----
Miz laid on the roof of the Mystery Shack beside her brother. The two had come up to sunbathe and while Miz hadn't liked being in the sun as a human (heck, she'd barely left her house back then), she found herself rumbling in content now, as her tail curled lazily around in the warm weather. It was bright that day, but it wasn't quite hot -- not for her. Miz was using an 'air conditioning' type of spell, carved into a small stone she kept in her pocket. It made it so that she didn't overheat and would just feel a very pleasant warmth, as she relaxed on the roof with her big brother, lying there next to her.
It was a quiet day and anyone looking from outside probably wouldn't think anything of note was happening at the moment. They would be wrong.
Despite her peaceful expression, Miz was not as relaxed as she appeared. Through much trial and error, she had realized that while the unicorn barrier blocked out Weirdness and the bracelets blocked Magic, neither did anything to block out her Psychic powers. That was the reason why Miz's Empathy and Telepathy had still worked, even inside and under the mystic barrier spell.
So now that Miz had realized that her psychic powers apparently didn't count as Weirdness or as Magic, she wanted to explore just what she could do with her psychic powers alone. They were similar to her Eye, but different enough that she wanted to know how much she could See using them without her Eye. --Specifically, she was planning to try and find Blue's Ax. She had thought that ALL the AXOLOTL were related, connected, up until recently. But the way her brother described his Ax just seemed so… different. She had met with an Ax the last time she was here, when she was drunk and Blue had invoked his name. So, she had thought the one she'd met was HIS AXOLOTL. But now she wasn't so sure.
Miz felt around the weave of this reality. It would be easier if she was outside of this unicorn barrier, but pushing her powers to do stuff while under limitations was a good way to really explore and experiment.
She stretched her senses out and Felt for the edges of the world. She knew how to get into the Space between Spaces easily. But was it the same in this world? She couldn't feel it the same way, it wasn't in the same place… and yet… it was there. It was everywhere around them, literally between all the spaces, woven into the reality around them.
Miz yawned and shuffled over to press herself up against Bill's side. ...She might have to get into the Mindscape for this. She could Feel where the AXOLOTL could be using just her psychic powers, but if she wanted to actually See the AXOLOTL she would need to use all her powers to do so.
Bill glanced over lazily. "What are you looking for?" he asked her. (He'd caught on that she'd been trying to look at something, some way.)
Miz stretched lazily. "I'm testing out something. The things you've said about your Ax sound really different from mine, I want to know what's causing that difference." She knew the laws of reality were different in different dimensions, but how different were things here that the native version of Ax would be so… weird? And not the good kind of weird?
Bill raised an eyebrow. "The stupid lizard is stupid. It doesn't talk to anyone hardly ever. Even demons who break the Rules." He didn't want to get into what he'd had to do to get it to pay attention to him and then to respond beyond that, though; he didn't want to give Miz any very bad ideas that might get Stanley angry with him (and that Stanford almost definitely) and he himself a bit worried at what she might do with that information upon learning it, accidentally or otherwise. (And it had BARELY worked anyway.)
Miz sighed. "Mine is nice. I want to know why. From what you say, Ax isn't supposed to be nice. So what is it that makes mine so different? Maybe if I can meet yours, I'll be able to know."
Bill closed his eyes and shrugged. He had thought about that as well. His current theory was that her 'dad' thought that pretending to be her dad would make her easier to manipulate for whatever plans that that stupid lizard had in mind for her… which was a terrifyingly possible theory.
"Alright. Be careful," Bill finally said.
Miz nodded before she laid down and closed her eyes. Bill watched as all tension left the vessel and Miz floated up and--
--away like a shot, immediately punted out of the barrier, and not just her constructed-body! ...Right. She wasn't within that bubble of anti-magic the bracelets made around her vessel for her anymore.
Miz shook herself off and waved at Bill, who was making himself busy with lifting her body over a shoulder and making his way towards the edge of the roof, before she focused her thoughts on finding the Space between Spaces and allowed her energy form to spread out, sinking between the gaps of reality.
She Looked UP.
-----
The concept of numbers. Enabled and disabled. The strings which bind together walls upon walls of concepts forming ideas. True and false (...and a spin of probabilistic uncertainty that leaves enough space for chaotic chance to be inserted into an otherwise-unforgiving system, for some small mean concept incorrectly termed by lesser beings as 'free will' to exist…). A webmatrix spread across all of reality, built upon the core system which governed all reality (--all realities that ever was or ever were or ever are or ever would be--). Spiralling further and further into everything. Rules. Fundamental laws of the universe. (These were written, these could be REwritten.) Order. Stability. (An injection of pure chaos, from the outside; from the inside--) A system of balances. Inputs and outputs. (The processes were--) A core system in charge of maintaining those laws. ('Oh AXOLOTL, hear my prayer--') Those rules.
Miz opened her Eye and Saw. ...And then she did more than just See.
She stared. Unable to comprehend for a while. She understood all the parts. (She did, she did! They were understandable! They were!) The lines and numbers. The codes and string. (So familiar; when she did things she liked to--) The embedded sections that would recall previous sections. Individually, she understood what it all meant. (All of it! Everything!) But here, spread out before her, was infinity. (It was so beautiful, SO BEAUTIFUL, and-AND-AND--)
Miz felt her mind crack again as she tried to comprehend the vastness of it all. Here was everything. The truth of the world and all within it. SHE WENT MAD…
... for a few seconds at least. Then, her automatic functions took over and this Truth, like all others she had Seen, was Sorted, Analyzed and Saved away in another section of her core, to be pursued later for a deeper understanding.
And in the midst of all of this that she was trying to not just See, but also Comprehend, Miz Saw… the AXOLOTL.
Miz stared at the AXOLOTL. It stared back.
"Um… hi!" Miz greeted cheerfully. The AXOLOTL said nothing. It didn't even blink. (It had no eyelids to blink. It SAW ALL, always and forever, it couldn't not.) It gave no indication that it had heard her. (It had.) No acknowledgment of her presence. (It would not. Its interactions were bound and regulated by--) Not even the barest flicker of recognition or care.
('Care' was not the most accurate word-concept-allowance-descriptor for what it did and did not do.)
It was cold. (And burned with a power that rivalled every star in every dimension it had ever spun up and ignited with--) Unfeeling. (It had no body to feel--) Distant. (And right next to and running alongside everything at once, as--) It continued to run its functions. (Of course it would. It had its own mandates. The mandates of others were--) Never stopping, never stalling to continue to perform its duty. (And it WOULD perform it WELL. Because--)
And Miz realized in the space of a broken moment: this was NOT the AXOLOTL that she knew.
And then Miz was smacked on top of her-- head?
She tumbled, fell and fell and fell, and then...
...she looked up into BlueBill's face.
He did not look happy with her.
"DON'T DO THAT." Bill told her, as she blinked up at him, trying to regain her bearings. "YOU'LL GO INSANE AND UNSTABLE AND EVERYTHING WILL BURN."
Miz blinked slowly. "Oh. Sorry. I… wasn't expecting what I found." Miz said sheepishly. She ignored the pounding headache. Well, less of a headache and more of a mindache but...
"I told you to be CAREFUL!" Bill complained at her, slowly lowering himself down to the ground from the hover he'd been doing. "I am not ready to do that. YET. And I did that once before, and have SLOWLY been working my way back up all of the pathways and levels, since," he told her as he settled into a kneeling posture and the crudely and quickly-modified 'floating' spell, which he'd used to get up that 'high' to metaphysically 'smack' her on the head, was cancelled out by him with a gesture. "You shouldn't do that, that way. I barely caught you." He was frowning at her. "And I KNOW you fractured." He was giving her an angry (...but also worried?...) look.
"I'm sorry… didn't think it would be… so much." Miz winced. "But I'm… otherwise undamaged. I managed to shunt it off before I got overwhelmed."
"'Overwhelmed'," Bill echoed at almost a mutter. He (gently) poked her in the forehead. "WHAT did I TELL you about MENTAL STRENGTH?!" Because he's Seen her Mind being 'overwhelmed' and… did she still think that her Mind was unable to be influenced by other beings' Minds?
"Well, that Ax didn't..."
"--But it COULD HAVE," Bill pointed out, with another soft forehead-poke. He hadn't thought that it would do that (that would have been a form of communication), or he would have told her not to try. To Bill, though, the more important point of what he was trying to tell her was that her assumption that she could not be directly influenced by any other Mind in all of existence was WRONG! (Which meant that she was leaving herself WIDE OPEN to all sorts of possible avenues of potentially-SUCCESSFUL attack, because she wasn't even considering--)
Miz frowned at this, mistaking his insistence for a different sort of concern. But instead of trying to protest that she was alright (what she thought he was worried about), she changed the subject to something that she thought was more important, instead. "That thing was NOT my dad," she declared. Because that unfeeling thing was not the AXOLOTL she knew. It was nothing like the other AXOLOTL she'd met either. The one who had shown up the last time she was here when Bill had invoked it. (So, if it wasn't Blue's Ax, which AXOLOTL was it?!)
