-Race you to the bottom of the stairs-(Part1)

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Miz whined softly at all the whirling emotions happening in the household when she woke up the next morning. Everyone was upset… and it was her fault. She was a terrible houseguest. She thought about how she could make up for it and decided she could strengthen the foundations of the house, repairing and refreshing the wood, clearing out some mice and icky bugs living between the floorboards… cleaning off the dust. She would work carefully around all the wards. She wasn't doing anything BAD after all, she was just… fixing the shack… making it nicer to live in.

Her shoulders were down as she got up to kneel in the attic room with her body's senses turned up as high as she could make them, to try and feel out the other parts of the house. Surely they wouldn't be upset at her for... clearing out the termites that were there, and fixing the wood? She just wanted to do something nice for Stan as an apology for… everything.

Bill had gone downstairs to talk to him last night. At the time, Miz had wondered if she should go too? Part of her had been a little afraid to. Stan had looked really upset. She scooted back to lean against a wall with her eyes closed, attempting to swirl particles around the house into brief triangles to look around. Feeling and Seeing were different things after all. Tiny, microscopic carbon atoms linked into a cyclopropane structure floating around like flecks of dust. She could do subtle. It didn't quite work though. Probably something about the wards. Instead she had to try pinching together specks of dust until they formed a tiny triangular clump.

Ngh… nope. There was… something… she dropped concentration and sighed. Her powers were… restricted in here. With both the ward and the anti-magic bracers. She lifted a hand to inspect the cuffs. Also… she suddenly realized it might have been rude to spy inside Stan's house without his permission. She nodded to herself. Will ask him later. Besides… there must be a reason why Blue hadn't already set up spy eyes everywhere.

Feeling frustrated and a little unhappy, she did what she always did when she felt this way.

She started singing.

"Os iusti~meditabitur~sapientiam~et lingua eius~loquetur indicium~" she sang quietly in case Bill was still sleeping. She didn't normally sing in Latin but she liked this song, it let her draw out the notes slowly and work on her scales.

She could feel herself relaxing and feeling better as she sang. "Beatus~vir qui~suffert tentationem~" actually, speaking of Bill…

She looked around for him.

Bill was curled up in one corner of the room, back to the wall, and taking up almost no space. It was an odd posture, though, because while he was on his side, none of his limbs were quite overlapping or touching each other. The very top of his blue-haired head was pointed out towards the center of the room. He himself was still fast asleep, and making little noise.

When Miz had been sleeping, he had unconsciously started to let out a very soft buzzing hum on each outbreath, somewhat meandering in tone. But he hadn't woken up at all; not even roused a little.

His breathing was calm and even, his chest moving in and out just as it should. If not for his body's posture and his odd bi-color hair, he'd have looked entirely human-normal in aspect just then.

Miz decided to let him sleep in.

---

Eventually Miz made her way downstairs, hungry since she only had one pizza slice last night. Her stomach growled. "Shush tummy. I'll feed you soon," she told her stomach. "That's the problem with physical bodies," she muttered to herself. "Always hungry… at least I don't have to deal with most bodily functions… ugh… sleeping and eating is good enough for me…"

She made her way to the kitchen, wondering if she would be allowed to get a snack or if she needed permission. Well… what if she made breakfast for everyone? That might make them feel better after last night!

She looked through the cabinets, climbing up on the counter to reach, of course she left her shoes on the ground, she wasn't a savage, and got some flour and sugar down. She was going to make pancakes! Without hair! Because that was disgusting!

She was struggling to get down, damn counters being so damn TALL, when she heard heavy footsteps and saw Stan walk into the room. He stared at her and then at the large mixing bowl and ingredients next to her. Miz ducked her head shyly. "U-um… good morning sir…"

Stan eyed her with his standard resting grumpy face. "Where's the kid," he asked her, looking around and not seeing Bill anywhere. He wasn't real pleased to see her running around the house without any supervision from the kid. Miz got off the counter with a small grunt. "He's asleep. I didn't want to wake him…"

"Yeah. That don't usually go well." Stan looked over at the mixing bowl. Miz shuffled her feet back into her shoes, still feeling weird for wearing shoes indoors. "Um… I'm really sorry for last night… I got… upset…" Miz rubbed her arm. "I thought I would make breakfast as an apology?"

