-You’re probably wondering- Part 1
----
Miz pressed her ear against the Door. She didn't hear any buzzing. She knocked on the Door carefully without opening it. Waited. No buzzing. The glitch-Bill had finally left. Okay. She turned to her brother and smiled. "Today's the day. Should we go tell Stan?" Bill nodded his head, then shook it from side-to-side. "I'll go talk to him about it. You stay here and wait for me."
"And I'll get the barrier set up," Miz told him. Bill grinned, nodded, and pat-pet her on top of her head affectionately with a small smile. Bill had been showing her how to do things his way, all the ways that he thought were the 'best-worst' (and most efficient) way to do them. Miz didn't use them all, since a few of her own ways worked better for her, but she liked learning from him anyway.
(And Bill, for his part, didn't mind that she liked using her own ways of doing things better. When she said it was easier for her to do it her way, he believed her; he just knew that that might not always be the case -- case in point, things being far more difficult for her to do here -- and he was just happy to give her as many completely different ways as he could think of to do the same thing, in the hope that if she ever found herself in a situation where her usual powers didn't seem to be working for her correctly -- if at all -- that she'd have as many possible other fallbacks to fall back on that at least one of them would end up always-and-still working out for her, still.)
Bill had even taught her his way for fixing those tears in reality. They'd fixed those already -- this morning, in fact. Not that any of the Pines seemed to have remembered that that had been an issue that needed solving...
(...and it was yet another thing that Bill had wanted to show his little sister how to do, given what she'd said about her own singular human-Earth-containing dimension, for multiple reasons. Bill had also made sure to make them all LOOK the same by 'sticking' those sticky-glue remnants in space, hovering above the ground, once he was done with each of them, just in case anybody went looking. He didn't want anyone to be able to tell that anything had been done to them at-a-glance, let alone easily differentiate between the ones that he'd gone and closed up completely, and the few that he'd not gone ahead and already 'fixed' up 'permanently' -- just-and-only merely stabilized in place -- for a reason…)
They already had a picnic blanket and basket set up near the edge of the forest in the 'yard' of the Shack as a reward to themselves for their own not-talked-of-to-others work that they'd just completed that morning, half in and out of a pleasantly-warm ray of sunbeam and otherwise half-covered by the shadows being cast by the trees overhead. A perfect picnic spot as it were.
If they were going through a Door, they'd leave their bodies behind, and with the unicorn barrier around the shack, it'd be a problem to get back inside to their bodies if they left them up in the attic in there (more like, it'd be annoying for both Miz and her brother). So their plan was to have a 'picnic' outside and simply… take a nap. And of course all sorts of protections needed to be in place to protect their discarded bodies from possession or harm. This was what Miz was setting up right now -- a barrier of their own, keyed to keep out anything and anyone who wasn't the two of them.
Meanwhile, Bill went inside to talk to Stanley about what they were going to be attempting to do quite shortly, if everything stayed clear on the Door front before they left.
---
"Miz and I are gonna have a picnic near the woods today," Bill announced to the kitchen as a whole, as he put a kettle of water on the stove for heating to boiling, before he took in a breath and said next: "And we would like to remain undisturbed for the length of said outing."
Stan glanced up from his newspaper from where he was sitting at the table. Yeah, he'd gotten the message loud and clear, there. (Hell, he was surprised that Ford wasn't looking more suspicious about it. Not that he'd been able to talk the kid into a 'code phrase' that was even a little more subtle than that. Crazy triangle. He lowered his paper to look over it at him, then raised it again and said, "How long you think you're gonna be out there?"
(Ford, standing at the counter and nursing a suspiciously not awakening-feeling cup of (likely decaf) coffee, saw the long look that Stan had given the triangle demon, and looked between the two of them suspiciously. Since when did Bill announce when he was going to be spending time with his demonic 'sister' outside, in the general vicinity of the Shack? Let alone anyplace else?)
The kid didn't even seem to have to think about it. "A few hours," he said. ...Yeah, that wasn't surprising. Kid and the dragon-lady had said that this first one was only supposed to be a quick trip out and then back, after looking around at some stuff. So Stan nodded to him and said, as half a reminder… "Have fun. Stay out of trouble."
"HA! 'Trouble' better stay out of us!" the kid cackled out like the happy lunatic demon-kid that he was, before turning on his heel and began to rummage through the cupboards for who knew what the heck else that the kid thought he needed for this 'picnic' of his. Stan let out a sigh and flipped out his newspaper a little bit. Demons...
As soon as the kid finished up with grabbing a few teacups, mugs, and saucer-plates, along with significantly more forks and paper towels and stuff than even Stan was expecting the kid to go for, causing Ford to go from giving him a thinking glare to a frown… the whistle finally went off on the kettle, and the kettle and the whole stack of tableware and junk promptly ended up in the kid's hat (the eyepatch-one).
And as soon as the kid had not quite raced off upstairs, for who knew what else, casually walking over to the staircase but then taking the stairs themselves two or three at a time… once the kid was out of direct earshot, Ford grimaced, turned to him, and said, "Stan…"
"It's fine, Ford," was Stan's gruff reply. But at the look his brother was still giving him (and had been giving him ever since he'd told the kid to 'have fun'), Stan sighed and told him, "Ain't nothin' they're doin' that I don't know about and haven't talked about with the two of 'em before, okay," he said next.
At this, Ford's frown deepened. "What are they up to, then?" he asked his brother suspiciously. Because that told him absolutely nothing, and--
"It's fine, Ford," Stan repeated. "Don't go worryin' about it."
Ford stared at his brother for a little, then drew himself up and started to stalk off for the porch, coat billowing all dramatically behind him as he stated, "I'm going outside to keep an eye on the two of them."
"Yeah? You do that," Stan told him, completely unconcerned.