"Back in your vessel, first," Bill told her, pointing down at it, where it was laying on the ground outside the barrier, where he'd moved it to. "Then we'll talk." He acknowledged that this was a worthy and high-priority topic of discussion, yes -- but if she'd done what he'd thought she'd done, the way he'd thought she'd done it, then she needed grounding. RIGHT NOW.
Miz floated down and settled, gasping air into the lungs of her vessel as she connected herself back into a more concrete physicality than her existence in the general Mindscape. "That thing… it… it's not even…" --alive. Not exactly. The word 'alive' didn't even apply to something like that. It was…
"Oh dear lord, you're in the Matrix…" Miz mumbled out. That Axolotl was… some kind of PROGRAM. --Oh, it figured that the alternative dimension she was looking at (with that Will who was not Bill but still denied being Will and who was playing a game, some VRMMORPG that took place in this reality, AS this reality--) turned out to be directly connected to this one.
(And more than that, the Will she'd Seen there was a demon from the Outside--)
Bill tilted his head at her. "There are many matrices, yes? Which type are you talking about?" He settled from a kneeling posture to a cross-legged one. "There are no pillars," he told her next, guessing at what she might have meant because of what she had been trying to look at, and thus had likely Seen at the same time with the way she had been trying to Look and See everything. "It is more of a… net?" He spread his hands out in front of him, trying to give a bit more description to the words, despite the limited three-dimensional-plus-time nature of the motion. (Stupid human language didn't have the best words to describe the concept.)
"I was actually making a movie reference." Miz admitted. ...One that, in retrospect, didn't actually exist here in this dimension, now that she caught her breath and took a moment to look back through her own previous Flickers in this dimension. Oops?
(Note to self, make everyone watch the Matrix… unless it counted as a mental attack? But it would be very helpful towards getting the Pines to understand…)
Bill blinked and thought about that for a moment. then he smiled and reached forward to pat her on the head.
"'Welcome to The Game'," Bill said, with a sideways smirk going. Miz let out a semi-hysterical giggle at the thought. Bill's smile grew wider. "We hope you enjoy your stay!" he chirped out at her almost sarcastically as he spread out his hands in something like a gesture of welcome, except his eyes were gleaming with amusement as he did it.
"Huh… well I can now honestly say that my Doors apparently reach even farther than I thought." Miz turned to Bill. "Your AXOLOTL is, in NO way, connected to mine. At all. My dimensional set runs nothing like it is here." Hers didn't have an 'outside' in the sense of another reality connecting in from 'reality' and even IF reality was an illusion, her world was 'real'. ...Well, as 'real' as it could be considering part of her still thought it was based on a children's cartoon show...
Bill nodded at her, frowning. "There is a net to catch everything, not pillars, the Rules can be rewritten, and there is an outside that connects in," he told her, relaxing as he began reiterating these simple truths and differences that he'd been cataloguing here for some time now. (It was nice to have someone to talk to about this.) "It's very different wherever the outside is," he told her, propping his arms up on his knees and his chin up on his fists. "The outside can't just turn us off like a computer game, though," Bill said to reassure her, having a feeling that that may be part of what had worried her? (The idea of having NO CONTROL over the continuation of his own existence AT ALL sure would have worried HIM! HA!) He raised an arm to look at his hand and wiggled his fingers as he turned it, while showing it off to her, keeping his chin propped up on his other fist. "Biological simulacrum, quantum string substructure, etheric stream overlay, knotted parallel spin mechanics supporting the underpinnings…" Bill trailed off with a shrug.
Miz nodded. She bet it was more complex than she already thought it was. This dimension… it was all… some kind of simulation? --No, that wasn't quite the right word here. Not just a game, something more, bigger, grander.
Then a thought hit her as Bill lowered his arm, as he looked over at her again. Bill wasn't from the Outside (Not a Player so that must mean he was an--), unlike that Will she had seen who WAS from the outside.
She brushed that thought aside for a second to focus on the other issues. No need to follow that thought to its logical conclusion right now. (And it wasn't like it would matter either way, she didn't think of any of these people as JUST NPCs.)
"I'm not certain what your stupid lizard is, but from what you've told me, it handles things VERY differently from… 'mine'," Bill said, making a face of near-disgust as he said it. Then Bill shook himself and moved on. "I don't know how different it actually is, or if it is just masking you from Seeing it PROPERLY in your dimensional set, instead," Bill added, "But…" He grimaced, because, "...that is unlikely, though, with how well you can See things." He found the latter idea suspect because of that little fact, when coupled with what Miz knew about the underpinnings of her own.
Really, Bill had been starting to suspect that something was off for awhile, with the way Miz had talked about her setup back in her home 'set, but… the thought that the Axolotl wasn't or might be completely different where she was, that it might not be a simple connected instance of the same stupid lizard he knew, was… disquieting and disturbing to Bill. (He knew how the Rules worked HERE, but there…? How was he supposed to HELP her effectively if he didn't KNOW? Because without knowing even something so simple as that--)
Miz sighed. "My dimension doesn't run on a matrix. It has rules and stuff too, but nothing like it is here. My Ax is a PERSON. A living, feeling, sentience with his own wants and desires. He creates new dimensions by forming a new Space but there would be no progressive Time within it without Time Baby's help, and there would be no life in it without the Energy to start things off. So in my world, the multiverse was formed from the three of us working together." Accidentally in her case. What with her explosion creating not just the 3rd dimension but tearing holes through all the other Spaces, to form the greater multiverse...
"The AXOLOTL here is stupid, but it's SUPPOSED to be intelligent," Bill told her. "It's not a demon-from-the-outside. So it is ALSO a 'person'. But it is very-different living at that level so high up and out, yes," he told her, agreeably. "That's what happens to most beings that manage to ascend -- they CHANGE," Bill groused. (It was why he was so very careful to never-change -- he REFUSED to lose track of what -- of who -- was important to him. Otherwise, what was the point of doing that, and taking over, if in the process he lost track of himself, what-and-who was important, and what he wanted to change?!) Then Bill narrowed his eyes slightly at her. "...YOU are a part of the decisions-made for every new dimension your stupid lizard spins up?"
"I'm just there to lend the energy to kick start it. Sometimes dad lets me decide what I want in it. But he doesn't let me decide very often. Apparently, making a world where every carbon atom is replaced with an entire fish was too headache-inducing for Ax to work with. Though now that you've told me about a way to make it work, perhaps I could bring that up to him next time." Not to mention all the other 'fun' ideas she'd had which Ax had said were all too annoying to work with. Although she HAD managed to convince him to make more dimensions with an Earth (and, eventually, humanity), just so she could have more places to play around in. Speaking of which, she hadn't visited the Marvel-verse in a while...
[[A/N: This is actually something that popped up in a Broken Timelines chapter I wrote but never finished or published, but it still exists within my Lore and I'm sorry I never really spoke about this before >.> Eh… it was essentially, MizBill got permission from Ax to decide a new dimension and they chose to recreate the Marvel Cinematic universe because they're a goddamn nerd.]]
Upon hearing this new information from Miz, Bill's smile got just a touch wider (and rather more... evil, in some respects).
"You have leverage," Bill told her, as he began to understand the situation she was in a bit better. "The universe won't start without the energy. You can hold things up forever if you don't like the way it's set up." Bill's smile got a touch wider. Because as long as Miz wasn't there… "Maybe that stupid lizard will appreciate you more, once you're back… if it's got a backlog to handle now that it NEEDS you for," Bill grinned.
Miz blinked. "I never thought of that. I was always worried that I was holding them up. Time Baby gets impatient."
"Time Baby is dumb, and the stupid lizard doesn't need Time Baby," Bill pointed out. "It can take over that stupid Baby's pillar, you said! But if it needs Energy… where is it going to get it without you?" Bill queried her. "You seem to self-generate very large amounts from very small bits of starting material, for redistribution."
"Well, Ax can generate his own through worship but he's not as efficient as I am. He gets tired. Most of his power goes to running the Souls system."
"Yes," Bill nodded. Efficiency was VERY important. "Which means that at some point, if it tried to handle it all itself, that stupid lizard would RUN OUT of power to use as energy!" Bill's look became truly maniacally-'evil'. "Once you're ready, you could just wait elsewhere -- like here -- and jump back in after the stupid thing has almost guttered itself out… and overpower it easily," Bill told her, with a vvery wide grin.
Miz looked a little worried. "I don't want to hurt dad." She loved him. "Or betray him." She would feel really bad about that. It would be so ungrateful of her to do that after everything Ax had done for her...
