"Gideon Gleeful has tried to kill you three times?" Ford repeated. He felt… almost odd about it. How very matter-of-fact his nephew was being about--
Dipper nodded, then grimaced. "Well, okay," Dipper told him next. "Maybe he wasn't actually trying to kill me the second time… Oh, wait," Dipper said, straightening in place, and Ford was about to breathe a sigh of relief at Dipper's rethinking of whatever situation, up until Dipper said next, "Are we counting Weirdmageddon stuff, too? Because then it's definitely three, maybe four."
Ford managed to keep his composure, as he tried to tamp down the rising rage he was feeling internally.
"...Perhaps you could start from the beginning?" Ford said. "Just so that I understand the situation more clearly, and fully. What did he try to do the first time?"
Dipper nodded. "The first time, he tried to cut me in half with some shears, though Mabel stopped him. And then we both almost died falling out a window and off the side of a cliff after that, except Mabel caught us both then, too. --But the falling thing was an accident; neither of us were trying to do that, it's not like Gideon was trying to take me with him."
Ford blinked. Shears? How did one… "And the second time?" Ford prompted.
"The second time, Gideon tossed me onto the top of a cliff face after grabbing Mabel," Dipper told him next. "I… kinda cratered a… kinda-long furrow into the ground, and almost hit my head on a big rock behind me pretty hard. But I think that was maybe an accident, therock thing." And Ford stared as Dipper told him, "It's not like he tried to toss me off into the trees of the woods way farther down or something; he was just trying to get me out of the way, not actually try and kill me, right then." Then Dipper let out a sigh and told him, "...And we both fell down when his robot tumbled over a cliff in the middle of our fight, but that was an accident, too. And, uh, when I fell out of the robot, Mabel caught me before we hit the ground. That would have been an accident, too." Dipper gave him a rueful, almost embarrassed smile, as Ford looked on at him in confusion. There had been some sort of robot involved in this?
"--That was from the time when Gideon got that giant robot to chase the bus down after Stan tried to send us home, since we became homeless because Gideon stole the deed to the shack," Dipper told him, at Ford's look of confusion. (...And now Ford knew what his nibling was referring to, somewhat -- when 'the Shack being taken over' had come up, Stan had grimaced, grumbled, and said he remembered that, and they'd skipped over that page of the scrapbook almost entirely.)
"What robot did you fall out of?" Ford asked him.
"Oh, uh, Gideon had Old Man McGucket make this huge robot that kind of looked like himself," Dipper told him. "They set it up right by the Shack. We didn't know it'd actually work, until Gideon was actually piloting it around. We thought Gideon had just had that made up as some kind of big metal statue or something, for the amusement park he'd been talking about in those TV ads he'd been showing. Like some kind of mascot at the front gates?"
Ford stared at him, feeling a little faint. Fiddleford had created a robot that… had been used to almost kill his grand-niece and -nephew??
"So, yeah. --Oh, the third time he tried to kill us was with a bunch of fireworks during the town election… uh, except I guess he thought it would only trap us inside the head of that memorial statue of the mayor. --But we were practically sitting right on top of all of it, and Gideon only said he was going to leave Mabel in there after she said she'd rather die than marry him!" Dipper let out a huff, now starting to look more than a little angry, before he calmed down again.
"...The fourth time?" Ford prompted, slowly, not wanting to derail his grand-nephew. ...But, marriage? What did that have to do with any of this?! (Ford refused to think about how the man-eater had said something about romance, when she had been telling him about the reasons why she had thought Gideon had done the things that he did.)
"And the fourth was when Gideon was working for Bill during the beginning of Weirdmageddon--" Dipper stopped. "Uh, but I guess that kinda doesn't count," Dipper said "Everybody was acting pretty crazy back then, and Gideon probably would've ended up in that cage a lot sooner if he hadn't tried to get back on Bill's good side again…"
Ford forced himself to pull in a breath, and let it out just as slowly.
(He also held back the instinctive "Bill has no good side!" rebuttal.)
"Are there any other times that you've fought with Gideon that seem particularly notable?" Ford asked him, attempting to stay (at least outwardly) calm.
"Well…" Dipper paused. "Uh, I guess... --Well, there was this one time, when Gideon shrunk me and Mabel down to, uh, about an inch tall, and kept us in a jar? But he wasn't actually trying to kill us that time, just get us out of the way." Dipper grimaced. "We wouldn't have gotten caught like that if we hadn't been fighting over the shrinking-growing crystal flashlight right out in the open in front of him, though," Dipper admitted. "So I guess we were kind of asking for it. Gideon couldn't have done that if we hadn't been fighting over it, or if we'd seen him there; we would've stopped sooner. He just took advantage of the situation." Dipper shrugged. "Oh, and Mabel and Soos saw Gideon summon Bill and make a deal with him, to have Bill go into Grunkle Stan's mind looking for the code to his safe, so Gideon could sneak in and steal the deed to the Shack. --That was when we first met him. Bill, I mean," Dipper noted.
"I see," said Ford, and he believed that he was, in fact, starting to see. When Dipper and Mabel had first brought up 'fighting Bill', post-Bill's return when he'd asked for more information, they'd talked about following Bill into Stan's mind and how they'd fought him there (in far more detail than listing off his weaknesses to him in abbreviated form the summer prior) -- but they hadn't said why they'd done it, and Ford hadn't asked at the time. They'd all been far too focused on identifying Bill's weaknesses, and...
...Ford was starting to see how very much of a mistake that had been.
"And… Gideon hasn't faced any punishment at all, for any of this?" Ford asked very carefully. (That was something that was going to have to be rectified quickly, post-haste.)
