100 -Ask me anything-(Part 1)

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Ford was determined. He had a mission. An important mission that he couldn't afford (he tried not to twitch at the 'HA! a-Ford!' pun that he was sure Bill would have made if he were here) to fail. He'd managed to outrun those rude cops (again) who'd tried to confiscate his guns (again), yelling something about gun control laws that he really found rather rude (wasn't it okay to give children weaponry in this dimension? so why not adults?), and once he'd lost them (again), he'd made his way to this rooftop. And now he was watching the pawnshop like a hawk. A solemn vigil in the night for the sake of protecting the future of the boy within.

He was dedicated. He was vigilant. He was…

...bored as shit.

Ford muffled a yawn as he crouched on the roof. His legs were cramping up and he'd been here for hours and nothing was happening. The younger version of him and Stan had rushed back earlier while clutching… paper of a sort that was usually found around ice cream cones(?), and neither of them had left the house since. He shifted his weight, groaning as his legs creaked. Stakeout was so… boring.

But he wasn't going to leave, of course! He had to keep his eye on the house, stop the young Stan from ruining his life-- … the younger him's life. It was a noble goal. If Ford stopped young Stan from breaking his project in a selfish impulsive act of jealousy teenage emotion, they would both be fine.

And the niblings as they would exist here might never be born.

--All of them would be fine. Stan didn't have a crystal ball to the future; he didn't know that these versions of themselves wouldn't take care of their younger brother. And Ford could perhaps… leave them a note…? Yes, he could leave the young Stan or Ford a note to take care of Shermie once he was older and… and…

Yes. That would be enough. Surely, that would be enough.

He wouldn't waver. He would ensure that at LEAST in this dimension, the younger version of himself wouldn't go down the same terrible path of mediocrity and--. He would fix it.

"An old man with guns spying on two teenage boys. Now doesn't that seem like something that should be stopped?" a high-pitched voice drawled out behind him in a deadpan. Ford twitched and swung around, hand already shooting towards his gun before he saw Miz standing behind him on the roof (along with Stan, the niblings, and…)

"--What are you doing there, Bill?" Ford growled out, because the demon had the gall to ignore him! It had been Miz who had said that, while Bill wasn't even looking at him! Instead, the triangle demon was crouching down and pulling stuff out of… his hat?!

Ford stared. "--How did you get that back?" Ford demanded of Bill next. (And where had it been? Had that demon been lying about having it up until now? --He'd accused Ford of taking it for weeks!) But Bill continued to ignore him, which just served to aggravate him even further. How dare Bill ignore him like… like…

… like Bill didn't care about him. Like he didn't think Ford was worth his attention. Like he was nothing. (And it was that point that Ford's stomach seemed to drop out from under him. --No. No. Stay strong. Don't--) Ford tensed in place and forcibly suppressed the cold chill that ran through him at the thought.

"Right, well, just… straight to Bill again, are you sure you two aren't an ex-couple going through a really bad break up?" Miz asked with an annoyed look.

Ford turned to her and sputtered, "No! Stop saying that!" He'd never done any such thing! They weren't a couple! And Bill had never been his friend!

"Then stop acting like it! You're obsessed with him to the point that it's unhealthy." Miz rolled her eyes. (Ford nearly told the demon off -- he wasn't obsessed, he was being watchful! Bill was a threat! A clear and present danger!!) "I'm not even trying to make fun of you now. You're worrying the kids." Miz thumbed her hand back towards the twins behind him.

Ford finally glanced over at them and then stopped as the two shuffled their feet; they both looked slightly… ill? Dipper was pulling his hat down. "Can you please stop calling them a couple?" Dipper complained at Miz.

"He constantly wants Bill's attention, wants to know where Bill is, what he's doing, who he's talking to…" Miz listed off. "Like some clingy, overbearing, possessive boyfriend…"

Ford bristled at the implication -- because, if anything, Bill was the one who had refused to just leave him alone and--!

"Stop, please!" Mabel said quickly to Miz (which was how Ford knew it had to be far worse than it had sounded even to him -- Mabel was usually the first on board for any potential romance, no matter who it involved), and (thankfully) Miz (finally!!) shut her mouth.

Stanley (the traitor) was holding his expression in that perfectly calm set that made it clear he was doing everything in his power to hold back laughter -- which Ford did not appreciate in the least, because the current situation they were in was hardly amusing!

Meanwhile, Bill was quietly pulling out bedding and food from his hat. They soon had a cozy little campsite set up on this roof top, and Ford's stomach growled at the smell of freshly grilled fish.

Stan narrowed his eyes. "Eat. Now." He pulled Ford over to sit near the (still hot) grill. When Ford opened his mouth to protest, Stan grunted out, "I cooked it; it's fine. And we've all eaten it. --It's fine." He stared at Ford until the man ate the fish.

Ford was glaring at Bill the whole time he ate, as Bill set up various planks with carved-runes around the edges of the roof surrounding them.

"What is he doing?" Ford asked of Stan suspiciously.

"Setting up a temperature thing, invisibility that even those other kids can't see us through; the works," Stan told him easily. "Let him do his thing, Ford; it's fine." But Ford side-eyed the boards uneasily. Was it anything like safe? Or had Bill lied? (Ford wasn't sure that he could trust Stan to always know when Bill was lying anymore. Bill was inside the perimeter with them, though…)

"Bill," Ford demanded. "What are you doing?"

Bill, without looking at him or even slowing down in what he was doing, said, "Setting up a temperature control spell that keeps the inside perimeter between 66 degrees Fahrenheit and 72 degrees Fahrenheit, and an invisibility spell that no-one else including the younger local versions of you can see through, and a sound-canceler that blocks human-made noise from travelling across the perimeter inside to outside, using these boards," as he put down another board and added a small mark to it using his knife. "There's also a stasis spell for the food, on the crate that the food is in," Bill added in a neutral tone of voice, as he stood up and moved over several steps, to put down another board with intent, as if he was placing it exactly where he was putting it for a reason. (...And as far as Ford could tell, Bill had not just lied to him and was not leaving anything out.) Ford frowned as he shifted in place.

"Where'd he get that hat?" Ford asked of Stan next. It both looked familiar, and didn't. (Was it actually Bill's original hat? With the way it was floating above Bill's head, it seemed likely, but… It looked… odd in three dimensions.)

"Kid summoned it. With a spell." Stan's mouth twitched. Ford was confused at Stan's reaction to Bill's successful 'summoning'(?), but he didn't ask. He just watched Bill, as Bill finished what he was doing and sat down (and none of them immediately caught fire or died horribly as whatever spellwork carved into the wood sprung into being, in a succession of odd arcing flashes). Once Bill was done (and the spellwork had gone quiescent again), Ford lowered himself back down into a more stable crouch and went back to watching the pawnshop -- taking another fish to eat as he did so, so that Stan wouldn't complain about him not eating enough.

As he settled back into his watch, he took the time to glance back occasionally, to see the kids (and demons) taking their time fluffing pillows and all in all getting themselves settled in for the night.

Ford sighed deeply, because it may feel like the afternoon for them right now from their current sleep schedule, but the night sky overhead was making them feel sleepy regardless. Perhaps they would end up conforming to the new local time after all. ...Or maybe they were going to be trying to pull an all-nighter here like he was as well. Either way, so Ford could hardly fault their logic; they might as well get comfortable, for whatever they determined to be the correct choice of action moving forward.

(Ford rather wished he had a strong cup of coffee at the moment, though, to help keep him going. Perhaps he should have put some in his flask… or the canteen he usually reserved for water, instead.)

Everyone stared at the pawnshop.

Minutes passed with nothing happening, and single minutes slowly ticked into tens of minutes with nothing happening...

...and Miz became bored quickly, shifting around in her seat and rolling along the blankets she'd laid out on the rooftop, pillows and extra blankets piled around into an odd nest-like shape. She shifted her clothes into an oversized, long sleeve t-shirt that hung down to her knees, one with a giraffe printed on the front. She flopped around, her t-shirt lifting up to reveal bare legs above where her thigh-high socks reached.

Stan looked over and frowned. "Are you wearing anything under there?" he asked, though not really wanting to. (Hey, at least he always wore boxers and a wife beater for full coverage!)

"Just my underwear?" Miz rolled over again as Dipper blushed heavily.

"--Put on some pants!" Dipper complained.