"Yeah, no," Stan told her. "You ain't sorry, and you ain't making breakfast." Dipper and Ford would likely think it was poisoned. Miz sighed. "I'm sorry for upsetting you. Not so much for Ford," she admitted.

"Which is why you ain't really sorry," Stan told her. "I got angry 'cause my brother got upset." He moved past her and went for the frying pan cupboard. "Would think a used-to-be-human should know better on that one," he grumbled out at her. He was feeling better that morning, but he was reserving judgment until he saw how his brother was doing after a good night's rest in the nibling's bedroom, with them on point with hugs and sweaters and whatever else.

Miz pouted, trying to find a way to explain how she felt. "I don't like the way Ford treats you. He's… mean." She moved away so Stan could start cooking.

Stan stopped what he was doing for a moment to look over his shoulder at her. "Ford ain't mean," Stan told her. "And I like the way my brother treats me just fine," he added. "Don't go tryin' to fix things that ain't broken." He turned away from her and went back to his food preparations.

"He wanted to hurt you with his words." Miz said quietly. "Isn't that… wrong? I admit I might have been projecting but...still..." She was sure it was wrong. Siblings can tease and mess with each other, but they weren't supposed to deliberately hurt each other.

Stan sighed and set down the pan to rub at the bridge of his nose. "Kid, my brother wasn't tryin' to hurt me. He just wanted me to agree with him on somethin' I don't agree with him on." He rooted through the drawers for a spatula. "He's worried that people are gonna get hurt, and angry that he thinks I ain't gonna try and help him stop it."

"By implying that you would stand back and watch Bill kill people? I know you're not heartless. You would be upset if anyone died. Regardless if they were part of your agreement." Miz sat down and fiddled with her shirt.

"Kid, I have straight-up celebrated some people's deaths with booze and sex," he told her. "I don't know who you think we all are, but the words you think you're hearin' us say ain't the whole picture, not by a longshot." He reached for a second mixing bowl and the ingredients. "Maybe you'd feel the way you were talkin' about if somebody said that junk to you, but I sure don't." He let out a snort. "And you wonder why I call you a kid. Other people ain't you."

Miz sighed. "Well… if you're really ok with it then I'll leave Ford alone about that." she looked up at him. "I might actually feel sorry and apologize to him and mean it, when I'm not mad anymore." She told him.

"Yeah, you'll apologize to him," Stan said. "And you'll leave Ford alone on everything, too." It wasn't a question, not even close. It was a directive or-else.

Miz shrank in on herself. "I'm sorry. To you at least. I'm… a terrible house guest." She wiggled in her chair uncomfortably. She wasn't used to having an adult who actually put a foot down to discipline her. Ax was very hands free. She's been allowed to run about doing whatever she wanted for the longest time. It felt weird to be scolded properly. Most people were too afraid to try and discipline Bill Cipher. She didn't like this feeling. "Is there anything I can do to make up for it?"

Stan had been thinking about the best way to put, 'Don't worry about it, this has been one of the better days this week, you should see what happened with the kid three days ago,' except he did want the kid worrying about it, and last night had been a hell of a lot worse than it would have been if she'd just kept her mouth shut instead of straight-up tossing gasoline on the fire multiple times in a row.

He damn near froze in place when he heard her ask what she could do to make up for it. ...And it was really, really hard for him to back up off of that ledge.

Remembering what the kid had told him last night about her being another 'triangle demon' made it a little bit easier. He still had a laundry list of junk like, 'instant fame! a million dollars! a bigger boat!' flash before his eyes, though. (It was probably a good thing that he'd been turned away from her when she'd asked him that, to not see the look he'd probably had on his face. --Hey, could ya blame him? It wasn't like he didn't have a functioning greed gene or somethin', and it wasn't like he didn't remember seein' how easy that the dragon-lady had created that bouncy castle for Mabel out of nothing on practically a lark, on that security camera footage that Ford had pulled up.)

So it was pretty damn difficult for him to take a deep breath and say, despite all that, "I think I'm gonna wait for the kid, before I try setting anything up with you on that. ...Gonna probably need a demon translator, or somethin'," he ended on a mutter, as he turned on the heat under the pan and started up the first batch of pancakes.