"Well, we got him put in real adult prison for spying on the town," Dipper noted. "--That had to do with the whole robot thing. We couldn't really get him jailed for just kidnapping Mabel, or trying to kill me, since we didn't really have any proof." Dipper shrugged at this, though he did look at least a little frustrated at such an egregious lack of justice and fairness. "And he was already in prison when he tried to blow us up. --We're not really sure how he did it, but he was controlling Bud Gleeful to move him around and talk for him, somehow. ...Maybe it was part of that video belt he was wearing?" Dipper shrugged. "He did try to help us out during Weirdmageddon, though," Dipper noted, looking more than a little conflicted about it. "Twice. Once with Mabel's bubble, and once with the circle? So… we decided to give him kind of a second chance, I guess," Dipper told him. "Gideon leaves us alone, and we leave him alone. No more bothering me or Mabel."
"I see," said Ford. And he was exercising all his self control now, to not let any of the rage show on his face. (He didn't have to like the fact that apparently his grand-nephew and -niece had, in at least some respect, apparently forgiven this little troglodyte for his transgressions.) He had to force himself to take in another deep breath before he said, rather neutrally: "And, for what reason did Gideon believe he thought he had reason to kill you?" Because the man-eater had been right about the shears, but surely she had been lying or misunderstanding about that child making these murder attempts simply from being slighted from Mabel's affections--
Dipper snorted. "It's not like he had a good reason," Dipper told him. "He was just obsessed with Mabel. He pressured her into dating him, and got upset when she broke up with him. I mean, he actually wanted her to marry him, which was pretty crazy. I think maybe he still does." Dipper shuddered. "Mabel just doesn't like him back. He refused to accept that. And it's not like attacking any of us is gonna do anything but make things worse with his chances with her, not that he really got that."
Ford twitched, because... How, exactly, was this a thing? --And why wasn't Dipper more upset about it? That Gleeful boy had tried to kill him multiple times, and had gone after Mabel in a terrible fashion, but his great-nephew was largely acting like it wasn't a horrendous problem of the highest order--
"He tried to kill you, because Mabel broke up with him?" Ford just couldn't understand. Being turned down by someone was not enough to have any sane individual resorting to… to murder atttempts on the sibling of the object of their affection in… in some plot for revenge! That was insane! And the Gleeful boy was only 10 years old! He would have merely been 9 years old last summer, when the niblings were 12, and… that was a three year age difference, and at that age-- That wasn't--
Dipper shrugged. "Like Mabel says: he's a creepy little dork," was all Dipper had to say about it, apparently in his sister's own words.
This was insane. Completely and utterly-- "Why haven't his parents disciplined him for--"
"For what? We didn't have proof for most of this stuff, and Bud was okay with setting up that arranged marriage thing with Grunkle Stan in the first place, when Gideon first started dating her. And Grunkle Stan was pushing for it, too, until Mabel told him she didn't want to. Then he was all kind of, 'whatever' about it, like it wasn't a big deal that she didn't want to." (Good. Because Ford would have to murder his own brother, if he hadn't.) "I dunno. Gideon had this bolo tie thing he was using for his shows and stuff. I didn't even realize that was how he was doing half his act, until he used it on me to try and kill me with those shears. There was this blue gem, that I think was actually the important part. I don't know where he got it? But Mabel destroyed it," Dipper muttered. "And, well, between that and whatever he did to control Bud, I don't think Gideon's parents could exactly stop him from doing whatever he wanted. I mean, he summoned Bill just to get the code to Grunkle Stan's safe, and then blew it up because he got impatient waiting for Bill to get it for him. I mean, who summons a demon just to--"
Thinking over things, something suddenly connected for Ford that made him go cold. "Wait! Gideon had-- he had an… you said it was a large blue gemstone? Was he able to use it to levitate objects?" Ford asked, as he pulled out a piece of paper, and started sketching.
"Ah, yeah. He was able to levitate a lot of stuff with it." Dipper frowned slightly, then sat up a bit straighter. "Wait, you know about it?" Dipper asked next, just before Ford showed him the image.
"Is this--" Ford began to ask, but Dipper was already nodding. He lowered the sketch. "That mystic amulet is something I found. The use of it bleaches the user's hair white, and corrupts their soul."
"Yeah, that's a pretty good description of Gideon Gleeful," Dipper noted. "Are you sure it was just the amulet, though? He hasn't had it for awhile…"
"Soul corruption is not easily purged," Ford noted, though he couldn't help but frown. "I thought I had hidden it well." He'd written down the location in Journal 2, but… no. Surely not. No elementary school child could possibly be so conniving or clever as to manage to find it, or dig it up, with how he hid it on those school grounds. That was the entire reason he'd hidden it there -- with that much foot traffic and children nearby, no-one so shady that Bill would be able to make use of them would be able to approach the building without being stopped, let alone begin the difficult process of retrieval.
...And yet Stan had had that journal in his possession, upon his return. (And no offense to his brother, but Stan would never have been allowed near a school building as an adult, even if he had been inclined to approach a school again.) Stan would not want to enter any school grounds without a very strong reason to do so -- which was, in retrospect, an even less likely occurrence. And Gideon had been the one who had had the amulet on him, not Stan, and Stan would not be one to throw something so potentially useful out; he would hardly care about the potential corruption of his soul either, Ford had no doubt. Which meant...
"Dipper, how long did Gideon have access to Journal 2?" Ford asked him rather urgently, to a rather blank look from his grand-nephew.
"Gideon didn't have Journal 2," Dipper told him with a frown. "Grunkle Stan did. He was just missing Journal 3, until I told him about it."
Ford frowned. "You are absolutely certain that Gideon never saw or knew of any of the Journals?" he queried him.
Dipper frowned at this. "Uh. Actually, Gideon did know about the journals." Dipper looked almost shocked. "--I nearly forgot! That's why he was chasing me and Mabel down with the robot. He took my Journal 3 when we tried to get the Shack back the first time, and he was yelling at me about the other journal. He thought I had another one! So, he must have had either Journal 1 or Journal 2, right? Oh, man..." Dipper buried his face in his hands. "I didn't even think about that. I was so distracted with everything else that…" Dipper muttered out.
"It's all right, my boy," Ford comforted him, resting a hand on his shoulder, which had Dipper slowly lowering his hands to look up at him again. "I myself have not always been able to keep track of everything, in the heat of the moment. That you remember him saying such at all is a testament to your memory and recollection ability." Ford smiled at him. He truly was proud of his grand-nephew. He hadn't realized what sorts of things he and Mabel had been facing all throughout the past summer.