Ford didn't quite stop in place at that, but his pace did slow down a lot for a moment, as he turned his head to give Stan a frown over his shoulder for a long moment. But then he turned away again and slammed his way out the door of the Shack and out onto the porch, picking up steam all over again.
Stan sighed.
(Ford was not going to just leave the two demons to their own devices -- not when they were so clearly and obviously up to no-good. He wasn't an idiot, though. He wasn't about to attempt to directly insert himself between them, given the sheer folly of such a thing; he was going to watch them both a safe distance away from them, out on the porch of the Shack instead, remaining under the barrier and far away enough that no-one could possibly complain that he was intruding on their so-called 'picnic' in some way. Luckily, they were close enough that he could still see them right at the edge of the treeline to the forest where they were having their picnic (which, quite frankly, made the whole situation all the more suspicious to him…).
Stan glanced up as Mabel and Dipper re-entered the kitchen from the Shack's gift shop. Neither of them looked hugely happy with him still, given what had happened this morning. (Yeah, when the kid had started getting all… pointed... and 'edgy'... talking about stuff from the night before that morning, Stan had gone and tried asking for a transcript of stuff again, even though he knew the kid hadn't been in the room, and about three-quarters sure that the kid wouldn't want to fess up to having bugged the rest of the Shack out (except for the bathrooms and bedrooms and basement) to the rest of them, like he had him. Except Stan had held out his hand and gotten one. The kid had done it. He'd done it for him right on the spot. He honestly hadn't thought the kid would give up the goods like that in front of the rest of them all, but the kid had. Maybe the kid had been trying to make a point of some kind, but Stan wasn't sure what exactly the kid was going for here, yet. He wasn't even sure if the point had been more for the niblings, or the kid's own sister.
"Yeah?" Stan asked of his grand-niece and -nephew, as they came up to the table (and the kid came down the stairs quietly -- that was new -- behind their backs), and they exchanged a glance between them.
"Pacifica wants to talk with you sometime," Dipper told him, as the demon-kid just as quietly walked up behind them, and...
"If she wanted to talk, she would have stayed for breakfast," the kid said right behind Dipper, and Dipper jumped nearly a foot.
"--Bill!" Dipper complained, but Stan just reached out and put a calming hand on Dipper's shoulder, while sighing, and said, "Kid, I think little miss rich girl there probably wants to talk to me without you around. Yeah?"
"Hm," said Bill, eyeing him back.
Stan mostly ignored that one as he took the phone Mabel had extended to him from her. "Well, you two are off your grounding, bein' stuck at the Shack," he told them both, "But you're still gettin' babysat," Stan added, trying to quash their good mood a bit, because they'd looked far too excited with those grins and that 'yes!' and 'hey-yo!' along with that high-five slap, right there. Stan looked back down at the phone as he started typing. "She's got her shift at the diner today, right? We could meet her there; get you two a late brunch-lunch thing, or somethin'."
"...The diner?" Stan heard the kid say next, sounding way way too interested and engaged in it and all that shit, right as Stan hit that 'send' key, and Stan's head came up; he was feelin' full-on grumpy on this one.
"Kid," Stan told the demon-kid, as he handed Mabel back her phone, "You got a picnic you're doin' with your sister, already," he reminded him. "You stay here with your sister and let me do my whole 'takin' point on the agreement' thing, yeah?" he told him, looking up to give the kid a stony look. Because hey, somebody had to talk the Northwest girl down, and that wasn't gonna happen easy if the kid came along with, Stan was pretty damn sure.
"Hm," said the kid pretty damn noncommittally, before turning away and wandering off (to who knew where else in the Shack, since it didn't look like he was headed for any of the doors outside), and Stan stifled a sigh. ...Great. So, that was maybe a fifty-fifty toss-up on whether or not the kid would actually stay here, instead of following them down.
"C'mon, you two," Stan told both Dipper and Mabel, as he slowly stood up from his chair. "Let's get going."
---
Miz set up the barrier and waited for her brother to come back.
And waited.
And waited.
And… where the heck was he?
Fighting down the worry, Miz Flickered and Saw...
What?! No fair! He went back to the diner without her? Miz whined and sat down on the picnic blanket. And he was talking to Stan, the twins, and... Pacifica. Ah, okay. Yeah. Miz could see why he thought this would have been important. She was still annoyed that he'd essentially stood her up for their multiversal scouting mission (picnic date), though.
Whatever. She would just wait for him to come back. They were already heading back now.
That didn't mean Miz didn't pout at her brother when he finally showed up though, despite his confusion at her annoyance at the (apparently short duration to him) hour-long delay. (Though, to her amusement, that Stanford -- who was spying quite obviously on them -- seemed just as disgruntled by Bill's tardiness.)
She wondered, however, at her brother's further confusion at her continued annoyance despite his handing over of what felt to her like a 'bribe' of both diner-obtained apple pie (solely for her, since it contained things like added sugar that he wouldn't eat) and hot water with various loose-leafs for tea from the Shack kitchen, with assorted utensils and tableware to support their imbibement of both.
"I needed to take care of a thing," Bill told her, still not understanding why she was so annoyed with him. "If I didn't take care of it now, either Llama or the living ventriloquist dummy or both could have ended up here, trying to ruin our picnic and everything else," he told her, frowning. "I said I was getting more supplies for the picnic, not just talking with Stanley. How long did you think I would take?"
At her, "Five minutes! Or at least tell me if you're going to take longer, and when you'll be showing up! Not telling me is-- It's rude!!" her brother finally seemed to start to get it, as his expression went from a frown to a startled raised-eyebrows look.