Miz hummed. "I could… get rid of the termites in the walls? I heard… and felt them running around last night. Chewing and chewing." She stared at the pancakes. "There's no hair in that… right?"

"What, this one?" he said innocently. "I dunno, you made this one, not me." He glanced over his shoulder at her. "Did you not want to eat it?"

Miz whined and wiggled around in her chair. Her stomach took that chance to growl again. She pulled on the bottom of her shirt and whined. "Hair is yucky!"

Stan grinned and flipped the first two pancakes in the pan over. "No! Really?" He sounded scandalized almost, and was definitely hamming it up on purpose. Miz whined. "It's coarse and gets stuck between my teeth! This is why I don't eat people's heads!" She paused. "It's the same reason why I don't like celery."

"Uh huh," Stan said good-naturedly, as he transferred the pancakes to a plate, turned, and set it down in front of her on the table during this mini-tirade.

"Good to know about the heads thing," he told her, as he turned back to the stove and started the next batch out of his Stancake mix, instead of hers. Miz inspected the pancakes and poked them before she shoved it in her mouth, almost like she was inhaling it whole. She sighed and licked her lips. It didn't have hair. That was good. "...Thank you, sir."

"Heh, don't mention it," he told her, as he flipped over the Stancakes on the stove. "Seriously. Don't mention it."

As Stan cooked, Miz got bored and started looking around for more stuff to eat. She was currently squeezing syrup into her mouth with an "Ahhhh…." sound, when Dipper and Mabel slowly made their way down the stairs and into the kitchen.

"SYRUP RACE!" Mabel yelled, racing for the refrigerator for her own bottle with glee. Miz looked over. She narrowed her eyes in challenge. "Ahhmm alweady winning!" She said, tongue still extended.

"Bet I can eat it all first before you can!" Mabel said, game for a nonstandard challenge, as she pulled her own bottle out of the cold fridge.

"Mabel, sweetie, not the whole bottle at once," Stan said from the stove. Miz laughed, coughing slightly when she choked on the syrup. "No one can beat me at eating stuff!!"

"...Because she ain't doing it," Stan cut in, which garnered an 'awwwwwwww…' from said 'she'.

Dipper walked the rest of the way into the kitchen and didn't quite slam his own journal down onto the table as he sat down. He didn't look very happy with Miz from last night, still.

Miz felt his irritation and put the syrup bottle down. She cleaned off her face before turning to him and bowed her head. "I'm sorry I made you upset last night," she said. She glanced over to Mabel. "And you too." She wiggled in her seat.

"No, you aren't," the twins both chorused at her in very different tones, as they each continued on doing what they were doing. Mabel's response was a bit more sweet and light and sing-song-y, and Dipper's was laced with both teenaged 'I know exactly what I'm talking about' authority and a great deal of general suspicion.

Miz groaned. "You guys too? Well I AM sorry to you two. I'm not sorry yet for Ford… but I'm working on it."

"No buts, kid," Stan cut in. "You ain't sorry, you don't care about the fallout," he had a feeling that she'd do it the same way all over again even if somebody was ever stupid enough to hand her one of those time-tape things the kids had told him about, "And you didn't even notice when the kids left the room. You weren't thinkin' about 'em at all. All you were thinkin' about was how you felt about things," he repeated. He flipped the Stancakes over on the stove.

Miz sighed and buried her face in the table. "I was mad… still kinda am… but I also feel all… unhappy inside knowing that you're all unhappy…" She frowned. "I don't like feeling like that."

"You think any of us like feeling like that because of what you said to Great-Uncle Ford last night?" Dipper said to her angrily right back. "Leave him alone! He didn't deserve that! He didn't do anything to you!"

"Yeah!" said Mabel, at her left. "And he isn't mean or whatever! He's our Grunkle!" she informed Miz, hands on her hips.

"Hm… I think some of my feelings might be due to meeting a few other Fords…" Miz rolled her face to the side, still lying on the table. "There was one who betrayed his Bill, even though his Bill was in love with him… that was distressing to watch…"

"Wh-whaaaaaaaaat?" Mabel said, staring at her. "That's crazy-sauce! Bill doesn't love Grunkle Ford!"

