Non-spoilor Interlude

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(This interlude takes place in some unspecified time in the future, I'm still writing stuff for later)

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Oh shit. Oooooh shit. Shit. Shit. Shit.

Okay. D-don't panic. I can… fix this. Yeah. I can TOTALLY fix this. Yup. Yup. Yup.

...

...

.......

I CAN'T FIX THIS! NOOOOOOOOOO!!!!

I buzzed around the Mindscape, staring down at the Earth and trying very hard not freak out (more). Everything was flooded. WEll, not EVERYTHING, it would be impossible to flood the entire Earth at this point without completely terraforming it, but a whole LOT was flooded. I don't even know how this happened?! I-it wasn't my fault… right? I mean...

It flooded here often! They should have known and prepared for this! Why did they summon me and make a Deal for rain?! I didn't mean for it to rain THIS much! I didn't! I swear! Goddam why were they so impatient that they thought summoning a demon to make it rain was a good idea?!

Why did I think granting that Deal would be a good idea?!?!?!?

Auuuuuuuugggggghhhhhh!

Ok, calm down. Think about this. How… do I fix this?

Below me, the flood waters raged on. Uuuhhhh it was like Atlantis all over again...

...the only good news was that no one was dead (so far). Like I said, they got floods pretty often. So… they had boats ready. The problem was… this water level wasn't going to drop for a while. Maybe even months!

That was going to make it very difficult for the people to survive. I guess there would be some fish that end up here from the lakes that flooded over, but most of the plants have drowned. Plenty of animals have drowned. Not that they couldn't swim, but swimming for such a long time with no place to stop to rest was… hard. I winced at the body of what miiiiight have once been a deer floating by, it's large eyes glassy and lifeless. Yeesh.

Okay. Think, think, think. I guess I could teleport this water elsewhere… except I still had trouble using my powers in the 3rd dimension. And moving the water would cause all sorts of OTHER problems--

Just… okay, let's think options. Teleporting the water wouldn't work unless I had it spread out over a large distance, otherwise I'd just end up flooding some other place. Moving it all into the ocean wasn't a good idea either. Not all at once, at least. The pH levels were all wrong and more than that, having all this water suddenly vanish would lead to all the boats, people and every other floating thing, slamming down several stories in height. Yeah. The water level was pretty high.

So… gradual would work better?

Ahhh this would be so much easier if I could just use my powers properly here! Nngh...

Wait. I got it! Plants drink water! Too much water would kill them, duh, but if they were big enough...

(And if there was one thing I'm good at, it's messing with plants!)

Well I'm gonna need some seeds to begin with, and to do that, I'm gonna need a host! A bird would be best, since they can fly and avoid all the water! The rain stopped, so that was ONE good thing to keep in mind.

I looked around for any birds nearby. Oh! There's one! A huge crow picking at the deer carcass as it floated on top of the water. I surged forward, easily overtaking its mind and felt myself fill up it's body. Ah. Felt so cramped in here.

Still, I flapped my wings a few times, getting settled in here and flew off to find any surviving plants I could take back here to begin messing with. Magic worked, even if my Weirdness didn't. I could totally pull this off!

---

Uuuugh! I couldn't find anything! Everything, even the tops of trees, were covered in water. I couldn't get down there to find anything. Fuck. I suppose I could have gotten a fish's body and then switch back to a bird? But the humans were catching all the fish and it was so annoying to deal with them while I'm trying to work! They kept shooing me away! A few even tried to stab me with sticks! How rude! I'm gonna send them mild nightmares about crows eating then alive as punishment for clipping my tail feathers!

...okay no. I shouldn't do something like that just 'cause I'm salty. I need to try to be the bigger person here. I can't always retaliate just becau--

That bitch just shot me with a freaking arrow!

Okay. No. Fuck this! He's getting ALL the nightmares! He killed my host! Auuuugh! Now I have to find a new one! And I finally got used to this body too!

I found myself back in the Mindscape. Poor bird. I didn't mean for her to get killed. I felt sad now. Stupid trigger happy humans. I get that they were hungry, but who eats a crow? They're like… not chickens.