Miz scoffed. "Pajama pants are for squares!" to which Dipper groaned:

"Modesty!"

Miz shrugged. "I mean, I was essentially naked as a dragon and you had no issue with that?" she told him, and Dipper buried his face in his hands, embarrassed by proxy.

Stan sighed. "Hey, even with the kid's temperature stuff, it's still kind of cool out. At least wear pants for that, yeah?" he told Miz.

Stan frowned at Miz's lack of modesty before thinking over that dragon comment, and realizing that the kid had been essentially naked as a triangle himself (a hat and bowtie weren't really enough clothing for a human-being). And then Stan thinking about all those monster-demons of the kid's and what they had and hadn't been wearing when they'd been up against the Shacktron. So if Miz had been living with aliens like Bill's Henchmaniacs (okay, alternative versions of them or whatever) who were all pretty much naked as well… uh…

...Hell. Maybe this was part of the reason why the kid almost always wore loose and light stuff. Kid wasn't used to wearing clothing. Hell, the kid had problems with blankets, even. ...Great. So with the way the demons thought and Miz had just talked, the two of them probably thought the rest of them should just be grateful that the two of them wore any clothes at all, to speak of. (...The kid was wearing that full bodysuit though, and under his regular human clothes even. It made Stan wonder what it was made of, and how light it must be. The kid had told him before that he didn't like blankets because they were heavy and too constraining, and apparently that even included bedsheets.)

At Stan's words, Miz materialized some shorts. Shorts technically weren't pants, but… it was a compromise 'for modesty' and cool (but not cold) weather, for the 'A/C range' the kid had set up for them. (Stan wasn't gonna second-guess that; the range seemed fine to him, and they did have blankets.)

Stan snorted. Well, at least she'd listened to him. "Thanks, Miz," Stan told her. ...Hell, Bill even patted her on the head for him. (These two, Stan swore…)

They all continued watching the pawnshop as Miz arranged a plethora of stuffed animals around her in her 'nest'. Mabel glanced over multiple times until she couldn't contain her curiosity and love of stuffed animals; she got up and made her way over to ask about them. "So, did you pull these from a wormspace thing and another dimension like Bill does?"

"Well, the way my powers work is that I can scan an object or creature and then recreate it on the atomic level. So most of these are copies of the dolls I have back home or rough approximations of my memories of dolls I used to have." Miz held up a huge, pillow-sized Pikachu. Mabel grinned.

"That's pretty cool. What're their names!" Mabel asked, interested.

"There's Sparky, Neon, Jellybean, Poison, Batty, Flip and Zip and their 6 children…" Miz started picking them up and listing them off, the pikachu, a dolphin, a rabbit, a poison dart frog, a bat and a bunch of cats in different colors. "The six kittens are actually dolls that my human grandfather gave me back when I was a child."

Mabel was thoroughly enraptured by them all. And when Ford noticed that, he told Mabel (with no small frustration), "Mabel, you shouldn't talk to her."

"Grunkle Ford, she's got a really cool stuffed animal collection! Just look at all these cute faces!" Mabel said, holding up one of the stuffed animals for him to see.

Ford glanced over at Mabel quickly before refocusing on the pawnshop. "She's tricking you into liking her." She was a demon! (And… probably not another 'Bill Cipher' really, she just… had the same name as him, as Bill had admitted outright -- and she had used to be human? That was hardly the same!)

(And because she remembered once being human… perhaps that was why she was far better at lying than Bill. Yes, that must be it. Obviously. --Which was why Bill had left her to do the storytelling for him, and why Bill himself had avoided saying anything about that fake-brother of his. Bill was probably waiting to do so until he'd finished learning how to lie properly -- from either Stan or this Miz -- before trying to pull off the lie on his own. Ford was on to him!)

"She's going to find a way to use it to hurt you," Ford reiterated to Mabel, speaking to her love of stuffed animals. (Would tearing them apart in front of Mabel make her sad? Alarm her? Or worse? He wouldn't put it past that demon to do so.)

"No, I'm just bored and I wanna play with my dolls." Miz responded, rolling her eyes because YEESH. There was paranoia, and then there was prejudice. "You wouldn't like me when I'm bored."

Stan snorted at this, while Dipper nodded; Dipper did not want to see Miz bored. (He'd heard Bill complain about being bored at mealtimes at the Shack a bunch of times by this point, and all the stuff that Bill came up with to be less bored -- that Grunkle Stan pretty much always ended up vetoing -- was always really weird and kind of nuts. So who knew what Miz would do if she got bored! ...Probably not the chupacabra thing, because they didn't have a goat right now!)

Miz turned back to her dolls. "This is Bushy." She pointed at an orange lion. "He's the king of the animal kingdom. Flip is his daughter and she's actually next in line for the throne. Her husband is from a commoner family--" Miz moved some dolls around to point at them as she explained. Mabel nodded with a grin. This reminded her of the way she'd used to play with her dolls as a child.

Then Mabel felt a little bad because she hadn't done that in a while, being too distracted with boys, her phone, and stuff. It was bad enough she didn't love all her dolls equally. But she hadn't spent time playing with them as much as she used to. She was… growing up.

Miz looked up. "Are you ok?" she asked.

Mabel nodded. "I just got reminded that I'm growing up and don't play with my own dolls like this anymore." She kind of missed playing with them, actually. It was sad.

"You shouldn't let growing up stop you," Miz pointed out. "You can still play with whatever toys you want no matter how old you are."

Mabel gave her a small smile. "You're right. I'm being a big dumb-dumb, aren't I?"

"--You're not dumb," Miz responded before anyone else could. "You're just busy with other things. You're gonna get more responsibilities as you grow up and it'll get between your personal time for things, but that doesn't mean you can't still play when you want to." She hesitated before handing Mabel a small polar bear, shaped like a rectangle. "I got Frosty here when I was 23. I didn't let growing stop me from getting more dolls."

Mabel smiled and squeezed the polar bear. It was really soft. "And you're like what? 600 billion now?" she laughed.

Miz giggled. "I'm like, 50 billion years away from 700 billion, but yeah. And I'm STILL collecting more." A bunch of them were in Ammy's room and her penthouse suite or scattered around the Death Star. She actually wasn't sure how many she had now...

The two girls played with the dolls, making up stories and weird voices for them as they went. Stan sat back on a beanbag chair and smiled at them. ...And wow, was this beanbag chair thing relaxing.

(Miz had Blessed the beanbag chairs, pillows and blankets to help ease aches and pains -- hey, if Stan didn't want direct help for his aches and pains, then indirect was fine, right? Besides, all the bedding type stuff were enchanted for comfort and promoting better health, so it's not like she was helping him specifically…)

It was nice to see Miz could play like a normal kid without adding in a bunch of weirdness. Comforting even. ...The kid could play that way too, if he was told all the rules first (and by that, it really meant all the rules -- like 'don't eat the dolls' and 'axes are not for stealing and beheading the dolls' for doll-playing, knowing the kid...). But so far, the only thing Stan had found (well, that Melody had found out for him, really, but hey, getting her to help babysit was his idea, so he was taking all the credit there!) that the kid seemed to actually be able to handle in the same way as a 'normal' kid withouta lot of extra explanation and junk? Was that FCLORP stuff with Soos and Melody. ...Which was, y'know, geeky as heck.

Stan noticed Bill was watching Miz and Mabel with a peaceful expression, same as he had been on the deck of the ship. Ford was still tense, glancing back now and then with a frown, whenever one of the girls giggled.

Really, the whole thing made Stan kind of wonder… because hell, the kid seemed to get more enjoyment out of watching Miz play than actually...

"Kid," Stan asked, "Uh, ya don't have to answer this one, but…" Stan scratched his cheek. "What kinda games did you used to play, way back when you were a little kid?" That got everyone's attention, and Stan could see Ford forcibly holding himself back from turning right around and staring right at Bill for his answer, instead of keeping on staring at the house.

Bill blinked, and turned his head away from his sister and Shooting Star, and towards Stanley instead. "...Why do you want to know," Bill said slowly. He wasn't sure he trusted the question, especially so soon after...

Stan shrugged. "Just curious, really."

The kid eyed him, then after a long pause, said, "Define 'little kid'."

Uhhh… right. Hell. Stan sighed. "I meant the first time you had a body. The whole triangle-triangle thing. 'Little' triangle kid. Before you decided to be a triangle demon, or whatever. --What'd you do for fun, back then?" Stan restated, because yeah, 'games' was probably not the best word to have used with the kid, there.