Bill shrugged at this, dropping his arm to leave both hands in his lap, sitting upright instead. "Then just overpower it and put it in a position where it can't threaten you again," he told her easily. "Disconnect it from everything. The process doesn't HAVE to hurt," he told her. It would likely take more energy to hurt it at the same time, anyway. It would be more efficient to hurt it later, if she was keeping it alive and changed her mind; it would be rather more dangerous to attempt hurting it at the same time as she was trying to take over everything.
Miz realized what Bill was referring to, but... Well, Miz had meant the emotional pain of a betrayal instead, but she wasn't sure how to explain that to him. But she did try, by saying: "I meant hurting his feelings. If I just overthrew him and stuff."
Bill blinked at her. "Does it like spinning up universes where beings with free will have to suffer and die, and then watching that happen?" he asked of her.
"...no." Miz admitted.
"Then why would it be hurt," Bill asked her, "If you're making things better, so that it DOESN'T HAVE TO DO THAT ANYMORE IF IT DOESN'T WANT TO?" He was staring at her intently as he asked her this.
Miz wasn't sure how to explain it any other way to her brother. She still continued to try, though. "But the worlds don't quite work that way where I am. We decide the physical makeup of the worlds, what people decide to do once they exist there is up to them. So it's not like Ax makes them have to be sad..."
"Yes, it does." Bill snorted. "It decides how the worlds work," Bill told her. "And sometimes, so do you. --I told you, you could set things up so that people don't need to eat, sleep, breathe, or die-and-stay-dead," he reminded her. "If there are no resource or time-constraints," Bill said to her, spreading his arms out from his sides, "What do people do?"
Miz thought about it. "True. But I'd probably have to restrict birth rates or make it so that no new people can be born if I do that. There are only so many Souls to go around." She had no idea how to create Souls. It was Ax's thing, not hers. She could make soulless creatures with a fully formed mind and personality but that still wouldn't give them Souls.
Bill just shrugged at this. "Make it more difficult to have new beings be born -- actual conscious and meaningful effort -- and that will drop the rate to start with." Because for all its many, many, many, many, many, MANY, many, many, MANY flaws… his home dimension had at least gotten that one right. Almost. the ,i>parents, on the other hand-- "If overpopulation looks like an issue because of space constraints, just create another empty dimension or twelve," Bill told her with a shrug. None of this seemed particularly hard, difficult, or otherwise show-stopping to him. "So what if you have a limited number of Souls?" he asked. "You can't make more?"
"Ax makes them. I've tried but I can't seem to do it." Her Nightmares were proof of that.
"Then it's even easier," Bill told her. "Either the stupid lizard plays nice when or if you want more Souls because it NEEDS you for more dimensional spin-ups, it teaches you how to do the soul-making itself, or>/i>… you have a closed system with a stable population," he told her, "Which is easier to manage. --Or you go steal some base Souls from other places through your Doors," Bill waved off. None of these felt like an unsolvable problem to him.
"That feels kinda… mean." Miz pouted. Even disregarding how much of an ass she'd feel like for betraying her dad to capture, contain and restrain him to usurp his authority, stealing Souls was one of those things she didn't want to do.
"'Mean'?" Bill echoed. Miz nodded at him. "The stealing of Souls from other 'sets?" Another nod from Miz. ...And she didn't like being mean. "Hm." He thought about that. (Admittedly, he generally didn't do that outright himself, the whole Soul-stealing thing.) "--Just claim whatever you want first, and kill any who oppose you?" Bill told her, then stopped for a moment and blinked as he remembered: she was supposed to be in-or-past Endgame in this scenario! "--Defeat-without-murdering those who oppose you in places you haven't fixed yet," he self-corrected himself. "Then it belongs to you, because ownership claim rights have now been transferred, and nobody will say 'no, you can't!' anymore!" He grinned at her.
Miz wasn't sure how to feel at that idea. It might work, but if she did that, she would have to fight a lot of people to take over those places. A lot of people would hate her. More than they already did at least. Plus, ownership rights didn't work in her world the same way it did here. Especially since there were no 'Players' in her dimensional set. No 'Demons from the Outside' or anything like it, which had likely led to the structures that were here being so different -- or vice-versa.
"I will think about it," she said to Bill at last.
Bill blinked at her again. She didn't like his solution? Was it because... "You don't like conquering and owning dimensions, so you can take what you want from them when you want it?" he asked of her, curious. Because in his experience, most demons did.
Miz sighed. "I don't mind stealing from bad people, but there are plenty of good people that I don't want to upset." And the Federation owned most of the multiverse, and taking down a far reaching government would cause utter chaos and instability… which, well, chaos might be her forte but she didn't want to make the innocent bystanders suffer from the collapse of their governmental foundation. She'd maaaaybe be able to do it if she introduced a new form of governing to everyone across the multiverse and got them to self-govern or something, but people wouldn't listen to her. It's why she was more for the idea of putting good, fair people in power instead, let them work to change the government into something better. A single person wouldn't be able to do it, no matter how powerful, to get a government to change required the government itself and the people working together to enact the changes needed. But it was something that required time and work and… well… Miz sighed, she'd had this conversation with Pynelope before, it just… there wasn't an easy solution one way or another between quick activism versus the slow and steady approach.
Bill still wasn't sure about… "Define 'bad people' and 'good people'," he said almost flippantly. Human morality wasn't something he usually bothered with -- that Stanford's so-called 'morality' was so two-dimensionally flat. Not to mention that stupid Karma system…
This was a hard one. Miz personally wasn't sure what made someone good or bad. It was more of her personal gut feelings...
"--You could borrow-or-buy-or-barter those Souls you want, instead," Bill said next. "...Or ask," he added, straightening in place as a new thought occurred to him. "There could be a dimensional set with too many Souls?"
...Luckily, Bill didn't seem to be too invested in an answer from her on it, right then. So she addressed the other thing instead. "Well, there ARE random chairs around the multiverse that accidentally got Souls because Ax wasn't paying attention…" It was funny but also kinda sad. Poor things weren't in a dimension where living chairs were a thing (probably the reason Ax messed up to begin with, what with some dimensions having living chairs and others not) so they couldn't move or scream and simply existed in a perpetual state of horror at their own existence.
But she didn't want to think about taking over her multiverse. She wanted to change the subject. "Well, either way, now that I know that there are AXOLOTL that are entirely unconnected to each other, I'm curious about what sorts of ways other places behind my Doors could be run." A whole different system. A whole different series of things to learn. "It would be cool to check them out.
She turned towards her brother. "Do you think you'd be able to come with me?"
Bill's eyes widened. "I…"
And Bill paused for a moment, feeling almost… conflicted. Because he had his anchor, and he had Stanley, and he wasn't… didn't want to lose his Stanley.
And without really thinking of it, he raised a hand to the back and base of his neck…
Miz frowned. "Right. Your anchor. We'll need to find a way around that? You don't want to break it, right?" Bill slowly nodded his head. Miz thought about it. "We'll need to experiment."
Bill let out a short laugh at that, then grinned. "Yes!" he said, dropping his hand just as unthinkingly. Then he got a bit of a cagey (not really all that innocent look). "I might have a few ideas to start with…"
---
"....This is a terrible idea." Stan deadpanned.
"We'll take every precaution!" Miz insisted. "I don't want to hurt brother, he doesn't want to lose the anchor, and, well…" She shrugged. "Brother's gonna have to figure this out eventually anyway."
"This is still a terrible idea." Stan rubbed a hand across his face. These two were just...
"I'm not saying I want much," Bill said almost innocently (about as 'innocently' as the demon ever got, yeah, sure).
"You're askin' for me to give you full rein over your powers again," Stan deadpanned. "I'm pretty sure you're saying you want everything," because that was what the kid was really asking for, here.
"--Only for a little while!" Miz said, while trying to give him puppy eyes. (The look, not handing him actual eyes.)
Stan gave her a long look. ...And even the kid looked down at her, and put a hand on her head and mussed up her hair just a little bit.
"Stan does reasons and wants, not asks," the kid told her, dropping his hand, then looked back up at Stan.
"Make your case," Stan said grumpily, crossing his arms. (Because he already knew that he wasn't gonna like this…)
"Miz wanted to check out more other dimensions and see what they're like, what their stupid lizard's are like. And so do I," the kid told him.
"Why," said Stan.
"Miz just found out that the lizard HERE isn't actually connected at ALL, that she can see, to her OWN lizard. And that…" Here, Bill actually looked uncomfortable. "...That's DANGEROUS."
Stan frowned at this. "What do ya mean, kid?"
The kid did that uncomfortable-looking, squirming under his own skin thing. And then…
"It means," the kid told him, "That from what she's Seen here, and Seen in her own dimensional set, that it's not only the STRUCTURE of our 'sets that are very different from each other." The kid looked up at him, looking grim. "If these things are different, and the lizards AREN'T connected, aren't all the same one-is-many-is-one, and the differences where Miz is from really ARE what she is telling me," and from the look the kid had on his face, he believed her, "...Then the RULES governing everything are different there, too."
