-It’s very confusing- Part 1

---

The next morning at breakfast, during which Miz cooked a large spiced vegetable medley -- with chopped nuts, corn, carrots, potatoes and some alien plants that Dipper didn't recognize - for her brother and herself, Dipper and Mabel grilled their grunkles about everything that happened during that week that they'd missed out on, while the portal had been closed before opening again.

"You really sent Bill to high school?!" Dipper gasped out He'd thought he must've misunderstood Great-Uncle Ford the night before -- they'd all been tired, and Dipper couldn't imagine him being okay with Bill doing that, when he didn't even want the triangle demon going into town! Stan chuckled while Bill made an annoyed chittering sound in between bites of his breakfast.

"No, seriously," Dipper said next, super-worried about this. "Why would you even do that?" he asked his grunkle and great-uncle both. "--How many people died?"

"None," Bill said. "Zero people died from my attending that school. --No thanks to Sixer, here," Bill muttered out next, shooting Ford a rather flat look (and Ford looked away, not quite wincing).

"Seriously?" Dipper said skeptically, while Mabel was giving Bill an intense look -- which the dream demon was avidly avoiding, while also trying not to look like he was avoiding it at the same time.

"Bill and Miz both attended," Stan told them both. "Had a bet with Bill about whether he could survive the week without killing anybody, and he did. Miz had a mission to make sure the younger set didn't try skipping out on school again; she managed that too." Speaking of which... "--Good job there, Miz."

Both the twins looked over at Bill and Miz now, as Bill started patting-petting Miz on the head (for Stanley, to go with the 'good job', since Miz was out of arm's reach of Stanley right then). Because, seriously? Two demons at a human high school? Together? At the same time?!? Dipper didn't know whether to laugh or cry at the idea.

Miz giggled. "It was fun! And~" She leaned in to grin at Mabel. "Despite their utter fear of him, I actually noticed a few of the kids there… crushing on Bill," she mock-whispered.

Mabel gasped at this news and then started making a sound only dogs should be able to hear.

Bill, for his part, sputtered at this news and straightened up where he was sitting in shock. "WHAT?!"

Miz nodded sagely, having overheard ALL sorts of thoughts coming out from the kids around the school (as well as some of the both terrified AND intrigued expressions people made when looking at Bill, whom they all thought was a teenage girl). "There were some girls who thought he was 'really cool' after he beat up Crampelter -- that guy preyed on lots of girls at the school -- and a few guys who were like 'I want to be stepped on by her'--" Miz was cut off by Bill stuffing one of the pancakes Stan had made for everyone into her mouth.

Bill's right left eye was twitching as he pulled his hand back away from his sister, having achieved said 'shut up for a minute' objective via temporary rolled-up pancake insertion into said little sister's mouth. The older demon's shoulders came up and his eyes narrowed in annoyance at the thought that there had been humans getting squirmy feelings for him. UGH.

Stan was muffling his laughter, holding his mug of coffee up to hide it a bit. Mabel was still squealing, while her brother looked a little green.

...Ford also looked a little horrified by this apparent fact.

Miz chewed and swallowed the pancake and pouted at Bill. "What? I think it was kinda cute."

"No! It's STUPID!" Bill told her. "None of them are my type!" he snarled out. "I was giving none of those human 'sex signals' out," Bill told her. "No pheromones, no open-display posture, no gesticulations, no verbal social cues, NONE. --That should NOT have happened," the triangle demon grumbled out, before shoving another forkful of vegetables into his mouth, and crunching down hard on them, while making an annoyed and rather ugly chittering sound. (He prided himself on effective communication, and the idea that maybe he hadn't been… He was going to have to review his bodysuit's sensor history for this now, to see what Miz might be referring to, and he was NOT looking forward to doing so.)

Miz shrugged. "From what I've seen, people tend to get crushes on other people whether or not the other party is interested…" she deliberately did not give Dipper a teasing look about Wendy. "Well, it was a fun week. I haven't been in school for a really long time. It was so weird to be back." She frowned a little. "A lot of guys were crushing on me too. But it was less of a crush and more lust. I think the only guy who was legitimately crushing on me was Ben." Huh. Actually, she should go ask Mary how Ben was doing. He seemed like a very sweet boy.

Stan raised an eyebrow at her. "So, you're okay with this Ben guy crushing on you?" Weird, he'd thought she was oblivious to that sort of thing, what with her friend having told her he loved her not registering at all.

Miz shrugged. "I was in the form of a very voluptuous young woman. And I was friendly with him. It wasn't a serious crush, he was just happy, and a little terrified, that someone like me was paying attention to him." she pointed out. Dipper frowned. "Wait, voluptu-what?"

And Miz activated her cybersuit's hologram function to make herself appear to be in her older form.

...and Dipper went bright red and slapped his hands over his eyes. "AAAAAAH!! TURN BACK! TURN BACK!!"

Miz dismissed the hologram with a confused look. "Huh? Wasn't the reaction I was expecting?" She wondered if maybe Dipper was afraid of sudden shapeshifting. He might have trauma from that shapeshifter after all...

Meanwhile, on Dipper's end, his poor teenaged hormones were rearing their ugly heads and the boy just wanted to crawl into a hole. Those curves! This was so messed up!

On the other hand, Mabel was nodding sagely. "Ooooooooh. O~kay. --Girl, I can see why that Ben guy was so smitten!" she said with utter seriousness and a head nod.

Stan's snort was badly hidden behind a bite of pancake. Ford was rubbing his face with a hand. He rather understood what problem his grand-nephew was going through just then, and felt a great sympathy for him.

Luckily, the breakfast conversation was quickly steered away from that, moving from high school shenanigans on to what the twin's favorite grunkles had been doing during the day themselves. (--Spoiler alert: it had mostly been making money and fixing up the boat.)

Ford talked about the kitchen he'd wired up by moving the solar panels from some of Miz's machines to the deck (and Miz's machines to the lower deck themselves), and rediverting their power to be able to run and charge other things -- such as the bank of fuel cells added to the lower deck as well, which he'd made from a few other things he'd found at some of the hardware stores and also the town dump. Stan himself talked up the long list of things he'd done to earn more money from the suckers along the boardwalk, and explained the Con they'd pulled off with Dragon-Miz.