(...Not that much of it wasn't, apparently, entirely stoppable, if not avoidable. Ford would just have to see to it that his niblings wouldn't have to face any of that sort of thing from this particular miscreant, ever again.)
Dipper flushed a bit. "I should have thought of it, though."
"Well, we are getting to the truth of the matter together, now," Ford told him, before frowning further. "It is not as though I did not note Gideon's hair color, myself. Given the general appearance of his parents, I should have suspected such far earlier myself." He himself had not asked Stan. how he had managed to find the journals, either -- and, apparently, he really should have. "I'll have to conduct research into the purification of souls, again." He'd tossed away some of it when he'd discarded his journals in the Pit; the rest of those Bill-tainted papers, he and his family had burned along with every other Bill-tainted thing that had remained anywhere in the house.
"I really don't think it's gonna make much difference with Gideon Gleeful," Dipper told him almost warningly. "It's not like Bud's really any better."
"We shall see," Ford said neutrally. Then he paused for a moment. "It certainly does not excuse his behavior towards either you, or your sister."
"Well, yeah," Dipper said, like he thought that such a conclusion was obvious, and Ford couldn't quite hold back the laugh.
"You know," Ford told him, "While I may have written a substantial amount of those spells, rituals, and curses that I researched down in Journal 2…" He paused for dramatic effect -- well, only slightly -- but could one blame him? Because... "...I did not write down absolutely everything in there that I found," Ford confided in his young (unofficial) protege, with a small (and not quite evil) smile. "So if you would like to know a few things that even Gideon could not possibly have ever known about real, true magic…"
And with that, Ford was rewarded with a very excited, happy smile from his young grand-nephew, who certainly deserved far better when it came to the knowledge of magic, than an accidental localized zombie apocalypse, a desperate and hurried attempt to forestall Bill's invasion of Stan's mind, and whatever terrible things that this Gideon child had tried to inflict upon him. Dipper deserved far better than that.
(And yes, Ford was going to still talk about this with Stan, to confirm what he already knew now must be true. Gideon had had what sounded like the mystic amulet, along with the ritual to summon Bill. Both had been things that he had written down in Journal 2, and neither of which would have otherwise been accessible in any way to an elementary school child by any means. The amulet had been secured by one of Fiddleford's own locking -- and passcoded -- inventions, and the caves were a several day hike out into the woods from the town. The chances of a nine year old somehow stumbling across that old native cave that had Bill's drawings and warnings in it were absolutely, and perfectly, zero. It would be, unbelievable as it was, far more likely for an elementary school aged child to have somehow retrieval Journal 2 from its hiding location. This all led Ford to his final conclusion: Gideon, at some point, for an unknown amount of time, had read at least part of Journal 2.)
And Ford felt like a bit of an idiot. The niblings had told him that Gideon had summoned Bill to make a Deal with him; he should have put it together sooner, the fact that Gideon knew how to summon Bill must have meant that-- But he had become so used to the idea of Bill being ever-present and so well-known throughout the multiverse that the thought simply hadn't crossed his mind that, no, Bill's summoning circle shouldn't have been so freely-known here. Thirty years had passed, yes, and it could have been possible that Bill had made a larger foothold in this, his home dimension, but he should have checked. And he hadn't. The first two people he'd talked to in this dimension had known of Bill Cipher, and...
...yes, he supposed he'd had other, more pressing things on his mind, such as properly securing his mind during sleep, and the Rift, but...
Ford sighed as he slowly got up, and moved off to the larger lab space, with Dipper all but bouncing in excitement at his heels. Of course Gideon had learned all of this from his Journal. Of course he had.
(Had he copied down the instructions for any of those spells and curses from his journal at some point? How dangerous was the child, still? Were those spells part of what allowed him to keep those rather dangerous-looking bodyguards of his in line?)
None of this was making Ford feel any better. Because even disregarding everything-- the fact remained that Gideon Gleeful had tried to kill another child, multiple times. Two, in fact: both Dipper and Mabel. His grand-nephew and grand-niece.
...and apparently no-one in town really cared, or even knew anything at all about it?
How much did Stan know, that he hadn't told him? Why hadn't he told him?
"Great-Uncle Ford? Are you okay?" Dipper asked in worry, apparently at the expression on Ford's face.
Ford rubbed a hand across his face and sighed. This wasn't normal. It couldn't be. It shouldn't be. (Was he really so out of touch with what was or wasn't normal anymore? Forgiving and giving a second chance to someone who had tried on multiple occasions to kill you, who you still didn't really like, was one thing. It was barely conceivable, but perhaps somewhere within the realm of possibility. Maybe. But the fact that Gideon was free to just… waltz around town with those bodyguards of his, even after multiple attempted murders -- convicted or not -- and no-one was doing anything about that? Should Stanley be up in arms over all of this madness? And how exactly had Gideon been able to be convicted for spying on the town, but not any of these multitudinous attempted murders?)
"Dipper, I know this may be something of an odd and pointed question, but why isn't Gideon still in prison?" Ford finally asked, as they strode into his lab space together.
Dipper shrugged. "Well, the convicted criminals that broke out during Weirdmageddon aren't in prison anymore, either." ...And that was considered acceptable as well? This town… (He hadn't any idea at all, about any of this. It just made Ford feel even worse about all of this, that he hadn't even known...) "I mean, we told everybody about what had happened, so they all know that Gideon helped us when we were trying to get rid of Bill. So I guess the townsfolk just kinda… forgave him? And Gideon says he's working to be a normal kid so…" Dipper shrugged again, though he also grimaced at this.
...This wasn't something that his great nephew should worry about, so Ford simply nodded at this and moved on to what he could do for him, instead.
...Which was to gift him with (and then drill him in) as many defensive spells and counter-spells as he possibly could.