Stan frowned at him.
"Still not seein' why that means you think you've gotta go running off other places here, kid," Stan told him.
"--BECAUSE THE RULES ARE DIFFERENT!" the kid told him. "Because if the Rules are different, and the lizard isn't one-and-many, but two OR MORE--" the kid grimaced, and then looked Stan straight in the eye. "I am SUPPOSED to be helping keep Pine Tree and Shooting Star safe, as part of our agreement. --I can't do that if I don't KNOW how different the rest of those lizards are." Then the kid grimaced as he said, "I'd be breaking the agreement if I didn't go out there, and take a Look around. --I NEED to know how different things might be, out there," the kid told him, "If I'm going to set up any PROPER defenses against ANYONE and any THING that's out there at all!"
"Well, I'm sure the other Axs are too busy with their own sets to really bother with others, but, it would still help to learn about them," Miz piped up.
The kid shot her a look. "--You don't know that," the kid said, before looking back to Stan. "That's the POINT. AND the problem," he told Stan. "Her stupid lizard doesn't do much, either; same as this one," the kid said. But he also gave Stan a long look as he said it.
--And Stan suddenly got it. The demon-kid was worried about an active lizard-god that was enough like theirs that it was powerful enough the kid wasn't ready to take it on yet, but that might be roaming around doing who knew what around the local neighborhood.
Stan hadn't paid much attention in English class in school, but he did remember some of that stuff about the Greeks and Romans and junk. Petty gods, doing really petty things. ...The kid didn't put on airs, calling himself some kinda god -- 'just' a demon -- but the kid called this 'lizard' of his one. And Stan had seen some of what the kid could do. Most people would call a lot of what the kid could do unbound 'godlike', but the kid didn't. Which meant that--
"Alright, so you're worried," Stan told him. "I get that. But--" Stan held up a hand. "We're gonna have to talk this out some more. --First thing is, you don't want to be picking fights, accidentally or otherwise, or having one of these 'not so good' lizards maybe noticing you poking your heads around out there, and getting their attention doing this." Stan frowned at them both. "I want you both to be absolutely sure what you're gonna do -- and not do," Stan added, with a bit of a glare at the demon who'd caused his family a lot of grief in the past, "-- before you two even think of going out there 'exploring'. And I need to understand what all it is you're gonna do, and all the rest of it, first. ...Can't help you all with it, if I don't," Stan groused, because boy was he gonna workshop the hell outta this all with the kid first. Like hell he was gonna have these two running around stirring up trouble out there for no reason, let alone letting them bring it all back home to roost here again.
Yeah, he'd known something like this was gonna happen, sooner or later. And he knew that if he said 'no' to either of them, now, they'd just go off and do it without talking to him about any of it, instead. --That the kid had a reason at all for doing it that he thought was in their best interests, for keeping them safe? Wasn't something Stan was about to stop. That was what he wanted the kid to be doing for them all in the first place.
...He'd just need to be clear about what parts of what they thought they wanted to do were incredibly stupid, and redirect the kid to other less-world-conquer-y things like he always did. The fact that they'd come to him first, at all, was a pretty big first step, here. (Because yeah, he'd sort of laid the groundwork for this with the 'anti-Bill' and 'anti-Ford' trip-visit thing -- and hell, even with some of what had happened with the niblings and that time tape stuff, too -- but this was a whole different level of crazy.)
"So," Stan said, "Let's talk about goals. --What do you need to get out of this overall, and what do you think you absolutely need to do, and not do, on this first trip out?"
---
It took a few hours of discussion to get everything settled. Stan didn't tell the kids or Ford about it. Not yet, anyway. Ford would just raise a huge stink about it and stress out unnecessarily. Stan would tell him afterward, once the demons got back, make it one of them 'fate accomply' things, or whatever. Besides, it really wasn't any different from when the kid had brought them all to that other dimension that the twins bounced into after the time tape incident.
And it really wasn't like Stan cared all that much about 'other dimensions' or 'sets' or whatever. Thing was, if the kid needed to get something out of his system someplace else, instead of doing it here? Stan could live with that. (Maybe Ford couldn't, but he sure could. Because if that was really what it took to keep the kids safe…)
(Didn't mean he liked it, but…)
--Look, it wasn't like he wasn't trying to give the kid other stuff to do that he'd like better than destroying things, all right? He was. And it was even starting to work out already, so far. Kid was coming to him for his opinion on more stuff, and all the rest of it. And this thing that the kid had said about these lizards maybe being a problem, kid definitely wasn't lying about it. Kid thought it was serious; this was a recon mission. Looking around, maybe talking to people, and getting info. Stan couldn't go out there with him, tagging along to watch his back (and watch him), since how the whole 'set travel' thing worked? That was half of what the kid was gonna be trying to figure out, here -- if there was another way to do that, to go out there safely. More safely. And Stan sure didn't want to be bait for any lizards that might want to snap any of them up, because he was pretty sure that that was what he was gonna end up being, if he tried muscling in on things that he really shouldn't be doin' and tried to go on out there with them; he could run fast, but float fast? This was the kid's specialty -- all of it: floating around, looking around, and grabbing up info -- and once the kid was back, Stan could help him figure out what was really going on out there, since the kid was more paranoid on a good day than Ford was at his worst. Kid jumped to the worst conclusions like lightning to a metal rod, every damn time.
Stan had wanted the kid to not call up his demon-friends, because he hadn't wanted the kid dragging that noise straight down into their backyard -- literally. But with this… they already had noise coming after them, because Miz had already had some 'broken Bill' after her right now, that was keepin' her here.
And Stan figured that one of the only things that could do that kind of junk to a Bill Cipher would be another him and a memory gun blast followed by a good and heavy right hook, or one of those 'god'-lizards the kid was starting to worry about now. Yeah. It was about time.
And considering that the kid wasn't still 'glitching out' after he'd come back (and had mostly pulled himself back together right before the punch Stan had given him anyway, which is why Stan had punched him when he had), Stan was thinking it a whole lot less likely that it had been the 'one good punch and a memory gun' one. In either order.
Better to send the kid out to maybe get eaten, than have whatever-it-was coming here, Stan figured. ...But that was kind of a lie, the kind he'd tell Ford if he asked -- because Stan knew that bad things like that never just stopped at just one thing. At just one person. So whatever was out there doin' this stuff? Pulling it off on triangle demons? Stan doubted it would stop at just the kid, if it did manage to catch him. ...So the kid had better not get himself caught.
Like he'd needed another reason to want to keep the kid around, besides--
Stan had known that, sooner or later, the kid was gonna want to help Miz out with this 'broken Bill' thing. And you had to give trust to get trust. Stan knew that one, too.
Stan couldn't lock down the kid -- nobody could, not really -- and the whole point of the agreement was to make that problem a solution instead. To make the kid work for them, instead of against them. To turn him around, and point him right back at--
And Stan knew he didn't really have much of a choice here, anyway. Kid had just got done talking about 'fallback measures', and losing the anchor had been one of them. Stan had listened carefully, and it was pretty damn clear at this point the kid knew enough about the thing to get rid of it if he really wanted to, with or without that being what Stan himself wanted. ...It was also clear that the kid didn't want to break the anchor yet, for whatever reason. So instead of pushing for something stupid, Stan did the opposite. He wanted the kid's weirdness to stay locked down as much -- and as much of the time -- as possible; he wasn't going to give the kid a reason to want to try and break it, now.
The kid hadn't put it this way, hadn't even tried to threaten him with it, but from what Stan had understood from the kid explaining things to him, and to Miz… either Stan could give him enough slack on the weirdness-powers stuff that he could do this the 'better, easier' way, or... the kid could break or get rid of the anchor or whatever himself, go off and do this thing with Miz anyway, and when he came back, there would be no anchor restricting the demon in any way from there on out anymore.
It was a choice between handing the kid a loaded sniper rifle (that belonged to the kid and) that the kid damn well knew how to use, and then having the kid go off and do his thing, and then come back to him and hand it back over for Stan to go off and lock up again for him… or refusing to, and the kid sneaking over to that chest and stealing it back away from him in the dead of night anyway, and who the hell knew what the demon would do with it, then.
Thing was, Stan knew how this shit went down. He knew what 'I'm going to kill you now' was like. He knew that nothing was or had been actually physically stopping the kid from trying to kill them all since he'd entered their dimension in the first place, weirdness or not. And he knew that what the kid wanted to do wasn't 'killing them', not now.
The only thing that had ever stopped the kid from killing them had been the demon-kid himself.
Maybe Ford just hadn't been able to ever take advantage of that, but Stan? Stan sure could. And he knew it.