....okay, that's not an excuse. I shouldn't blame them for being hungry or anything but Uuuugh. Well, I spent the next few days sulking over the dead crow before I managed to work up the motivation to try again. The water level had dropped a little, which was good since it would mean there was a chance I could actually find a piece of plant to work my magic into.

Since possessing the crow only got me shot at, perhaps I should find a different bird this time. A quick search led me to a human who actually had a pet bird. A rather fancy looking white pigeon. Aww~ she's beautiful~

Damn I love pigeons. They're just so cute. And soft. Like, have you ever held a pigeon in your hands? So soft! Their feathers were loose and that made them extra fluffy!

So I dove into the pigeon and after I settled in, I unlatched my cage and flew off. The owner cried out but could do nothing but watch me fly. It's fine dude! I'll bring her back! I was less stupid this time and actually managed a simple protection spell around my new host. Casting magic was hard without the fingers to draw a proper rune or vocalizations to recite the spell, but even mute creatures could still invoke via prayer. That sort of thing was mental after all. The only thing you needed was a deity who was willing to respond to said prayer.

And FYI, most deities didn't bother. It was too much trouble, especially if you had a lot of worshippers.

More worshippers meant more power, but it also took away from one's ability to listen to, and grant their prayers. So frankly, if you wanted a better chance of a god hearing you, you're better off finding someone obscure to worship. And you also had to actually care enough about that god to even count AS a worshipper.

In my case though, I sent off a prayer to Lord Spud, the Potato god. He was a cool guy. And he'd answered me before when I invoked him in the past, so I figured he would be willing to help me out. I was correct. I felt his divine presence flow around my host. Sweet! I really would have been upset if another host got killed. I sent off a 'Thanks Spud-man! You're the best~!'

:You're very welcome:

I flew around in search and finally found the barest tip of a tree peeking out of the water I flew over and contemplated it. Alright. How do I do this? Normally I'd simply feed my power into the tree to make it capable of sucking up all this water, but my powers were limited unless I had a Deal. And I couldn't make a deal with a tree. (I've tried, they were all stubborn sons-of-a-bitch who refuse to work with me!) The pigeon body I was in also wasn't good for using magic. But I could still do simple things. Like rip off a small twig and fly back to my host's owner.

I had a deal to make.

---

Well I'm glad that worked out. The water was drained by the giant tree I grew. My pigeon host's owner, a nice guy actually, was surprised to meet me inside his dreams, he asked me if I was God, and well, I mean… I am a god? I told him this but I'm not sure we fully understood each other. Still though, I got my Deal. "I will fix this flooding problem, and in exchange… you will carve a small triangle into various places." Because I might as well extend my Sight here on Earth. Would make things easier for me.

He was quite thrilled to do so, and grateful for the tree. I rather liked it as well. It wasn't a tall tree, but it was a thicc boi. Wide, stout and thirsty as all get out. It's growth managed to get the water level down within just a week. There were a lot of dead animals, people and plants (and I was so glad I didn't have a nose because it looked like it really stank) but… hey, I had a cool tree now! I almost wanted to name it. It was a really awesome tree… up until the humans cut it down to use for rebuilding their country. Which… admittedly, was an efficient use of it's wood.

...I still moped over it for a few days.

---

(Some indeterminate amount of time later)

Started figuring out more things I could do online in an alternate dimension. Aside from my transdimensional Tumblr and chat room, I got access to more of the internet, which I immediately used to check out any anime or cartoons that I couldn't find here. Mob Psycho season two?! Hell YES! Catching up on watching all those new shows killed a lot of time.

That's all I did anything for anymore, killing time (HAH! It's funny to use that phrase, though Time Baby finds it offensive.) There wasn't much else to do. It's a waiting game now. Waiting for time to pass. Waiting to see the Earth develop. Waiting to see when Canon begins. I mean, I knew that I shouldn't place all my hopes on Canon, it's not like the course of one summer is all that much to look forward to.

....I wasn't planning on dying anymore.

So what did I do now?