The four of them all carefully avoided talking about all the… other stuff that had happened, though -- the sorts of things that would have upset the twins (and had upset the two older ones). Miz didn't bring up Carla; Ford didn't bring up the science project. Stan didn't bring up anything about who was thrown out of the house and who wasn't, or any and all of the rest of it. Bill kept quiet on all of that, and then some.

Eventually, they all finished talking their way through the (sanitized version of the) vents that the niblings had missed, and also their respective breakfasts. Miz helped with clean up -- claiming that she'd used the plates and pans for cooking, so she should clean them. Stan saw no problem with that; he usually let the kid help out, and he didn't mind having Miz help him with it this time, instead.

As soon as she'd finished (quickly) cleaning up 'her' plates and such from breakfast, though -- and Stan finished up the rest -- Miz almost immediately asked (before anyone had really left the kitchen table), "Can we play Dungeons, Dungeons, And More Dungeons today?"

Stan chuckled at this. "Well, if the niblings want to play that old nerd game with you... I don't see why not." The kid had managed to do that with the niblings a couple times by this point without any major issues, so he didn't see why Miz not being able to do the same.

Ford twitched, having thought that Stan hadn't been serious about that when he'd brought it up in the other dimension. Mabel looked at Miz in surprise and the beginnings of excitement (but then hesitated and glanced over at Bill), and Dipper...

Dipper lit up with a smile that rivalled a Pines family fireworks display on a summertime 'family fun day'!

...at least, he did for the first second there. Then he got over the initial happy rush of someone expressing interest in his favorite game of all time, and frowned at Miz suspiciously. When he realized she didn't seem to be making fun of or joking at him, he glanced over at Bill for a moment, and then looked over at Ford with a complicated expression.

"I can DM. I do that with my friends back home," Miz said as she bounced in place, capturing Dipper's attention again.

That left Dipper wincing though, and immediately looking to Great-Uncle Ford again, worried at what his reaction might be.

"--Absolutely not," Ford said quellingly. "You are not DMing anything!" he told the man-eating demon. Because if there was one thing Ford was absolutely certain of, it was that giving a demon free-rein at doing anything that left them 'in charge' of anyone -- let alone with clearly and openly more power than you did over the situation at hand -- was an absolute and unmitigated disaster--

--Stan shot Ford a long look. "Miz ain't Bill, Ford," Stan told his brother. "And having Dipper tryin' to roll up a bunch of new characters and other stuff so she can play with everybody in some kinda last-minute one-off game is gonna be a huge hassle, takin' forever," because he knew that Dipper didn't have anything that he'd consider 'workable' ready right now for something like that, given how the kid played the game, right then, "And sidetrack the whole thing he's got going on there, with that 'current campaign' or whatever," Stan told Ford, which his brother ought to already know, if he thought about it for two seconds. Besides…

"If she's offering to DM, I'm thinking she already has something or another already worked up that might be usable," because most nerds didn't do that unless they did. Stan looked over at Miz for a second. "And I'm thinkin' that maybe I'd like to see how she does it," he said next, waving his hand at his brother. (He'd learned a lot about the kid by watching how he'd played the thing with the lot of them. ...And he was pretty sure that Dipper and Mabel had, too.)

Ford went a little stiff, and a little still.

"...That is not a good idea, Stan," Ford said slowly.

"Nah," Stan said. "I'm thinkin' it might be a great idea," he told his brother, "Just so long as we get a couple things straight first, and all the ground rules agreed-on before anybody goes jumpin' into anything feet-first," Stan told him with a chuckle, before turning back to Miz. "Will there be any brain eating in this game? 'Cause I'm thinkin' we'd all like our brains to stay where we usually keep 'em," he half-joked. Stan was relatively sure Miz wouldn't do anything like that, but, y'know, better safe with demons than sorry.

Miz shook her head. "It'll just be a board game. No shrinking players down and making them actually fight the monsters or anything like that," she assured him. (Yeah, guess she'd looked into them all enough with that 'magic eye' of hers to have seen what all had happened last summer then. Good to know.) Stan nodded.

"Yeah, good. --Better check your rulesets and variations, though," Stan said. "Make sure everybody's on the same page, and all that."

Ford looked like he wanted to protest but Stan gave him a flat look. "Ford, it's just a nerd game. In fact, it's your nerd game. There's no reason not to let the kids go off and have a little fun," Stan told him next, and Ford bristled.

"You shouldn't ever play a game with a demon, there are always stakes involved--" Ford reiterated, yet again.

"--and we can play it with the same stakes we do with the kid, which is for information," Stan told him next, as he shuffled over to the fridge to pull out a soda. "That sound good to you, Miz?" he asked, then waited for a nod out of her before turning back to Ford. "I want to see how she plays it. And I'm thinking the kids might, too. --We're gonna work this all out, before anybody agrees to it or even throws the first dice roll," Stan told his brother next. Just the same as they had with the kid.

"You can sit this out if you don't want to play," Miz told him. She didn't look very happy as she said it, though. "Do you have to always assume everything I do is automatically evil?" she complained. "I could be collecting seashells on the beach and you'd be wondering what nefarious plots I'm planning with them!" and Ford had to stifle a twitch, because he had been eyeing up the pile of seashells and rocks that Miz had slowly been adding to over the last week in an out of the way corner of the boat's deck. Said shells had been placed inside her own Hat along with that sandcastle before they'd left, too. Ford didn't know where they were now, though; he hadn't seen them since.

--And of course he was going to 'sit this one out', because: "I don't play games with demons!" Ford objected to her tersely. "And you are a demon, who claims to be an alternate version of Bill Cipher," Ford said, pointing at said local triangle demon, "Fully admitting that you are trying to be more like him yourself, attempting to emulate both his thoughts and his behavior! --Why would you think I would ever want to 'play a game' with you?!?!" the older scientist ground out at her, not pleased with Miz in the least.