"...Listened to stories, asked questions," was what the kid handed him. And Stan waited. And waited. ...And then realized the kid wasn't just stuck trying to think of more stuff, he actually wasn't planning on saying...

"...Anything else?" Stan tried. "Maybe when you were a little older?"

"Learning things," the kid offered next. "...Deciphering codes. Reading. Thinking about... some things." Bill paused, before adding, "...Solving equations, sometimes." The kid didn't look as sure about that one, though.

"...Okay. And?" Stan tried again. And the kid just looked at him and blinked. "Anything else? ...Anything," Stan asked the kid.

"No, nothing else," the kid said breezily, and then Bill resituated himself in place, turning his head away from him as he went back to watching Miz and Mabel playing together.

Stan stared. (The hell? That was… it? Sonofa-- Seven things. Kid had only seven things on his list from back when he'd had a brother? And… Stan did three of those with the kid on the daily -- stories, kinda, answering the kid's questions, and the whole learning thing -- and he pushed the kid to do a fourth all the time -- think about new things that the kid hadn't thought about before. And the kid was reading things on his phone now sometimes, too, since he'd gotten ahold of Mabel's phone and 'cloned' it… which Stan had also been running interference for him on, for him to do.)

(Only thing that was missing there was the codes and the equations. ...Then again, half the time when the kid talked about his magic junk…? --Hell. That was it. That was all of it. ...And the kid thought he had "standards" for stuff?! Hell.)

Mabel and Dipper exchanged a glance at this (because they'd been expecting to hear something more crazy, like 'Turn all my enemies' heads into bees! HAHA!' or something…). Miz glanced over at them for a second and twitched. Oh. She liked to do that… was it not funny? She thought about what Kei would say: 'Why bees? Why not potatoes?' the mental Kei laughed. Oh, well… Miz had a feeling that was also an unacceptable answer… ah, what did she do for fun as a human? And in Flatland?

Miz spoke up quietly. "I used to read to, and explain stuff to, my younger siblings." She looked nostalgic. "Will liked to listen to my stories. My Birthers didn't like it though, said I was filling his head with nonsense. Said that Will should be focusing on learning how to take over our father's place in his job, like he was supposed to, because I couldn't…"

Stan frowned a little, thinking that didn't sound so bad. (It also didn't sound really different from the kid, yet. Probably meant the kid's Liam had been the one telling him stories.) Speaking of jobs... "Hey, stuff was different for you 'cause of the whole… y'know, right? What was it like for most other people?" Stan asked, because maybe Miz talking more about 'normal' stuff in her old dimension would get the kid talking more, too? Get some stuff off the kid's chest, and Miz's too? (That had happened a lot, in the attic, since she'd been there.) Because hey, it couldn't have been all bad, right?

Miz thought about it. "Most of the shapes I saw back then weren't allowed to play once they were old enough for school or career training. There was a schedule in place that everyone had to follow. Wake up, eat, work or school, break for lunch, work some more… that kinda thing…" She thought about it some more. "Unless you were female, in which case you just stayed home and took care of the children, birthed more children, cooked, cleaned… females weren't allowed a full education, the higher rank you were, the more schooling you were allowed, but once you were big enough to carry young, you were Paired off with someone and your duty was to take care of the home."

"Your dimension was less restrictive than mine, especially with the learning," the kid seemed to shrug off. "And technically also three-dimensional-plus-time.

Stan stared at the two demons. (...The hell?! Weren't allowed to play? Yeah, Stan had gotten the idea before that the place had been pretty bad, from some of the stuff that Miz had said, but… What Miz had just described was like some kinda... totalitarian Nazi prison camp bullshit -- and the kid had said that was less bad than his dimension had been?! --Stan had been in prison in three different countries and… some of it had been as bad as this shit sounded to him, yeah, but it had been prison, not… And females weren't allowed a full education?! What? What kinda 14'th century bullshit was that? --Just, the whole learning being restricted thing? That… oh. Oh hell. Learning and rules. No wonder the kid--)

Miz sighed. "It was really boring. All the stuff I did for fun were things I remembered from my human life. There wasn't much that Shapes seemed to do in their spare time. I saw some elderly shapes walk around and sit in the park. That seemed to be it? The really young shapes would chase each other around like Tag..."

"--What about music?" Stan brought up suddenly, as it occurred to him. Kid played piano, and he liked it. He had to have learned it somewhere sometime. (Stan didn't really want to ask what happened if somebody broke the rules, because he was pretty sure he already knew that one. Stan did not want the kid ranting about that in front of the niblings.)

Miz winced. "My Flatland didn't have music. I kept trying to introduce it but everyone told me to shut up and stop being weird." She groaned. "Thank Spud the rest of the multiverse had music… I would have gone NUTS." She paused. "More nuts." She amended.

Mabel gasped, clutching the doll she was holding to her chest. "You didn't have music? --That's horrible!"

"The sliding scale of insanity is not musical!" the kid put out there brightly.

"Right…" Stan said. He was really not liking how the kid hadn't really commented on the whole 'not having music' thing. Did that mean the kid had or hadn't had it? Stan pulled in a breath. "...Uh, kid. The whole piano thing?" he tried asking again, more directly.

...And the kid just stared at him.

"The piano is a human construction," the kid said. "I learned how to play the piano from humans."

Miz raised her hand. "I introduced the idea of pianos to an alien race and let them invent it, so that I could learn to play it." And many, MANY other instruments, too.

Stan rubbed a hand across his face. Okay. Okay. Maybe he should start over. Miz had said kids had been able to play… for awhile, and the kid had only brought up a few things that the kid knew he'd liked. Didn't mean there wasn't more stuff that maybe the kid just hadn't tried out back then, to know whether he'd like it or not, right? "Kid. Was there, uh…" Stan looked around and his gaze fell on the dolls. "Anything like playing with dolls that was a thing in your old dimension?" Stan tried, because the kid and Miz did seem to have a bunch of junk in common.

"No," said Bill.

Okay, so-- Wait. Stan blinked at him. "Nothing like dolls."

"Nothing like dolls, yes," Bill repeated.

Stan pulled in a breath. "Nothing like dolls, even for girls?" Stan tried again.

"Nothing like dolls, even for lines of any age, yes," Bill told him. Stan blinked at the kid.

"Nothing that was anything like that, for either of you to carry around with you, at all?" Stan said incredulously. What kind of dimension didn't have dolls? Or action figures? Or… or something?

Miz perked up. "There were accessories! Hats and bows and stuff. That was fun. Ornamentation was the closest thing I found to a 'hobby' that Flatlanders had." She'd only gotten the top hat though, should have tried to get more clothes… that was the only real way to be unique, even if all you had to choose from was black and white.

"Okay," said Stan. That seemed like a thing. Kid had accessorized as a triangle demon, so… "They have accessories in your old dimension way back when, kid?"

And the kid… made an odd uncomfortable sort of face.

"It… wasn't…" The kid's eyes weren't tracking right, and he looked frustrated. "--like that," the kid said abruptly, before adding, "My dimension was more consistent than hers, accessories weren't," the kid made an odd sort of two-handed gesture, "--because 'accessories' are irregular-looking and irregular was-- was--" The kid was looking more and more agitated.

"Kid…" Stan said slowly, and Stan was getting a not so great feeling when the kid abruptly shifted his gaze directly to him and sat up.

And then the kid brought both hands up to his own right eye and peered through them and said, "I was a triangle!" and… his hands were forming a triangle in front of his eye. "Two-dimensions-plus-time, not three--" The kid huffed out a breath and dropped his hands. "I was math! A triangle. Geometry!" the kid said, and Stan...

...He got it, but… Stan also didn't get it at all.

"What did you have instead of accessories?" Stan tried, and the kid grimaced, but he also got a look in his eyes that Stan recognized, and Stan braced himself for the word barrage -- because he'd just found a pathway forward for the kid to explain.

