch as Bill gave Stan a smile (not a grin, just a smile) and then floated himself straight up and then over the railing, onto the deck.
Ford turned to his brother and opened his mouth, about to say something, when there was a 'thump', and he twisted his head around to see a rope ladder next to them, twisting and swinging against the side of the boat. ...His heart was still pounding, as he slowly turned his head to look over at his brother.
Stan just shrugged at him. "Kid takes requests," Stan said.
Ford pulled in a breath, then pinched the bridge of his nose and let it out slowly.
"What day is it, Stanley?" he asked of his twin brother finally.
Stan gave him a long look. "Don't want you freaking out on me again," he was told.
"Tell. Me." Ford gritted out.
Stan grimaced a bit, then sighed. "You had that talk in the woods with the two of them yesterday," Stan said. "You remember that?" he said, testing the waters, hoping Ford wouldn't break on him again.
Ford pulled in a shaky breath. He wrapped his arms around himself, and focused on his breathing. (Bill was back. That demon was another Bill Cipher. He couldn't… he couldn't...) Ford pulled in another breath. (He had to. He would. He must. --He must not give in and--)
"...Yes," Ford said finally, shakily. He slowly started to regulate his breathing. Because. Because… he could. He could. He was and would continue to-- hold it together for now. (Hold it together, Ford.) He could… he... (Ford pulled in another breath. Focus.) --The kids. The kids needed... they needed him to...
Ford swallowed, hard.
...they, they were real. Right? This was… real? (But they were so good, so… how could they possibly be real? And if it, all this, wasn't real, then… was it a nightmare? Or a dream? The kids were perfect, Ford loved them dearly and desperately, but he couldn't keep them safe from Bill, and--) Ford forced his eyes shut. He felt his breathing start to go shaky. (He HAD to. But what if-- he couldn't…)
He felt his brother's arms slowly encircle him, and he couldn't stop shaking, because this-- all of this felt wrong. All of this felt wr...
"You're awake," they both heard Bill call out lowly, from above.
Ford's eyes snapped open; Stan looked up. Ford didn't look up. He tensed, he...
"You are in Dimension 46'\+" they both heard Bill say next, and Ford shuddered slightly, going pale.
"...Ford?" Stan said quietly.
"You are in the Milky Way Galaxy, Orion-Cygnus Spiral Arm, Sol System, Planet Earth," Bill continued, in that calm, almost soothing tone of voice. "Latitude 39.8922 North, Longitude 74.1327 West."
Stan could feel Ford shudder in his arms again, heard him make a slight choking sound. Stan frowned. Ford was actin' weird, but he couldn't figure out what the problem was with what the kid was saying. And Stan opened him mouth to say something, but stopped. Because he wasn't sure if he should stop Bill -- not when it sounded to him like the kid really was trying to help right now. (So Stan continued holding his brother, comforting him in the only way he knew he could, when the problem was inside his brother's own head, and hoping Ford would calm down and settle into his own head properly again.)
"You are--" Bill began, and Ford ducked his head into Stan's shoulder and damn near screamed out at the same time, "--I'M NOT SAFE!!"
And Stan felt himself go expressionless, because Ford hadn't just overridden the kid there. Bill had said 'safe' at the same time that Ford had said it, and there was really only one way that Ford could possibly have known what the triangle demon had been planning on saying next.
From the way his brother suddenly froze up stiff as a board in his arms a good second-and-a-half later, his brother must have realized what he'd just 'admitted', too (...hell, really, just given away to him).
And Stan pulled him in tight and did not let him go.
"--Ford, don't run," Stan told his brother, "Don't run."
He felt his brother shudder violently again, start to try and push him away--
"--Please don't run," Stan said, feeling damn near like something was tearing apart in his chest as he said it. "Ford, please."
...He felt his brother jerk, and quiver in place like a damn scared racehorse, and then--
"RELAX," Bill intoned above them, with a whole slew of odd undertones as he said it. Stan felt a strange warm shiver go down his own spine, but he felt more than heard his brother whimper at the single almost-distorted word... and Stan barely held onto his brother as Ford's knees went out on him suddenly. --Stan followed him down, on purpose.
There was barely a second to breath, before… "You're awake," Bill began again, in the same low, calm tone he'd started in, and Ford was struggling to straighten up again, shaking now. Stan let go of the bear hug to slap his own hands over Ford's ears (about to yell at the kid for this mess).
But Stan was a split-second behind his own brother, as he brought his hands to his own temples and blurted out: "--Stop!!".
Bill stopped.