Miz actually looked a little hurt by this admission. Dimensional counterpart or not, they weren't the same entity. "I just wanted to play DD&MD…" she said quietly. "And just because I'm a Bill Cipher, doesn't mean we're exactly the same. You're nothing like that younger Ford after all…"

"Ford--" Stan said quickly, because he knew this was gonna get ugly real fast now. (Bill glanced between them both.)

He was too late.

Ford felt a bolt of outrage course through him, and he shot to his feet. ('Shit', thought Stan.) "You have told all of us yourself that you are trying to be more like the triangle demon who tormented me for years--"

"Because 'Bill Cipher' has a role in the world. How do you think Gravity Falls even formed?" Miz fisted her hands in her shirt. (The kids started to lean away from them both.) "There are things I need to do to ensure the plot moves along properly as it should…"

--And Miz stopped and jolted in place as Ford slammed his hands down onto the table in front of him, looking absolutely irate. "--There is NO ROLE in this world -- or any other -- for a being of MASS DESTRUCTION and sheer CHAOS to have to play!" he yelled out at her. "Not least of which was just proven by the very existence of the dimension that we just exited last night, a dimension that had no Bill Cipher in it, EVER!!" Ford told her next, adding insult to injury -- and meaning to. (Bill's eyes narrowed at him, down to almost to the thinnest of slits, and his shoulders shifted and jaw worked for a moment… before settling down only slightly again, which Dipper and Mabel both noticed and had them starting to look alarmed...)

"I don't plan to torment my Ford once I have one! As long as I can get things to happen as Ax and Time Baby want, I'm free to use my own methods to get there…" Miz trembled. "And I don't want to hurt anyone if I can avoid it. But Dad told me that--"

"--STOP," Bill said abruptly, and Miz looked startled and stopped talking. Bill had his hands steepled in front of him. (Dipper and Mabel quickly exchanged sideways glances.)

"Miz, one minute," Bill told his sister (as that Stanford bristled right in front of him), then Bill turned his head slightly, to look over at-- "Stanley," he said next, "Is this lack of consensus progressing in the same way as the first loud discussion that Stanford had with my little sister at dinner the first night she was staying with us as my sister here?" Bill said cooly.

'...Well, shit,' Stan thought, internally impressed, because he hadn't thought the demon-kid would have caught that one on his own. (Kid also looked like he was practically biting his tongue on something he really wanted to say, too. This was definitely new.)

Externally, Stan had a bit of a frowning scowl going on -- that he was directing at Ford and Miz, not the kid -- as he said, "Yeah, kid. This fight that's going on here, tossin' a whole bunch of mental attacks back and forth during the whole thing, is sure goin' downhill pretty quickly." (And hey, 'nice try' at trying to call this whole thing something that it wasn't. Stan wasn't about to let that one fly with the kid, there. Trying to call it a 'lack of consensus' or just a 'loud discussion' -- like hell. But as for the rest of it… the kid wasn't wrong.) "And I'm thinkin' you're not all that sure how to not start arguing with her and makin' stuff all that much worse, other than tryin' to call a 'time out' and maybe trying something else that might go a little better this time maybe, yeah?"

Bill nodded once.

The kids were looking to Ford, holding hands under the table, and they began slowly relaxing as they watched Ford taking breath after heaving breath, hands still palms-down on the table, beginning to regulate his breathing as he went and calm himself down.

Miz didn't look much happier than Ford, though she was looking down at her hands gripping the bottom of her shirt as she worked to calm down, herself.

"You lookin' for a better solution from me, here?" Stan said to the kid, and added almost leadingly, "Or, y'know, just some other option?"

The kid nodded once. "Yes, either," the kid said to him as calmly as Stan had ever heard him, while slowly lifting a hand to place it on top of Miz's head, a light but unmoving touch, as if to help her calm down and stay calm, too.

...Okay. (Hell, it was nice to have some backup this time, here.) "Well, Miz listens to 'stop's better from you than she does from me, and Ford listens to 'em better from me than almost anybody else, so that's what we'll start with here, yeah?" Bill gave him a long flat look, then nodded once. Good. Great.

Stan turned to Ford. "Ford, are you wanting to play this game with her? --Yes or no, just that."

"No," Ford said tersely. He didn't look at all happy at having to have repeated himself like this.

Bill glanced over at Miz. "Do you want to play with that Stanford?" he asked her.

Miz shook her head slowly. "No…" though she sounded disappointed as she said it.

"Ford, are you gonna try and stop her from playing your nerdy game with other people?" Stan asked him next.

"It's not my--" Ford stopped and took in a deep breath. "It isn't wise--" Ford began again.

"--Not what I asked," Stan said almost warningly, giving Ford a long look. "Are you gonna try and stop her from playing it with somebody else, any more than you've tried to stop the kid from doing it?"

"...No," Ford ground out eventually at them all, sounding like this was some huge concession (and possibly some sort of terrible failing) on his part.

...Yeah, he'd thought the context might help a little there. "Good," said Stan. "Then we don't got a problem, here, when it comes to this nerdy game that one of you is wanting to play with some other people, here," Stan said heavily. "Ford don't wanna play; Miz don't want him playing with her. Everything else? --You two can table the rest of that for some other yelling match, some other time," or, y'know, never. Never would be good for that one. (Stan knew that his brother wasn't going to get through to the dragon-lady on this one; not like this. He'd told her the same thing straight-out twice, and she didn't seem to be hearing him, or what he was trying to say. So…)

"Ok…" Miz took a deep breath and breathed out slowly. Then she turned away from Ford and clapped her hands together, as if using that as a segway, and looked over at the kids. "Okay, so who's going to be playing? I can get the character sheets drawn up, unless you already have your own? It doesn't matter what level you are, I can adjust the difficulty of the encounters for it."

Dipper looked over at Stan. The old man gave him a lopsided smile. "It's fine. Just one of those single, one-session games should be alright, right?"

"...Standard rules?" Dipper said slowly. "Or…"

"We'll all go over the rules first, sure," Stan said, trying to keep down the smile.

Dipper's eyebrows went up, and Mabel let out a little giggle. Bill was decidedly poker-faced over this, and Ford was left blinking and sending Stan a quick glance.