Miz nodded. "That dimension was super messed up. In that world, Ford--"

"--Could we please not talk about other dimensions," Dipper put out there, pulling down on the sides of his cap. Miz paused and stared at him for a long time before slowly nodding her head. "Right. This makes you uncomfortable right? I'll stop." Dipper looked up at her almost suspiciously, but didn't accuse her of lying, or say anything one way or the other.

Welp, that was as good an opening as any. "Bill tell you about the agreement he's got with me? About 'no' and 'stop'?" Stan asked of her, almost casually. "Because if you think you can manage that part of it for as long as you're hanging around here, that'll go a long way."

Miz turned her head to look at Stan. "He hasn't explained it yet but I think I sort of get what it is? A basic rundown would help. I DO want to try and be a better guest."

"You could just leave," Dipper muttered into his journal as he opened it up. He wasn't even sure why she was staying, or why Grunkle Stan seemed okay with it. --Why hadn't he kicked her out yet? Because Bill was pretending that she was his sister? That was stupid. Hadn't Great-Uncle Ford told Grunkle Stan what had happened to Bill's family, way back when?

"Not a lot to it," Stan told her. "Formal thing is a 'mutual non aggression agreement'. Not sure you use the same words for things as the kid, though." Stan shrugged, as he transferred the first batch of Stancakes to a plate. "Most important thing is, if somebody tells you 'no'?"

"No means no," Mabel told her firmly.

"And if somebody tells you to 'stop'," Stan said.

"You stop right then, no questions asked," Dipper added for him, glaring at her.

"And don't go trying to kill nobody or picking fights," Stan said. "Come to me if there's a problem."

Miz nodded. "Define picking fights?" She had already picked up on the whole, asking for definitions thing.

"No baiting people," Stan said. "You don't start it. --I'm talking right then. You get away and stop throwing punches, and they stop too? That's a restart. Starts over again. Physical and mental attacks, and mental includes verbal junk like talking," Stan told her firmly. "The kid can explain physical to you just fine, but he still has to come to me for most of the mental stuff." He looked over at her. "Which is why the 'stop' is really important," he said in descending tones.

"And there are accidents and mistakes and on-purpose and penalties and is she going to be part of the agreement now too, Grunkle Stan?" Mabel asked of her favorite grunkle, as she sat down at the table next to her brother.

"Depends on the kid," Stan told her. "I'm thinkin' no. Probably he'll want to set up some kinda different new thing--"

He stopped talking for a moment at the thunder of sound making its way down the staircase.

Bill practically tumbled off of the staircase landing and barely kept his feet as he hit the ground floor. He sped up when he saw Stan, looking grim and downright furious, but came to a screeching halt when he saw Miz in the kitchen with him.

Miz waved. "Morning big brother. Don't worry. I haven't made any Deals or stuff yet. I tried to apologize but I'm not sorry enough yet. I'm still working on that." She reached for the syrup again.

Bill's breathing was more than a little bit off, even after he saw Miz.

He turned to Stan, and if looks could kill -- and Bill's had used to -- Stan would have been pretty well crispy-fried on the spot already if the 'mystic barrier' around the Shack hadn't been in place.

Stan's eyebrows slowly went up. It was the first time that he'd actually seen the kid look… one-trillion-year-old demon-y, all spitfire rage and ancient I-know-exactly-how-to-fuck-up-every-last-piece-of-your-shit-you-don't-even-KNOW-haven't-even-begun-to-COMPREHEND-what-that-means-yet-BUT-YOU-WILL.

"...You really don't trust me with her, huh," Stan said slowly.

"STAY AWAY FROM HER." Bill said outright, as he stomped over to Miz. "DON'T GO TALKING TO HIM WITHOUT ME AROUND," was what he demanded from Miz. He was twitching and shivering in place, his breathing still well-off.

Miz looked back and forth, unsure why Bill was so angry. She was unharmed. She nodded anyway. "Ok."

Bill lifted his hand with a snap-like jolt, and it hovered above her head for a moment.

Then he brought it down again, right down onto the top of her head, and he did a sort of mussing, then not-mussing-just-holding it there, and then a mussing again, before he just let it lie there for good.