Stan had to take a few breaths to calm down. (He wasn't calming down; he was still pissed.) "...Kid," Stan ground out lowly at him, angry as anything (because how the hell had this been helping?!). "Take the kids and go to the other side of the boat. Now." Because with how loudly Ford had yelled just then, Stan didn't doubt that they had a larger audience than just Bill anymore. And if the way Ford had damn near run from him a few seconds before was a thing, then his brother would not want the kids looking down over the side of the boat at him, to see him now.
Stan heard footsteps, and some muttering (kid was probably getting flak from the younger set now -- well, he sure as hell deserved it more than little bit, for pulling this stunt when Ford was already feeling this bad), and Stan waited to say anything more until he was pretty sure they were mostly alone again.
"Ford…" Stan began quietly, slowly lowering his hands away from his brother's ears, but his brother sure didn't look like he'd just cracked up again. He just looked like… like he was in complete and disbelieving shock. Shit.
"He… he…" Ford was shivering, on-again off-again, still holding his own six-fingered hands at his temples. Stan waited, and Ford finally blurted out: "He stopped." His brother, wide-eyed, looked and sounded like he couldn't believe it.
Stan frowned as he looked down at his brother. ...Now that he thought about it, Ford had sounded like maybe he hadn't actually meant to say 'stop' out loud before. Like his brother hadn't expected anything to happen except maybe… who knew what. (Probably nothing good. ...Hell.)
"Yeah, he stopped," Stan told him heavily, which had Ford looking up at him, still in shock, and so very, very confused. "Kid's supposed to stop at 'stop' and 'no'," Stan reminded his brother -- really, told him all over again, before leaning forward a bit. "With everybody," he told his brother, and Stan watched with a sinking feeling as his brother struggled hard with utter disbelief, and a little panic (...the hell? why...?), and something like despair.
And then his brother broke down sobbing where he was kneeling in the sand right in front of him.
Stan moved his hands to Ford's shoulders, and he brought Ford in towards him just a little bit closer. Closed his eyes and touched his forehead to Ford's own. (Dammit all to hell. When was the last time his brother had felt safe, before all this? ...When Bill had told him to? --Ford had collapsed like a damn rag doll for a moment there; he'd never relaxed that far, even in his sleep, even on the boat, he'd… Hell, had Ford actually believed the demon, there? Whatever the hell the demon had done, it hadn't made him do more than shiver, but Ford had... --What the hell had been going on in those other dimensions that he didn't know about?!)
After a while, Ford (finally) nearly collapsed forward up against him again, dropping his hands away from his face to wrap his arms around his brother, instead. ...But Stan couldn't help but notice that as Ford did it, he'd still seemed to be fighting himself to do it. It was almost like his brother was afraid to hang on to him too tightly.
So Stan brought his own arms down and gathered his brother up in a hug again, trying to make things better. (Mabel was right about that one, hugging things out being a thing. ...Maybe a little more right than Stan wanted to, or would ever, admit.) ...At least this time, Ford didn't fight him on it, didn't fight the hug he was givin' him, trying to get away.
Damnit. Stan's thoughts were both dark and grim. --That triangle demon had known exactly what he was doing when he'd insisted that Dipper or Stan himself should be able to say something was okay to talk about in some other dimension -- that it had to be a thing, that they had to be able to override Ford's own wishes in not wanting to talk about something -- before the kid had even begun to think about agreeing to ANY of it. That damn devious demon.
...The worst part was, Stan was both afraid of what would happen if he took the demon up on it, and just as afraid of what would happen if he didn't. Either way, his brother might not trust him anymore. (Which meant that the only way through this was to…)
Damn him. Damn that demon for doing this to his brother, and damn him for putting them all into this situation in the first place, too, where Stan would need to make a decision like this.
--And damn him again for acting like he thought Stan couldn't fix this, too. Bill was convinced that Stan would have to choose between breaking the agreement and kicking the demon to the curb -- letting the demon loose to do whatever the hell he wanted -- and the rest of his family's safety and sanity? --To hell with the demon. Stan would find a way to do both.
And he'd make the kid help him do it, too. Stan glared out across the beach as he held onto his brother in a hug. ...Because now, hey, there's a penalty worth slapping on the triangle demon, right there. Showing him how to fix something he couldn't figure out himself, not in another trillion years. That'd show him. That'd teach him, not to mess with him or any of his family, ever again.
Not ever.