After awhile, they had to stop. (Dipper seemed rather overwhelmed, and Ford was beginning to think that perhaps he'd been going a bit fast with him. ...Ah, well. Better to give him more to work with, to be able to refine later, than not enough of anything at all.) And as Dipper left him to his own devices, on his way back upstairs, Ford slumped in his chair, ran a hand across his face, and sighed. He had a lot to think about.
...Namely, what he was going to do about the other, potentially-subverted member of Bill's Zodiac Ten, who they would have to rely upon to perform the circle in the most dire of circumstances, whenever they came to be.
---
Dinner was blessedly uneventful that night and passed without incident. Miz seemed distracted by something and didn't attempt to speak to him or anyone else really, just eating her meal quietly and causing no further trouble. Bill didn't seem particularly restive that night, either, for whatever reason. (Frankly, Ford was happy to be able to count his blessings on that front, for once.)
Ford ate quickly, sent Stan a glance to let him know that he wanted to speak with him later, and after Stan sent him a silent response in the affirmative, he got up and left the room, trusting Stan to keep the niblings safe for the rest of dinner. They were pretty much done anyway, and Bill had finished eating long since, sitting back and staring at the kettle for boiling water as he usually did these days.
Ford still lingered in the hallway outside his bedroom, where he could hear the noise from the kitchen, until the niblings had finished eating and put their plates away. He watched them pass by, heading for the staircase upstairs to their room, while he listened to Bill (and perhaps Miz) wash the dishes from that night. Bill wasn't yet done, when he heard Stan's footsteps approaching, and Stan finally shuffled his way into the hallway.
"Alright, what's this about?" Stan asked as he headed for Ford's room, Ford falling into step with him.
Ford waited until they were safely behind closed doors before beginning to unload his latest questions and worries on him -- this time, about another member of their very self-same Zodiac, one who he had previously (and apparently wrongly) assumed had only been tricked into helping Bill, while actually and truly being on their own side.
---
Miz was dealing with a very odd problem that night. It was a problem that cropped up whenever she was in a physical form for too long.
She was feeling horny.
Miz sighed as she rolled around onto her stomach on some pillows up in the attic after dinner. Ah… she really wanted to masturbate… but Bill was right there. She felt uncomfortable at the idea of doing that in front of him (at least while he was watching).
Well, perhaps she'd wait until he fell asleep… or maybe for sometime when he'd left the room so his suit's sensors wouldn't record such a lewd act for him to see… damn physical urges. Miz supposed she should just make a vessel that wasn't capable of having a libido, but that wasn't good either… it almost felt like the itching from when there was too much power surging through her (which was different from the itch of a karma imbalance) but… less painful and more annoying. She kinda preferred feeling horny over feeling itchy (since at least this she could satisfy without hurting herself) so she left her vessels capable of having a libido. But part of her still got embarrassed about it. Even when she knew that she shouldn't be. While she couldn't say it was as natural as the bodily urges she'd had as a human, it wasn't really all that different. Just a different body.
Thing was, she could go years without feeling any need for sexual stimulation, so there was a reason why this was coming up now. If she had to be honest with herself, this had been building for a while. Ever since she'd asked Bill to modify and make an 'older' and 'voluptuous' looking version of her vessel. Miz flushed and buried her face in the pillow. Watching her 'child' form grow and swell in all~ the right places stirred her up in ways she couldn't fully articulate. At the time, she'd been in the Mindscape, without a body to express the feelings, and afterward, she'd been too busy with things to really address it.
But things had calmed down, the days passed peacefully and Miz still had some pent up desires that hadn't been addressed.
...and damn if she didn't feel a little ashamed to feel like this. She knew she shouldn't, there was nothing wrong with wanting or enjoying sexual relief. Even if one was asexual. But in this house with young children, who were so sweet and innocent, she felt dirty for having such desires, fearful they would find out and be disgusted with her. Stan or Ford? They were adults, she didn't give a shit if they knew. Bill? Well… maybe she felt a little afraid he'd be grossed out by her physical needs. By her wanting to have physical needs.
So Miz rocked around on the pillow and decided she would wait for everyone in the Shack to go to bed and then lock herself in the bathroom to… take care of her needs.
Wouldn't take too long, everyone had gone to their rooms after dinner. It was only a matter of time until they all fell asleep. She had her cuffs off, she always took them off when up in Bill's room, and she considered how she wanted to do this. Well, it was that older form Bill created for her that had set her off this time, and she had wanted to thoroughly explore that lovely body. Those large, round breasts~ so heavy and soft~
Miz buried her flushing face deeper into the pillow. There was something seriously wrong with her. Lusting after her own bodies. And other people's bodies, though she had no interest in other people for sexual relief. Ugh… it sucked sometimes, being an asexual with a libido… this was probably why she'd thought she was bisexual for the longest time, because of her horniness...
"...Problem?" Bill asked her, from where he was seated. Miz looked up to see that he'd cracked open an eye (and looked to be done with his meditation properly, this time). He seemed a bit… not calmer, exactly, but his energy hum seemed to be... that much more smooth? (The flow of it seemed to be a little more…)
Miz sighed and rocked on her pillow again. "Just… some physical stuff." she was too embarrassed to outright say what it was she wanted here.
"Hungry, thirsty, itchy, tired, need-to-move, need-to-stretch, need-to-spin, touch-craving, sex-cravings, adrenaline-reflex, squirmy feelings, itchy feelings, other-thoughts, other-emotions, or just-other?" Bill asked her simply, resituating himself in place.
Miz couldn't help but twitch when Bill listed 'sex-cravings' and she saw Bill raise an eyebrow at this.
"...Hmm?" Bill said, and then Bill blinked, then sighed. "Miz." He shifted in place a little. "You make your vessel bodies with this problem, why?" he asked her. She hadn't twitched at the 'squirmy feelings', only the 'sex-cravings', so he assumed it had nothing to do with that Stanford this time. (Which was good. --Progress!)
"...I sometimes enjoy the feeling…" Miz mumbled into her pillow. "And this feeling is better than feeling itchy. Since I can satisfy it. And it doesn't happen very often. Just when something that..." she wiggled again. "...that arouses me comes up…"
Bill blinked at her. She hadn't twitched at the 'squirmy feelings' mention though, which meant that...