"I'm good on anything between version 3.5 to the current edition," Miz told them. "The older editions are too broken to play," what with having the Players calculate the weight of their inventory and adding that to their speed and agility modifiers, and height above sea level being a factor in their ability to breathe...

"Uh huh," Stan said, giving absolutely nothing away. "Well, that'll probably work out, y'know, in a way. --Dipper, maybe grab your newest copy of that manual or whatever for her to check, make sure it's all the same stuff from her 'set, too," Stan told him.

Dippr blinked at his grunkle. Well, if Grunkle Stan thought it would be safe, and that just going by the standard ruleset would be okay…

Dipper bit his lip, decidedly did not look at Bill at all (standard ruleset, right), and sent Great-Uncle Ford a somewhat-apologetic look, before nodding at his Grunkle and running upstairs to get one of his character sheets, his DDNMD box with all the standard starting materials (game mat, player's rulebook, basic miniature figurines…), and all of his dice, pretty much everything -- except for his own binders and all the graph paper that made up his own campaign material. (His new one wasn't done yet and he definitely didn't want to spoil things for people.)

"So Dipper's playing, who else?" Miz asked.

Mabel raised her hand. "Will there be a hot elf?" she asked.

Miz giggled. "Well… there miiiight be a vampire~" and Mabel lit up and immediately agreed to play too.

Miz looked delighted.

"Would you like me to play, oh little sister of mine?" Bill asked her himself. At that, Ford shot Bill a look that Miz didn't quite catch, and when Miz happily and enthusiastically said "Yes!!" ...

...Ford let out a sigh, pinched the bridge of his nose, and intoned, "I'll be watching the game, as usual." He'd done it before because he'd had to keep an eye on Bill and what he was doing, with Dipper DM'ing and Bill liable to do… well… the sort of acting out that Ford had come to expect out of the demon at every turn. (Except in those games that Bill was 'just' a player in, and Dipper was 'in charge'…)

This time was going to be different, though. The demon was going to be DM'ing this time, and Miz… with Bill playing? Stan was setting them all up for…

Ford sent Stan another look, because he damn well hoped his brother knew what he was doing here…

Miz raised an eyebrow. "You're all free to watch," she said simply. "So where can I set up the board?"

"Might as well do it out in the living room, here," Stan said, gesturing at the 'family room' behind them, beyond the kitchen area. "Not like this should be running past dinnertime."

Ford sent Stan a glance as he watched his brother decidedly not say anything one way or the other about whether he might potentially play the game himself.

Dipper came back downstairs with his DDNMD box, and plonked it down in the middle of the living room floor, while Miz glanced over at Mabel, as she got up from her own chair to go sit down next to her brother. "Do you have a character?" Miz asked. "I can help you write up one. What Class do you wanna play as?"

Mabel considered it. "Welllllll~" Mabel said. "This is a new one-time game, right? So we should probably just make new ones up, just for this! So I guess, maybe~… a Healer?"

Miz nodded. "Well, in a campaign with undead, it's always good to have a Healer."

"--I know, right!" Mabel grinned out at her as she shot out of her chair and headed for the living room, and Miz blinked at how quickly the teenager took off.

The rest of them got up and all made their way to the living room, as Miz talked Mabel through her character creation. "I'm gonna be bumping everyone up to level 5 so it'd be more fun to play. You'll have more skills and HP." Mabel nodded at that while Dipper changed up his own character sheet, leveling it up to 5. "So stats, a Healer generally needs high Wisdom and Charisma…" Miz said as she wrote up Mabel's character.

Mabel giggled. "Charisma!"

"--Hey," Stan said. "Check the nerd-book first. Make sure the rules are the same," he reminded Miz, as Dipper pulled out the handbook and dutifully held it out to the demon-girl.

A quick scan and a nod later, Miz handed the book back to Dipper. "It's the same, but the names of things changed around, I've got the correct terms for this dimension's version of the game memorized now."

Ford sent Bill another look, as Bill folded his legs under himself and sat down next to Mabel on the floor, on the side opposite from where Miz was currently sitting -- effectively putting himself between Mabel and Dipper for the moment.

Bill ignored Ford's look at this choice of his, and instead reached out and took a blank character sheet from Dipper -- who eyed him as he handed it over, along with a pencil -- then looked down and away while seeming to be very interested in his own character sheet after that.

Turning back to Mabel, Miz grinned. "Don't underestimate Charisma! It's the stat for being able to talk to people, it affects the Persuasion skills!" She pointed at Stan: "High Charisma and Wisdom with points in Strength." Miz moved her hand to point at Ford: "High Dexterity and Intelligence, terrible at Wisdom saves. Wisdom is the stat you use to defend yourself from Psychic damage." Ford twitched at what was effectively a verbal slap-in-the-face insult, while Stan looked over at his brother. Huh. That was… an interesting way to put it. The kid had said similar before, but the kid had left out all the extra explanation that Miz was tossing out there along with it here.

"Maybe keep the insults to a minimum, yeah Miz?" Stan told her. "Unless you want to piss off the kids to the point that they don't wanna play with you anymore, 'cause you can't stop takin' potshots at Ford long enough to actually DM the nerdy game right," Stan noted, and pretended not to see the look that Ford was giving him for it. (--Yeah, he'd said it to Sixer, sure. But Sixer wasn't the only person there who he'd thought maybe needed to hear it…)

Miz blinked. "I wasn't trying to…" then she paused and tilted her head. "Ah, okay, sorry. I won't talk about his Stats."

"Believe me, you don't need to. I've already outlined that to him, long-since," Bill told her, as he finished putting the finishing touches on his own preferred-choice of character, levelled up to Level 5 -- what an absolute steal, not having to even start out at the bottom with a simple Level 1 character, HAHA!