---
After Ford's shout, and Stanley's 'request' (read: demand), Bill had herded the children (including Miz) over to the other side of the boat. Miz took this time to check on something she'd been meaning to. She back against the railing as she hummed a quiet tune and Flickered. How similar was this dimension to the one they'd left? Could they make it so that THIS Stan and Ford wouldn't stop being friends? The more she Looked though, the more confused she became as she Saw something she didn't expect. She hadn't noticed before since she'd only been looking for Bill's past and alternates within this dimensional set. Ford was…
She bit her lip. This was…
She turned her Sight over to the two of them briefly, Seeing them hugging each other down in the sand -- oh no, poor Ford had been crying. She wasn't sure what had happened there, aside from Ford shouting 'Stop' to something Bill said. Should she Look, to try and understand what had happened just then? Should she say anything about what she'd just Seen before that, looking? At least now she understood what Bill had meant when he told Stanley that Ford wasn't his brother. But… but… she shook her head. It… wasn't any of her business right? As long as Stan was happy with that Stanford...
But…
She bit her lip. If this Stanley loved his brother so much...
Bill walked over to her, his 'chewing out' from Pine Tree and Shooting Star for (supposedly) having mentally attacked that Stanford again now 'mostly complete' (according to them), and he leaned back against the railing next to her.
"Problem?" Bill asked her quietly. He'd noticed her growing distress. Miz sighed. "I'm worried about how Stan would feel when he finds out--" 'this Ford isn't HIS Ford.' (She didn't say that last part aloud, wary of the younger twins glancing at them.) And it was all sorts of tragic, this misunderstanding. That Stanford was from a different dimension; he had a different Stanley back in his original world waiting for him.
Bill (having realized rather quickly where Miz was going when it came to 'Stan finding something out' and a 'worry') had been about to raise a hand, to her lips to slap it over her mouth and cut her off. His hand hovered at shoulder level for a moment after she'd finished speaking, before he raised it still further and dropped his hand down on top of her head, instead.
"So am I," Bill said quietly. Worry wasn't quite an alien concept for him, and he generally didn't feel it under nearly any circumstances, but in this case... "He can't even think it," Bill murmured out. Stanley could not even consider the possibility of his brother not being there. And if he found out what Bill had done, before Bill brought him back? --Bill didn't want to risk the agreement. He had a good thing going, and it was contingent on not messing with Stanley's family! On the implicit ASSUMPTION that 'Stanley's family' was here, there, with him already.
"I'll fix it," Bill told her quietly. "I can and know how." He could disentangle the energies properly. It wasn't like he hadn't been paying attention when... "It's fine."
Miz nodded, still looking a little sad. She felt bad for poor Stan and Ford. But… brother said he would fix it. And she believed him. Miz leaned in a little against his side.
Bill blew out a breath slowly, and patted her on the head. He knew at this point that Stanley didn't know. Calling that Stanford his 'twin'.The problem was… Bill wasn't entirely sure that that Stanford didn't know, or at least suspect. That Stanford was fairly oblivious to A LOT, but not everything had been EXACTLY the same between the two dimensions. Bill had tried to gloss over the differences, had tried to handle things in such a way that Sixer wouldn't pick up on it until it was too late, wouldn't think of trying to leave if it came to that, if it came down to the Rift being his only viable option out of his old decaying dimension and into THAT ONE (-- and it had). Bill had tried to set things up so that Sixer -- in the worst of worst-cases -- WOULDN'T realize that maybe, just maybe, Bill had needed every last one of his Zodiac in exactly the same dimension at the same time in nearly the same place in order to get out... (because he had, because of the stupid lizard's STUPID PROPHECY...)
It had been a balancing act and a half.
Bill glanced over, as Shooting Star finally got up from where she was sitting with her sibling and marched across the deck, right over to him.
"Mister," Shooting Star said, with her hands on her hips, "We have been talking," she told him (while Pine Tree made an 'ugh' face from where he was still sitting), "And you are going to apologize!" Shooting Star declared, pointing at him.
Bill blinked down at her and frowned. "...Why." (That also generally encapsulated 'what' and 'who', Bill was pretty sure.)
Miz raised her hand. "Should I try apologizing too?" She looked over in the direction of the other side of the boat, where they'd left Stan and Ford in the sand. "Do you think he would accept it?"
Dipper groaned from over where he was still sitting, pulling down on his hat. "They don't know what you're talking about, Mabel," he told his sister.
Miz tilted her head in confusion. "What did we do this time?"
Mabel let out a huff. "You did something really bad to our other most-favorite grunkle in the woods yesterday!" she reminded them, putting her hands on her hips.
Miz pouted. "I didn't know he would react like that. It didn't seem like it was anything too troubling…" She played with her doll. "I was just talking about my dad." Bill not quite winced and looked away. Dipper was watching this, and narrowed his eyes at them, then said: "What did you say to Great-Uncle Ford."