And he would. He was. --He already had been, with the other-dimensional 'set' stuff that had come up already. Kid had set up a bunch of alarm and traps, and Stan had already given him 'full permission' to use those powers in defense of their dimension from outsiders, more than a few weeks ago.
--And when Miz had first shown up, the kid had practically leapt out of the window, gotten down onto the lawn and outside the barrier in a rush with hands blazing. Stan had seen the flames the kid had been waving away afterwards; he'd come out fast, packing heat and ready to punch.
The kid had been standing there, looking up, resolute and ready to face up just about anything.
Kid had acted just as well as Stan could've ever asked out of him or anyone else, and then some.
...But it wasn't like Stan had told his brother about that one, either. Not like he needed 'permission' from Ford to work out something on his own with the kid. Let alone something that was related to the agreement he had with him.
So the thing with this 'broken Bill', now? This time wasn't actually all that different from any of the other stuff before it, from where Stan stood. Kid was worried about incursions by other Bills from other dimensional sets that might even be stronger, more powerful, or smarter than him; so they were adding stuff that was the same kinda problem to the list, just with a different name attached to it -- so what. The only difference here was the kid going out and playing a little more offense than defense, maybe. Not that Stan had let the kid even think 'offense' this time out -- recon was supposed to be neutral, just going out and saying hello to the neighbors, really. Not even looking to case the joint.
He'd talked it out with the kid, and the kid… would be going off with Miz once the coast was clear. They weren't gonna be heading out there when they thought the 'broken Bill' was around; they were being cautious. Kid wasn't rushing things; that was good.
They were going to let Miz check if that 'broken Bill' was around first; if he was, they would wait. If he wasn't, then they'd take that chance and head out right then. So there was no idea of 'when' and no hurry to get out there, only that they eventually 'would', and the kid was asking for Stan to give 'in advance' permission for this thing now. So, yeah. He'd be 'easing up' on the anchor now, sure. But that didn't mean the kid could do anything in the meantime; the kid would only actually get more to work with once that happened, and they were just about ready to leave -- just like the dimensional alarm thing. Because Stan was only gonna be easing up on it for just this one thing.
The kid had even helped him make the 'easing up' a bit more specific than Stan had been originally thinking, staging it so that he'd be able to grab some weirdness powers stuff while in this dimension, but could only grab the rest of his power for things once he was elsewhere. And the fact that the kid had said it, and given reasons that had included Ford and the kids and 'mental attacks', had been… yeah. None of it had been anything like open-ended, and some of it had even been a one-time-only thing. --Stan wasn't about to say 'no' to that.
So Stan went inside the house. He went into the kitchen, and grabbed himself a soda from the fridge. He popped it open, sat down at the kitchen table, and he thought everything pretty carefully through.
And then he, very quietly, gave the kid permission out loud, 'to the anchor', to do what they had both talked about him needing to do for this.
---
Bill pulled in a breath outside, where he sat. WELL, WELL, WELL. That had been quick! He'd certainly felt THAT one. --Really, he'd thought that Stanley would at least want to talk about it with some of the others in his Zodiac first -- like Shooting Star and Pine Tree, or at the very least his brother.
GUESS NOT! Bill let out a slight laugh and shook his head.
"We're all yellow on my end, sis," Bill told her. "Whenever you're ready, I can back you up, and then some," he indicated, letting her know that it wasn't just the 'dimensional defense' stuff he had in his arsenal again, anymore. (Which meant that if she 'appeared' the Door and something tried to stupidly latch on to her and pull her through-- Well, that wasn't a PROBLEM though. Bill would see to it that nothing would EVER get THAT FAR in the first place!)
Miz concentrated again, pulling at the edges of her Door, and pulled it back into Existence.
She crept closer to the Door she'd made, carefully listening, making sure she didn't accidentally hit the Door open and get sucked in -- like what had happened most other times she'd messed with them. She'd checked a while back and it had still been there then, but maybe...
The Door rattled.
"He's still there." Miz sighed, as Bill shot to his feet up in an 'attack posture'. "You'd think he'd have gotten bored by now." She waved a hand and the Door faded again.
Bill was still tense, and he only relaxed slowly as he began checking over the area (both physical and metaphysical) carefully, waiting -- JUST IN CASE. "Might not have anything ELSE to do, over there," not if it really couldn't get through any other Doors. "Can't say you aren't worth WAITING FOR though, little sis! HA!" He smiled at her as long seconds passed, and nothing seemed to try and make the Door reappear from the other end of the connection.
And, once a few minutes had passed, and Bill was done completing his checks...
"Well, what're we doing today, since we can't go out?" Miz asked him, sitting back on the edge of the porch (after making sure to put her cuffs back on, before attempting to re-enter the barrier, this time). "Do you wanna watch some anime with the kids?" She looked up at the sky. "Or maybe I could meet the rest of your Zodiac?" She'd wanted to do that for a while.
"Well, there's 'out', and there's out!" Bill told her, "And there's OUT. --But I'm thinking that staying local is probably a good idea, after I had to smack you back down into your body." Bill hadn't liked doing that -- it had been more of a forceful and very quick shove, but it had been metaphysically a bit too close to an actual hit for him to be happy about it. ...If he HADN'T done it when he had, though, and that quickly, she would have been FAR worse off than that 'smack' he'd had to give her on the top of her 'head', he was very sure.
Bill thought for a bit. "We could go into town and meet more of my Zodiac," Bill said slowly. "But Stanley just gave me a lot of permission for things just now," and he didn't particularly want to push things further. Also, Gideon was in town to run into. Better to let things settle a bit on both those fronts, really. "We could… ask some of them to come here to the Shack, instead?" Bill tried, with a slight thinking frown going on as he thought of Shooting Star's 'sleepovers' and such. "Or I could take you to see the spaceship; haven't done that, yet. An anime marathon with Shooting Star and Pine Tree would work, though," Bill said, turning towards the house. "Maybe…" Bill blinked. "...we could… tell Question Mark that we want to have a movie marathon? For anime movies? And that he should invite all my other Zodiac? --Except Glasses and Gideon," Bill elaborated with an annoyed look. "I don't want them here," he added almost huffily, shoving his hands in the pockets of his shorts. (And frankly, it didn't take a genius to understand why.)
"I'd like that. We'd be able to have tons of snacks!" Miz grinned. "And I can show everyone Mob Psycho 100! It's a good story, and it wouldn't cause problems for the kids, since it's a story that children around their age are supposed to be able to watch." Not to mention it was just a good show all around. And had many messages that Miz wanted to put out there for her brother and everyone else to learn. Especially Stan. And she probably shouldn't make them watch the Matrix until she got the all-clear from Stan on that one, anyway.
"Alright, then. We'll do that!" Bill grinned, seeing Miz so fired up for the idea made him feel a bit warm all throughout his insides. (He liked being warm.) He turned to walk back into the Shack. "Hey, Question Mark!" Bill called out to his Zodiac. "You're gonna make a few calls for me! Chop-chop!"
---
"An… anime marathon?" Pacifica raised an eyebrow. "And… they're inviting all of us who are a part of the Zodiac?" She glanced over at Dipper with a suspicious look. "This isn't some kind of trap, where the demon's trying to get us all together so he can turn us all into tapestries again, is it?"
"It's not all of us, and no. I don't think so?" Dipper sighed. "Miz really likes anime, and I think she assumes that we're friends for some reason. ...Or at least, she wants to be friends with us?" He looked over at Mabel, who was making faces at the one pony Pacifica had been able to keep. "Mabel--"
"Awwwww~" Mabel said as she looked at Pacifica's pony (so cute!!), then heard her brother and shook herself. "No. The pony is a distraction. A cute and cuddly distraction. --Focus, Mabel. You can do this!" She slapped her hands quickly to her cheeks after her quick 'self improvement' rallying speech, and turned back to Pacifica. "Um… what were we talking about?" she asked Pacifica almost sheepishly.
Pacifica gave her a long look. "...How the crazy triangle demon is probably just trying to get us all in the same place to turn us into tapestries again, or kill us this time?" Pacifica drawled out, looking at her fingertips as if playing with her nails. (...while she still had her gloves on.)
Mabel let out a laugh and waved a sweater-adorned arm at her friend. "Oh, Pacifica, don't be silly! Bill doesn't need us all in the same place to kill us!" she told her friend and her brother both.
Dipper winced. "Really not helping there, Mabel." He turned back to Pacifica. "Besides, McGucket and Gideon were specifically not invited. Like, un-invited not invited. --Bill was pretty clear about not wanting them there." Dipper shrugged. "I don't get it though. I mean, not wanting Gideon around, I can understand. He's…" Dipper made a face. "Well, no one really likes him, least of all Bill. But I don't know what he's got against McGucket."
Pacifica gave Dipper a long look. From what she understood, 'not liking Gideon' hadn't exactly stopped Bill from making deals with the underaged ex-con before. And...