"DON'T-- do ThAT aGAin," Bill said, and while his voice was jumping between high-pitched triangle-demon like tones and low-pitched rumbling, the hand on top of her head was shaking slightly. ('Don't leave me behind. I didn't know what happened. You were supposed to be there but you were gone and…')

Miz pretty much purred into his hand. "Alright. I'll wait for you next time." She could feel he was really upset about this and didn't fight him on this. "I'm sorry for worrying you." She resolved to stay within his sight for a while. He must have been really upset to wake up to find her gone.

"NOT-worried. I'm-fine. Stanley-is-dangerous," Bill was calming down slowly, the longer he saw that Miz was fine and that Stan was acting the same as he did every morning. He was still clearly suspicious and angry as hell, though. Miz looked over at Stan. "MORE dangerous?" she asked.

"He killed me." Bill told her succinctly, glaring at Stanley as he finally got his stupid human-ish body's breathing back under control. "And he's smarter than he acts. DON'T be fooled." Miz nodded. "Ok." She agreed easily. Stan was a conman, she knew not to just make deals with him willy-nilly. Even if she felt bad for upsetting him. Stan looked pretty unperturbed. Dipper and Mabel were watching the back-and-forth between the two of them, though, and exchanging looks between them.

They all heard boots clomping down the staircase next, then almost a hesitation in their step, before they picked back up again, and Ford made his way the rest of the way down the stairs and into the room. He didn't look like he'd slept entirely well; his hair was still a bit askew.

Miz looked over and then looked away. She sighed. Took a deep breath and huffed. This… well… she… she could do this. Miz pressed a hand to her face and sighed. Ford didn't look all that well-pleased at seeing her still there himself, with the way he stopped for a moment and grimaced slightly, before firming his jaw, moving his gaze away from her, and striding the rest of the way in.

Bill was eyeing Stanford, looking somewhat expressionless during his assessment. After awhile he looked away from him, to glance out the window instead.

"Oh, great," Bill muttered as he got a good look at the sky, and the weather ongoing. "No rain today." He sounded absolutely disgusted, and more than a little put out.

"Yup!" Mabel said cheerfully, and Dipper dipped his head to cover something of a laugh and a smirk. Ford just looked done with the entire situation already, and rubbed his fingers across his eyes as he sat back down in his chair.

Miz was still breathing steadily as she tried very hard to purge the anger from her system. The problem with absorbing emotions for energy was having them inside her until she could filter them out into pure, clean energy. She breathed carefully until she wasn't angry anymore. Specifically, until she wasn't angry at Ford anymore.

Bill turned his head and looked down at her, picking up on something that had to do with her breathing, but not sure entirely what. Nobody breathed that evenly or regularly unless they were doing it on purpose... but she didn't look like she was trying to meditate -- not to him. Miz straightened up and groaned. "Ok. I'm not mad anymore," she said carefully. "Should I try apologizing now?"

"No," said Bill. "What?" said Ford, his head coming up.

"Nothin', don't worry about it," Stan told his brother. Ford readjusted his glasses and looked around at them all, frowning slightly. "...What did I miss," Ford said slowly, as Stan turned around and dumped a plate with a large stack of Stancakes on it down onto the table in front of them all. "Nothin', I told you," Stan repeated, and Ford narrowed his eyes at his brother suspiciously.

"Stan…" Ford began. "Eat your breakfast, Ford," was all he got back from him, as Stan turned away from them all, back to the stove. Miz looked at Ford and then Stan. Well, they said she shouldn't try to apologize so… she should just wait? "When and how should I apologize?" she asked.

"Is this the 'game' we're playing this morning?" Ford muttered almost under his breath, looking not entirely well as he snagged a few Stancakes from the stack with his own fork, after the niblings had finished taking their own shares each. Miz looked over at him again, now feeling bad for him, the obvious exhaustion on his face. She wasn't sure what to say. "If I'm still hungry, can I go out and get some food on my own or can I eat something else?" She said instead, unsure how to apologize when everyone seemed so tense. She also took the glasses off because it was really weird when Ford looked like that. She rubbed her eyes.

Stan finished up making the second large batch of Stancakes and cleaned up the stove, putting the pan and such in the sink. "I'm done. You can cook the rest of that up for yourself if you want," he told her, nodding at the batter, as he carried the new batch of Stancakes to the table and sat down with them, before pushing them out to the center of the table.

Miz nodded. "Ok. Thank you." Bill dropped his hand to move to the side, and she got up to start pulling out a new pan to use. She hummed a soft melody as she went.