"Dipper!" Mabel almost hissed out back at him.
"--Don't answer that," Bill told Miz (though he was grimacing as he said it), which left Mabel groaning. Miz nodded slowly.
"Dipperrrrrrr," Mabel complained. "I almost had it out of them!"
Dipper eyed Bill and his 'sister'. Dipper had his own way of trying to tackle things with Bill, and after he'd called off their deal… Bill had actually gotten a lot more straightforward with him when Dipper asked him questions. He actually even answered them sometimes, and when he did… it was usually the blunter and way more straightforward ones. So…
"--Why don't you want us to know?" Dipper asked Bill next, and Bill let out a long breath, looking annoyed.
Miz glanced at Bill and then at Dipper. She didn't personally see an issue with telling them. It wasn't something they could use against her after all. And it wasn't like they would freak out over the existence of other Bill Ciphers right?
"It's talking about other dimensions," Bill put out there, crossing his arms. Dipper was almost glaring at him at this point.
"...What did you say to Great-Uncle Ford out in the woods," Dipper repeated, watching Bill closely.
Bill looked over at him, eyes narrowing slightly. "I JUST SAID--"
"--and I'm telling you to tell me anyway," Dipper shot right back. "You already broke it. You had to, if it's about other dimensions. So tell me," Dipper said, "Or tell me why you don't want to tell me."
Miz bit her lip and fidgeted in place. She wasn't supposed to say anything but she could… she allowed her tail to unfurl and waved it up in front of her, wondering if the twins would pick up on the familiar brick-like pattern of her scales.
Bill looked highly uncomfortable for a long moment. Then he looked away from Pine Tree and snapped out, "I don't want you treating my sister any differently!" He shoved Miz's tail down and out of the way, giving her a small shake of his head. Miz retracted it and looked down at her doll.
Dipper sent an angry look Miz's way. "So she said--"
"--No," Bill cut him off, whipping his head back towards him. "It was ME. He didn't understand it until I made it clear. ME."
Miz buried her face in her doll. "--My existence is what upset him!" she cried out. She was trying hard not to cry. She didn't like having her very existence denied so vehemently.
Bill let out an exasperated chittering sound. (Dipper glanced between the two of them.) "--NO," Bill reiterated, dropping a hand onto her head again and mussing up her hair. "There are plenty of other--" Bill grimaced. "It would have happened eventually," he told her. "That Stanford is stupid for deciding to-- it--" Bill was having a hard time trying to think of a way to explain… "--He decided to hate me. Understand? He hates. ...He shouldn't hate me in the first place," Bill muttered. (That got a pair of disbelieving frowns from his Zodiac up on deck.)
Miz sniffled. "I haven't even MET my own Ford yet." And she had been excited to meet him someday. She wanted to meet all of them.
Bill pulled in his breath sharply with a 'tssst' sound, realizing exactly what sort of a mistake he'd just made in even letting the subject come up, when Pine Tree said: "What do you mean your own…" (Because Pine Tree wasn't stupid, and Shooting Star wasn't--)
Dipper trailed off as he realized not just what Miz had said, but how she'd just said it… he remembered how, when they'd been in the kitchen, she'd called him and Grunkle Stan and Mabel and Great-Uncle Ford all Bill's, and... "No. No way." Dipper leaned back, staring at Miz.
Bill let out a hissing-chittery sound and pulled Miz in a bit closer to him, eyes narrowed into slits. Mabel was just watching them all, wide-eyed.
"...Dipper?" Mabel said almost tremulously. (She'd realized, the same as her brother had, that Miz was a Bill Cipher from how she'd just talked about 'her own Ford', but she wasn't sure if he'd realized something else that she hadn't.)
Miz sniffled. "I haven't done anything wrong. I haven't tried to kill any humans or… or…" she hadn't done anything EVIL… right? Sure she killed people (and so has Ford!) but she didn't do it for fun! And out there in the Multiverse… things happened. So she shouldn't be hated… right? "I just happen to be who I am. But we're not the same. One of the others was a literal honey bee for fuck's sake--!"
"--You met another you who treated your sister like garbage," Bill practically snarled out at Pine Tree, trying to force him to THINK. (He knew Shooting Star would get it right away -- and she had. But Pine Tree--) Bill knew Pine Tree was capable of it, at least. Of stopping, and thinking, and-- "Do you get angry at YOURSELF for how HE treated her, the same way you got angry at him?" Bill demanded out of Pine Tree -- telling them, reminding them of what had happened at 'Anti-Mabel's' house, when Anti-Ford had invited them all over for tea. Reminding them of what had happened after Bill had made a portal there, fully meaning to just toss that 'anti-Bill' on back through and nothing else beyond that -- just close it again. How, how and what had happened, had been...