It was simpler before, knowing I would die once that destined summer came. Hoping for it, looking forward to it. (And yes, I DO realize that waiting for the day I was killed off, and looking forward to it, is really fucking messed up.) But if I died… I'd leave so many people I loved behind. I… yes, I knew my Friends loved me. I could Feel it after all.

But I always thought that they'd just move on, get over me and live out their lives just fine. I would have left them enough Credits to be financially stable for YEARS. They would have still had the Death Star to live in. They would have still been free to do whatever they wanted. They'd be able to live out their lives just fine. And, they might lose their immortality, but I had thought it would have been a plus. But Brother needed me. He… he wouldn't have been able to handle losing me. He would never get over it. He never got over Liam. Just as I still haven't gotten over Will. Just as the thought of losing brother nearly drove me mad with anxiety and fear. No. The two of us couldn't handle losing each other. Not one little bit.

My friends never really worried about losing me. They all thought I was indestructible, I could hear it, feel it. They never thought about what would happen if I was no longer there, never even contemplated such a thing ever happening. Not really. Not fully. That wasn't something they could comprehend.

Because they believed so strongly that I was eternal.

Well, they didn't know about the Zodiac, my Zodiac. I never told them. I never tell them everything. I felt bad about that sometimes, like… maybe I didn't actually trust them as much as I thought I did.

But that wasn't it.

I trusted my friends, I loved them.

I never told them because… what would be the point? It would just make them worry, and in the worst case scenario, they'd want to kill my Zodiac. And I couldn't have that. I wanted them. Needed them. They would be mine.

Brother's Zodiac were fun, but they weren't mine

Even if I didn't actually want to die anymore, I still wanted what was mine. And my Zodiac? They were mine. Mine and no others. And I wanted them.

I couldn't risk my friends getting rid of them, to keep me safe. So I never told them.

But it mattered not. I decided I wouldn't seek death anymore. Not for my own sake, not because I really wanted to be alive forever, but because I realized that there were people who would be torn up at my death, in a way they wouldn't ever recover from. And I just couldn't put brother through that. Not again. Not when he opened his heart to me, to accept me as I was, as broken, traumatized and troublesome as I was. I couldn't bear to hurt him like that. So Alive I shall be. And that meant I couldn't let my Zodiac kill me.

And it was fine. I wasn't gonna do anything that would make them want to kill me. Frankly, I don't know what I want with them anymore.

Perhaps, I just wanted them to be my friends too. That would be nice. That would be fun. And then, they would age and die and leave me alone. The thought hurt. I was sick of losing people. Could I somehow convince them to want immortality? (Okay, scratch that. I don't want Gideon being immortal. That would suck.) Maybe they would want to stay with me? Kinda doubt it, but whatever.

It would be sad to lose them. But what else could I do? I didn't plan to force them. That would piss them off and they'd probably kill me. Well, whatever. I just… didn't know what to do with myself. What to do with my life. I was just tired. This wasn't like me. I shouldn't be so tired. That was Ax's job. I guess… I just haven't been motivated to do anything recently… not since...

...I couldn't even bare to think about it.

So I filled my time with distractions and tried to take my mind off my worries. After getting a little worn out from watching shows (I was feeling restless from staying still so long), I went around as Miz and helped people who were in bad situations. If people didn't want my help as Bill, I could do it as Miz. Didn't really think it would work out as well as it did though.

"Thank you." An elderly Carpician had told me after I healed her injuries. It felt nice to be thanked, even if I shouldn't be doing this to be thanked (I'm sure that Stanford would say that it was greedy to expect gratitude for doing a good deed, but I was just happy people weren't spitting on me for helping them). Really, I was getting a name for myself in the healer's community. Well, I DID help out at Jessie's temple a lot. I didn't have a stationary clinic where patients could visit me, but I did know how to simply Search for people who needed my help. It was nice. I ended up on battlegrounds often, dodging past laser fire to grab the injured and take them back behind their ally lines. I had to be careful with those kind of jobs (was it still a job if I didn't get paid?) since nine times out of ten, they started shooting at me too. I ended up letting out more of my dragon aspects, just to protect myself.