"--The idea of accessories," was what the kid said next, looking wild-eyed and almost relieved after he'd said it, gotten it out there. "It-- I sold the idea of them! --You didn't wear them," the kid tried to explain, waving his hands about, "They-- they weren't physical? --They weren't. You-- you had to explain them to other-- other--"

"Kid, breathe," Stan told him. "You… sold people ideas?" That was… what the hell. (Wasn't that kind of like the kid's… deals? Because he'd had to sell somebody on the idea of a deal first, then…)

"--YES!" the kid said, and he looked even more relieved as he said it for some reason. "I-- I made them, and I sold them--! And when I-- I finished the transaction, the selling-them, then I gave them the ideas, and they-- the idea belonged to them, then!" the kid said, as Stan frowned trying to follow this. "They could tell other-- other shapes and lines, you see? So they could… could see it? If they wanted to tell? --But it was still theirs!" Bill said. "It stayed theirs. The-- the others couldn't make-it-take-it theirs away from them that way, they couldn't give it away like I could, there's a trick to it-- you-- you see-- you have to UNDERSTAND the-- the concept of a-hat entirely--" Bill said, bobbing side-to-side slightly and staring off into the distance.

(Stan felt like he was barely holding onto the concept himself, here. Everything sounded too abstract. How was somebody supposed to sell a hat if it wasn't a physical thing? And if it was… a description of a hat, maybe? Why couldn't somebody else just memorize the description and repeat it?)

"I-- I didn't just think them up? --'Make' is closer, it wasn't just 'thinking' things up, it was more-- more-- more of a making-it, a-- a--" The kid made another odd hand motion.

(...There was something wrong with the kid, right now, Stan realized. He wasn't acting… right. --Not that the kid ever acted right, but the kid... It was like his eyes were too… shallow, somehow? Like his thinking wasn't really… reaching far enough? ...It wasn't like the kid wasn't thinking straight, exactly, either, because the kid sort of was right now? But it was more like the kid was thinking… too straight, somehow. And then kept making these… jarring sideways-swivels in the way he was thinkin', or somethin'...)

"And-- and I-- I could think-and-make them up, over and over again, and I could give them away… --But-you-don't-EVER-give-any-thing-away-for-free-you-have-to-SELL-it-MAKE-it-WORTH-some-thing," the kid said next, in another mental-verbal sideways-swivel, and it sent a chill down Stan's spine, because that hadn't sounded like something the kid had come up with himself, with the way he'd just rattled that off. It sounded more like something the kid had recited like he'd memorized it, like he'd never really thought about it much before -- not enough to really challenge the idea completely...

And then the not-so-great feeling Stan was feeling twisted slightly, as the kid rocked forward again and refocused on him again, and the kid was grinning like he was about to tell him a secret.

"...But?" Stan said slowly, because he had a feeling that the kid was waiting for a 'but?'...

"But I DIDN'T ALWAYS sell them!" the kid told him, "Sometimes… sometimes I GAVE THEM AWAY, for free!" the kid said, then chittered out something a bit in glee. Because… that was really the only word Stan had to describe the kid just then. His shoulders moved up and down slightly, he was grinning with his eyes crinkled up… the kid looked like he'd gotten away with something somehow, in doing that.

"...Broke a rule, huh?" Stan said slowly, watching the kid. (So, maybe the kid had challenged it, at least once?)

"Yes! No," the kid said, still smiling. "Not a circle-Rule," the kid made a face, "But a different one, yes!" Then the kid bobbed from side to side again. "--I gave one to a friend! It was fun! --She wanted a hat," Bill told him, "But she never told anybody she was wearing it! So nobody ever knew she was wearing it! Except us! Just her, and me! It was a SECRET," the kid told him, putting his chin on his hands, steepled out in front of him. "And we GOT AWAY WITH IT, too!"

"...Uh huh," said Stan, eyebrows raised. "Well... good for you, kid. Kinda… rebellious of ya, there." And that was really all Stan could think of to say. It just felt like some... petty, kid getting back at the adults kinda thing. A kind of invisible hat you had to describe to somebody else, for them to see it? It really sounded like a kid's game, played on the rest of the adults in the room. It left Stan feeling almost bemused, and maybe almost a little… sad. Because this whole thing just sounded...

"Yes!" the kid enthused, throwing up his hands. "I did that, too! --Joined the Rebellion," the kid told him. "I BLACKMAILED my way in." The kid was grinning.

Miz whooped, "Me TOO!", about the blackmailing and joining her own world's rebellion thing. Stan blinked as he looked at them both.

"...This friend of yours, that you gave the hat to," Stan asked of Bill, resting his elbows on his knees. "She part of this Rebellion, too?"

"Oh, yes," said the kid, nodding. "She -- HAHA! -- she burned down TWO PLACES, towards the end! --One of them was my shop," the kid said, like it was a throwaway thing, like… he hadn't cared about that.

"Didn't really care about the shop, huh," Stan said, just to see where this went.

"It was stupid," said Bill. He suddenly stood up. "HERE'S THE SHOP!!" the kid said brightly, with a huge fake-false grin stamped in place, as he held out his arms at full-extension and spun in a circle in place, before coming to a stop. "DON'T SELL ANYTHING OUTSIDE OF THIS AREA! Because that's not a shop!! --Lock it down TIGHT when NO-BODY'S SUPPOSED TO BE in it!" the kid said, as he half-fell half-collapsed back down onto his own bean bag chair again, no longer grinning. "SO STUPID," the kid grumbled out.

"...How do you lock down an area?" Stan said slowly. Because that just seemed… kind of nuts.

Bill made a groaning-chittery sort of noise as he flopped back in his chair, and waved a hand at him. "Time-locked it. --Different kind of time-lock. Not like the whole-dimension one I did for yours. Stupid human-American-English-language; not enough words. --Two dimensions, and I swear we understood TIME better than all of you idiots with three," the kid groused out, flinging a hand up and out at the sky. "It's like the third one just all, up-and-DISTRACTS-you-all too much!" the kid said, waving his hand around at nothing at all. "And then you don't get anywhere else!" The kid raised his hand up to his face, to rub at his closed eyes with his fingers, and something about his tone now was… "And people think that two-dimensional people are more stupid than…" the kid trailed off in a quiet mutter.

"...More stupid than what?" Stan asked, as he realized… the kid was back to what passed as normal for him. (The kid was back to thinking the way he usually did; Stan could hear it in the kid's tone. Something about trying to bridge the gap between now and back then had somehow…)

"...Everyone else," was Ford's quiet contribution to the discussion, as he kept on staring at the house, and Stan glanced sideways at him. "Most people, in most dimensions, who know anything at all about other-dimensional travel…" Ford continued on quietly, sounding almost subdued.

"Oh yes," Bill said, and suddenly his tone was just dripping with scorn and malice. "I'M JUST A STUPID TRIANGLE, AREN'T I, STANFORD."

Stan saw his brother flinch at his side, his back tense.

"HAHA," said the kid, not even looking at any of them. "It just MAKES you WONDER, DOESN'T IT, Stanford?" Stan clenched his jaw as his brother tried to suppress a shudder from where he sat next to him, as the 'just a triangle' said, "Because if I'M the STUPID one, here, then WHAT DOES THAT MAKE Y--"

"Stop," Stan said, cutting the kid off. "Nobody here thinks you're stupid, kid," Stan ground out.

There was a moment's pause. "That Stanford--"

"--Let it go, kid," Stan told him. "Don't matter what my brother thinks about ya, I'll set the kids straight if I have to, along with anybody else who thinks otherwise. Get it?"

Bill remained silent.

"Okay. Good talk," Stan said. "Learned a lot. ...Don't know how you go and make it so you can't hand off a hat-idea to a somebody-else, but--"

"--You want me to tell you?" the kid said, and that left Stan blinking.

"What? Uh…" Stan didn't really get it. "Why?"

"You made a hat for me," the kid said, and Stan blinked because, yeah, he had, that witch's kind of hat that he'd made out of black triangular cloth pieces and junk (because the kid had kept complaining and complaining about not having his hat, and so he'd thought that maybe he could replace the thing and just make the kid calm down) that the kid had gotten all excited about when he'd first given it to him, for no good reason that he could… see... (Oh hell...)

"Don't you want to know how to give them away properly to anyone?" the kid asked him next, cocking his head at him.

"...Sure, kid," Stan said slowly. "Why don't you tell me the, uh, trick to it, then. If you want." And the kid sat up straight and grinned at him.

"I want!" the kid said brightly. He clapped his hands together. "So! --The secret," the kid said, "and the trick is… you make them CUSTOM."