"No…" Dipper said uncomfortably. He didn't get angry at himself about that. He had defended her! Dipper did feel a little guilty, though. Some of the things that that other Dipper had said… had been a little too close to a couple things that he had thought before, a little too much for him to be able to truthfully say: 'that's not me, I would never say or do that'.
"He isn't you; you aren't him," Bill told Pine Tree angrily. "He does things; you didn't do those things, you did something else." Bill pulled in a breath. "You both just HAPPEN to have the same name, and a twin sister, and a pair of twin great-uncles, and maybe a few similarities between you, beyond that," Bill told him, and Shooting Star, and Miz.
Miz sighed with her face buried in her doll. Still, it felt nice to get this off her shoulders. She hadn't liked hiding who she was. It was fine in the short term but if she wanted to stay here longer, she'd rather be honest about herself.
Mabel was glancing between them all. "Soooooooo... is Anti-Bill also a--?"
"--WE ARE NOT DISCUSSING 'ANTI-BILL' RIGHT NOW," Bill said, looking highly uncomfortable.
Dipper crossed his arms, looking at Bill uneasily and a little skeptically. (Especially when Miz snorted in amusement.)
Mabel, not to be deterred, followed up Bill's revelation with: "Did you two grow up together?" instead. At the pair of confused looks she got from Bill and Miz, who turned to face her, she added, "You said Miz is your sister! Was Miz checking up on you at the Shack because she was worried about you and hadn't seen you in ages?" Then she gasped. "Did your parents really give you the same name?" Miz twitched. So close, yet so far. It wasn't the same name with her and Blue, but Liam and...
Dipper slapped his forehead. "Mabel," he complained. "They just admitted that she's another--" he grimaced and gestured at Bill, "--him--" Dipper hissed out, instead of saying 'Bill Cipher' out loud, knowing their great-uncle would hear him if he said Bill's name, "--not actually his sister--"
"Dipper! You don't know when they could've met!" Mabel told her twin brother quite seriously, nearly aghast.
Miz let out a soft giggle at Mabel's words. "Yeah, well… I kinda named myself Bill because I saw that the other ones were called that. And even if I had chosen a different name, it wouldn't have stopped me from being the Bill Cipher of my dimensional set," she told them, as she looked up at Bill and leaned into his side. "My Birthers actually never gave me a name. And when I went out to find the others I go by a different name to avoid confusion."
"That… is only half-true," Bill told them. He'd worried what would happen if his Zodiac realized Miz was a 'Bill Cipher', because he'd thought they'd get stuck on THAT like that Stanford did and stop listening completely. But... Stanley hadn't done that before... and Pine Tree and Shooting Star weren't doing that NOW... so now he wasn't too worried about this.
Mabel gasped. "Your parents didn't name you?" She felt sad about that. What kind of parents didn't name their own kid?
"No," said Bill. "Her 'parents' named her before that. Her 'Birthers' didn't." He gave Miz a long look. Did she not want to tell his Zodiac about being human once, before?
Miz played with her doll. "I have a complicated backstory," she mumbled. "Like… it would take ten chapters to explain it all."
"Don't start writing journals like that idiot down in the sand," Bill said in a monotone, of that Stanford. "Please."
"Hey," Dipper complained. He had his own journal, too! (He didn't exactly feel much better when the next thing Bill did was wave a hand at him and say, "I'll wait to judge YOURS until AFTER you've finished it and I READ IT! HAHA!" If anything, it made him feel worse… and very glad that he'd left it behind at the Shack instead of trying to bring it with him.)
Miz pouted. "I'm not usually the type to keep a diary." She'd only done it back in Flatland when she'd been afraid of forgetting her human life. Now, with her memories set in energy and power she didn't have to worry about forgetting unless she just didn't pay attention. She was still a bit of a spazz. She wiped at her eyes. "But Ford got really upset when he realized WHAT I was… I didn't think he would do that… I didn't mean to break him… but..."
"Are we REALLY going to talk about this RIGHT NOW?" Bill muttered partially under his breath. "It's bad enough YOU TWO idiots know it. If you say ANYTHING around that Stanford about it…" Bill looked uncomfortable again.
"...What?" Dipper said suspiciously, while Mabel looked worried.