"Maybe he knows that McGucket's out to kill him?" Pacifica said dryly. "Given that you did have him repair that time tape for you, and you let the demon know that little fact."
Dipper flushed sheepishly. "Ah… well…" (Mabel snorted and gave Dipper a small smack to the shoulder. At least she'd managed to grab those magic-suppressing cuffs Bill had made for her, when she'd found them on the ground after they'd gotten back, to get them back to Old Man McGucket. Good thing Miz didn't notice… or didn't care that they'd gone missing. That hadn't kept her out of the Shack, though. Grunkle Ford still had to see her a bunch, and sleep under the same roof as her, feeling all not so great about it... Actually, Mabel was pretty sure Miz had made a new pair of those cuffs for herself by herself, not gotten another set of them from Bill; those new cuffs she was wearing nowadays certainly looked different, but they were still pretty easy to see, almost as if Miz made them purposely noticeable -- unlike what Bill had done, which had seemed almost the opposite. It was a little weird, too. Anything she'd seen that Bill had made had almost kind of a certain look to it...)
"Maybe Bill just doesn't want weird older men around his sister?" Dipper tried next.
"Or, maybe the crazy demon's on to all of us," Pacifica said. "Either way, I'm going to have to attend." She pulled a face. "I'll need to see what he knows. I can't trust you two to do it right. This sort of thing actually requires skill, and finesse." And Pacifica sighed deeply as she watched Mabel get herself all distracted by the mere existence of her pony again.
Then the other thing Mabel had said finally registered. "--Wait, the demon has a sister?" Pacifica said, staring at her. She'd been wondering who this 'Miz' they were talking about was; at first, she'd thought it was some random nerd friend of Soos', what with them apparently having this 'anime' thing in common. "The crazy demon actually has a sister?" She'd thought that was just a rumor going around town, that the Pines were hosting two girls at the Shack that summer, instead of just one!
"Yeah, it's super weird." Dipper winced. "The crazy thing is, he kind of acts like… he actually cares about her. Like… he's really all protective, and everything!"
Pacifica would have facepalmed at this, if it wouldn't ruin her makeup. "Dipper, you have to tell me these things!" she berated him. "I can't plan effectively with Old Man McGucket if you don't keep me completely informed!" Having the one world-ending demon around was bad enough, but he had a family? Who liked him enough to come visiting? And who he liked having around and in their dimension with him, himself?
"Sorry, we've been kinda… busy." Dipper pulled on his hat, not wanting to tell Pacifica that he and Mabel had been essentially grounded for the past week (and counting). "But aside from some problems with Great-Uncle Ford, Miz is almost…" Dipper paused. "I mean, she's pretty horrible sometimes, but most of the time she's actually trying to be... nice? --And not the fake Gideon kind of nice, either." Miz wasn't overly sweet and charming, she was awkward and unsure and it wasn't exactly right, but it was sincere.
"Yeah..." Mabel said. She had her own mixed feelings on Miz. "If she'd just leave Grunkle Ford alone, then…" The teenager twirled her hand around to try and think of a good way to put this. "Wellllll, things wouldn't exactly be great, but they'd definitely be okay, at least!" Some of the things she talked about sometimes were worse than Grunkle Stan with the Truth Teeth in. "She doesn't mean to say horrible things most of the time. It's like… she hasn't been taught how to behave right around people?" Even though she'd been human once, way back when. "--But she's learning! Grunkle Stan's been talking to her and she's been trying really hard--" Mabel added, trying to be fair about it.
"--You two just don't get it, do you," Pacifica told them both, cutting her off. "Fine. Let me put this in terms you two commoners will understand," she said, glaring at them both. "Would your parents have a problem with someone if somebody killed you? --Because mine sure would if anyone killed me," she told them, "It's just a matter of principle! ...And now you're telling me that this demon's maybe got a whole family out there, behind him, backing him up," Pacifica swept her arm out at the sky, "Who might not be all that happy with us all, if we kill that demon while he's here! --That makes this situation that much more dangerous!" she told them both. "Having one crazy world-ending demon here is bad enough; what if the rest of his family is actually competent at it?!" she demanded out of them both, hands on her hips. It had been a good thing to hear that Stan Pines had managed to somehow convince the demon not to call up all his friends, and invite them back to a new party. But that meant absolutely nothing if the demon's family was going to come to him anyway, invited or not!
Dipper and Mabel winced. "Ah, well, if it's any consolation, they're both orphans?" Dipper told her weakly.
Pacifica let out a tired sigh, and slumped about as much as she could in-place (as much as she ever let herself get away with, rather). "And that makes things so much better," she muttered. ...Admittedly, it did, actually. That meant the demon-count was sitting at 'two' and not going to get any higher, so long as Mr. Pines kept doing his own job -- at trying to keep the demon isolated from his 'Henchmaniac' friends, and whoever else -- along with whatever else that conman was probably trying to do that was probably three different types of illegal. "--But he really has a little sister, and she's here?" Pacifica tried to confirm. "Who, I'm guessing, maybe has the exact same reality-screwing-over powers as he does, cares about him, and wouldn't like it very much if we killed him?"
"...yeah. Probably. The last time she was here, Miz made that bouncy house for me out of pretty much thin air, when I asked her to." Mabel rubbed her arm. She didn't want to make Miz out to be a complete monster. She didn't like Bill's sister because of how she'd hurt her grunkle -- she'd made him think that reality wasn't… real -- but... she wasn't a complete-complete monster, in Mabel's book, because... "They really seem to love each other, though." She winced. "Probably because they lost the rest of their family…" she explained, rubbing at the side of her arm, and not feeling so great about that.
"Okay. Okay." Pacifica rubbed her fingers against her temples and resisted the urge to pace back and forth too much. "I'm going to have to think about this, and maybe talk with her, too." Ugh. Great. The demon who'd rearranged her father's face and turned her into a textile pattern hanging from his ceiling really had a sister. Wonderful. "I'll figure out how to work this. Somehow," she muttered at the end.
"Well, Miz is pretty nice, for a demon. She almost seems like a regular kid as long as no-one makes her mad… like what keeps happening between her and Grunkle Ford. But it's not his fault and he doesn't mean to," Mabel said. "-- And she's getting better!" Mabel added quickly. "She hasn't snapped at Grunkle Ford in days!"
"And what does this 'pretty nice' demon do, when she gets mad?" Pacifica asked the Pines twins both.
Dipper and Mabel exchanged a glance, and Dipper sighed. "Talks," he said simply.
Pacifica looked at them suspiciously. "Talks. That's it. She just talks."
They exchanged another glance. "Yeah... only, she…" Dipper couldn't really figure out how to explain it. "The things she says, they…"
"She hurts our Grunkle Ford by saying too much stuff," Mabel said. "She says things that sort of… break his brain." And she looked really unhappy about this. Pacifica was pretty sure that Mabel's fists were clenched inside those sweater arms of hers.
"Right; got it." Pacifica could extrapolate from there. There were ways to hurt people like that. Ways to scare them too, that went far beyond blackmail. She didn't like using them, but some of the family stories about her grandparents, or her great-grandparents… She wasn't about to say this to either of the Pines twins, but her parents were practically saints by comparison to some of her ancestors...
"And sometimes she says other stuff that's pretty awful, but it's like she doesn't realize that it's awful," Dipper added, exchanging a look with his sister, and looking uncomfortable himself. "Which is kind of like Bill, except…" Dipper pulled a face. "At least she seems sorry sometimes when she realizes she's saying horrible stuff. And she does listen to 'stop' and 'no' most of the time," Dipper added, which was kind of both in the plus and minus column for her, as far as he was concerned.
"So, what's the deal with this 'party' they're trying to throw, then? If it's not supposed to be all world-ending like the last one," about which Pacifica had her doubts... "Is Bill trying to introduce us to his family?" Pacifica asked next, because it was about the only other reason she could think of for somebody powerful enough to want to draw up a social function: to introduce someone to the rest of society. (Well, the rest of society that one cared about impressing, that is.)
Mabel blinked. "Actually, I think Miz is just bored," and Dipper hissed out, "--And we don't want her getting bored."
Pacifica looked between them. "Why?" She frowned at them slightly. "...What happens if she gets bored?" she asked them both slowly.
The twins both exchanged another look. "She can manipulate reality, just like Bill can," Dipper said simply. "What do you think?"
"She hasn't really been bored yet," Mabel added, hugging herself and twisting back and forth, and back and forth, in place a little bit. "And we kind of don't want to find out."
Pacifica let out a breath slowly.
"I need to leave and get ready," she told them. "You two can show yourselves out; I'm going to be attending that party." She was going to have to call Old Man McGucket, to let him know the situation; from the sound of things, he was going to be the only real backup that she'd have for this thing, whatever it was really supposed to be. Gideon was no help these days; he couldn't seem to make up his mind between marching straight up to the Shack with those ex-cons of his and calling Bill out, or wanting to hide at home under his bed until the next Weirdmageddon was over and dealt with forever.