...Right. The kid had said something like that before. He'd asked him, hell, multiple times if Stan had made it just for him. (And then immediately shown it off to Melody after Stan had gotten done convincing him that, yeah, he had. The kid had worn it all day on that one single day, and hadn't really worn it since -- or complained about not having his top hat on him anymore -- which had had Stan thinking that having a hat had been enough until the summoning thing about an hour ago. The kid had just squirrelled his new custom-made all-triangles triangular hat away from them all for safekeeping... except for when the kid had worn it again that one time, for that FCLORP session the kid had NPC'd for Melody.)

So, apparently 'custom' was a thing for the kid, and the kid actually wanted to share something? Sure. Stan was all for getting the kid some more practice at sharing shit with other people that the kid thought was important. (He wasn't about to turn anything like that down, especially right now, when the kid had said before that the 'lesson' was 'him not oversharing'. Besides, hell, if Stan did that, the kid would probably think he was devaluing it, and the kid himself, again.)

So, sure. "Okay, kid. How do you do that for… idea-hats," Stan asked.

"Idea-hats! HAHA! Yes!" The kid grinned. "--You know the measure of the person you're making it for!" the kid told him. "And so, when you make the idea of it for them… you make it in their size," the kid said, "To match them."

"Okay…" Stan said leadingly. "Still not seein' how that's any different from a physically-there hat being too big or too small on anybody's head." Honestly, he wasn't really seeing it at all.

"Yes!" the kid said next. "The idea of the hat is relative to the size and measure of the shape! So they can describe it, as it fits them! But if anybody ELSE tries to describe it…" the kid grinned a little wider. "It doesn't fit them, because they are not the same shape or the same size!"

Stan frowned slightly. "Uh. Give me an example, kid? Like… for your head?"

"HM," said the kid. It took him a moment, staring off into the distance.

And then he got an 'aha!' look and took his hat off for a moment, then raised a finger to the center of his face, to point at himself.

"You see me, yes?" Bill asked. Stan nodded slowly. 'Course he did. "Out, five inches from center, between two eyes; towards top… curve." The kid moved his hand straight up, to leave his finger pointing at a spot right above the top of his head. "Following the curve to the left, 30 degrees, line moving outward-" and the kid gave some kind of string of letters and numbers that sounded like an equation, "-of length five inches." And then the kid moved his finger straight to the left five inches… and left a softly-glowing trail of light behind.

The kid did this, and talked his way through what looked like… the outline of his own top hat, when it had been hovering above his head, before.

And then when the kid was all done, he waved it all away, and held up his other hand.

"Different shape!" the kid said, holding up the same finger as before. He started it at the center of his palm. "Out, five inches from center," the kid began, and the rest of it, following the exact same rattled-off set of instructions… turned out to be a freaking mess, a crazy glowing outline that made no sense, and didn't even connect at the ends.

"...Okay," said Stan, struggling to hold down a laugh. "I think I see where you're going with this, kid." Because with that explanation? He really kind of did.

And the kid just grinned.

(He could practically hear the question marks dancing above his brother's head, there, sitting next to him, because his brother had refused to turn the hell around and watch the kid for all of the thirty seconds while he'd been showing them, there.)

Stan stifled a sigh, sat back in his chair, and thought about that one. "...Be a mess above my head, too, right?" he asked the kid as the kid waved away the mess and put his hat back in his head. Stan said it both for the kid, to show that he got it, and his own brother, so his head wouldn't explode tryin' to figure this one all out on his own. (Ford knew what the kid looked like, but hadn't seen what the kid had pointed to next.) "My head's bigger, don't curve as much as yours, looking head-on…"

The kid nodded at him, eyes lighting up.

"Huh," said Stan, as his own brother paused for a moment next to him, then startled next to him a few seconds later. (Stan managed not to laugh.) And then Stan let out a sigh. Because… it kind of was the same thing. Stuff not fitting. Just… a different way of how it was not fitting. ...Huh. --And that'd explain why nobody could steal it, too. If you had to understand the whole thing from the start, what it was supposed to look like from in front, then...

Wait...

Stan looked over at the kid.

"Kid," Stan said slowly. "If you're makin these things in two dimensions… what are the two dimensions?" Because… no matter how Stan tried to turn it around in his brain, he couldn't figure that one out. You needed the third one to check that, what it was supposed to look like, with the moving outline through the other two...

"Breadth and depth," said the kid, and Stan felt Ford startle next to him. ...That also kind of didn't help him, because that wasn't length, width, or height.

"Show me?" Stan asked the kid, and the kid thought for barely a moment, then raised both hands to his own eye-level, flat and fingers splayed outwards, palms-down.

"Breadth," the kid said, and swiveled his whole head, hands included, about his neck, like his head was fixed on a pole. "Depth," the kid said, and he moved his hands forward, then back again, like he was sliding them along a flat table top right in front of his eyes.

(Ford had turned around next to him for this, and he was staring.)

Miz blinked. "Cool, my Flatlands were more like… 2-D people in a 3-D space."

"So was the one I saw that confused me for a long time," the kid said, as he slowly lowered his hands, and Stan almost asked about that one, but he knew better; he'd be chasing the kid down rabbit holes forever unless he got the first concept first. He'd figured out that one within the first hour of the first day.

"What's the third dimension?" Stan asked the kid. (Ford's shoulders went tense. Because for some reason his brother was absolutely freaking incensed with him right now. The hell?)

"Time," the kid said next, "But it's more of a -half, because it was only-forwards not also-backwards for controlled-motion," the kid told him.

"What's the fourth one, then?" Stan asked next. (And hell, now he could practically hear Ford mentally screaming with impatience at him right next to him, for some reason. ...Well, if he didn't want to ask the kid out loud whatever he wanted to himself, that was his problem, not Stan's.)

"Height," said Bill. "A concept which can be approximated by 'hierarchy', but doesn't really fit or match or encompass the WHOLE of the idea, so..." the kid looked annoyed at this.

"How do you figure out what the shape of the idea-hat looks like from… above, then? To check it?" Stan asked him.

To that, the kid gave him an odd look.

"You don't," the kid told him. "There was no 'up'. You measured everything from the sides." He held up both hands again, next to each other -- this time palms-outwards towards him -- and kept the fingers un-splayed this time. And then the kid moved his right hand towards his left, then moved the side of his right hand along the side of his left hand, almost like he was rubbing it, and… then kept on moving it like… it sort of looked like a violin-string motion almost? Moving along and back again, with a different tilt? Except he kept going...

"O-kay…" Stan said. He pinched the bridge of his nose, because this was almost giving him a headache. "Not… not really sure how that works out, kid."

"Close your eyes," the kid said next, and Stan sighed and closed them. "There is a table in front of you."

"No, there isn't," said Stan.

"Pretend," the kid said with exasperation. "That there is a table in front of you. You are eye-level with it." (Dipper and Mabel looked at each other, then closed their eyes for a moment, to try and 'imagine' as well.)

"Okay." Stan didn't really see where the kid was going with this, but… "I see it."

"No, seeing is wrong," the kid told him. "The wrong sensory modality. This is feeling-with-touch," the kid told him. "In seeing, the lines converge, but the breadth does not ACTUALLY change with depth. Think," the kid said. "The table is right in front of you. It is two feet deep, and five feet wide." ...Yeah, okay. "If you reached out with your hands, across the tabletop, where would you feel the table below your hands-and-fingertips? --Forward, back, across, sideways," the kid said. "It's there, the actual physical thing. Your eyes lie to you, say that the thing becomes smaller when it is further away," the kid said. "You can 'see' that, but your touch tells you where it actually is. Straight out. Not getting any smaller."

Okay. Stan could sort of get this, but… "That's not sideways, kid, that's the…"

"There is a plate on the table," the kid said next, and suddenly Stan thought ground when it came to the table, and it came to him in a flash. The kid had needed something solid to start with, to-- "You can move your hands around the plate, but your hands stay on the table. You can use both hands if that's easier," the kid said. "You trace the circumference around it. You know the shape of the plate. You can trace it."

Stan opened his eyes and let out a sigh, scrubbing his hands through his hair. Okay, so... if he was moving through a room in the dark, yeah. Kind of like that. Memorize where stuff was, how large it was, where it was, and try not to hit it. It was sort of a… these things are larger and here, thing, Stan guessed. Sure.