"...This was a 'better' feeling for you before you started blocking out other-beings' emotions and thoughts, though," he reminded her. "Do you know whether you still like it or not, yet?" he asked her next, rather clinically.
"Well," Miz rocked slowly on her pillow as she thought about it. "I enjoy the feeling. But I don't want to have s-sex with anyone else. Just… myself and my own touching…" she whined a little. "It's a little embarrassing."
"Masturbation, yes," Bill nodded. He'd seen that a lot, in a lot of species! Including... "That's normal for most humans," he noted, propping his chin up in his palm. It wasn't quite a question.
"I used to do that a lot, back when I was human. I think part of me still registers that." Miz pulled at the hem of her pajama t-shirt. "I still have most of the same fetishes. Though I think I've developed new ones over the years, in this life."
Bill let out a sigh. If it went that far back… well, she also had that 'melon allergy' that she hadn't gotten rid of yet, either.
"Do you want to keep it, or learn to get rid of it?" he asked her rather practically next. It hadn't been on her list, but… That sort of thing could be incredibly annoying and ill-timed, after all, and distracting. It made one much more likely to be attacked, and harder to defend oneself properly, in that timeframe. Made it harder to concentrate when it happened. (Notably, his current stupid human-ish body was not quite that stupid, and did not have that problem. ...Not least of which because what little it might seem inclined to do, were it left completely without management and fully to its own devices and balances and original baselines and setpoints, Bill had rebalanced and tweaked and otherwise handled himself quite thoroughly, to make it far more properly useful, in completely his own regard.)
(Bill was fairly sure that if he himself ever had some sort of sex cravings -- not that he did, ever had, or ever expected to; he was a triangle, that wasn't something Shapes felt, or how they did things -- then if he ever tried the physical human way of performing their physical act in his current stupid physically-human-ish body, it would likely leave him as seemingly-vulnerable and open to attack as he was when he was trying to feed. Not that he did any feeding when anyone else was around, being or demon -- blasted Glasses jumping in on him like that - it was a very delicate procedure!)
Miz paused and thought about it. "I… don't dislike the feeling. As long as I can take the time to satisfy my needs. And I can ignore it to take care of it later once things settle. And…" she wiggled. "I got aroused back when we were in that other dimension, and I've been able to ignore it until now, since things are more settled down and I have the free time to allow the feeling to really surface…"
Bill thought about it. So she could 'ignore' and suppress this feeling well-below her surface until she was in a place where she felt 'safe' enough to pursue it. And this had been something she'd been holding back since they were in the other dimension? Hm. ...Well, he was pretty sure she didn't have all the correct blocks and shunts in place to prevent resonances from being created in response to external pressures, and then surfacing and becoming a problem whether she wanted them to or not… BUT... the fact that she was talking about this NOW and didn't seem worried about this sort of issue, meant that Miz felt safe enough here that she believed it was fine to start feeling it here (...allowing herself to feel it?).
"Well then." Bill told her, "If you want to keep it, and you're sure you want to keep it, then you should. And if you want to not-feel-it anymore, later, you can do that too?" He'd save the resonances talk for later. Bringing up the PTSD now when she was feeling safe now was not something that he wanted to do. He liked her feeling safe, upstairs, with him, and he wanted to keep that one going. Because he was starting to think that Stanley might actually be right about that whole 'humans needing a safe space they can retreat to' thing. ...at least a little bit. Maybe. For some humans.)
"...If I wanted to, I could just… not." Miz thought about it. She didn't get horny when in a fully energy form, so far as she could tell. She could still look at things that aroused her, but she didn't feel any of the 'hot and bothered' feelings until she went back into a physical body. "So long as I'm not feeding off Lust energy, I'm fine with experiencing sexual arousal and satisfying it."
Bill nodded at her. He'd never really seen the appeal (for a multitude of reasons…), but… if he'd had some kind of… squirmy-feelings back when he'd been a triangle… like she had back when she'd been a human… maybe he would have felt differently about it, too? And… it was proof, in a sense, that she was, in some ways, clearly still who she'd always-been before...
"Do it when you want to, don't do it when you don't want to, and if you want to take your surroundings into account when determining the 'want', well," Bill let out a laugh and grinned at her, "I won't argue with that! That is much safer! Less risky to you," the rather-untrusting triangle demon noted, in the lightest way he could touch upon the subject at-present. "As long as it's not a problem, it's not a problem," he shrugged off (as he set the groundwork for a later PTSD discussion at the same time), lowering his hand to his knee. "Yes?"
Mis nodded slowly. "Ah, yes." She paused. "You're not… grossed out by me? She asked quietly. "For being a weird pervert?"
Bill blinked at her, then looked a little taken aback. "No, of course not!" He sighed, then told her, "You were a human. You are still sort-of a human. You do human things still. This is a human thing!" he told her. He shifted over a little, closer to her, and placed a hand on her head. "You like what you like. It doesn't matter what anyone else thinks." As long as she was safe and having fun, he'd be happy about it, whatever she did. He just didn't want her getting hurt or DYING AGAIN.
Miz leaned into the touch, feeling a bit better about not being judged for this one bit.
"Don't know why humans keep getting all up in arms about this stuff all the time, the prudes," Bill told her next, as he patted-petted her on the head. "Like they think they're the only species that does this stuff? And MOST of the time, they're so BORING about it! It's just the same thing to See, over and over again. --You know, I actually helped that one guy write the Kama Sutra, just to spice things up a bit?" Because if he had to See that stuff from time to time, the least they could do was make it a little more interesting to watch! "Though a few of those poses REALLY should've kept the warning labels," he told her, making a face, and removing the hand from her head, to gesture to the side. "Flexibility and joint-limits are a thing! If you don't warm up the RIGHT parts of those human bodies first--"
...Aaaaaaand now Miz was getting super-embarrassed all over again. "--Uh, brother?" she asked him, tugging at his sleeve, and he stopped.