Sure, there was that cyber suit that brother helped me design, but cool as it was, it was paltry compared to the weight of my full power here. This was my dimensional set, where I reigned supreme. When I wasn't purposely weakening myself to seem helpless and fragile, Miz's vessel was quite robust. I tanked canon fire, bitch slapping the shell into the ground as it flew at me. There were scales all along my arms, my tail was whipping about, diverting attacks as I made my way across the pockmarked fields, which used to be so pretty before this war started, before the mortars and tanks destroyed the plants here. I had my headband on, it had been redesigned multiple times until I was at a point where this felt comfortable for me. I could still absorb emotions for power, but the headband blocked the brunt of it, and the new exoskeletons I've been working with would filter out the emotional flavors from the rest.

The only downside of an exoskeleton was how cramped they felt. They weren't as natural and comfortable as my normal vessels. But having my mind clear and all my own for these past several billion years was… nice? It was easier to think, and harder as well. I found myself getting depressed more, with all the outside stimulus no longer overwhelming me, I was left with my own dark thoughts. Gosh, I wonder if that was part of the reason I've been so tired lately? Mentally tired, not physically.

But I didn't want my pessimism to win out. Lying around doing nothing made me feel worse. So I busied myself with all sorts of things. And if that meant running through a warzone to heal fallen soldiers and unfortunate civilians, then that's what I was going to do. I smacked a large mortar away with my tail and bent down to lift up a fallen tank, my reinforced vessel's dragon strength easily picking up the vehicle and flipping it over, revealing the people trapped underneath. Shit, one guy's dead, the other two were in critical condition.

I reached out to heal them, wishing I could simply bubble them and bring them out of the way of the fighting, but that was too much of a 'Bill' thing. So I would just have to move them once they were stable. I heard the bones snapping back into place and the blood flowing backward to go back inside their body. I filtered out any bacteria to prevent infection and nodded to myself when they were fully healed. Now to get these guys back to their own camps.

---

The Federation was going through a lot of changes. I was happy to note that there were some improvements. Tina's mom was working tirelessly to get reforms in place. Federation expansion had slowed, but the colonies still existed. There was still some forced integration but at least they weren't forcibly stamping out native cultures anymore. It didn't mean they got along though. And to keep up the prosperous dimensions under their rule, the Federation still needed supplies, which they had to take from elsewhere. A planet could be mined and stripped of all resources within a few centuries, and they'd need to find another one. They needed the metals to build their machines and factories to produce their products. They needed food to stock their markets, labor to keep up the work. They needed so many things, because people relied on them for everything. I'm gonna talk to Time Baby about making all the individual planets and dimensions more self sufficient. That would help to take some of the stress off the Federation for the supply and demand thing.

I could also head to those empty husk planets and… revitalize them. That would take a LOT out of me. I'd have to convert my own energy into materials to replace everything that was taken. It was exhausting work. I had to ask Queen to lend me a lot of the plants from her dimension (she found it weird that I called her dimension hers, but she's pretty much a god in her own right by this point, even if she doesn't recognize the worship energy she's receiving from her people. I dunno if I should tell her or not) to plant and grow in these other planets.

Of course I have to adapt the plants to the new area, different atmospheric pressures, climates, soil composition, making sure these new introductions wouldn't become invasive… and that was only getting the plant life of a planet back on track. I had to help the native species get back on their feet after their planet was drained by the miners. The holes and mines ripped out a lot of the planet's internal structure, there were not a lot of places I could work on without replacing or filling that empty space first. Otherwise everything would collapse in on themselves.

Looking into the history of the planet helped with knowing which elements I needed for rebuilding. Still, essentially turning myself into the planet… parts of the planet(?) was an interesting experience. The weird part was when people started living on me. That...

...I don't know how to feel about this.

I felt their ships land on my surface and wander around, marvelling at the miraculous recovery of the planet. It kinda tickled to have them walking on me. I might have wiggled a little. They screamed about the earthquake. But I settled down and they all picked themselves up and cautiously examined me. After the while they settled down, setting up camp. It was almost cute. It was odd, being a planet with people on it. I was curious enough to stay for a while, just to see how it went. They called in all sorts of scientists to try and figure out why the planet had suddenly healed itself. This was beginning to feel weird.