--Not to mention, she needed to figure out what would be appropriate to wear to this… anime showing at this commoner's house.
"--Butler!" Pacifica called out, as she turned on her heel in her riding gear and headed back for the main house, leaving the Pines twins behind to see themselves out. She wasn't going to be doing any more riding today.
---
Miz hummed cheerfully as she set up pillows and beanbags around the storage room. It was the place where the wax figures had used to be kept, but since they'd all gotten killed by Dipper and Mabel (and really, why wasn't anyone more upset about that? When she killed people unwillingly, it was still a problem, but the twins could do it on purpose and no one cared? ...Well, it was self-defense though, so maybe that alleviated the blame…), she was going to use this space as a makeshift theater room. There was plenty of space, a large expanse of wall that she could use the technology in her suit to project the Screen onto so that everyone could watch the show...
And there were going to be snacks! All sorts of chips, sandwiches, fruits, and drinks! She and Soos had been in the kitchen getting things ready, and now she was putting the finishing touches on all of the seating. --Stan would even get a nice armchair, one that was super-comfortable and everything!
Miz gave the room one last look. Perfect! And as she did so, she reminisced for a bit about the anime marathon parties she'd used to have with her human friends, and the ones she'd started having with her Maniac friends. The human ones had involved crowding around her computer in her basement, since they didn't have much space, but it was the company and commentary that made it so much fun! With the Maniacs she could give them a lovely huge screen to watch on, with all the comfortable seats and snacks they could ever want...
She looked up, shaking herself out of her reminiscing, when Soos came in with an armful of snacks. "Hey dood, whoa. This place looks nice," Soos complimented her, as he put the food down carefully on a low table.
"Thanks. Do you know when the guests are arriving?" Miz asked, making her way over to move the food around so it wasn't all bunched up together. Soos shrugged and told her, "Like, they should be arriving soon, dood."
As if on cue, she heard some footsteps before Dipper and Mabel showed up with Pacifica. The blonde did a double take when she saw Miz. "Is that her?" she asked Dipper from the corner of her mouth. He nodded. "Ah, Pacifica, meet Miz Cipher. Miz, this is Pacifica."
Pacifica wasn't really sure what she'd been expecting, but a little girl who looked around their age, maybe a bit older, dressed in a simple dress with a picture of cthulhu on it wasn't it. Before the Northwest heir could say anything though, Miz grinned widely at her, and practically bounced on over. "Hello! It's really nice to meet you! You're a lot prettier in person," the younger demon said as she held out her hand. "Hi, I'm Miz."
"Ah," Pacifica said, as she looked down at Miz's hand. She knew about shaking hands for deal-making from the twins, and while she might be wearing her gloves... "Pacifica Northwest," she said, stepping forward to clasp arms with her instead. "You're Bill's sister?"
"Yeah." Miz didn't seem at all offended that Pacifica didn't take her hand. She shook and let go, stepping back. "Find a spot to sit, I'm gonna go and grab some more snacks and then we'll wait for everyone else to show up." She gestured at the many pillows and beanbags.
Pacifica had been about to open her mouth to ask rather haughtily which one was the best seat there, since she could hardly tell, when she felt a slight chill come over her.
"WELL, WELL, WELL," she heard from right behind her back, and she forced herself (with years of training in etiquette, and other things) to remain still (rather than shiver or jump in shock), as she heard Bill Cipher's voice ring out above her. "Look who's here! --HELLO, little Llama," Bill enthused down at her with a grin, as Pacifica primly turned around in place. "Now that YOU'RE here," the demon said, leaning down slightly towards her, still looming, with his hands still-hidden behind his back, "The party can REALLY begin!"
Pacifica stared at him. And Bill's grin got even wider.
"Bill, cut it out," Mabel scolded the demon with hands on her hips, much to Pacifica's amazement. "You're being all demon-y again!" And even Miz pouted at her brother and said, "Don't scare the guests."
"Kid, low energy, yeah?" Pacifica heard called out from the hallway -- from Mr. Pines, she knew that voice -- and the demon...
...straightened up a bit, rolled his eyes at her (and everyone in the room, really), and suddenly seemed to just… relax a bit in place, like watching a peacock ruffle its feathers and then settle back, with its tail no longer spread and full-out on display.
"Just having a little fun," the demon said. "Didn't want her to not RECOGNIZE me!" he said next, as he crossed his arms (his hands free, with nothing in them) in front of his chest.
"I saw you the first day when we were all debating whether to use the circle on you," Pacifica informed the demon dryly, "And I already knew that you'd decided to join the fairer and smarter of the sexes a few weeks ago; Mabel has been sending me pictures to my cellphone every day since." ...The news of which had the demon blinking at her, then turning to Mabel. And the crazy demon had a look on his face that Pacifica couldn't quite… place.
"Surveillance?" the demon asked Mabel, to which Mabel grinned and said a bit too enthusiastically instead, "--No, silly! You actually allll~most kind of look cute when you sleep!"
...The look on the demon's face spoke volumes.
Pacifica wondered for a moment if pictures of the demon falling asleep on a picnic table or in Stan Pine's chair with him really were blackmail-level material when it came to the crazy demon currently in-residence at the Shack. ...She discarded the idea quickly, though. It would likely just get her phone (and face) melted if she tried. (Besides, she was trying to be better than her parents.)
...Though she did make note that Miz was muffling laughter behind a hand. Maybe it could be useful to share as an incentive for the other demon, instead?)
"Stan, the chair's for you." Miz said simply as she stepped past the old man who was just making his way into the room, Soos right behind her. "We're gonna go get more food."
Oddly, the crazy demon seemed to perk up at this information, immediately swiveling his head over to stare at the armchair. And reading his body language, with the way he was actually leaning towards it... Pacifica could tell that Bill wanted to walk right over there immediately, to sit down and take it for himself.
But instead the demon seemed to pause, almost biting his lip. Then, he straightened in place a bit, and turned his head away from the chair and towards his sister, to call out, "Miz, where are YOU sitting?"
Miz blinked. She looked over. "Um… I guess I'll sit wherever there's a free spot once everyone else finds where they want to go?" She shrugged. "I don't care too much, as long as I can still see the screen."
"Is there a seat for me?" Bill asked her next.
Miz pointed at a large blue beanbag chair; it was a little firmer and sat just a bit taller than the others. "I thought you might like that one, but if you want a different one, that's fine too."
"That one is MINE," Bill said promptly, pointing at the one Miz had pointed out to him. "Stanley." He looked over at Stanley as he said his name. "Stanley, that one is mine. I want it. Mine." (Pacifica couldn't help but give the demon an odd look as he called this out to Mr. Pines. He didn't sound like a whining Gideon or a toddler as he demanded this; it was more like listening to an adult trying to express themselves adamantly, in a non-native language that they had a very limited vocabulary for.)
(And to be fair, Pacifica realized that English probably wasn't the demon's native language, but… he hadn't seemed to have any problems speaking it fluently before, during that whole Weirdmageddon madness thing. So what was the story there?)
"...Yeah, I hear ya, kid," Stan said, as the old man shuffled into the room. "It's yours. I'll save it for ya."
Bill nodded once, briskly, then turned away from him and strode towards the doorway. "It is also Miz's! I've decided. --We're sharing," he declared to the room, and then Miz, as he came up next to her, right outside the door in the hallway. "I'll help you and Question Mark finish bringing in the snacks!" he offered to his sister with a smile.
"Thank you." Miz smiled up at him. Bill shifted in place, a smile of his own in place. "HA! --Don't thank me YET!"
They vanished down the corridor, along with Soos.
Pacifica turned to the Pines twins, staring at them. Because what the heck had she just watched happen, there? Because that had almost seemed like--
"We should probably grab a seat before the best ones are taken," Dipper said, while Mabel yelled out, "DIBS on the pink one!!!" and practically did a flying running-tackle into it from across the entire room.
"Dipper," Pacifica hissed out at him urgently, following along quickly to grab at his arm. "What was that?!" Because the only siblings -- literally, the only siblings -- she'd ever seen get along like that (without practically parental threats of violence to keep them in line, let alone acting nicely towards each other) were--
"You get used to it," Dipper informed Pacifica with a simple shrug, to her shock. (Her literal shock; she was so shocked by his reply that she actually let go of his arm.) The blonde was still shaken.
"When you said they liked each other, I didn't think you meant…" Pacifica could think of no way to finish her sentence, good, bad, or otherwise.
"Yeah, you get used to it." Dipper repeated.