Miz continued to gently steer Mabel through character creation, explaining the special skills, how her Armor Class worked and how to calculate damage. Mabel knew a lot of this from when Dipper had DM'ed with her and Grunkle Stan and Bill now, using the actual rules as opposed to just rolling to save him from Probabilator. She wished that they could just grab Dipper's laptop and go with the Genjitsu variant that Bill had coded up for them, though, because that let them just use straight up english text and descriptions for stuff when casting spells -- just like they'd been able to do when the infinity dice had gone off and made everything weirdly real. Bill's online website-program thing had also let her get a set of character stats and items just from answering a bunch of questions on 'gamelike scenarios' and letting Dipper ask them in a fun way and then type in her answers for her, but…

...the newer DL (Dungeon's League) ruleset variant that Miz was talking about wasn't so bad for this character creation stuff, either -- it streamlined everything down to some really simple math!

Dipper had always complained about the standard DL variant though, and had refused to ever play it since it took all the really fun math out of everything -- which was really one of the biggest reasons why he wanted to play it, besides the cool adventures!

...which was also why Mabel had never played the game with him before last summer. The DL variant also no longer allowed Players to be rewarded Gold from finding treasure in the game, either; instead, everyone in the party, regardless of how much or how little they did during the game, would all receive the same amount of Gold and Experience points at the end of said game. (...which Grunkle Stan hadn't liked himself, when he'd first heard of it.)

And in the DL variant, Magic Items were only available via purchase with Treasure Points that they got rewarded after each session, to keep things from getting 'too convoluted' during the game as they played. So even if they found a magic item in the game, they couldn't actually own it until they purchased it with Treasure Points. (...which Grunkle Stan also would've objected to, if they'd ever gotten that far in the explanation before Bill had chimed in with his own recommendation that first session, with his special 'multiverse variant' that hadn't been introduced to their own dimension yet. It had had a many-to-one translation from 'simple American English' to the right sort of output of math that wasn't any different from the ruleset they'd been using, so Dipper had been able to use the variant for Mabel's and Stan's own stuff, and use the 'normal' math for his and Bill's own.)

...And then to add insult to injury, multiple people in the party could purchase any magic item found over the course of the game at the end of the game, which Dipper insisted was 'stupid' since 'in the story of the game' there should only be ONE of that item: the one their party had found. (Apparently this rule in the 'make it super-easy to play' variant had been put in place to keep the party from fighting over an item that multiple people might want, since everyone could have one if they 'bought' it. --But it broke immersion and didn't make any sense Lore-wise!)

At the unhappy look on Dipper's face at Miz telling them she wanted to use the DL variant for her DM'ing session, Miz told them that she would be only using the newer DL ruleset for the combat and encounters while keeping the old Loot system, because she found it unfair as well. ("They made it so I wasn't allowed to keep my Windvane Spear because it was a 'story' item that was only allowed for the campaign it came with! Like, how stupid is that? As if my character would just give it up after finishing off that campaign! And I even bought a customized figurine of my character with the spear!")

Once they'd all finished establishing what all the rules would be -- a mix of those from the standard rulebook that pretty much anybody human would be playing in that dimension -- Miz pressed her finger to the game board and said, "I'm going to use a visual overlay; it's easier than drawing and erasing the map everytime we change locations."

Mabel blinked at the tiny little village that grew out of the board. It expanded until they could see all the miniature buildings, marketplace and even tiny little figures walking around. "Whoa, how'd you do that!" Mabel gasped out, while Dipper and Ford flinched back.

"No weirdness--!!" Dipper complained quickly before Ford could even get a word out.

Miz's tech suit was glowing faintly. "They're just holograms! Not magic or weirdness at all!" she huffed. "Pyronica gets bored when there's no visual stimulus, and I had a human DM once who would bring in a whole set of blocks to build the setting and dungeons as well--"

"It's fine, kid," Stan told her with a smile. "You're just wanting to make this more fun, right?" He glanced at the board. Huh. He bet the kid would've set this up for Dipper, too, if he'd had his suit all made up at the time; probably a good thing though, that the kid hadn't. "As long as no one gets shrunk down or has their brain eaten or is gonna get hurt or killed or anything, we should be good," Stan told her. "--And the only thing anybody wins out of this besides playing the game is any info they get while they're playing. Sound good?"

Miz nodded, "That's fine." (Ford glared at Stan but didn't comment. He was not looking forward to seeing what he was expecting to see happen during this game -- not in the least.)

Bill shifted in place where he was sitting on the floor and looked over the board, as he handed his character sheet over to Miz. (He didn't need a character sheet for his own calculations, since he was perfectly capable of keeping track of all his stats in his own Mind. That said, Miz would need a copy of it for herself to start with, to ensure a lack of… 'cheating', as one might put it, so-to-speak.)

Bill blinked as he stared at the area where Miz had 'put down' the figures she'd made for this, where Mabel and Dipper's characters were already standing. Dipper was playing a Halfling Druid and Mabel was an Elven Healer. And Bill waited to see if…

...and his own character appeared there shortly, looking just as he'd described him -- a female Human Sorcerer-Bard, standing at the entrance of the town alongside the other two characters. Miz quickly explained the setup: that they were travellers who had just gotten into town.

Stan did a little more back-and-forth with Miz on the do's and don'ts of the rules and the way the game was going to be played -- for Ford's own benefit and own peace of mind, mainly -- and then they all settled in for the game, with Stan watching the action going on from the sidelines too. There weren't really any more surprises before they began.

By the time they got started, everybody was expecting what Miz was going to be doing to handle the gameplay -- for instance, instead of describing the scene like a normal DDNMD game DM'er would have had to do, Miz was instead simply changing the image being projected on the ground as their characters moved around the board, and then let the players decide what they wanted to do. They were also able to make Perception or Investigation rolls to reveal more of the map as they went.

(What none of the Pines were all that sure about was what Bill might pull during the session, because…)

Dipper, more used to DMing than playing, accidentally stole a chicken almost from the get-go, leading to their entire party having to run away and out into the woods to get away from the authorities. Mabel teased him about it mercilessly, as they all regrouped and had to return to the town in disguise to continue exploring. ("How was I supposed to know the chicken would follow me?!" Dipper complained, frustrated by his Druid's passive Animal Friendship effect apparently Charming the chicken into following him around. Since they'd all been bumped up to level 5, his character had a lot more Skills to keep track of, and Dipper hadn't really gotten used to them all yet.) And Miz made it rather clear from some of the NPC chatter that they'd need to stay in disguise, too -- at least until the heat was finally off of them. Stan found it all pretty funny. (Ford hid his face for a moment, not finding it funny in the least.)