Miz wiggled, pressing her legs together.
Bill blinked at her. "Oh Right. --Right," he told her, as he thought through his catalogued tally of 'things that embarrass humans a lot' (along with several of his theories behind their sources) and 'got it' as he got a one-to-one match to them, with her, on-- "Sexual displays in front of 'family members' are biologically hardwired to suppress and misfire in humans. Avoidance of incest is an evolutionary thing for most species! --I can go downstairs for awhile?" he told her. "And direct my suit-sensors not to sense or record anything this far upwards?"
Miz nodded, a bright blush on her face.
But as he was about to get up, Miz reached out and tugged at his sleeve again. Yes, she felt a little horny (okay, a lot horny, and being reminded of that particular book hadn't exactly helped calm her down any!!), but right now, she was feeling embarrassed enough about it that she wasn't sure she could do it, even if she knew he wasn't watching, she felt so very self-conscious about it now. She needed to calm down a bit (--not that way!!) and think about something else for awhile.
"...Another problem?" Bill asked her again, settling down to sit down again, and looking at her curiously. He didn't know why she had stopped him.
Miz nodded at him almost desperately. It took Miz a moment to think about what she wanted to say, and exactly why she wanted to say it, why she was feeling so embarrassed about everything right now...
And then it hit her: Bill knew all this stuff about her now, but she didn't know anything equally potentially embarrassing about him. --That was so unfair!!
"--I can wait a bit!" she told her big brother. I want to know something else about you, first!"
"Something about me?" Bill asked her, a little confused. (Had he been wrong about the wanting him to leave and not watch thing? Most humans were like that, and she'd seemed to react that way to what he'd said just now, too? ...Then again, some humans were very much the opposite, almost exhibitionist--)
"How did mating happen in your dimension? As a triangle?" Miz asked, honestly curious, and she tried to suppress her own current still-embarrassed blush. Her own dimension had incubation of piece/eggs, but Bill (from what she's been able to See or learn from listening to him talk) didn't have such things. The way he'd talked about stuff on her blog... Well, he'd said that the sex-related stuff had been really different than what she'd described, and with the way he'd asked about stuff in hers, it had sounded like the shapes and lines in his dimension hadn't had parts or slots or anything like that at all.
"Hmm?" Bill blinked at this rather odd question. "Well," he began, trying to think through things (given his limited knowledge on the subject, though he hadn't really realized it at the time -- and still didn't, somewhat). "If you were my younger triangle… line? Sister/brother?" Bill frowned for a moment, then shrugged it off. "Either way, I would have to teach you the Equations, as a start," he told her.
It was Miz's turn to blink at him. "Equations?" she asked him. "Equations for what?"
"For making more Shapes and more Lines," he told her, settling into place, and making a triangle shape out of his hands at her for a moment, before dropping them, too.
Miz blinked at him. ...Right, he'd been a triangle, and… in the other dimension that they'd just visited with the younkle twins in it, Bill had said he'd been geometry in a really two-dimensional dimension -- breadth, depth, and time, with no height at all? (She was still kind of trying to wrap her head around that one…)
"Um," said Miz. "What would be the stuff past the start?" She was a little curious now, and if that was 'the start', then there should be something else too other than just the start. Right?
"The circle-Rules for the pro-cess of pro-creation," Bill told her. "When you're supposed to use the Equations and not, and who-with. Not that there's anybody around to enforce them anymore," Bill told her with an odd chittery-chuckle, propping his chin up on his fist again.
Miz thought over this. "You know both sets of equations?" she asked him.
"Both sets?" Bill repeated, confused for a moment. "--No, no, no," he told her, "There's only one set of Equations! One!"
...Okay, that made his first comment about it not mattering if she was a shape or a line for what he'd have to tell her make a little more sense, but now she was even more confused about… "If there's only one set of equations," she asked, "Couldn't somebody have a little shape or line all on their own?"
"...Theoretically, yes," Bill told her. "But they'd have to be very smart, and maybe think up a 'suitable partner' who they'd be solving them with, who was 'there' in their mind and thoughts -- but not really there bodily in-body -- as they solved these equations along with 'them', but not with them," he told her. "And they'd have to know themselves very well, as well," Bill told her next.
"...Okay?" Miz said. "But why would they need… an imaginary second person?" she asked next.
"Because of the way that the circle-Rules for solving those Equations are laid out," Bill told her. "They include starting-instructions, for how to work out the solution. You don't have to be very smart to do it," he told her, "You just need to be willing to put the time and energy and intense concentration into doing it -- a very-intended and intentional intent," he told her. "'One shape and one line measure each other'…" Bill began almost sing-song, "'They take their partner's measure', and 'they take what they know', and then 'they work on those Equations together', and then..." Bill ended his explanation there with a little shrug. "It's… a little like the making of 'hat-idea's?" Bill told her next. "Custom-made, tailored to fit… Everything has its place, and everyone has their own place, too. --There is a place in the family-unit that needs to be filled, and it needs to be filled relative-to that shape and that line that make up that family-unit; circle-Rule." And then Bill shrugged again.
"What if the shape and line already have a child?" Miz asked next. "Do they have to measure the child as part of the family, to figure out the next 'hole' in the family to fill?" That sounded… more than a little off to her. And potentially super-creepy and wrong.
"Measuring is only ever done relative-to the parents," Bill told her. "Children just have to deal with it and make more room for the new child, if it's needed, whatever the outcome finally and with-finality is. The parents decide if there's another section of space that needs filling with yet another child or not, and then they go off and they fill it. And if there's some overlap there…?" Bill shrugged. (Oof. That sounded more than a little bit brutal.)
"But somebody could potentially do it differently, right?" Miz asked next, getting back to her original question, now a bit intrigued. (She was certainly feeling a lot less embarrassed, and more than a little distracted from certain other things too, by the new concepts she was hearing here and now from her brother.) "Like a shape and another shape, or a line and a line?"