Then they brought the drills.

Aaaaaannnnnnnnggggghhhhhhh~!!!!????!!

Everyone panicked at the next earthquake I set off.

As the shaking stopped, I managed to calm down enough to examine what the fuck that had just been. Those… drills… digging into me, vibrating, swirling and scraping, going deeper and deeper...

Uwwwwwuuuuuuuuu~

Oh wow… that… felt… kinda nice...

I couldn't blush as a planet, but the weather went wild, clouds swirling and lightning striking everywhere. I had to quickly stamp down and get everything back under control. Okay. Uh. That. Was a thing. So….

I had to leave my planet vessel before my feelings made things go nuts again. I shuddered in the Mindscape, unsure how to feel about what I had just experienced. It was… surprising, certainly. But it wasn't… scary? Well, I was a planet. Things felt different in my different vessels. And I'm not stupid, I know what the whole drill thing kinda metaphorically could be equated to (I'm an unrepentant pervert! I knew ALL the Drill jokes!). But it wasn't. As embarrassing as it was, it actually wasn't. It wasn't anything like being aroused or sexually stimulated. It just felt really good. It didn't feel uncomfortable or scary. It was more like a super deep muscle massage? But even once I calmed down and thought about it, I still felt rather embarrassed about it all. The way I reacted was certainly odd. But… well… I really… missed massages.

...that thought led me down a path I really didn't want to go down.

...but I still kinda… wanted to feel that again.

Wow I'm really fucked up.

I didn't feel comfortable with letting someone touch me like that. It reminded me too much of--

My good and bad memories of it all clashed. I didn't know how to feel about it. It was scary, it was fond, it was sad— it was--

A large hand placed upon my skin, rough fingers pressing down, finding all the sore parts and making the ache go away…

I hated this. I hated feeling like this. I hated missing it. The actual act itself wasn't the problem. Having my body soothed of pain, having that feeling of relaxation go through me… that was wonderful. It was something I loved. Being touched in that way felt nice.

Why did it have to be ruined for me?

I cried into my non-existent hands and tried as hard as I could to let this go.

I'm sick of it. Sick of all of this.

Briefly, I wondered, not for the first time, if maybe I'd be happier if I got rid of these memories.

But I never could bring myself to do it. I was too afraid of the risk. I was too afraid of everything. Even now, after all these years, I've never stopped being afraid of everything. All the time. I thought I'd gotten over it. But I really haven't changed at all. I was still afraid of everything. Just a stupid, pathetic coward who could never let anything go. I wanted— needed a distraction.

....no. No. I...

Fuck.

I couldn't keep...

It wasn't right to keep on--

I spasmed a little, buzzing all up and down every frequency, screaming and screaming and screaming for a long, long time. I swear I even blanked out for a while because when I finally settled back into my baseline, the planet I looked down at was already filled with villages. How many years had passed? I couldn't keep doing this. Putting off everything until I just had a breakdown. It wasn't a good way to deal with this.

Sucked that my attempts at therapy to get over my original trauma only led to a different sort of trauma now.

Feeling almost guilty, I left that place and found another husk of a planet to rebuild, molding myself a new body within it. Was I trying to get something from this? More drills? Just to get that nice sensation I craved? Probably. And I felt so incredibly guilty for wanting to feel it. Like, maybe I was a bad person for still wanting this. I don't even know anymore.

My planet rained as I cried in the only way I could as a celestial body, confused, scared, guilty and so very stressed out.

I shouldn't have tried this. Being a planet had seemed like fun… but I shouldn't have tried this. Even if it was a good experiment, realizing I could possess non-living vessels. That opened up a lot of opportunities for me. Will need to experiment further.

I still shouldn't have tried it...

I left that planet behind and went back to repairing others. It was more difficult to fix them from the outside, I had to manually find all the holes to fill, but it kept me busy and distracted, the mind numbing repetition almost soothing. It was fine like this.

It was fine like this.