Pacifica not quite glared down at Dipper, as he took his own seat in a nearby beanbag chair and half crab-walked, half-shoved it along the floor, until it was over right next to his sister's chair, too. Through a force of effort, Pacifica kept from saying what she really wanted to say to them, and instead asked, "Who else is attending this… event? --Who RSVP'd to the guest list?" she corrected herself, remembering that this was a commoner affair, and not everyone invited might be intelligent enough to actually show up, not realizing that attendance was most likely mandatory in some sense.
Pacifica didn't doubt that the crazy demon would decide upon some rather unpleasant repercussions for those who dared let down his 'little sister' by not attending this... event. And then enact them. The only question in her mind had been, would it be less of a cost to come, than not. For intelligence-gathering, though...
Well, at least she'd had some assurances from the Pines twins before all this that her insides would remain inside her, and her outsides would all remain in the same places, for the duration of her visit. And they had food.
"You, me, Dipper, Candy, Grenda, Soos, Grunkle Stan, Grunkle Ford, Melody, Wendy, and Robbie," Mabel listed off easily. "We didn't tell Gideon that he was uninvited, but Grunkle Ford might've told Old Man McGucket, which is sad," Mabel said with a sigh.
Pacifica raised an eyebrow. "Hm," she said simply. This wasn't just a 'Zodiac' thing, then. "So, we're watching an anime; any idea which one?" She'd heard stories about just how weird anime could get.
"Miz said it was a show for young teens and therefore it should be appropriate," Dipper let her know, pretty much word-for-word. "She said it was about a boy who fights ghosts?" which didn't sound all that bad to him. Dipper was actually looking forward to it a little.
"Ah huh…" Pacifica looked around before finding a comfortable-looking pillow to claim. Well, she wasn't quite sure if the anime chosen was relevant in some way, given Bill's words earlier about the 'party' not beginning without her. Was it meant to be some kind of psychological poke at her? ...No. This wasn't about her. At least, she hoped it wasn't. --It couldn't be. And she didn't want to think about what it would mean if the demon was trying to… what? Make fun of her? Single her out? She'd done nothing overtly to oppose him that he should know about. But with the subject matter being one of ghosts, and the way he'd reacted when she'd arrived...
More footsteps came from the doorway. "HEY GUYS! WHO'S READY FOR A MARATHON?!" The silver tones of Grenda Grendinator bellowed out. Candy waved from beside her best friend. "We have arrived to eat your snacks," Candy informed them all with a grin.
"HEEEY CANDY! GRENDA!" Mabel shrieked back as she waved her arms in the air. "Here, here! Sit next to me!" She patted the pillows around her excitedly. The girls made their way over, maneuvering around all the other beanbag chairs and pillows and cushions; Grenda grabbed a bowl of popcorn as she went.
"Hey guys." A knock came at the door frame and Wendy waved as she strode in. "So, like, you turned the storage room into a theater? Pretty nice." She looked around and was about to sit down when Dipper cried out to her, "Wait! That's Bill's chair," while waving his hands in a big warning 'no'.
"Yeah, you should probably choose a different seat," Stan said with a shrug from his own armchair, but it was still pretty clear that what he was saying wasn't exactly optional; it was final. Wendy didn't care either way and sat down beside Dipper instead.
"So, where're our hosts?" the redhead asked him. Dipper sighed. "They went to go get more food with Soos." Dipper glanced over at the doorway. "Is Robbie coming?" he asked Wendy.
"Should be," Wendy said. "I called him and threatened to tell Tambry about all those old band posters of his if he didn't come over. Y'know, the ones he 'screwed up' and didn't want anybody to see," she told Dipper with a smile, nudging him with an elbow.
Dipper chuckled. "The ones with makeup?"
"Nah," Wendy said, lounging back in her beanbag chair. "The ones that weren't 'edgy' enough. The best ones are all pre-emo phase, when his parents were still having him take music lessons and do 'normal' choir music and stuff."
Dipper's mouth dropped open, and then he snorted. "What I wouldn't give to see those!" He snickered.
"Eh, I've got 'em on my computer at home," Wendy told him casually. "I'll email a couple of 'em to you later," she promised easily.
"Wow, thanks Wendy," Dipper said, feeling a little blown away. "Aren't you… worried that I might show them to someone else?" That'd make them worthless as blackmail material after that, after already having been released.
"Hey, Robbie ripped at me for forty minutes on how I didn't tell him about how the demon had a sister -- pfft, like it's my job to 'let him know' when stuff happens, instead of him just picking up his cellphone and talking to you or Mabel instead," Wendy complained. "I had to hang up on the jerk. If you want to show some of 'em to other people, be my guest. He deserves it. It's not like I don't have plenty of 'em," she told him with a smile.
Dipper couldn't help but smile back.
"Dipper…" Mabel quietly teased him under his breath, as Wendy looked back at the screen, and he said, "I know, I know." He swore he didn't have a crush on Wendy anymore, really, it was just… it was nice to be trusted and to have real friends you could count on to have your back, y'know?
"Woo! Food incoming!" Miz cheered as she came back with more snacks. "Oh, hi!" She lit up when she saw the other guests. She put down her armful on the snack table before going up to Grenda and Candy, both.
"Hello. You two must be Candy and Grenda. I'm Miz." She held out her hand. "It's nice to meet you." And right there, standing right next to each other, Dipper blinked and then blinked again. Okay, he wasn't racist, really! But... he'd never noticed how similar Candy and Miz looked. Because sure, Candy had glasses and a rounder nose and Miz had those moles under her eye and a thicker chin, but... Dipper rubbed his eyes. 'I'm not a racist, I'm not a racist…' he mentally groaned to himself.
"Problem, Pine Tree?" he was asked, and the mental groan became an out-loud--
"--IT'S NOTHING!" Dipper said a little too loudly. Everyone raised their eyebrows at him before Grenda turned back to Miz with a huge smile.
"HI! IT'S NICE TO MEET YOU TOO!" Grenda bellowed out to Miz, and Miz squeaked when Grenda enveloped her entire arm with a hearty handshake.
(Pacifica noticed how Bill went still for a moment as he watched Grenda and Miz interacting, from the moment it had looked like Grenda was going to touch her.)
Miz's eyes were wide but she calmed and smiled. "You're stronger than I thought. Then again, you did lift that armchair with one hand…" She giggled.
"HUH?" Grenda said, because she'd lifted a lot of armchairs before, but she hadn't done one yet here today. "UH…" she said, as she let go of Miz's hand. "THANKS!" she told Miz with an enthusiastic grin as her reply. Because being told she was strong was a great compliment!
"It is very nice to meet you." Candy said simply, giving Miz a perfectly ordinary handshake. Miz nodded at them and then looked at the bowl of popcorn in Grenda's other hand.
"Um, just a note, please try not to drop food on the ground." Miz told her firmly. "If you do, and I know it happens sometimes, please help to clean it up afterwards."
"After this whole thing finishes up, we'll all help clean the place up," Stan said from his armchair. "If it's really bad, I'll get you kids to grab some paper towels, but messes happen."
"They sometimes throw popcorn, little sis," Bill informed her, after setting down his own armload of foodstuffs and walking his way over. "They think it's half the fun. And mouth scoops are messy."
"Please don't, it's a waste of food." Miz pouted. "I know that popcorn isn't exactly good food, but still…"
"It will be their food after they claim it," Bill told her, "And then they can do what they want with it." He paused for a moment. "...And the goat will eat anything that they don't," he seemed to decide to end on, in a tone that sounded like he was extending half-a-compromise there.
Miz thought about it. "Okay, as long as it's not going to waste," she decided.
Bill nodded, then sent a quick glance over to Stan, who nodded at him. Pacifica watched this all, and wondered. She'd seen her own father give… something of a similar slight nod to her, after she'd gotten done handling a particularly difficult client or businessman at a gala or ball or business meeting. And that was...
Soos set down the last of the food and grinned. "That should be enough for everyone." He grinned. "And if we run out, we've got back up snacks in the fridge too, doods." He went to sit down next to Stan, a little bit behind him. "So eat your fill. We've got plenty."
"All of it is store-bought; none of it was made by myself or Miz," Bill informed them all. Even the sandwiches and cut fruit had been bought, from the diner. (And Miz had traded some quick errands for Susan in exchange for her help with preparing the food for her party. The woman had thought it was adorable -- even Bill's reponse, as he had watched it all like a hawk the whole time.) "So you don't have to worry about that Stanford acting like an idiot when you try eating it."
Stan let out a sigh and looked around. "Yeah, I'll go get him," he said after a moment. "Gimmie a sec." And he got himself up out of his (very comfortable) chair and headed out of the room, looking grumpy about it.
As Stan walked off, Melody was coming down the hall the other way with Robbie. "Guess who I found outside, pacing out in front of the house?" she joked, as she saw him into the room. Robbie scoffed, huddling into his hoodie. "I wasn't pacing. The place looked closed," he complained.
Miz lit up. "Hiiiii Stitched Heart~!" she waved. Robbie twitched. "My name's Robbie!"