"Hmm…" Bill hummed out, thinking. He hadn't thought he'd need to give her a time for when he'd be ready to start the picnic. An hour hadn't seemed too long, and… well, Liam had never given him times for things when they'd done them together. Bill had either tried dropping in on him in his room out of nowhere, and they'd just… talked? And played? Or Liam had told him not to disturb him because he was working on things for awhile, and Bill had just waited until Liam had been ready to come out and see him again. And Bill was a big-brother. And Miz was his… little sister? ...Maybe it was different for little sisters? Nora had seemed a bit more impatient, overall. HMMMMMMMM...
"I think I understand," Bill told her. "If I am doing a thing with you, or if I need to do a thing without you, I will tell you in-advance and try to give you a working time when the thing with you will start, or when my thing without you will be done. And I will let you know if I need more time at the time that the working-time expires, if I need it," Bill ended. Though he was usually pretty good at his how-long-something-would-take estimates; he was usually pretty conservative in those, and it had been a VERY long time since he'd blown past any of those, for a reason.
Miz's pout finally went away and she smiled. "Alright, I don't mind waiting, just give me a heads up next time. Then I could have gotten something to entertain myself with while I was waiting."
Bill nodded. He understood a little better now. Miz got bored easily; she had far more trouble 'just watching and waiting' than he did.
"Picnic now?" Bill asked, pointing down at all the food, and Miz nodded quite happily. She set about setting everything up, glad to be able to just hang out with her brother, even if they both had an ulterior motive for it.
(And the mischievous part of her loved the baffled expression on Ford's face when they just did picnic stuff. Eating the snacks, pointing out clouds and what they looked like, cuddling… yeah, Ford looked really annoyed at them! Hah!)
---
"...Ready?" Bill grinned out at her, once Miz had finished the last of the pie, and a cup of tea to go with it. (He'd finished a good while before her, needing less energy overall than she did, still.) This was only going to be a quick trip out to search for information.
Miz nodded at him, and then the two demons laid themselves down comfortably on the blankets, after putting away the remnants of the lunch that Miz had made for the both of them. They curled around each other as per usual for their sleeping arrangements.
Then Miz took a deep breath and pushed herself out of her vessel, then turned around and pulled gently on Bill... until he slipped out of his human-ish body, too.
And Bill let her do it. That was the whole point, really -- not forcing it, his 'removal', at all.
Bill felt the line from his anchor play out a bit -- just like he'd discussed with Stanley -- and… he felt the familiar 'chill' of no-sensation of the Mindscape once again, as his senses quickly spread out exponentially around him. Something was a little… odd, though. He just couldn't quite put his finger on...
Bill looked down at himself in the Mindscape.
His Mindscape-self looked like his physical human-ish-formed body.
...Hm. He'd wondered if this might happen. ...Well, it should be fine. It HAD been a probable consequence of keeping the anchor and doing it this way, and he should know!
Miz and Bill both watched and waited to see if anything was going to go wrong, and…
Nothing happened; Bill didn't start glitching, despite the fact that his own form in the Mindscape was still keeping to his human-ish body's form. The anchor stayed firm, but insubstantial; Bill could trace it, even if Miz didn't seem able to -- which was also good. His Eye didn't quite feel sore, but he knew he was going to have to be careful not to do anything too strenuous overall, as he Looked around. No Scanning a trillion dimensions all-at-once for him, for need-it-RIGHT-NOW-information and safe-routes-and-outs and all the rest of it; he'd have to take his time, instead. --Good thing he wasn't planning on fighting with anything or anyone, out on this trip! They were planning on doing this slow; no lightning-quick retrievals or hard-and-fast scans on this little 'pleasure jaunt' -- not THIS time.
After another few long moments, Miz mimicked a sigh of relief. So far so good. She took Bill's hand (he 'held' hers back gently, with the bare minimum of weirdness-force he could exert to 'trap' something at this level of existence -- not wanting her to feel actually captured in the Mindscape itself, but also knowing that she liked the feeling of no-sensation here even less than he did), and Miz tapped open the Door.
They were sucked through together without incident.
Miz peered around the Void of Doors. This would be Blue's first time seeing it. He was staring around. Miz was in her triangle form (since she hadn't bothered to 'change' her mental image of herself).
Miz noted, as she started moving away from it, that Bill's Door was larger than her own by a few inches on each side. Huh, she hadn't noticed the Doors were different sizes before. Miz was reading the words on various doors. She wanted to explore, she wanted to find Seb. He was from the Triplet AU section but… there were so many Doors there, too!
Bill glanced around carefully, while keeping a metaphysical 'eye' (really, at least part of all his senses) attuned to any possible glitchy-ness in the immediate and surrounding area, as well as its farther-out environs. ...Interesting. This place…
Miz was floating up to a Door and reading the plaque. "Another mermaid AU? Ugh… what the heck?! A Lion King AU?! Bill Cipher saves Christmas? Where are these all coming from?!" she glanced around, keeping an eye out for any trace of that buzzing monstrocity. "Hey brother? Would you mind if we just go check out a few of these just for fun?"
Bill shrugged -- he was here to listen and See and learn, more information was always better, he'd like to know more -- and as he floated along, not sensing any more danger here (which Miz seemed to have almost forgotten about at this point, but he hadn't -- it had been yet another reason he'd wanted them to take their time, while leaving the Door waiting and floating there for them, and why taking at least an hour or two before heading out had seemed like a natural thing to him -- he'd wanted to see if the glitchy-Bill came wandering back once the Door was there long enough, or if it-or-they were actually and truly gone…), and Bill read the words along the doors with interest. --So, each one of these led straight to another Bill Cipher, did they? HMMMMMMMM...
Then Bill saw the words on one door out of the corner of one of his eyes and paused. He turned slowly towards it, his eyes going wide as he realized that, no, he had NOT misread it...