Bill grimaced again. "--I don't know, all right?" Bill snapped out. "I don't know WHAT he'll do, not for certain," he told them, leaning back against the railing hard. "He gets unpredictable on the details for things like this; it makes it hard to plan," Bill groused, folding his arms again. "What I do know is that anytime he's ever seen or met anyone who is 'okay' with 'Bill Cipher', he's attacked them. Shot at them and tried to kill them," Bill told them, the safety of Stanley's 'family' overriding all else in this instance, because they needed to know how dangerous it was to say the wrong thing around that Stanford right now. Bill didn't want to risk losing any of his other Zodiac to that Stanford's downright stupidity! "And he thinks-- thought-- that Miz is…" Bill let out a huff. "So if you don't hate her like you hate ME…" Bill trailed off, letting the implications sink in a bit. Because Pine Tree and Shooting Star weren't stupid.
Miz shifted in place. "He might get upset again? We don't know. And he might hurt you." She squeezed her Kirby. "I don't want to see you guys get hurt."
Mabel let out a laugh. "Grunkle Ford's not going to shoot us!" she said, then looked over at her brother, and her face started to fall. "...Dipper?" she said. "Grunkle Ford-- he--" But Dipper kept not answering, and he had on his thinking face.
Mabel shook her head and turned back to face Bill. No. No! This was just like the portal, and Grunkle Stan! "--He loves us!" he told Bill. "He'd never try to hurt us! Never!"
Bill looked down at her, and told her, quite simply (with the surety of the memories of a hundred dimensions, and the fates of many many more of his OTHER puppets, to back him up…) as he looked her right in the eyes: "He'll think that killing you is saving you. From me."
Mabel stared up at him, not comprehending. Miz rubbed her eyes. "This is why my existence is the problem…" she muttered.
"No," Bill told his sister. "There are others. It's better that it's you, really," Bill told Miz. "You're not inclined to kill him. Or any of my other Zodiac," Bill noted. Then Bill frowned. "Stanley thinks he can get him through this…"
"You don't think so," Dipper said quietly, and he watched Bill grimace.
"He's been fighting me for thirty years," the triangle demon told them. "And he's finally starting to realize, now that I'm back, that he's never going to win." Bill moved the gaze of his eyes down towards Dipper -- with a cold look in them that Dipper really didn't like, as Bill said, "But he's not able to accept the possibility of killing me or dying trying anymore, because he's too afraid of what will happen to you if he's not alive and nearby to protect you." Bill rolled his eyes and shifted in place slightly, leaning back against the railing further (and Dipper kind of wished it would just give out on Bill, because it'd serve the demon right, to have Bill flail a bit and look stupid as he fell to the sand below them).
"So FAILING isn't an option, and dying BEFORE you two do isn't an option, but he knows he's going to do both, and he's starting to finally realize that HE CAN'T STOP ME." Bill let out a breath. "But he doesn't want to admit that, so he tries to think of ways to fix that 'quantum destabilizer' of his, and the circle, and EVERYTHING ELSE," Bill waved a hand. "Except along comes someone else who he knows he can't beat, because they're like me, only no Zodiac, and he doesn't even have a prayer of a chance." Bill shrugged. "--He did it to himself."
Miz mumbled, "And I'm not even hostile."
"Yes, I know," Bill told her. "Stanley knows. Pine Tree and Shooting Star even know it now," Bill told her. "Like I said: he did it to himself."
Dipper glared up at Bill from under his hat. Mabel didn't look very happy with him, either.
"You could tell him--" Dipper began.
"--What, Pine Tree?" Bill demanded, rounding on him again. "What, EXACTLY should I say?" Bill sneered, standing upright and stalking over to him. "I've been trying for YEARS to get him to listen to me properly -- DECADES, even!" He threw his hands out at the sides. "'Oh, Bill's a liar!' 'Don't ever listen to Bill!' 'Why, he--'"
"--because you lied to him!" Dipper objected back, getting to his own feet. "You--" Mabel got between them.
"No," said Mabel, "No." Dipper looked angry. "Mabel--" he began, but she looked back at him and shook her head with a strained smile.
She looked back up at Bill who was frowning.
"Did you mean to hurt Grunkle Ford in the woods?" Mabel asked Bill.
Bill glowered. "I didn't care!" But he also looked away from her as he said it, and-- Dipper suddenly realized that Bill was sounding almost defensive. ...And, wait. 'Didn't'? As in, past tense didn't?
"What…" Dipper began, but Mabel just patted him on the shoulder.
"Bill," Mabel said, "When you woke up yesterday morning, were you planning on going out into the woods and trying to hurt Great-Uncle Ford?" she asked him again.
Bill's shoulders came up a bit. His jaw clenched. He still wasn't looking at her.
Dipper glanced between his sister and Bill, and--
Ohhhhhh… Oh, wow. He hadn't thought...