But that still didn't tell him… "How would you explain height to somebody if they only understood breadth and depth?" Stan asked the kid, because he wanted to know how the kid had got there himself, and he wanted the explanation to be something simple that maybe he could get -- because he bet that the way that the kid had first done it had felt hellaciously complicated to the kid -- and when stuff felt complicated to the kid, he liked making it feel complicated to everybody else, too. (Stan had figured out that one pretty quick, as well.)

"Ha," said the kid. He sat up straight.

"Start with breadth, rotate about a point at the center of you," the kid said, doing the head-on-a-pole thing again. "That's a rotation you understand. And you know others rotate about other points, their own points too -- but that doesn't matter so much," the kid told him. "Depth, a line out in front of you." The kid used a finger to trace a line out from the tip of his nose, then back again. "This feels like a point at the surface here," the kid tapped the tip of his nose, "And this line intersects with and at and through the point at the center of you that you usually spin around," the kid told him, then paused.

"Okay, with ya so far, kid," Stan confirmed.

The kid nodded once, then held his hands out in front of him again… weirdly. Stan frowned. The kid's left hand was held out fine, palm-up… but his right arm was contorted across his left arm, elbow practically sticking straight-up in the air, and his right hand was flipped over, palm up and to the right of his left hand, as the kid was facing him; both thumbs were touching each other, and…

"There is a line, that feels like a point, out in front of you," the kid said. "You turn about that," the kid said, and he twisted his hands together, at the same time -- counter-clockwise facing him -- and suddenly both of the kids hands were… still next to each other, but held out normally, palms-down. "And left becomes right and right becomes left--"

"--and everything becomes upside down--" Stan heard his brother choke out, right next to him, so quietly that he almost didn't even hear it... (but why the hell did his brother sound so horrified…?)

("--and backwards and wrong--" Ford mouthed out, unable to get out the rest of the words, feeling completely out of breath as he stared at Bill.)

"And keep turning and turning..." the kid said, after only holding it for a few moments… and now the kid's right hand was held out, palm-up, normally, and it was the kid's left hand and arm that was being held all upside-down and weirdly now. "...aaaaand there you are!" the kid ended, then dropped both his hands back down to his lap.

('--and, and all twisted around on you by the end of it--!!' Ford thought hysterically, feeling dizzy and very wrong himself as he shivered in place.)

Stan stared at this. "Okayyyy," he told the kid. "That seems like it'd be… kind of… jarring." Wasn't really sure how to put that. "Maybe like a fall in a direction you don't expect?" Stan tried, because those were pretty jarring. Slipping on ice sometimes felt like everything was spinning around on you, and kind of a lurch.

"Yes!" said the kid. "Learning something new that completely changes your whole view-of-the-world is-and-should ALWAYS be like that!" the kid said brightly, looking very pleased with him for some reason.

(...And Stan didn't really know what was up with his brother, now. Ford seemed really freaking angry all of a sudden for no damn reason that Stan could see, fists clenched in his lap and practically vibrating with rage.)

"Right. Different 'world view'," heh. Stan got the joke, even if Ford didn't. "Next step, view from above, right?" Stan asked the kid, settling back, and the kid nodded at him enthusiastically, grinning.

(...aaaaand now his brother seemed really confused and taken aback. Hell. They were really gonna have to have another long talk in the basement again after all this, once they were home again, weren't they.)

"Huh," said Stan. "Thanks, kid." The kid looked a little startled, but he smiled again, before settling back into his chair.

(Ford slowly turned back towards the house he was supposed to be watching, fuming. --Damn him. Damn him! This meant that-- Bill had made everything that had ever felt that way like that deliberately-- Damn him!!)

Things got quiet again for awhile after that. Ford sat there, watching the house, still fuming, while Dipper kept sneaking glance after glance back at Bill, and staring down at his own hands occasionally (and wishing he had his journal with him, because then he could've recorded how Bill had just described his own hat).

Stan sat where he was next to his brother, watching the kid and Miz and Mabel, and the kid kept watching his little sister and Mabel playing more with the dolls again (with the occasional odd question from Mabel on whether Bill had sold bows and other stuff).

They all sat where they were (sort-of, mostly) peacefully for a while, watching the Pawn shop or each other, until Miz tilted her head and commented to Bill, "So your family were merchants? Mine were carpenters. I wasn't allowed to learn because my Birthers knew I would be taken away anyway and couldn't be their heir, so they birthed Will to be their son and replace me…"

"All equilateral 'perfect' triangles were merchants; isosceles were laborers and guards--" and the kid seemed to cut himself off right there. Then the kid pulled in a breath, and said, "No carpenters. --No height -- no trees." The kid sighed. "No buildings, just concepts of walls and areas-of-exclusion with time-locks on them sometimes." He sounded half-annoyed again, at nothing in particular.

"Soooo…" Mabel said slowly. "You were… perfect?" She sounded skeptical.

"Sixty degrees that come in threes," the kid said almost sing-song, then said more soberly, "My OUTER sides were." Then he got a slow and almost nasty smile. "My inner-sides have been and always-will-be very, VERY irregular." He sounded almost pleased at this for moment, before his tone soured. "Too bad for them! None of THEM ever cared about trying to measure anyone's inner-sides AT ALL, just the OUTER ones that they could all see and touch. ...Idiots," the kid muttered out at the last, sinking into his beanbag chair further and glaring out at the world.

Miz shrugged. "Same, I was a perfect equilateral on the outside and my insides were all wrong, but in MY Flatland, they could measure my insides. Was a pretty uncomfortable experience…" She grimaced, placing a hand over the space between her legs unconsciously. Stan remembered Miz saying that apparently her 'genitals' had been wrong and shuddered as he realized what that meant for her. They had measured her insides? That was… (He really hoped the kids didn't understand that one.)

Bill frowned a little, remembering what she'd said about parts and slots. "Insides are not inner-sides," Bill said slowly. "Our insides were… homogenous?" He wasn't entirely sure. He'd never actually seen… he'd never killed anyone outright himself in his old dimension, back before it had all destabilized on him, just heard stories about what that was like. "Puncture and die. Break and die. Bend and… usually die, or be demoted. No going back." And most shapes had thought the latter was the worse of the two fates.

"That's a difference I guess? Our Flatlands are similar but not the same, in my world we could break but as long as the damage wasn't too bad, we could heal." Miz shuddered as she remembered the way that Circle had cracked like an egg, his outer shell caving in so… easily.

"No healing," said Bill. "Survive the initial blow or die. Fragile." Very fragile. He smiled though, as he said, "Lines were the most dangerous! But everyone tried not to tell them so. The circles tried to say the opposite. So stupid. HA!"

"That's another difference. Females were Lines in your world. In mine, everyone were Shapes, and male or female was determined by your insides." Miz hugged an elephant doll to herself. "Or you could be BOTH like I was."

"Wait," said Mabel, as she lowered her own doll, "There were no girl triangles?" she asked Bill.

"Girl… triangles?" Bill said, blinking. And blinking again. And blinking...

"Oh boy," Stan said, "Think you broke him again, Mabel," Stan teased. (Wasn't the first time she'd done it, either. Heh.)

"No nooooo, that's-- noooooo," said Bill, shaking his head. His dimension was not like Miz's! "That's not how it--"

"But there could be a two-dimensional dimension with girl triangles, right?" Mabel asked next, curiously. "What would that be like?"

Bill opened his mouth and raised a finger to the sky. ...And then he stopped, almost seeming to grind to a halt as Mabel's question actually registered… and then he sort of let out an odd click...click…...click...… sound.

And then Bill got a completely DISTURBED look on his face.

And sat there frozen in place for awhile.

"Yup, you broke him again," Stan said good-naturedly, because had he called it, or had he called it? Heh. (Ford had turned around again to stare at them all in confusion. ...Then stared at Bill for awhile.)

Then the kid shook his head back and forth abruptly, snapped his mouth shut, and practically glared down at Mabel when he was done.

"YOU--" the kid began, pointing his finger at her. "That's NOT how it--" The kid stopped again, closing his eyes.

And then the kid let out a seriously-strangled but forced-out anyway "HAHAHA!" and slapped that pointing accusatory hand to his own forehead.