---

I hadn't done this in a while. For that reason, and also because I felt a little bad that I didn't hang out with Facey all that often, I invited the angel along for my next cooking show.

"What is the point of this, my lord?" Facey asked, examining the ingredients arranged along the countertop.

"It's FUN!" I giggled. "Now get ready, we go live in 3...2…"

COOKING WITH BILL!

I grinned at the non-existent-but-still-present camera. "Hey kids! Guess who's back for another exciting episode?!" I threw my hands in the air and streamers flew around the room. "ITS ME!" A sound effect of a chorus of children saying "Yaaaay!" rang out. I giggled and waved a hand at the camera. "Aw~ you missed me haven't you? Admit it~"

Facey was floating to the edges of the room and examining them. "Where are we?"

"Now today's lovely guest star is FACEY!" I gestured and a spotlight shone down on them. "Welcome to the show!" The sound of applause echoed around. Facey blinked their many eyes at me. "How did we get here?"

I rolled my eye. "The same way everyone does. Now!" I turned back towards the camera. "Today we'll be baking!" I gestured to the ingredients. "I confess, baking isn't really my strong suit, but I want to practice and…" I leaned closer to the camera to stage-whisper, "Watching me fail hilariously is also entertainment." I pulled back, grinning once more, "Now who wants to learn how to make a Pizza?!"

Multiple thin black hands, suspiciously similar looking to my own, began to wave into the air from the audience. I gasped, placing my own hands on my plane, "Oh wow! So many of you?" I flushed a little. "You must all really enjoy my show!"

"...are those not your own hands, my lord?"

I shushed Facey, don't ruin my bit! "Well first off, to make a pizza, you'll need the dough. And by that, I mean you knead the dough!" The audience laughed and applauded. Facey blinked their eyes out of synch. "I don't understand what is so humorous?"

I sighed. Note to self, teach Facey about the joy of puns. "Well apparently I'm supposed to measure ingredients or something." I glanced down at the bowl with the flour and yeast and everything. "Eh…" I shrugged. "I'm sure I could eyeball it."

I tossed stuff into the bowls. One bowl had the yeast and sugar (wait, did I need something else for it?) and the other bowl had flour and salt. I snorted at the thought of how that Stanford would have had a frustrated meltdown just watching me. And I was petty enough to just go with it, because I'm kind of a little shit like that. "Hey Facey, can you pass me the water pitcher?"

They didn't move, staring at me with a faint sense of confusion. Ah, blocking out emotions and such with a Seal wasn't really something I could do while inside the Mindscape or Dreamscape. The fortifications I placed around my Self did take the brunt of it, so all I got were the faint echoes of their flavor. It was the best I could do at this time. Facey looked at the water pitcher and then up at me. "But… can you not simply grab it yourself, my lord? You are more than capable of--"

I laughed, the edge of hysteria leaking into my tone. "Oh Facey, this is a COOKING SHOW! And you're my lovely guest and assistant." I leaned closer to them, my smile going so wide my eye was nearly a slit. "So why don't you assist me?"

Facey wordlessly handed me the watch pitcher.

"Thank you." I told them sweetly even as fire flickered around my hands, warming the water in the pitcher. I proceeded to dump the water into the bowl of yeast. Yeast needed to drink right? They needed sugar to eat and water to drink. And then...

I stirred the mixture and watched as it began to froth. "And now, the yeast will f*** and that's what makes the dough rise!" I grinned, poking at the bubbles. Heh heh… bubbles.

Ah… next would be… oil! Right!

"Now you add some oil!" I told my captive audience (it's not like any of them have figured out how to escape, hence, captive!) "It can be whatever oil your species is capable of consuming with no negative side effects. In fact, you could probably substitute any and ALL ingredients for whatever you can eat with no negative consequences! I'm sure it'll turn out fine regardless."

"I don't think baking works like that…" Facey muttered. I kindly ignored their slander.

I stretched my hand out to grab some Juersun nuts. They were large, around the side of an earth chicken egg, with a hard outer skin. "I will be using Juersun nut oil. Because I think it smells nice."