"--You didn't, did you," Dipper said, finally picking up on where Mabel had been going with everything. "You and Mabel were gonna go to the lab again, except your… uh… Miz showed up," he said, "And… you were gonna go everyday this week," he said, because he'd remembered that breakfast conversation, but everything had gotten out of whack with Miz showing up and… wait, they hadn't even been talking about going outside at breakfast, had they?
"You screwed up," Mabel said. "--Poor planning!" she literally pointed out, pointing at Bill, and Bill practically bristled in place, but he wasn't arguing with her, either, and… woooooow.
If Miz could whistle, she would have because daaaaamn Mabel. And Dipper was practically grinning as Mabel followed it all up with, "And that's why you should apologize to Grunkle Ford! You didn't mean to do it," Mabel told him authoritatively, hands on her hips.
Bill made a frustrated-sounding series of whistling-clicking noises, clenching his hands into fists at his sides. He did NOT look happy in the least. Miz lightly patted his arm sympathetically. Because damn he just got straight up destroyed.
"Nnnnnn --Don't want to!" Bill told his Zodiac almost petulantly.
"You'll feel better!" Mabel told him, and that got Bill rocking back on his feet and turning his head to stare back down at her in something like alarm.
"I will NOT," Bill said, in tones that sounded almost horrified.
Miz made a snorting sound that made Dipper grin. She said (almost placatingly), "I always feel bad until I apologize. It's why I keep giving Stan stuff."
"No, that's-- I--" Bill said, glancing over at her, clearly not expecting it from ALL SIDES. His breathing was starting to pick up. Miz took mercy on him: "Take your time."
"You screwed up, and you got your plans all wrong, and you didn't mean to, so apologize to Grunkle Ford!" Mabel repeated, not letting him take that time herself and bringing the pressure up, instead. "Say you'll do it!" Mabel pushed him. Bill gritted his teeth. "Admit it!" Mabel repeated firmly, as Bill tried to stare her down, and his eyes… for a second there, Dipper swore he saw Bill's eyes move side-to-side, just a bit. "Say you'll--"
"--STOP!" Bill blurted out, then went almost rigid and wide-eyed with shock. So did the kids. "I--" Bill, still wide-eyed, literally slapped a hand over his mouth, stood up to his full height, and then quickly walked across the deck at a straight-backed march, to then climb hand-over-hand down the ladder at the hatch, to disappear down into the depths of the hold below.
Mabel looked at Dipper, wide-eyed. Dipper looked back, just as surprised. Miz was staring at where Bill had disappeared, down into the hatch.
"Dipper…" Mabel asked. "...What just happened?" Dipper turned to look at the hatch. Bill wasn't coming back up. He stopped then slowly turned in place to look at Miz.
Miz sighed. "I think… brother doesn't want to admit he did wrong just as much as Ford does," she said quietly. "They're both kinda stubborn…"
"No, you don't understand," Dipper said, shaking his head. "Bill never uses 'stop'. He--" Dipper paused. Then he began again slowly, looking over at Mabel. "The only time he's ever said something like that, was when…"
"...we were fighting him in Grunkle Stan's mind," Mabel finished the thought.
Dipper frowned. "We were winning, and he yelled... 'no no no, ENOUGH'," Dipper remembered. "But…" he glanced over at Mabel. "I thought you said he thought he hadn't lost that time?" Mabel shrugged. And that had Dipper frowning all over again, because… did that mean that there'd been something else Bill had been trying to do just now, that would make him think it was… okay to give up?
Miz frowned. She wasn't quite sure what was happening. Not when she couldn't Feel what was going through Bill right now, with her headband on.
----
Bill came to a stop at the very bottom rung of the ladder and jumped off. He wasn't feeling quite well as he worked his way to the side of the hold, and sat down to lean his stupid human-ish body back up against the sloping wall, but...
...even as he sat down and all but slid down further to end up lying down across the wooden waterproofed slats that made up the 'floor' down there, he couldn't hold back his grin.
Because maybe he'd gotten it wrong with what had happened in the forest with that Stanford, but... he'd ALSO gotten it wrong with Pine Tree and Shooting Star, TOO.
They didn't hate Miz. They'd actually ganged up on him, with his younger sister. Together. On the same side. --They DIDN'T HATE her!
Bill, still shivering from reaction with everything else that had gone wrong, covered his mouth with both hands, to stifle the grin that he couldn't hold back and the cluster of clicks that bubbled out of him in his glee. --He'd 'lost', but HE'D WON.
...And they didn't even suspect it. HA!