The door Bill was standing in front of said simply: [Anti-verse]. Bill grimaced and immediately turned away and marched his way down the corridor, fists clenched at his side while refusing to look behind him. (Oh no. No no no! --No he did NOT want to think about 'anti'-Bill maybe being-- another him and that door might just belong to that being's old dimensional set or did it lead to HIS set now too NO NO NO--)
Stupid purple square couldn't POSSIBLY be another him--
Miz was floating up to look at a door reading [ReverseFlatland] and tilted her body in confusion. What would that even mean? "Hey brother? Wanna check out what this one is?"
Bill marched right up to her, looking not all that well and not even bothering to glance at the door first as he said, "YES! Let's go! RIGHT now! --Leaving!"
Miz raised an eyebrow before shrugging and tapping the door. It opened easily and the two of them were quickly sucked inside.
----
There was an odd feeling, like she was heading towards the Bill that this door led to before encountering some resistance. Miz squeaked as she tumbled through the air and landed gracelessly (as per usual) against the side of a large circular object. She groaned and slid down what HAD to be another freaking barrier. She shook her head and looked down to get her bearings. She seemed to have hit… the Mystery Shack again!?
Except… "Oh my spud!" she gasped. It was the Shacktron! Full robot Shacktron fighting with a giant… human-shaped Bill Cipher?! Miz glanced around quickly and saw that the people piloting the giant robot were… Shapes. Ohhh… so that's what it meant by ReverseFlatland.
Well, she didn't feel like dealing with some… weird alternative Weirdmageddon right now, so she felt around and opened a Portal so she could leave and come back at a different time.
Miz glanced over at Bill, who was staring at the surreal scene in front of him. "Brother? Are you coming? I want to go back to an earlier time so I can properly learn about what this Dimension is about." After all, that's what they were here to do, inspect and learn how different dimensions were run for Miz to fix her own, considering the worlds behind her Doors weren't all run by the same AXOLOTL.
Bill was still mentally off-balance from that information: that there might be more than one separate AXOLOTL. He'd never considered the possibility; it hadn't seemed a possibility. But when Miz had Looked to See his stupid lizard and mentioned that the thing she'd Seen was nothing like her own… she had seemed legitimately upset, having thought ALL the Axolotl were connected. (Well, she wasn't the only one -- Bill was 'upset', but for an entirely different set of reasons!) That assumption was why she had thought Bill's Ax might have cared (which was not true at all!), because hers had cared (but did it really?)… and the idea that there were MORE THAN ONE Axolotl, who WEREN'T connected to each other…
...that the Rules Bill knew the Axolotl to play by might NOT be universal…
Bill shuddered. That's why he'd had to come and See it for himself. And this was much more dangerous to him personally than he'd told Stanley before. Because if there WAS a proactive Axolotl out there, somewhere...
Then Bill had no idea what it might do, or how stupid it might-or-might-not be in WHAT it did, in what ways and means and respects that intelligence could be measured against stupidity. And it wasn't as though Bill had some innate defense against being impacted or changed in some way by an other-Axolotl…
Bill knew all this, of course. And he was taking the risk anyway, whether he liked it or not, whether he did anything or not, because multiple Axolotls DID exist. So if he didn't See for himself what he could See NOW… then he'd just get blindsided by everything later. Eventually. ...Except he didn't know how far off 'eventually' actually was, because he didn't KNOW enough. He didn't know anything at all about this; not really. --AND HE NEEDED TO KNOW NOW.
Except he couldn't do that here-and-now, with this stupid-looking nonsensical funhouse-mirror version of his own Weirdmageddon going on, right here. --It was too distracting!
So (Blue)Bill followed Miz into the Portal to re-enter this dimension over 40 years prior, as she went off to see what had happened here and how it had all come to be. To figure out how this dimension worked.
It was Flatland… but not. (Not like Bill's home dimension; it was more like… and Bill watched Miz as) Miz watched the lives of the shapes. The Zodiac of this world -- in particular, Stanley and Stanford Pines. They were two triangles born to square parents. Twins. The child should have been a square but twins meant the square that 'should-have-been' had split in half. A square split diagonally into two isosceles triangles. But they were still… squares. Should have been squares if only they hadn't been twins. Filbrick hated them both.
Bill noted the way that Miz trembled with anger at the way the older square had treated his children. Well, at least, the hierarchy was far less strict here than it had been in his dimension. (Not that 'twins' had ever been a thing there.) Here, shapes could actually rise above their station, more like Miz's dimension; even though the twins were isosceles triangles, they were tested for intelligence, the reasoning being that perhaps they could have been smart enough to be more than their unfortunate shape. Stanford tested well, incredibly well. His intelligence caught attention from the higher Shapes. Stanley, on the other angle, wasn't one for book smarts, and those tests weren't meant-or-made to properly measure the inner-sides and capabilities of someone like him.
So Stanley was slated to be sent off to do labor work for the rest of his life, like all the other isosceles. Meanwhile, Stanford would have a chance to try and impress some judges sent by the council. If he impressed them, he would be allowed to rise above his station. Maybe even up to the rank of a pentagon due to his test scores. And if that happened, it looked to Miz like the twins would be separated for good; Stanley would never be allowed to see his brother again.
Miz was biting her lip, worrying over the unfairness of it all. Bill could tell she wanted to interfere. But they were merely observing for now. Any changes could be made later. But she admitted quietly to him, as they watched, that in her own Flatland, the Council had forbidden her from ever seeing her brother again, because she was to be risen in rank and taken away from her family. Just like this Stanford would be. But Miz had rejected that. She hadn't wanted to leave her brother.
...unlike this Stanford. Bill watched as Miz struggled to talk herself through it. To make excuses for this Stanford here. How, 'no, that wasn't right.' How this Stanford didn't want to leave Stanley, but cared about raising his rank MORE than staying with his brother. Stanley was clearly upset, feeling like he was being abandoned.