"You do not have a nose, my lord…"

I kindly ignored that too. I have a nose in my other forms! Geez! Just because I'm incapable of tasting most things or smelling anything as a triangle didn't mean I didn't enjoy doing such things! Anyway, I simply held up the nut and crushed it with my bare hands, squeezing the oil out through sheer force of pressure. The fluid trickled out from between my fingers, slick and aromatic. Well, okay, I couldn't smell it right now, but it would be aromatic to anyone else who had olfactory sensors.

"Getting oil out of anything is pretty easy." I told my audience. "Simply crush it." My eye flickered and the room darkened. "Crushing and crushing, squeezing and squeezing. Until there's nothing left. Until every, last, drop, has been excreted and its left as nothing more than a dry, empty, husk…"

The lights went back to normal as I straightened up, dropping the now dried out seed onto the table and shaking the oil off my hands into the bowl. "Or you could buy it from a store. Either or." I shrugged.

I stuck my hands into the goopy mess and began to mix it even more. "Combine the yeast mix with the flour mix, a little at a time, and just keep mixing. Eventually it'll come together into a really sticky dough." Heh, heh, squishy squishy~ my hands were absolutely covered. It was very slimy and sticky. So much fun to stick my hands inside. And my little black noodle hands didn't have nails for the dough to get stuck under, so it didn't feel gross at all. Well, okay, a little gross? But still very fun to squish. "Well… ah… I guess this looks good." I looked down at the sticky mess. I could sort of push it into a vague round shape. "Yeah, that's good enough…."

I took out another bowl and squeezed out another Juersun nut to get more oil. I scraped the dough out of the mixing bowl and into the new bowl with the oil. I rolled it around to coat the dough with oil before placing a towel over the top of the bowl. "Now you just leave the dough alone while the yeast continue f***ing and multiplying." I told everyone.

"...isn't that called fermenting?"

"Interrupt me again Facey! See what happens!" I flipped my bricks around to glare at them. My angel shut all their mouths with a squeak and nodded quickly. "Sorry my lord, won't happen again!"

I calmed, bricks turning back to yellow and sighed. "I'm sorry. I'm…" I rubbed a hand along my side, smearing dough across myself, though I didn't care at the moment. "I'm just… trying to do a bit. It's kinda my thing? Whenever I have one of these shows?" I told them. I sighed and buried my face in my hands, smearing more dough over myself. "I'm sorry I lost my temper at you. I… keep doing that. I know I shouldn't snap so much. I'm sorry."

"Um… my lord?" Facey spoke up again.

"Like, I keep telling myself to be more patient with people. But I just can't seem to do it?" I continued. Waving my hand and just feeling like shit for doing this all the time. It was one thing to snap at other people, but Facey was MINE. I shouldn't have done that. It sucked more to scare someone I actually….

"My lord…" Facey's eyes were focused on a point behind me. Huh? Were they unable to look at me because I hurt their feelings when I yelled at them?

"What I'm trying to say is, I care about you. And if I ever scare you or threaten you, please call me out on it and tell me if you don't like it..."

"Lord…" Facey was twitching pretty violently. My metaphysical heart sank. I really screwed up didn't I?

I reached forward and placed my hands carefully along their… 'shoulder'-ish area. "If there's anything I can do to apologize properly I--"

"MY LORD IT'S MOVING!!!" Facey wailed with 87 voices, multiple eyes fixed upon something behind me.

I finally turned around to see the undulating mass of dough stretching high into the air as it stretched out of the mixing bowl and reached for me. "Holy SHIT!" I cried as it opened a Goddamn MOUTH and let out a low "UuuuOoooOoooOOOO!"

"KILL IT WITH FIRE!!!" I screamed as I blasted it. Facey was screaming and flying around the room, knocking things off shelves when they realized the dough on my hands, which had smeared over them as well when I touched them was also moving. Moaning as it spread across their faces. "GETITOFF!GETITOFF!!!!!"

"AHHHH!!!" I screamed as the fire only served to make the dough bubble and swell LARGER.

Facey hit the camera and the screen displayed a [Technical Difficulties] image.

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