"Maybe." But Bill seemed to mostly shrug that off, too. "I haven't solved the Equations myself, so I don't know what the outcome would look like for that, though," Bill told her, "Or if it would even work," he told her next. (He'd need to solve them using the original instructions first, in order to analyze them fully, to know that one. And he'd never had the urge, or felt the need to do that, to run that sort of 'Being-creating' experiment, for a MULTITUDE of reasons.) "I never heard of anyone defying the circle-Rules like that," he let her know. "And I haven't tried to think of any shortcuts for getting the same result, obviously," not having solved that particular set of equations before even once to begin with, not on his own all by his own self or with anyone else.
Bill wasn't capable of forgetting anything, but he honestly hadn't even thought about the existence of those Equations since forever, almost -- not for a very long time. (Honestly, even if he had been inclined to want his own child-spawn for some odd un-weird reason at some point, though -- and he wasn't, hadn't, and never-had to-date -- why in the name of all that was terrible and chaotic would he even consider bringing another being into being-existent to begin with, before he'd ended up ending all of the horrible Rules that made everything SO VERY WRONG, long before he'd finished FIXING EVERYTHING that he needed to fix?!?)
(--That would just be rude, and wrong, and a terribly-horrible idea!)
"So…" Miz thought this over. "You solve some equations, and then you have another person? What if you solve them accidentally?" she asked next.
"That's not how it works," Bill told her, blinking. "You have to have the intent to do it."
"Huh?" Miz was thoroughly confused at this point.
Bill looked a little frustrated, and clicked and clacked under his breath a bit to himself, thinking. (Apparently, this was something that seemed obvious to him?) After awhile, he nodded to himself and finally said, "Everything in my old home dimension was math and ideas. Yes? Ideas, and math. Everything, and everyone," Bill told her. "When I made hat-ideas out of ideas and described them with math, I made a thing. I had to try and make it, to make it," he told her. "If I wanted to time-lock the store-space, I had to think it, and want to do it, to concentrate and do it -- intent," he told her next. "If someone can think ideas-of-things into being a thing, if they know how to do it and try hard enough, intending to think ideas into being as-intended, why wouldn't they be able to think beings into being, the same way?" he posed to her, as if it was obvious. Then Bill sighed and said, "The problem is… when somebody gets the math wrong."
Miz blinked. "Gets the math wrong?" she asked. That… didn't sound good, the way Bill had put it...
Bill nodded, looking dour. "You solve for X -- plug in your parameters and go -- and you think the answer is going to be 3? But it's actually -27 instead, oops! --Better get rid of the mess, start over and try again!" Bill let out a huff. "Solve for a shape, a line -- maybe you aren't sure, you just know you really want one, and you want them to be the best, the greatest something-and-everything-ever, one that will be just perfect -- those are your parameters, the things that you think are important, defined by you, relative to you and your own thought-processes and those of the other about-to-be-a-parent, and… -- uh oh, you got an equilateral Triangle, not the isosceles that you'd really wanted to keep, instead. Oops! Well, that's taken care of easily enough, though. You'll never have to see them again," Bill told her. "Probably. --OH!" Bill clapped his hands together suddenly, startling Miz. "But maybe you want an equilateral Triangle, and try to set up the Equations just-so, so you'll be sure to solve your way to a solution for getting yourselves a really smart one of those, right? Thinking that's what you'll get?" Bill told her next. "But, oh left, you got an irregular Triangle instead! ...Guess you must have 'screwed up' your math. Oops..." And Bill trailed off almost darkly.
Miz pulled in a soft breath at this.
But then Bill raised his head, smiled at her, and seemed to shake it off.
"I used to solve hat-ideas all wrong on purpose, you know," he said to her next, apropos for nothing. "Just for fun." (Really, he was just trying to shift the subject to the next-closest thing, by backing up to what he'd said before, right at the start -- when he'd brought up the hat-ideas he'd created -- to then turn away from what he'd just said, just a little -- and move forward in a different direction instead, to talk about the creation of things instead of beings, again. Because the creation of things was much more fun to talk about!)
"--I never sold any of them, the ones I did wrong," Bill told her (confided in her, really), "I never even tried; I knew no-one else would want them. Because of the Rules. --But I liked them, though; I did." He let out a sigh. "It's why I like silly straws," he told her, "They're just so silly!" He grinned. But then the grin dimmed down to an older and smaller, old and small smile. "They remind me of some of my first hat-ideas and ideas-for-hats, all backwards and squiggly and crazy and wrong. Folding in on themselves, and all the rest. But they were still hats, though," he told her. "They were still hats." (And it was fine, right? That he'd liked them? That he liked them still? --He'd decided so, long ago, and he hadn't changed his mind yet…)
(He would never change his mind. He was Mind. And he would never change. NEVER. --He'd decided that long ago, too. In order to save his brother, he needed to not change, to still and always remain himself, so that he'd never forget, never stop, he'd never stop--)
"Nothing is perfect. It becomes perfect when you love it for what it is." Miz quoted with a small smile. "I'm sure your hats were amazing."
"I--" Bill blinked at her, staring. Then he took in a slow breath. "...I could show you," he said next. "...If you want." He bobbed his torso side-to-side in place slightly, as his arms lay a bit slack at his sides, hands in his lap.
"I would love to see your hats!" Miz told him eagerly.
Bill blinked, and blinked again. "Well. ...Well"
And then Bill slowly raised a hand.
And he drew a righteous tangle of lines a bit in front of him. He started with an equilateral triangle in front of him in another trailing color of light...
...and when he was done, that triangle had a larger crazy-looking squiggle of light all over the place around it (...but never actually intersecting the triangle anywhere; the squiggle always and only intersected itself…) and...
...when Bill got done, he dropped his hand. And the entire mess of color and light hung there in the air, in the space in the middle of the attic, and Bill sat there and stared at Miz in place, staying quite still as he did so; his torso was no longer bobbing-swaying from side to side at all now, not rven the least little bit (though it had as he'd worked). His eyes were slightly wide as he looked through the mess at, and to her, his sister, here. Watching. And waiting.
And...