With how upset that Miz was feeling now, and knowing how she'd reacted to his own Sixer with anger at similar seeming 'injustices', Bill made it a point not to bother to point out that this isosceles Stanford wasn't even considering how raising his own rank could potentially help his younger twin, born second instead of first. How, if he reached a rank equivalent to a pentagon, he could request laborers to help him with his work, with the way that things were set up here; how he would be in a position to influence the choices of fellow 'colleagues' in their choices of workers as well. Even if he was refused in his choice to pick his own brother by those higher up the hierarchy, while trying to follow the rules of the system as it existed currently in this Flatland here, Bill could see quite clearly that that isosceles Stanford might still end up having the pull in the future to potentially influence others at his rank-level to get that Stanley a better position in labor closer to himself, one that would allow them to be closer together, to see each other still.
But Bill knew how Miz tended to respond when she was angry, and the sorts of things that made her that angry. And Bill could See that Stanford's thoughts from the Mindscape, too. Bill saw how that isosceles had thought of his little brother's position and lot in life not at all, once it had looked like he himself would be getting a chance at what he himself wanted. That Stanford-triangle simply didn't care. --Not enough to consider even so much as working within the system to make things better for his twin, let alone breaking anything for him! Not even a single solitary thought towards Rebellion against those who were giving neither of them any REAL choices at all. Limiting them both.
And it wasn't like that Stanley-triangle was thinking of bucking the system in any meaningful way, to try and stay with his own brother, either.
And so, Bill let out a frustrated mental sigh at the pair of those 'twins' -- flat minds, flat thoughts, always and all of them FLAT -- and Bill turned his back on the two of them, as he had done many times before with other Stanleys and Stanfords he had Watched. He'd stay there with Miz as she Looked at what she wished, so she would have him there to support her, so she wouldn't be alone. But as far as Bill was concerned, he had other, more important things to do.
...Like what they had come there to do in the first place -- to Look at the local Axolotl and the Rules and structure of this dimensional set, to see how similar or different it was from each of their own.
(Besides, if they wanted to go and change things later… if Bill wasn't the one doing the Looking, to See what was happening, it wouldn't necessarily require a nonlinear time loop to 'fix' anything later, to prevent the dimension from ceasing to exist or spawning new timelines. (If that happened, then that other human-looking Bill's Zodiac wouldn't exist anymore, and he might never get out; it would be far more likely that that Shacktron fight they'd both seen upon entry might never happen.) If he Looked at things, he'd See himself if he tried to do anything -- there was nothing he could do to hide himself from himself; he'd made sure of that a long time ago. Alternately, if Miz was the one doing the Seeing, Miz could lie or be vague to him about what she'd Seen -- and then he'd help her do the things she wanted to do, that she would have then Seen them already do in the same way that she'd Seen them, because he had already decided that that was what he was going to do -- help her change anything that she wanted to change here later. And if there was anything she Saw that was something simple but confused her? Well, then it would have been something that he had done in such a way that she hadn't Seen him do it. Q.E.D.)
So Bill stopped trying to See what Miz was Seeing. Bill turned away.
And Bill Looked Up.
----
Meanwhile, Miz was getting pretty invested in the lives of the twins. Stanley had tried to talk to his brother and Stanford had said he was getting a great opportunity. He couldn't give up this chance. A chance to be more than just the lowest of the low.
"But what about me?" Stanley asked. Stanford paused. His brother would be left behind. He was JUST a triangle after all. An average, unintelligent triangle. He wasn't like Stanford, who had this rare, precious chance to make something of himself.
"You'll be fine." Stanford said dismissively. "You'll be given your job by the council like everyone else." He turned away, off to go work on his project some more, make sure it was perfect. Stanley stared after his brother, numb and shocked that he was so easily dismissed. "But…" Stanley slumped over.
And then Stanford walked off, left his brother to go back to working on his project, putting this whole issue behind him. Stanley sighed. So, even his own brother thought he was nothing more than a stupid triangle. He tried hard not to get mad. He WAS stupid after all. Stanley stayed out long into the night, thinking, getting more and more upset. As he thought, he wandered, ending up in the room with the science project. It was a small building that the Council had set up for Stanford to work in.
There on the table was Ford's invention. A perpetual motion machine, which Ford had told him before would change the way that all the factories worked. With a machine capable of generating endless energy, they would no longer have to burn coal to boil water to power their generators. It would revolutionize the world! Stanley didn't really understand it, but he figured it must be something important.
Stanley stared at the spinning object. It didn't seem all that impressive to him. Sure, it spun and spun, but it wasn't put together very well. Stanford was terrible at working with his hands on mechanical stuff. Stanley was better at that, having worked plenty of mechanic jobs part-time; he'd even built that sit-and-slide-boat out of scrap wood he'd saved up from his jobs down at the carpentry shop. So Stanley could see, just looking at this, that Stanford's project would eventually break. It just wasn't screwed together correctly. And it wasn't like it even worked, at all. Not in the way Stanford kept insisting it did.
Stanley couldn't help but want his brother to succeed though, even if he didn't want to be left behind. It really was a good opportunity for Ford. He could leave this shithole neighborhood and get a good job that would pay well.
So Stanley reached forward, intending to tighten a loose screw he could see...
"What are you doing?!" Stan jumped at that shout. He turned to see Stanford staring at him. "I was just trying to--" Stan tried to explain but Stanford shoved him out of the room. "Trying to wreck my machine!" The other isosceles glared. Stanley's eye went wide. Did his brother really think he would do that?! "No! I was just--!"
"Get out! I won't have you ruin my chances to be better!" Stanford growled. Stanley narrowed his eye. "Be better? What? Better than me? Is THAT what you mean?!" Stanford glared at his younger twin. "This is my one chance to be more than just a stupid isosceles! I won't have you ruining it for me!"