As normal as the town seemed from Miz's environmental descriptions, the party soon realized there was something very wrong going on from her descriptions of the people: the townsfolk were skittish and worried. They were deliberately talking around certain subjects and were clearly hiding something. Ford was already suspicious and Stan had to stop him from speaking up with a whispered "Look, these kind of adventures are supposed to have some kind of mystery going on, yeah?"

It took many Persuasion checks -- most of which were performed by Bill's character with the most success (...as usual...) -- to get one of the villagers to finally tell them what was going on.

"...been two years since that vampire moved in, somewhere on the outskirts of town. We fear for our lives every month when he comes into town and snatches a few people up for his meal! We've never seen any of them again," Miz narrated for a weary looking NPC woman that the party was questioning. No one in town wanted to talk about it, fearful of scaring away merchants and other travellers if the word spread that this town was the personal hunting grounds for a vampire.

"Why haven't you hired a vampire hunter?" Dipper asked. He was a little worried at first, but having the scene zoom in with all the characters walking around made it almost like watching a movie, except he got to interact with the story. That was pretty cool.

"We've tried! But none of the adventurers we've hired have ever returned. And with the vampire abductions continuing to happen, it's pretty clear that they failed," Miz said as she clasped her hands in front of her chest (the motion following through to the NPC woman as well). "I'm afraid I will simply be sending you brave, adventurous heroes all to your deaths just talking to you all about this, but I don't know what else to do! The vampire took my sister and I'm sure she must still be alive! The fact that the vampire only hunts once a month must mean he keeps his victims alive for at least a while!"

The NPC woman gave the Player's characters a pleading look.

"I don't have much to give--" Miz gasped, wiping away an imaginary tear as the hologram of the woman followed her movements with real tears. "But you would have my utmost gratitude! I would give you free room and board within my house whenever you are in town--" Miz made the figure of the NPC woman look around with a pained expression. "And my life savings of 50 gold."

"Of course we will help!" Dipper said firmly. "We don't need your gold."

Bill rolled his eyes and sent Dipper an annoyed look. He was starting to regret having cast that spell that allowed him to share his persuasiveness with all party members. "We don't need your gold in advance," Bill said. "We'll discuss any further payment, such as gold, along with room and board for all three of us supplied by you where you live forever, once we've handled your abduction-by-vampire problem and returned."

Dipper shot Bill an annoyed look right back. "Are we really charging this lady for saving her sister's life?" he hissed.

Bill sent Dipper an even look. "She put so many loopholes in that you should be bleeding out your ears just at hearing it. --I'm being generous by NOT finalizing the terms before we go out there, risking our lives for this thing. We are doing something of value. We should be compensated for doing so, properly."

"Bill--" Dipper began, but he stopped and almost winced as Bill called a 'whisper check' and Mabel rolled a perfect 38 for him.

Bill let out a huff of breath that was almost a sigh, then turned to Dipper and said, rather straightforwardly, "Pine Tree. We don't know what her house is like. We don't know if she'll keep it in good upkeep. We don't have a definition of what 'board' entails -- which could be anything down to a few grains of salt, a piece of moldy bread, no cheese, and dirty pond water to drink. We don't know if she owns any other properties here or elsewhere that might be significantly better than 'her house'. We don't know if she has funds other than her 'life savings'. We don't know how much more gold we could get, if we told her to get the whole town to 'pitch in' for a payment, since this is a whole town problem. We may never be in this town again, and this 'room and board' is only good for her house in town, so if she moves or her house burns down -- if she even has 'a house' instead of 'an inn' or anything else -- then she would be getting off scot-free with nothing at all paid to us for our efforts."

Dipper groaned. "Bill, I don't think it needs to be that exact. And if we get room and board, we don't have to rent out rooms at the local inn if we end up needing to come back here to rest before we finish the session. Most adventurers are gonna be heading out to travel to different towns anyway, so it's not like it's a big deal." he crossed his arms. "It's not about the rewards she gives us, it's about helping her and this town, by getting rid of the vampire that's been killing them."

Bill gave his a slight evil smile. "I never said anything to her about getting rid of the vampire," he told Dipper. "Just the abduction-by-vampire problem. --Leave our options open," Bill said. "We don't know why the vampire is taking people. And we could broker a deal where people go to the vampire voluntarily." The ending 'you idiot' Bill ended that statement with was heavily implied.

Mabel was glad that she'd moved to sit between Bill and her brother after she'd gotten her character straightened out with Miz, before the session had started. "Look, we just want to help the townspeople so they're not being eaten anymore."

"Not necessarily," said Bill. "They don't have any other monster attacks in the area. The vampire is probably taking care of that; they're very territorial. --If the vampire is eating the humans living here, then getting more of them to give less blood per person over time could set up a mutually-beneficial relationship between the town and the vampire. Killing the vampire would just leave a power vacuum for another, worse monster to fill," Bill shrugged off.

Dipper was getting a headache from this. He was smart enough not to object that this was just a single, one-off game, though. He knew by now that when Bill played a character, he played that character within the session seriously -- in 'the long view', as if the session would never end. And that when the dumb dorito chip was being that insistent about something, while knowing full well it was 'just a game', that Bill was trying to make some kind of a point...

(Dipper secretly found it a little admirable and funny that Bill got so into the game sometimes, but it was also still really annoying. Especially when it ended up being the second one of those things, because once he finally figured out whatever point it was that Bill was trying to get at… none of them ever really liked it. Dipper had practically flipped the board a few times over some of the stuff that Bill just kept pulling on them when he was--)

Dipper pulled in a breath, then let it out slowly.

"Mabel?" he said, "What do you think?" Because Mabel had seemed to handle Bill pretty okay whenever she'd been playing while Dipper had been DMing things. And a lot of times, she was able to smooth things over as a player, that Dipper had been about ready to quit over as a DM--

"I think we should talk to the vampire first," Mabel said firmly. "Bill, you can talk vampire, right?"