"It's beautiful…" Miz breathed, staring at it. She reached out tentatively at it, tracing one of the glowing lines with a finger.
And Bill slowly started to smile.
"It's okay," he told her, "You can touch it." It wasn't a Shape or a Line, after all, and he completely understood the urge. (Besides, even if it had been a Being, she was gentle-enough anyway to do that safely, still. He knew that from her hugs…)
Miz placed her hand on the lines, careful and soft. She trailed her finger along it, following the lines as they curved around and into each other.
"It's smooth," she noted. And just a bit warm. Not slippery-smooth, though. Just smooth. And the edges weren't rounded, exactly, but they also were not sharp...
"That was my first one," Bill told her, as he went from staring at her, to staring at the thing that he'd drawn and made and thought-up himself. "I liked it almost the best."
"Because it was your first." Miz told him, smiling softly. Gosh, she didn't even remember what her own first art had been...
*Yes," Bill told her. "But also because I went all-out with it," he told her as he continued to stare at it, as he told her... "I didn't know any better back then, that I shouldn't do it this way; that no-one else would want it."
"I would want it." Miz told him seriously. It was so pretty. The lines going in and around and out of each other. It reminded her of the scribbles she and her sister used to draw on the walls when they were children, reminded her of one particular scribble that she used to trace with her eyes every night as she fell asleep.
Bill blinked at her again, then… blushed a bit, and brightened up (and straightened up a bit in place) even more.
"--You can have it, if you want," Bill told her. "You saw it, and you like it; I don't mind if you have it, too. --You watched the order I drew it in, too, right? Where, and how quickly? --The order is important, too," he told her, "I meant it to be. I didn't know the rules for that yet, either," he told her, his light blush deepening slightly without him realizing it, just a little bit more.
Miz giggled. "You're really proud of it, aren't you?"
"Yes!" Bill told her. "It was my very first hat, you know!" he told her quite proudly, puffing out his chest a little bit.
Then Bill looked at her, and he looked at the hat-idea (that wasn't-quite one of those exactly, since it was all three-dimensional and upright-currently and made out of magic instead of 'weirdness' after all, but... it was still…).
And then Bill reached out, and fiddled with it slightly, and then...
...he seemed to undraw and then redraw it, by sliding his finger back and forth in the air just below it. Did that a few times, and then seemed to adjust the speed of it a bit. 'Re-ran' it for a moment, watching it unfold and then fold itself, back to the start.
And then Bill took the little dot of light that seemed to be hanging in the air there, plucked it away from where it was with thumb and finger, and held it, and held it out, as he reached out and gently took Miz's hand with his other hand so lightly...
...and then placed it all down and onto her palm, ever so gently.
"This one is yours now," he told her, as he pulled his hands away from her again. "You can rerun it, fold and unfold it, and, if you want to…" He looked up at her slightly, almost peeking up at her, "You could take it off the triangle base, expand it and wear it a bit. If you wanted to, sometime."
Miz looked down at the hat and then did just that. She let it unfold before her, and tried plucking the 'squiggle' hat away from the triangle it had drawn itself around (it came away easily). She raised it up to place on her head. It somehow fit in place, like a very odd sort of flower crown, woven out of light. She smiled up at Bill and he made a slight chittering noise in surprise but also glee, as he looked up at where she had placed it.
Then he looked back down at her.
"Snappy dresser," he told her with a nod, eyes bright. "You make that look good."
"Thank you." Miz told him before reaching for a hug.
Bill smiled, and hugged her back.
And then, after he had pulled away from her, he grinned down at her and told her enthusiastically (while still blushing a little bit pink), "Let me show you the rest of my collection!"
Miz nodded eagerly, thrilled to be able to see Bill's art. She was so proud of him, his work, his art. Her sisters had been artists too, they'd all been. And she had loved everything that they'd made, kept all their old drawings, even when Zeon said to just throw it away because she'd been embarrassed at her old work, but she'd kept them anyway, in a little folder hidden away...
Bill grinned, and he turned to sit a little more next to her, his side next to her side, a little closer, as he raised his hand up again. And there was a bright and happy smile on his face, as he began to draw--
---
...and when Bill was done showing off all of his saved up, and never-before-seen by anyone else wonders of work…
Bill made like a good big brother, and went downstairs to the living room post-haste to give his little sister some 'alone time' for her masturbating routine. (He also promised to wait for her downstairs, and not go back upstairs again until she came downstairs first, to tell him when she was done.)
(He also temporarily locked everyone else out of the attic's access rights for the duration just in case -- up to and including Stanley -- and made sure the full two-way soundproofing was in place for her, without her even needing to ask. Because he was a good brother!)
Miz laid back down on the pillow and carefully took the hat off so it wouldn't get crushed, back on its 'holding triangle' once again. ...Well, that was enlightening. Pun not intended. She wasn't feeling embarrassed anymore, and it made her feel better to know that her brother wouldn't judge her for having physical needs, for wanting to have physical needs. She looked up at the ceiling and projected a mirror so she could see herself. She stared at herself and then aged up her form into the older looking one, watching herself swell and grow and shit, she really was horny...
Well… she had the room all to herself… and Bill had soundproofed it...
Heavy blush in place, she made her clothes vanish and got right into it.
---
Miz refused to take the hat off for the next few days. (It fit juuuuust inside her bracelet's anti-magic field, so she could even wear the original one downstairs and around the Shack! But she had the whole thing stored in the holographic matrix of her bodysuit, too. --All of the ones that Bill had shown her, really.) Mabel had complimented it. Heck, she sort of wanted one too ("It's so pretty!") and Bill had looked so proud and so bashful at the same time.
...But Bill hadn't said anything to his Shooting Star about how he had been the one to make it. He didn't tell her that he'd made it; he didn't offer to make one for her, too...
Bill had smiled, but he'd stayed silent, and said not one single word to Mabel about it -- or to any of the others, whether any of them said anything encouraging and nice about it or not.
Bill didn't say anything at all about it.
Bill didn't say anything about it at all.
And Miz noticed this, too.
---