Bill, who had moved on to the toaster himself, absently and unconsciously let out a soft building hum at times, that built and faded away on odd notes at odd times as Miz hummed the same notes herself, as the notes she was putting out hit a sort of internal resonance with his own largely-suppressed and anchored-down energy form. More often than not, it was one-tone, but sometimes a soft polyphonic two-tone hum came from him, sort of bubbling out of his breathing, similar to what had happened when he'd been asleep.

Miz slowly began to harmonize her humming with Bill's, as she began to catch his pattern, and that it was a repeating one. Then she made hers go up and down around Bill's tones, a sort of… playful melody. Bill had absolutely no idea what was happening, completely oblivious to it, but it slowly caught the attention of each of the Pines at the table with them in-turn.

Stan noticed it first, almost at the same time as Dipper and Ford did, and paid attention, but said nothing. Mabel noticed it and then seemed to shrug, not thinking much of it; she was used to Bill being weirdly musical by this point. Dipper looked down and made a few notes in his journal, but mostly focused on eating his breakfast. Ford looked up… and slowly set down his fork, staring.

Ford stared at the two of them the longest.

He was still staring when they heard the door open after awhile, and the next thing that happened involved Mabel jumping up happily and yelling out, "Melody! Soos!" to dart way from the table and grab each one of them in a hug in rapid succession, brightly grinning up at them.

"Hey, little dude," Soos said to her good-naturedly, with his usual laugh. "How's the breakfast?" Then he looked up and spotted Miz. "Uhhhh, Mr. Pines? Who's the new girl with the tail?"

Mabel was happy to fill Soos in on how she was the dragon-girl from before that had made the bouncy castle for them, and Dipper added a piece of information or two when Mabel skipped something he thought needed adding.

In the meantime, Melody walked her way over to Bill. "Hello, Bill. Who's your friend?"

"Little sister, not a friend," Bill corrected her, talking through the hum he was still putting out, as Miz was still humming herself.

"What are you two humming?" she asked them, as Bill finished pulling his thrice-burned toast out of the toaster, to make up his customary toast-lime-jelly-pepper-sandwich of the meal. Bill simply looked up at her and blinked. "...Humming?" he said, with a thrum still in his voice, then blinked again and raised a hand to his throat, finally becoming aware of what he was doing. He had no idea for how long he'd been doing it, or quite why, just yet.

Miz paused. "Just a bit of a made up tune… I used to sing together with my sisters. Sadly, my other brother couldn't sing with me." She looked a little nostalgic at that.

Bill blinked and blinked again, as Melody refocused on Miz. He opened his mouth and closed it again. He tapped his fingers against the front of his throat lightly, trying to assess… Then he craned his neck around and turned in place to look down at Miz for a moment, after taking her and Melody's words into larger account. Miz blushed a little. "I-I really liked being able to make music together with someone again." She still felt giddy at the thought of Bill wanting to be her brother, to be her family.

Bill blinked at her again.

"I could play piano for you," he offered.

He did not see how Ford colored, went pale, and then practically bristled in place behind him at his words.

Miz beamed so brightly it was a wonder she wasn't glowing. "I'd love that very much! Thank you! Thank you!" She was wagging her tail as Melody blinked and finally recognized her. "Oh. You're that kid who came here with that other man… um… is he here too?"

"Seb's back home in his own dimension so he can fix his portal and save his Ford… ah… wait. Would this be one of those 'don't talk about' things… wow… I'm really bad at filtering stuff…" Miz groaned and covered her face. "Damn my mouth. Can never shut up…"

"Wait, wait, what?! What do you mean save his Ford?" Dipper asked, looking worried and also a bit angry at Bill. Miz looked over and fidgeted with her tail. "So… am I supposed to talk about other dimensions or am I not supposed to talk about it?" she asked them. "Getting mixed signals here." (Bill leaned back and said nothing at all, knowing anything he said to the rest of them at this point would come across very, very wrong.)

Stan glanced over at his brother, waiting for his decision, since he was the one not wanting to talk about other dimensions. "...Don't talk about it." Ford said stiffly, after a very long pause, during which he'd actually seemed to be mentally fighting with himself a bit. Miz nodded and shut her mouth. Dipper slowly sat back down as well, looking at his Great-Uncle with no small concern.