"Creature Of The Night is one of my language proficiencies, yes," Bill said, and Dipper slapped a palm to his forehead.

"Mabel--" Dipper began.

"--Player-to-player," Bill said, glancing over at Miz. At her nod, Bill then pronounced, "Miz has said within Stanley's and my hearing that she does not like 'murder-hobo' campaigns. I have already given her several suggestions for how to deal with 'murder-hobo' players, which she also does not like," he said next, side-eyeing Dipper with lowered eyelids, and Dipper blinked.

Dipper frowned at Bill. He didn't really know what that term meant, but he could sort-of guess what Bill was trying to say from the rest of it. "--Fine! We'll try talking with the vampire, or whatever!" Dipper said, tossing his hands up in the air. "But when it tries to eat us, I'm saying 'I told you so!'" the teenager frowned at the two of them. Because this was DDNMD, not Gravity Falls! Trying to talk to stuff that was classified as 'monsters' got you nowhere in the game!

Bill nodded once, then turned to Miz and said, "Player-to-player over. Whispering over."

And they continued on with their play.

"I thank thee for agreeing to help," the NPC said before giving the three of them directions to where the townsfolk thought the vampire's lair was. ("To the south of the village, within the mountain valley.") None of them knew the exact location, but it was pretty clear that part of the adventure was the players figuring out where it was.

The party wandered around a bit in the mountains and forests, they came upon a pack of wolves. Mabel's eyes lit up with a "ROLL TO PET THE PUPPY!" and tossed her dice for a 29 (with a +3 for Animal Interaction for a 32) and managed to pet the largest of the wolves.

"No, Mabel, you don't PET them!" Dipper groaned.

Mabel blew a raspberry at him. "Dip-Dop, you're a magic nature guy. Aren't you supposed to tame animals and stuff?"

Dipper frowned. He was starting to regret the druid character type he'd gone along with for the campaign, if he was just going to get razzed on it every chance they all got, for the rest of the afternoon. "Mabel, they don't drop EXP unless we slay them!"

"--EXACTLY! So why not just follow the rules!" Bill said, with a cheerful brightness that was very 'high-energy' for him. "After all, if you want a lot of EXP, you just need to kill EVERYTHING AND EVERYONE you meet! NO QUESTIONS ASKED!! RIGHT?" and that, along with the very-wide grin Bill was giving him over Mabel's head and his tone of voice as he said it, made Dipper pause for a moment, going still.

Miz took this time to speak up, "The DL ruleset grants a set amount of EXP at the end of each session, meaning that killing things or not killing things won't change how much EXP you get. This rule for the DL variant was made so that Players would try out more options in dealing with encounters than simply murder-hoboing their way through the game." She shrugged. "I hate their Loot rules so we're not playing by them, but the EXP rule I like because it places more emphasis on roleplaying instead of combat. That's why I suggested it." Miz looked down at her lap. "Of course, it doesn't stop players from choosing to kill, just because they want to."

Dipper looked over at Miz, staring.

Then he felt something almost akin to shock, as he slowly turned his head to stare back up at Bill again.

And then he looked away and tried not to wince. --Because he'd fallen for it. Again. --Bill had pulled something similar during one of his campaigns before -- not in the specifics, but...

This time, Bill had straight-up told him -- warned him, really -- that Miz liked to play differently as a DM. Bill had gone meta again, taking into account how the players and DM wanted to play, and then playing off of that. When Dipper had been DM'ing, Bill hadn't said it straight-out until Dipper had literally tripped over it and then called him out on it. --And now? Dipper was kicking himself, feeling angry with both the demons, and himself. Because he realized he should've known better.

And what was worse was that this time, they'd both told him straight-out what was going on first, long before Bill had challenged him on it, and Miz had made it absolutely clear herself what she was doing. Killing was a choice in this game, the way Miz was running it, not a requirement to get anywhere.

Dipper shifted in place, feeling uncomfortable. Then he clenched his jaw and glanced away, feeling even less happy than before. Because now? Now he was starting to get an idea of what Bill had meant, when he'd said what he'd said the last time that they'd played, about not feeling challenged by the scenarios Dipper was running...

Dipper had thought Bill had meant the difficulty level of the monster encounters, that they were still too low for him even after Dipper had figured out what was what with the standard rule set basically being broken and cheatable from the start -- which Bill had actually told him straight-out, too, after Dipper had demanded to know how he'd kept on managing to win every single encounter Dipper tossed at him somehow...

...it was why Bill had handed over a non-standard set of rules for creating all the monsters and traps and encounters after having finally gotten called out on all that. It was also why Mabel always rolled the dice for Bill, from there on in. Because Bill was an expert at cheating the rules by the rules, too. And the way Bill had made the rules for DDNMD...

Dipper let out a breath. He was still trying to get over that one. That Bill had made DDNMD, and introduced it to nearly every dimension himself, on purpose. And then wanted to know if Dipper liked the game, if he thought it was fun. (...Dipper knew that he was taking it better than Great-Uncle Ford, but that wasn't saying much. Especially since Great-Uncle Ford was still in denial over it, because Bill had really only heavily implied it, not outright confirmed it. And...)

...It was just one game. He could see how Miz DM'ed it, and see how things went from there. He didn't have to like it, or DM his own games the same way.

He pulled in a slow breath, and let it out again, then shook his head and glanced back up at Bill, and...

Dipper blinked. Because the demon hadn't been smirking at him as he'd been watching him work through all that. He'd just been watching, and smiled just a little at the end there, before turning away.

Confused, Dipper looked over to Great-Uncle Ford, but… he was watching Bill, looking just as stunned and off-put as Dipper felt.

(...Maybe because Great-Uncle Ford set up his games as EXP-grabs, too.)

Dipper frowned a little in uncertainty, then turned back to Miz.

"Okay," he said, biting the bullet and going along with it all for now. (Hey, he was a DM; he knew how this stuff worked when a player actively tried to play counter to a campaign. He didn't want to get his character dropped in a 'magical hole' that came out of nowhere, or worse. That'd leave Mabel playing the game alone with two demons, here, while trying to figure things out.) "So Mabel's petting them now. --Are they all acting tame right now? Or do I need to keep any of them off her, from attacking her," he Dipper asked Miz asked firmly.