----
(Stan tugged at his brother's arm. It'd been pretty damn hard to keep him quiet. Ford had almost objected a few times, and damn near let the cat out of the bag when he'd clearly thought Bill was going to attack the kids at the end there. If Stan hadn't made him hand over his gun first... Stan would've swore they'd gotten caught out earlier when the demons had started watching their words, but after all that…? No. No way.)
(It was probably a good thing that the boat wasn't completely level, and that there'd basically been that overhang there to keep anybody at the railing from being able to see them. The hard part now was gonna be keeping it from the kids after the fact that they'd been listening in on their conversation from below.)
(He tugged at Ford's shoulder again, and this time Ford finally started moving. They slowly and silently snuck their way back around to the other side of the boat, again. Only after they were over there, did Ford slowly collapse against the side of the boat and whisper out… "...what…?")
("Yeah, I know," said Stan. "That's what he thinks of you." Ford turned his head to look at him. "I told you he has you wrong," Stan told him again. "That's how he thinks.")
("...He's insane," Ford whispered out, with a touch of shock, and no small growing anger. "I would never hurt--!")
("He don't know that," Stan said quietly.)
("--He should!!" Ford began, and Stan shook his head.)
("He don't know that," Stan told his brother, "Because he's never seen you think otherwise." Ford got quiet, and a little pale. "No, look, Ford -- that ain't it!" his brother told him, realizing where he must be going with this. "He was inside your head, yeah, but he don't think like we do. He can't really predict stuff we haven't done yet. Stuff we haven't thought about. And he wasn't inside your head again, after you got home and met the kids; he hasn't since," Stan told him, and watched his brother grimace. "All he can really do is guess," he told his brother. "That's why he keeps on getting surprised by us." That's why they kept being able to beat him. "--He don't know you.")
(At that, Ford stopped to think, and looked a little pensive. ...and then a little ill, as something occurred to him...)
----
(Meanwhile, in a dimensional set far far away…)
The AXOLOTL twitched when he noticed the Energy levels in the multiverse lessen. As if a great pressure had gone missing. He sighed. -I keep telling them not to go…- The salamander shook his head. Still, if he tried to stop them, by force… they would never forgive him. Not if they knew. And since those Doors were a part of their very Being, they would know. It was hard enough to create that Space around all of the 3rd dimension to block Bill from directly accessing it without Bill noticing (it was for their own good) and Ax couldn't risk upsetting them by blocking off their Doors.
Ax sighed. All he could do, was set up protections in case Bill accidentally led one of those things into this Reality. Really, they should have just obeyed him. Bill listened to most of what he asked of them, why was this so different? From what few strings were left, tying the god of Space and Life to his Alternates, he felt their gazes and attention. They wish to see how this played out. Would this Reality fall as others have? As countless other Realities have been ruined, broken, destroyed, forgotten, discarded and left behind?
The AXOLOTL curled around himself and sighed. It would be easier if he didn't care for them. It had been so easy the last time. And the time before that. And the time before that. Countless Realities created and discarded. Because that was his job. But he'd finally found a Reality he wished to KEEP.
Even just thinking that sent waves of...
Doubt. Fear. Joy. Anxiety. Hope. Desperation.
...guilt through him.
He was the AXOLOTL. He wasn't supposed to WANT things.
But somehow, he must have broken. Because he wanted Bill. HIS Bill. The one he had now. He never wanted any of the other Bills he'd worked with created, used, discarded before. They'd been his counterpart. They served their purpose. And they were all ultimately left behind as he Created a new Reality. Tossed aside like an unwanted, broken toy that no longer worked.
And the AXOLOTL knew, that if his Bill ever found out about it...
...they would hate him forever...
That's why he didn't want Bill going out there. Meeting one of them.
But he wouldn't stop them. Because that would hurt them too.
The AXOLOTL curled around himself and waited. Waited for his Bill to return to him. Waited as he'd always done. Wait for it. Wait for it. Wait and watch, but never do. He was so afraid. Whenever he'd WANTED something and DID something about it...
A fracture across all of Existence, an infinite voices screaming out in pain before they were all silenced in an instant…
...nothing good ever happens if he acts. He'd already been pushing it with what he HAD done. The risk was too great. He would have to wait and hope and dream that his Bill would return to him. That they would be unharmed and unenlightened about what he'd DONE.
That they would still love him.
It was a habit he'd picked up from Bill, the AXOLOTL hummed himself to sleep, the faint, soothing melody rippling across Reality. They weren't aware of it consciously, but all entities within Reality felt an instant of peace permeate their very souls. None of them would remember it, or even understand that they had felt as such, but for a moment, just a moment, every soul was united. The AXOLOTL slept.
---