Miz hated how awkward it was in here. She finished flipping the rest of the pancakes and realized she'd used up the rest of the batter. Soos looked over. "Oh hey dude, can I have one?"

"--No!" Ford said quickly, looking worried in the extreme. Miz frowned but took another deep breath and let it go. Don't start a fight… so… getting mad at his distrust would be starting a fight? She breathed again, knocking away the negative emotions Ford kept putting out. "Ok, it's very hard to not get mad when you keep letting out angry waves," she muttered at him. "I'm trying my best here!"

"What." Bill turned to look at her. His eyes were a bit wider than usual. "--Define 'angry waves'."

"They're like… this psychic resonance that everyone lets off whenever they feel any emotion at all. I passively feed off it, which DOESN'T hurt them. And it's not just him." Miz sighed. "I can't help it when they're all feeling so strongly." She shook her head. "Even if I close my mind to it, I can still taste their emotions." It was passive, it helped her gain energy and wasn't normally a problem. But she already upset Stan and the kids. She didn't like that.

Stan opened his mouth for a moment, then closed it again, because he hadn't been sure whether to say 'Ford…' or 'Kid…' instead. All he knew was that whatever it was, was probably not such a good thing, if it had the two of them staring at the dragon-lady with nearly identical 'oh shit' looks on each of their faces.

It didn't help that the next thing each of them did was immediately look to each other. Ford's look turned thunderous. "Get her the hell out of the house right now." Bill looked angry in return. "Shut up and let me think!" Bill snapped right back. "--And DON'T interrupt me, it'll just take longer, you're ALREADY making me waste time having to TALK AT YOU when you're being stupid, Miz what kind of range are we talking about here," Bill ended with, not even stopping to take a breath until he'd finished quickly rattling through all of that, and then looking back to his little sister.

Miz blinked. "Eh… with my mind closed to keep people out, it's around a 30 foot radius around me?" She pouted at Ford. "It's not like I'm doing this on purpose, you know? I didn't get to choose what my powers were!"

"Outside," Bill said, as Ford was starting to open his mouth to, one assumed, repeat himself again. "We're going outside. Right. NOW." he told her. "Melody, more pancakes to feed her different things instead of angry waves would be helpful!" Bill called out to her quickly, as he steered Miz away from the kitchen stove and towards the nearest exterior door. "And DON'T COMPLAIN at me, Sixer! None of you were acting ANY differently than you normally do the past FULL DAY, this is a PRECAUTION ONLY!" Bill called back at him over his shoulder, as he walked Miz in front of him out through the door and onto the porch, and kept right on walking.

Miz seemed confused. Sure, the emotions were annoying but it wasn't like she hasn't dealt with this for years and years… it's not like she was absorbing Lust energy. That… sucked.

"Keep walking," Bill told her. "Last thing we need is that Stanford throwing a hissy fit because we aren't thirty feet from the outer barrier. --Yes, THAT one, he'd be worried about the disruption of you maybe-possibly feeding on THAT," Bill told her, as they kept on moving. He was steering her -- really, them both -- towards one of the walking paths used for the Shack tours.

"But nothing went wrong while I was here for like… a whole day? I mean, I got kinda irritable and angry last night but otherwise I was fine!" Miz protested but she still walked outside without fighting it. "I didn't think it was gonna be THIS big of a deal… I just wanted Ford to stop being so grumpy…"

"No, it's just a precaution, I told you -- him -- them. Technically, I'm taking more risk than all of them combined," Bill muttered. "--It's fine," he added shortly after. "It's GOOD that you said something." It explained a lot of the instability that she might've been having trouble with that he'd been reading about from her, maybe.

"I've never had someone react to knowledge of my empathic powers so… strongly." Miz continued walking past the border of the wards.

"That's likely because they didn't understand what it might mean," they heard from behind them as they came to a stop, and they both turned around to see a grim-faced Ford standing there, hand on the gun at his hip.

"Go back inside," Bill nearly hissed out at him.