"Right! Yes! FINE! FEMALE TRIANGLES! INSTEAD OF LINES! YES! WHY NOT!" the kid said, his voice getting higher pitched with each word that came out of his mouth. "DIDN'T THINK OF THAT BEFORE!!! MAYBE-- HAHA! ...MAYBE EVEN MALE LINES INSTEAD?" the kid managed to get out next, and then the kid paused and looked completely disturbed all over again at what he'd just said (at only reversing what Mabel had just told him), before letting out another stressed-out "HAHAHA!" again.

(Stan let out a sigh. Kid always did that when he got slapped in the face with the fact that he'd been making an assumption about something, treating it like one of those 'absolute rules' that he'd said most 'stupid' people never even thought about crossing, because they didn't even know what violating it looked like. …In other words, that they didn't even know was there, treating it like a wall, when it was just another of the kid's so-called 'lines that you could step over'. ...Eh, the kid would get over it. Never took him long. Maybe a minute at most.)

"NOT ACTUALLY MALE OR FEMALE ANYWAY! 14 BILLION DIFFERENT GENDERS!!l NEVER BOTHERED WITH THE PAPERWORK TO FIGURE IT ALL OUT! COULD BE THE OTHER WAY AROUND ANYWAY! HAHAHAHAHA!!!" Bill ended almost shrilly, laughing with a hand over his eyes and a too-wide grin on his face.

(Stan let out another sigh, watching the kid. Luckily, the kid looked like he was calming down on his own again finally, head tilted back and his breathing slowing. So Stan didn't have to get up to walk over there to sit down next to him, put his hand on the kid's head to help calm him down. Kid usually didn't get that worked up over things, never had before on a 'trip on a rule-line' thing, but there was a first time for everything.)

Dipper was frowning at Bill. The conversation had shifted and it seemed like nobody else had noticed for some reason, but… Miz had said that her birthers (was that like parents? Hadn't Miz mentioned something like that before?) had decided to have another child (Will, her little brother) to replace her? Because she wasn't a perfect triangle on the inside like she was on the outside? Why hadn't Bill jumped all over that? (It was pretty clear that Bill was trying to act supportive to Miz, and Bill didn't like parents to begin with. That was the kind of thing that usually got the stupid dorito ranting about stuff. But Bill hadn't called her parents out on being crazy-horrible. The triangle demon had just started talking about merchants and stuff instead, like it didn't even register. Like… like being replaced was normal?)

Dipper bit his lip before asking, "Miz, did you say your little brother was… supposed to replace you?" The thought of being replaced by a sibling was kind of horrifying to him. (...And was that why they had been Bill and Will, with almost the same name? That just made it even worse! ...Wait, didn't Miz say her birthers hadn't even named her?)

"Yeah. Because they knew they wouldn't be able to have me as their heir, the Council was going to take me away so… I guess they cut their losses and just tried again…" Miz frowned. "At first, I was angry and upset that my supposed 'parents' were so willing to just… write me off. But then I realized that having a brother would mean I wasn't alone anymore."

(As Miz spoke, Bill twitched hard, violently in place -- almost a flinch -- before glancing over at her. Because Miz's situation had been the opposite of his, the roles somewhat reversed, and… was… was that what Liam had felt like? 'At first'? Angry and upset that he… that… that… that couldn't be right… could it?)

(Dipper noticed that Bill had flinched when Miz had said 'angry', but… Bill just looked vaguely uncomfortable at the rest. ...Or indifferent. Dipper glanced over at Mabel…)

Miz continued, "And after he was born, I just…" She trailed off. "He was so small. So… helpless and tiny and cute and…" She wiped at her eyes. "...and I loved him. So much. Our father didn't like me hanging out with Will, but I did it anyway. And after the Council sent guards to 'politely' prevent me from going anywhere near my family, I had to start sneaking out to leave him letters. We only got to talk through letters for a while before…" Miz trailed off. "Well, my dimension burned to the ground and ah… that… yeah…"

"Not your fault," Bill commented on the burning. (Liam had always loved him. Thinking otherwise was stupid. No reason to think about it!) He fully intended to continue reminding her of what he considered to be a fact until she began remembering it regularly herself.

(Dipper and Mabel exchanged a look.)

Miz sighed. "Doesn't mean I don't still feel kinda bad about it." She gripped her doll harder.

"Shouldn't," said Bill. "It's not your fault. The others are to blame, so blame the-others."

"Was it your fault?" Dipper challenged Bill next. (Because Bill was really kind of all over the place, here. But…) Great-Uncle Ford had said that the Oracle had told him...

"No," said Bill. "The fire wasn't my fault. I tried to put it out."

Dipper had been expecting the first denial -- Bill didn't take responsibility for anything that he did that was wrong. Dipper hadn't expected the second part, though.

Miz winced. "I accidentally started the fire…" she paused. "I caught on fire. And that started a chain reaction that caught everything else on fire." (And it was sort of her fault. Miz didn't say it but it was clear from her tone… to the other humans on the roof with her, anyway. But to Bill...)

That… felt almost familiar, the way she had said it that time. Bill stared up at the sky.

"There was fire… and it was blue…" Bill said, and his voice was far away. "I fell… and everything hurt… and…" He grimaced. Everything had felt out of sequence then. Time hadn't been working, progressing, properly. Bill wasn't even entirely sure whether he'd tried to Look for his brother before… no, it had been after he'd fallen, after he'd tried to drag himself back up for the second time and he'd been burning… no, not a second time, he hadn't dragged himself up the first time, he'd been dragged by that Sphere the first time -- he'd only done it himself the next time, just the once...

"--was burning and burning but I didn't die, even though everyone else did. I tried to find survivors, but there was nothing but blue fire everywhere--" Miz was staring off into the distance, eyes faintly Flickering to scenes of a world filled with nothing but blue flames, the ground, the sky, the air itself...

"Oh, I died," said Bill oh so casually, so lost in old memories, that his Mind wasn't currently configured to properly and FULLY parse correctly and in their entirety at the moment, that he wasn't really thinking about who-all was actually listening to him at that particular moment. "But I refused to die. So I didn't die." And to Bill, at that point, when it had happened, it had really been that simple. (Don't die. Refuse to give up. Refuse to let go. Refuse to change. Refuse to let anyone stop you. Refuse to let it END this way. Refuse, refuse, refuse! And GET LIAM BACK!)

"--and then I tried to put it out by eating the fire, which was pretty stupid, looking back, but I wasn't quite in my right mind at the time… and then I exploded and that's how I lost my body…" Miz shuddered. Exploding wasn't the best sensation. She'd gotten used to it by now, being able to trigger them on purpose for a REASON, but that first time had hurt.

"And then I began screaming forever," Bill sighed out, skipping over talking about-- or thinking about what had happened with that other Bill and other Liam, because he hadn't been him, was never going to BE him, so why dwell on it? "And then I put out the fire. Eventually."

Dipper's attention was ping-ponging between the two demons (and why, oh why, hadn't he brought along his journal?!), while Mabel just looked shocked and worried as she listened.

(Ford was stuck on the fact that Bill had just said that he'd died back then, because even though he'd seemed to contradict himself seconds later, he hadn't been lying either time. ...which meant that, to the best of Bill's own knowledge, that had likely been the first time that Bill had died. But the mechanism by which demons came back...)

(...if there was one thing Ford was certain of about demons, it was that demons didn't just get to refuse to die, and come back again almost immediately. The multiverse did NOT work that way.)

(Except that had been exactly what had happened with Bill and the memory gun, hadn't it?)

(So then what was Bill, really?)

"--and by the time I was aware again, a new dimension had been created by my explosion. I was the big bang, apparently." Miz sighed. It was a totally cool concept, but she didn't enjoy being part of it. "And then the AXOLOTL found me, probably wondering about this new dimension that HE didn't create. And he found me."

Bill blinked, then blinked, then shook himself, and seemed to come back to himself again.

"--Which makes NO SENSE!" Bill exclaimed, looking over at her. Then he paused. "But I love you anyway," Bill said easily, and without reservation. "...Also, I still hate that lizard," he huffed out.

Miz grinned. "I love you too. And you can hate the Axolotl all you want." Brother's Ax sounded like a real jerk.

"Yes," said Bill, because of course she loved him, she was his little sister! "And yes." He would continue to hate the stupid lizard. He just wouldn't necessarily kill her piece-of-the-it outright.

"...And your dimension became the Nightmare Realm instead," Dipper said, looking to Bill.