Miz rolled a few dice behind her DM screen. "Well, they're kinda confused. Don't see you as a threat, and Mabel's petting roll was high enough that the one she's petting, who happens to be the pack leader, is pleasantly surprised by the comforting touch."

"--I, for one, think that our druid, who has a higher Animal Interaction skill than I do, should roll a Perception check on exactly what types of wolves these are, in this pack," Bill put out there, and Dipper winced, because he'd absolutely hated it when Bill had pulled that during their sessions, giving Mabel rather far too perceptive 'hints' at something he suspected, that had pretty much always been dead on, to Dipper's ever-present and ongoing annoyance as he'd DM'ed...

So Dipper sighed and said, "Perception check on the wolf pack, for classification." At the look Bill sent him, he added, "Each wolf in the pack." Dipper rolled his checks and announced them. He got over 28 for each.

Miz rolled a few more dice, then said, "Three timber wolves; they're normally in forests, but they've been pushed farther out from their usual habitat." Miz rolled one more time. "And one werewolf, which Mabel is currently petting."

Dipper stared, while Bill made a sound that sounded suspiciously like a snicker.

Mabel's eyes lit up. "What, really?!" Mabel said excitedly. She made her character hug the pack leader. "Aww~ I'm sure you're a handsome guy, aren't you~?" she cooed at the wolf.

Bill grinned. Dipper slapped his forehead.

They heard something that sounded suspiciously like a cough out of Grunkle Stan.

"--Wait, can the werewolf one talk? Can we ask him questions?" Mabel asked excitedly, starting to really get into things.

Miz raised an eyebrow. "You can ask him," she said neutrally. Mabel squee'd.

"And the druid can likely translate," Bill added while looking at the ceiling, rather than over at Dipper.

"Okay." Mabel looked back at the board. "Hey mister wolf, my name's Mabel! What's your name?" The image of the large wolf her character was still petting let out a soft "Ruff," while wagging his tail. Mabel turned to Dipper with a pleading look and the teenager rolled his eyes before casting 'Commune with Beasts' on the whole party. Miz flicked her fingers and the wolf's short barks morphed into english.

"It is very nice to meet you. I've had that itch behind my ear for a few days now. Can't reach it with my paws and the full moon isn't for another week!" the werewolf laughed. "My name is Remus."

"It's nice to meet you." Mabel hugged him. "So, um, would you mind answering a few questions?" she asked. Remus seemed to shrug. "Well, if you could scratch a little lower along my neck…" He gave Mabel an honest to god puppy-eyed look. The girl giggled and scratched the wolf as requested, Mabel the player moving her hands in the air in front of herself as her character copied her motions. "Ah yeeees~" Remus closed his eyes with his tongue hanging out. "Thank you kindly, milady."

"Ehehehehe he called me 'milady'!" Mabel almost wished she was shrunk down into the board so she could pet him for real. But she also knew way better than to voice this out loud.

"Do you know anything about any vampires that live in the area?" Bill asked straight-out himself.

"Aye, that guy." Remus grumbled. "Moved in several moons back. Set around claiming this place as his own." He seemed quite miffed at that. "Challenged me to a fight, didn't like my pack being on his 'front lawn' or some nonsense." Remus's ears drooped. "I wasn't at my best, that's the only reason why he won. Jerk," the werewolf huffed out.

"Oh, that's sad." Mabel pouted. "Well, he's been causing a lot of people problems, so we're gonna go find him and give him a stern talking-to! Do you know where his house is?"

Remus shrugged. "He's hidden it with magic. Even my nose can't scent out where the exact location is. But…" The wolf stood up and turned his head to point off into the woods. "It's in that direction. I can tell because there's still the scent of blood and humans from when he captured some villagers from that village nearby a few days ago." Remus huffed. "The only upside to all this is that the vampire hasn't bothered any of our prey. My pack has a smaller hunting ground now, but there are still plenty of deer." Remus butted his head against Mabel's hand. "If you're really going to talk to that guy, be careful. He's strong."

"Strength isn't an issue," Bill said neutrally. "Do you want to come with us? It would be easier to renegotiate your territory boundaries in-the-flesh. We could translate for you, so you could do so while you're in your stronger position."

(Dipper looked over at Bill and blinked, as he realized that the demon was referring to how the wolf-form of the werewolf was actually more powerful in a fight overall. Most players worried about the human form being contagious if their character was scratched, bitten, or otherwise outright cursed by a werewolf with their dying breath, but a vampire as rolled up by the standard ruleset wouldn't have that problem, DL variant or not.)

Miz rolled a few dice behind her screen. Remus shook his head. "No, I have to protect my pack. Can't go running off on them. And I'd rather not take them into the vampire's den thank you very much. But if you can talk to the guy, tell him that I'm perfectly fine with leaving him alone, I just want to have some of my home back."

"Will do. Thank you for your help." Bill made it a point to 'direct' (read: explain that) his character tipped his sorcerer-bard's hat at Remus, before he started walking off in the direction indicated. "You two coming, or what?" Bill half-taunted them over a shoulder.

Mabel gave Remus one last hug before following after him.

Dipper rolled his eyes and almost stayed put out of spite, but then gave up at the look Mabel was giving him and followed along, too.

...And of course the next thing they did was run into some bandits. Miz almost looked apologetic as she shrugged. "I rolled for encounters and you got bandits."

"Drop yer valuables and maybe you'll get away wi' yer lives," the bandit leader sneered at them. His band of four other bandits jeered and brandished their weapons menacingly. The party was going to be surrounded if they didn't back up.

Dipper and Mabel both glanced up at Bill, who looked perfectly composed at this, wondering if he was going to...

"I cast 'Invisible Party', with a three-second delay in activation, and then pull out my staff and cast 'Ghost Call'. And then we run," said Bill.

...okay, guess not. Mabel and Dipper glanced at each other. "We run, too," said Dipper. "--Alongside Bill, and not any faster!" Mabel said with a lit-up smile.