Stanley's fists clenched. Oh. Is THAT how it was? Well then… Stanley decided then and there, he wasn't going to warn his brother. After all, Stan was JUST a stupid isosceles, what would HE know?! He huffed and stomped away. Fine then. FINE then!
The machine had broken down by the time the judges came. Stanley didn't even complain when Stanford blamed him for breaking it. It's not like they would have believed him anyway. Stanley fumed even as he was assigned to janitorial work. He wasn't gonna go. They wouldn't miss him; he was one isosceles among a hoard of hundreds, he wouldn't be missed. Stanley took his boat and left instead, aiming to find his own way in life. He could be a salesman, like Pa. He could prove he was at LEAST at a Square level. Not just a stupid isosceles like everyone said.
As for Stanford, the judges left with dismissive snorts. He was still allowed a slight increase in rank; his test scores were still good, even if he hadn't lived up to them. Stanford was sent to further his education, and was told he would be able receive proper schooling despite everything. He wouldn't be as high on the hierarchy but he was still elevated above his station, by all accounts he should be happy he'd gotten this opportunity, but Ford continuously complained that Stan had ruined his life regardless.
The years passed as Ford studied, and he even met a pentagon named Fiddleford who became a good friend. Despite being a higher shape, Fiddleford was friendly and kind. He recognized Stanford's intellect and was thrilled to work with him. After graduating, Ford had to choose an area of study. He ultimately chose to study anomalies. --Why did they happen? What caused irregularities or birth defects that created shapes like him?
The Council liked the idea of studying this: perhaps, if they knew more, they could stamp out Irregulars from being born, perhaps there was a way for all shapes to be perfect and proper. So Ford was sent to a small town near the outskirts of the Flatlands, a town that had an unusually high rate of irregular births:
Gravity Falls.
---
Miz sighed. Well. This dimension was weird. She shook her head. Got too invested in watching the events unfold and she almost forgot why she came here to begin with. Right. She and brother were here to see what the other AXOLOTL and dimensional sets were all about. Miz glanced around to find her brother. She glanced around before Looking UP.
Whoa~
It was at that point that Miz realized this Flatland, while not being brother's Flatland, wasn't quite her Flatland either. From what she could remember of Seb's past, this world was somewhere between Seb's and hers -- 2D people in a 3D space. So there was technically an up, but an UP was different. Miz gazed up and UP and Saw...
...A Human-shaped AXOLOTL?
And Bill was glaring at it with his arms crossed.
(It looked a little like a staring contest, actually.)
"Um… hi?" Miz said cheerfully, as she made her own way UP there as well -- always try to be cheerful, it tends to work better for starting friendly relations! The human-shaped AXOLOTL slowly turned his head to face her, a faint expression of surprise on his face that was there and gone so quickly Miz wasn't sure if she'd imagined it. The AXOLOTL seemed to examine her for a bit before turning back to Bill.
-You should not be here- The AXOLOTL finally said. (Bill frowned at it, surprised -- it had TALKED to them!!! Without him even needing to--!!) Miz looked between the two. "Well, I was curious. And uh…" She blinked at the AXOLOTL. "...Ok, so a reverse Flatland means a Gijinka AXOLOTL, good to know?"
Bill looked over at her (the AXOLOTL had broken the staring contest first, so that meant HE'D WON! HA!) and it took him a moment looking through his Seen memories to catch the reference.
"Human-shaped, yes," Bill said to Miz. Then he turned back to the local human-shaped AXOLOTL and said, "WHY --do you think I-should-not-be-here." And Bill was glaring at the AXOLOTL again. (This stupid lizard had just tried to tell him what he should and should not do! He'd been challenged! --So it was TIME for Round Two of the Staring Contest until he won (again)! FIGHT!!!)
The AXOLOTL stared at Bill, -There should only be one Bill in this world. Please return from whence you came- he said evenly. Miz frowned. "Is our presence here messing with the threads holding this dimensional set together?" she asked. The AXOLOTL didn't look away from Bill even as he slowly shook his head. -This is not a matter of what you are effecting within this world, but how this world may affect you-
Miz tilted her head. "What's the problem here? Exactly?" The AXOLOTL finally closed his eyes and sighed. -My Bill will try to fuse with you, to expand his own powers- and that made Miz shudder. Ugh. Assimilation. How horrifying. The AXOLOTL turned away to look off into the distance. -Thus far, he has not noticed you. Please leave before he discovers your presence-
"HA!" said Bill. (He'd won the staring contest again!) "Note to you, Miz. THIS is why proper filtering and all those OTHER things are important!" he told her, not looking away from the AXOLOTL. His grin got a bit wider. "Won't work on ME. Not the way he might think. --I'd give him the worst case of heart-burn EVER!! HAHAHA! And he wouldn't get anything out of it, either; worst-case, I'm just fine, he isn't," Bill waved off. He'd had other beings (and demons) try to eat him before. (Sometimes he'd actually let them attempt it, just for kicks!) "--Good to know that this 'Bill' doesn't value INDEPENDENT THOUGHT and discourse, though," Bill ended on a more sober note. But then he crossed his arms a bit more tightly and his eyes narrowed a bit further. "Unless you're LYING. Or planning on HELPING this other-us-who-clearly-is-NOT-like-us-at-all out with that."
Miz considered that. Hm. Yeah. She definitely didn't want to be fused with some other Bill. She liked being herself thank-you-very-much. Well, she was still practicing the whole, shields and filters and all other stuff. Her world didn't have alternate Bills so she'd never had to bother with this before...