"It destabilized and collapsed a lot and I told that Stanford it was called that right away, so that he did not try to give it one of those STUPID random names of his that he makes up for things that already HAVE perfectly good names for them, yes," Bill told Pine Tree very straightforwardly. (Ford choked upon hearing this. --He didn't just name things randomly!)

That was weird. Dipper frowned as he thought this over. Miz had… exploded inside her dimension and created a new one, while Bill had only sort-of died and then actually been able to stop the fire in his own dimension... and it had imploded instead? Was this some kind of… big bang versus black hole thing?

Miz hummed. "Well I do have my own other dimension that I call the Nightmare Realm, which brother says is probably a collapsed dimension. That's fine, that means it's already broken so I wouldn't break it any more no matter how I mess with it. So I go there whenever I'm overflowing and need to release my pent up energy without hurting anyone." Miz snorted. "Though apparently other people can still be unfortunate enough to end up there from falling through portals." She shrugged. "I found Seb's Ford and Stan there. Good thing too. They would have died if I hadn't found them and brought them to safety."

Dipper sat up straight, eyes wide and hands twitching. "What?!" Was she really being serious there, about this Seb Pines guy? ...Or was this just some made-up story like Great-Uncle Ford had warned them about, just some kind of prank that she would laugh at them about later for believing?

Miz blinked at him. "Oh, well, like I've said before, I helped Sebastian fix his portal so he could get his brothers back, and that somehow got it temporarily connected to MY Nightmare Realm due to some energetic resonance. And since dimensions aren't time synched, even though Sebastian had been working on fixing the portal for 13 years, the Stan and Ford I found had only JUST fallen into the portal when I found them." Miz laughed. "Fordsie was so sleep deprived and paranoid he couldn't even realize I wasn't HIS…" She trailed off before coughing, "...that MY dimensional set wasn't his own dimensional set. Anyway. I took them back home with me and gave them some food and a place to sleep and get their bearings."

Stan, who had been listening to all this without comment, saw how the twins' eyes went wide as they both glanced over at Ford. He watched the kids try to stifle their own reaction at realizing Miz's near-thing there, that they had been talking about Miz having been a triangle, even though none of them had outright said she was a Bill… (and Stan barely held back the snort, because how much did the kids really think they could get away with them on, there? Sayin' things right out in the open like that?)

(The kids were worried because they weren't sure if their great-uncle remembered that Miz was a Bill Cipher or not. He knew what day it was, and he hadn't completely freaked out on deck the night before about multiple Bills being a thing, when Miz had brought it up again in front of them all when Grunkle Stan hadn't been around. But other Bill Ciphers maybe being somewhere else far far away was a heck of a lot different than Miz being one and right there…)

...but Ford wasn't looking at them and made no clear indication that he thought they knew that Miz was a Bill. (Stan, being the closest, was the only one who could see Ford's white-knuckled grip on his knees.) When it didn't seem like Ford was going to comment on what Miz had (nearly or actually) said, the kids seemed to relax and return to the conversation. (Stan stifled a sigh. The kids really must think they were dense. Well, as long as his brother was okay, it was fine, Stan guessed...)

So Stan left the kids and demon-kids to their falling for awhile. He had other things to think about, like what Miz had said a couple minutes earlier about--

And it was about that point, that Stan finally put together something Miz had implied from a couple of her earlier statements just then on the roof, with what Ford himself had said earlier at the boat.

Miz had been replaced by a younger brother, Will, because she hadn't been perfect. Bill was the younger brother, with an older brother, Liam, who wasn't perfect and had been killed for it, while Bill had been… --And then there were their names, that Ford had practically obsessed over. Will. Bill. Liam. And when Stan put all that together what Ford had said earlier, back at the boat -- William -- Stan…

...got an entirely different result than Ford had gotten. And Stan felt cold.

Son of a-- The kid's parents had given him exactly the same name as his older brother Liam, the one who was going to be killed by their government, because Bill had been his replacement? Really? That would be bad enough, if that really turned out to be actually a thing with a kid, but... --Exactly the same name? 'Bill' and 'Liam' were both short for 'William', and-- Hell, had those 'parents' of theirs actually--!?

--Damnit, forget 'no imagination', that was just plain out and out wrong. 'Replacing' him and giving them both the same name. Like it didn't really matter which-- (And then gaslighting the kid like that afterwards, pretending that Liam had never even existed in the first place?! If that was what had actually happened to Bill… no wonder the kid was insane!)

Hell, even he and Ford had been Stanley and Stanford. Their parents had only started calling them both 'Stan' when they were younger, because they'd started calling Ford 'Sixer' like he'd wanted, but kept calling him Lee when he'd wanted to be called Stan. Ford had gone along with it, demanding that everybody call them both 'Stan' (just as Stan had), until nobody had called Stan 'Lee' anymore for at least a month straight -- because that was what brothers did -- but...

Oh, hell no. No, he was not jumpin' off of this cliff alone. (If he was doing this, he was taking Ford with him, damnit.)

(...Along with a goddamned parachute, because he wasn't a goddamn idiot.)

"Kid," Stan said. "How do you say your name in Triangle-speak?" Because he wasn't flipping born yesterday and he felt Ford startle next to him.

The kid eyed him, and let out a chittering-chatter of noise, then stopped.

"That 'William' in English? Or 'Bill'?" Stan said.

The kid opened his mouth and let out a much shorter chittering-whistle of sound, then said, "-is 'Bill'." Then the kid let out the same, much longer chittering-chatter of noise that he'd made before, and said, "-is 'William'."

And Stan, who had been listening intently to what the kid had been saying (first-half had sounded close, but not quite, so he knew he was gonna get this wrong, but…)

Stan made the second-half of the longer sound (not repeating any of what had come before that middle-cutoff point that he'd been able to pick up on from the 'Bill' piece), and then said, "-is Liam?"

Bill gave him a long look. He very slowly sat up, staring holes into Stan's eyes. ...And once Bill was fully-upright where he was sitting... then and only then, Bill made a shorter whistle-chittering of sound, that overlapped just a little bit with what he had done before, for his own name.

Kid was still staring at and into him as Stan said, "Thanks for clearin' that up, kid."

"Your pronunciation is horrible," the kid said flatly, still staring holes in him.

"Yeah, well, ya' haven't taught me Triangle-speak yet," was Stan's response, staring right back at him. Bill blinked. And then the kid started to frown slightly. ...And the kid's pose got just a little less rigid. (Stan wanted to punch the kid's parents. Because Bill had just not-quite (but definitely) confirmed Stan's guess.)

"--How does that translate to 'William'?!" was Ford's own challenge right next to him, and what the hell, Ford--

Miz shrugged. "Well, in my dimension, saying 'William' would be more like-" and then she let out a strange vibrating hum and clicking sound. Miz tilted her head. "Translation is weird."

"'William' means 'resolute protector'," Ford ground out angrily, and Stan glanced over at him. (The hell? Had his brother actually thought that about the kid at some point? Really?)

"Technically," the kid drawled out at them all, "'William' is 'wil' and 'helm'. 'Will, desire'..." the kid smirked, "and 'helmet of protection'. You know..." kid trailed off leadingly, leaning to the side to prop his head up on a fist, and the kid was... pointedly staring at Ford's forehead now. Ford, for some reason, looked absolutely ill as his hand rushed up to touch the center of his forehead, and what the hell was going on there? The kid grinned at him, and Ford looked truly disturbed.

"Well, I was actually translating the letters that make up the word 'William' over into the closest approximation of that in my language and then reading it back out." Miz shrugged. "I wasn't going for the meaning behind the word." Stan could tell that Miz was trying to distract them all away from whatever the hell her brother had just said, and considering that whatever Bill had just said seemed to really upset Ford… Yeah. Stan grimaced.

"Ford, might want to let this one go…" Stan told him quietly, and Ford shivered in place next to him, still staring at the kid.

"What did you do," was what Ford said next to the kid, and Stan felt a chill go down his spine.

"--Kid, do not answer that!" Stan snapped out, and the kid actually looked startled, before glancing between them.

"Stanley, the plate in my head is supposed to--" Ford began in shaking tones, and Stan glanced back at him and realized-- he remembered the thing with the memory gun. Ford had a plate in his head. To--

--keep the memory gun from working, but… he'd said 'his mind wasn't safe' and 'it doesn't work' down in the boat's hold, clutching at his head.

"...What the hell am I missing here?" Stan grumbled out at them all, because damn it, how was he supposed to--?!