"So, you ARE planning on trying to help this other-Bill eat us, then, since you're wanting us 'gone'," Bill demanded out of the AXOLOTL point-blank. It wasn't exactly 'asleep at the wheel' here. It felt more… active in the lives of the beings here than the one back from his own dimensional set was. Not just the demons -- the beings here, too. ...Or maybe he should be saying 'just-and-only beings' here, since there didn't seem to be any demons-from-the-outside around -- not anywhere that he could See.
-All I want is for you two to leave- the AXOLOTL responded calmly. -I do not want to help my Bill or you, but everything would be simpler if this wasn't an issue to begin with-
"Simpler is not better. Or worse," Bill said. "And I didn't ask for YOUR help," Bill said. The last time he'd done THAT, he'd gotten a very-long prophecy. He didn't want-or-need another one of those right now! Then Bill's eyes jiggled back and forth slightly as he stared at the AXOLOTL and… something occurred to him. Bill got a thinking frown. "...Tell me what you WANT," Bill said to the AXOLOTL slowly, deliberately phrasing it as a demand rather than as a question. He'd never really gotten an answer out of his own; his own hadn't ever really had a conversation with him before. (He'd screamed things at it once or twice, and forever-and-ever-and-ever, but…) This was new.
The AXOLOTL actually looked tired. -All I want, is to keep my dimensional set stable for as long as I can. MY Bill is disruptive enough, purposefully trying to tear Reality down around him; I do not feel you two are like him, hence why I am even bothering to warn you. Leave-
Bill's eyes narrowed further. "If all he wants to do is 'tear down' Reality, jumping into OTHER DIMENSIONS isn't the easiest way to go about it. ...I doubt it's even the most FUN, either." (Bill knew exactly how to collapse dimensions into his own unstable one. It was rather simple to do, in fact -- though it did take a substantial amount of work and a very good understanding of the interdimensional processes and forces in play to actually pull it off. Still less work than portalling out of the 'Nightmare Realm', though. Stable portals to an unstable dimension were nearly impossible to do. NEARLY.)
Bill was starting to severely doubt this stupid lizard's words. (And he wouldn't even have considered that an AXOLOTL could have lied to begin with, if not for hearing about Miz's own lizard's deceitful and mis-leading actions and inactions.)
Miz frowned as she Looked back down and around and into and out of Everything. "What the heck?" she exclaimed as she shook her head. "Why the FUCK did you build this Reality like a goddamn house of cards?!" She stared at the threads she could see. That Flatlands place that this other Bill was planning to tear open was one of the Anchor spots, perfectly placed and connected into the other stitches holding everything together. If it was cut in just the wrong way...
Her own Ax had built Reality like a series of orbs. Free-floating and moving, but firm enough at their edges that they didn't crack or fuse with the others they collided with. Semi-permeable to allow for travel in and out without anything important on the inside leaking out everywhere. And even IF a dimension began leaking, any energy it lost would just end up like a free-floating 'substance' around the other orbs. (With all the spaces between being a mix of both the ACTUAL Space between Spaces, the Mindscape, and the Timestream.) Some of it would sink into the other orbs -- hence why there was Weirdness throughout the multiverse -- but collapsing ONE dimension where she'd come from wouldn't cause the WHOLE SYSTEM to come crashing down!
"What?" Bill turned away, looking away from the AXOLOTL, completely refocusing his thoughts and attention away from it this time without even thinking about the possibility of it trying to pick and win a 'fight' with him after losing a staring contest to him twice -- best three out of five! -- his little sister had sounded that freaked out and concerned. He began Scanning what he could, trying to figure out what she was talking about.
(This being the first alternate dimensional set that Bill was looking at, though, along with his lack of any experience at creating dimensions, he was having a good bit of trouble understanding and then analyzing what he was Seeing so very in-the-moment, as it were; parsing it wasn't an issue at least, but parsing and measuring by Eye alone was NOT the same as understanding it all. He tried to speed up the process, though, by using what Miz had just said as a bit of a clue as to one of the larger patterns he should keep his Mind and his All-Seeing Eye attuned to Looking out for...)
The AXOLOTL sighed. -I worked with what I was given. My Bill never wanted to help. My Time Baby went off on his own with progressing Time before I was ready to put everything together. I had to do a rushed--
Miz interrupted, "--You built a couple stable dimensions and anchored the rest of the multiverse into them in an upside down pyramidal tower that has the entire weight of the multiverse leaning on just those few stable bases! What the FUCK?! Why didn't you just tell your Time Baby to stop advancing time if you needed it?" At that, the AXOLOTL looked even more tired. -He and Bill wanted to one up each other. I don't have enough energy to deal with them while holding this all together…-
"Tower of Babble. Upside-down pyramid!? --Yes, Ziggurat at Er, upside down," Bill muttered to himself, half an 'ear' on the conversation that was continuing on without him as he Looked. And it all looked an utter MESS, to his Eye! (For starters, the dimensions in his dimensional set weren't so imbalanced in their relative placements to each other. The stresses of proximity alone with all those conflicting rulesets would--) Bill frowned further. (That wasn't what those connections were supposed to be for. They weren't supposed to be NECESSARY to--) Bill shook his head. (The dimensions in his own dimensional set had had almost no connections between them until he'd MADE them, wanting to allow for dimensional travel because--)
Bill shook his head in disbelief again, not Looking away from the entirely of the mess that was laid out before him. "You idiot. I could have done better than this while I was still Flat. --What are you going to do," Bill said, looking away from it all to recenter his gaze back onto the AXOLOTL. "Turn all those connections into taffy and lower them all down onto…" Bill paused, trailing off, then finally realized what he HADN'T Seen that wasn't there, that should have been there! He whipped his Eye around in a frenzy as he realized: "--you don't have an underlayer!?!" Bill couldn't imagine why it hadn't-- "Just spin up a 'net to catch it all! What have you been doing, actually sleeping this entire time!?" he spat out at it sarcastically, glaring back at it. Because as far as Bill could tell, most of these dimensions had been spun up quickly, one after the other after the other -- they all almost looked to be the same age, relative to each other, from the outside here--
Then Bill blinked as he realized. He stopped and looked away and slowly looked around much closer in, instead. And finally realized EXACTLY where he was.
(They were 'standing', floating in the middle of the AXOLOTL'S dimensional pocket. More or less outside of everything. Or at the very least well-removed from it all. He'd 'ascended' himself 'up' this high after he'd looked UP without even half-realizing that he'd done it.)
...Bill slowly looked over at the AXOLOTL again.
The AXOLOTL rubbed his eyes. -I set up the first few and thought I would take a nap. The Time Giants had my blueprints, they knew what it was supposed to look like, but they had a son, then just… up and LEFT- the faintest edge of stress entered his tone. -I woke up to see the mess they left behind and reacted hastily-
Miz scoffed at that. "Well, you did this to yourself, badow-dow, and that's why it hurts." She put her hands on her hips. "Even MY Ax sets up a lot of things before he takes his naps… though I guess my Time Baby is not as annoying as yours seems to be."
The AXOLOTL sighed again. -I don't want to deal with you two on top of everything I'm already working on. I would hate to have to scrap this world and start over…-
"--No more Deals!" Bill bit out sharply, almost on reflex, then quivered slightly in place.
Bill looked away quickly, and Looked over everything a bit more, as a distraction from… And Bill pulled in a sharp breath (even though when he was like this -- in the Mindscape, this way -- he didn't need to breathe). Because it was all so BIG. --Yes, he'd known it was, OF COURSE he'd know it was -- he'd even Seen it all in his own set, the entirety of existence, once before right before he'd fallen AND BURNED for the very first time… -- but… it was like his hats, he realized with an edge of hysteria to his thoughts. The hats he'd made, they looked different from above. And this dimension, the dimensions he'd seen before had looked so… so... (It was different. It was harder to grasp when he was like this; you had to reconfigure yourself to ascend up so high, in order to handle it all properly, all of the different and varying input, at the levels and in the ways it was all meant to be Seen. And thinking processes shifted when you went through that; things had a tendency to change, but Bill hadn't really done that this time, and… he was still--) And right now, he was SO VERY above, so very HIGH UP…
...Bill barely resisted the urge to start laughing, because it was oh so VERY hilarious that--
"Wait, scrap and start over?" Miz asked. ("Don't ask it questions," Bill hissed out at her, half-twitching, because that NEVER worked out well with--) The AXOLOTL sighed. -What do you think happens to a collapsed Reality?- He twitched a hand, slender pale fingers twirling more threads into existence and tying bits of Reality into place. -What else would…- He trailed off, closing his eyes and just looking incredibly tired.
"Well-then you don't have to SCRAP it, because we are not Dealing with you, so you will not be Dealing with us!" Bill snapped back, his tone rising a bit, two-toned as he usually was. The pupils of his eyes were a good bit more slitted than before.
Miz frowned as she looked back and forth between the two. "We're not trying to cause trouble, just… observing…"
-Regardless…- The AXOLOTL turned to face Miz. -Your father would be quite unhappy if anything happened to you- He sounded almost annoyed. Before Miz could open her mouth, the AXOLOTL continued, -He contacted every other one of us that he could and we all passed the message on. He wants you home-
Miz winced. "I didn't think he would actually reach out to ask about where I was…" Then she brightened. "Wait. He's actually, actively trying to contact me?" She giggled. "Either he's worried, or he misses me~" she sang out, incredibly thrilled. Because that meant Ax cared. She always felt giddy inside whenever she got some proof that Ax actually cared about her. In his own distant way… (and this also meant that this dimension was still somehow close enough to her own that Ax was able to contact them. What did that mean, exactly? What specifications needed to be met for an Ax to be able to contact another Ax?)
BUT! Miz frowned. "I originally came here to see how things worked here. There's… no pillar system here. So… if your Bill and Time Baby are so problematic, why haven't you done something about them?" The AXOLOTL blinked, a brief look of surprise on his face. There and gone in an instant.
"--Because this thing's too stupid to think that just TALKING to anyone instead of tossing them out on their pointed-edge is a great idea!" Bill cut in nastily. "And it's CLEARLY too lazy to do squat itself, on top of that, since it'd MUCH rather just SCRAP everything apparently, instead of putting in the effort to FIX IT ALL like it SHOULD. --Got a perfectly-imperfect good and messed up dimensional set that could use some ACTUAL FIXING right here!" Bill put out there as he gestured outwards at all (literally ALL) of creation. "--OH! But that would be too much WORK for it, right!! So just scrap it instead! But hey! Why not! Why not just start over, making the same stupid mistakes over and over again, collapsing EVERY FIRST AND LAST DIMENSION IN EXISTENCE WHILE YOU'RE AT IT," Bill half-shrieked out at it, halfway to hysterical. "Not like anyone will be LEFT around to CARE about that after you're DONE, right?! --OH! And maybe leave out the whole 'Bill Cipher' and 'Time Baby' this time, if they're such a PROBLEM for you, right?!" Bill added, deeper resonances entering his tone. "WHY NOT! --I mean, if you're looking for INPUT, here, buddy-boy-lizard-man, WELL! Far be it from ME not to PROVIDE anyone with a little HARD-EARNED KNOWLEDGE if anybody ASKS!! --It's not like I'D wish anybody into being who'd have to grow up in THAT hellhole of a two-dimensional dimension and then have their brother killed on them ON TOP OF IT just to turn out 'right', RIGHT?!?" Bill was shaking in place where he was floating by the end of this tirade, and his 'clothing' eyes, and hair had all shifted to a color that was a bright and nearly incandescent blood-red.