"No," Ford told him, taking a stand. "You're going to need a human test subject for this, if you're actually trying to define and restrict this at all, and of the members of my family and the people in town, I am the most protected out of all of them against any potential side-effects, adverse or otherwise. --I won't let you demand the participation of Stanley for this, or anyone else." Ford didn't look particularly pleased about it, and was more than a little tense and looking combative, but he was still standing there looking ready to deal with anything that he had to. Miz muttered, "Didn't have any issues the last time I was here…"

Bill snarled out a curse word in Galactic Standard at him, and Ford responded promptly with something just as derogatory in return, but far more cooly than Bill.

Miz grew and then settled into a large leaf-chair after she took the magic cancelling cuffs off. She sat down and sighed. Was she missing something? No one back home ever said this was a problem? She fed off Xanthar passively because he was really good at Calm and Peaceful. She'd only fed of people actively once, the Lust at her concert… because she was trying to make sure none of the people there would be able to feel Lust for a few hours after the show. Since Time Baby got all up in her case about that. The damn prude didn't like how horny the fans were after a concert and she really, REALLY hadn't liked the results of that active feeding.

Ford pulled out a smaller notepad than one of his usual journals and flipped it over to a new page. "She characterized this as 'angry waves', 'psychic resonance' she relates to emotions -- which also apparently have a 'taste' -- passive feeding with a lack of induced pain," Ford frowned, "An inability to completely shut this sensory phenomena out," his frown deepened into a grimace, "A sensory range of 30 feet in radius when consciously attempting to 'close her mind' to keep these presumably external feelings out, and an implied ability to be able to sense these 'waves' at further distances when 'open'." Ford finished jotting down what he'd been concurrently relating to them, then looked up at the both of them. "Did I leave anything out."

Bill rubbed the side of his hand across his right temple, and looked like he wanted to drop-kick Ford into the lake, despite how far away they were from said body of water currently.

"You are GOING to SLOW THINGS DOWN," Bill gritted out at him, and Ford gave him a long bland look down his nose at Bill. "Then perhaps you should consider my presence nonexistent, and I will simply observe your supposed brilliance from afar," was Ford's own clipped retort in return. Miz looked back and forth as they interacted. Ah… this taste… how… weird...

Bill let out a huff of breath and rolled his eyes. "More like hope for an opportunity to shoot me in the back and call it a misfire," Bill put out there, like he knew he wasn't giving that Stanford any new ideas on that particular front. He turned his back on Ford anyway, deliberately. "--Still worried about whether he was gonna bounce back from last night, Miz?" he told his sister with no small sarcasm, as he turned his full attention back on her.

"I'm actually… glad he's feeling better…" Miz said honestly. "This… right here… is much better then how he felt yesterday and earlier."

"Because he's focused," Bill told her. "This is a problem he thinks he can solve -- not that he actually knows how to solve it." Bill stepped up a bit closer, and squatted down in front of her. He reached for his back pocket, then stopped mid-motion. "Need my knife back, or a copy of it," Bill said to Miz simply, bringing his hand back around front. He didn't quite sound embarrassed at the delay he'd had in remembering. Miz nodded and flicked her fingers to summon it. She frowned at her hands, still unable to snap her fingers. Still, the knife appeared and dropped to the grass in front of her.

Ford stared at this. "You--" Bill had actually handed her a weapon? His weapon? The only one he'd ever been given by Stan? A demon doing something like that implied--

"--This the original or a copy?" Bill asked of her, as he scooped it back up. Ford frowned slightly at being effectively ignored, then visibly seemed to decide that he wasn't going to pursue it, and settled down in a balanced crouch at the nearest tree to where he was standing instead, watching them both.

"Original, didn't want to copy it without your express permission." Miz shrugged, kicking her legs childishly as she leaned back on the leaf chair. Bill blinked. "Thought I gave you that earlier." He then shrugged it off, 'cloned' it himself, and handed her the original knife back. Miz held the knife, scanning it absently and saving this template in the huge database inside her head.

"Without opening your mind -- keeping it as closed as you usually do and NOT trying to sense anything or focus on sensing anything any better than you already are," Bill told Miz, as he pulled a handful of something small out of his pocket, "What do you sense that Stanford is feeling right now?"

"You shouldn't be jumping straight to--" Ford began.

"Shut up, Sixer," Bill said almost absently, as if in reflex, while he flipped open his pocket knife and started working away on what he was holding in his hand. "Miz?"

"Well… he's Curious for one thing. A… faint taste of Worry and Dread." Miz said as she tilted her head. Emotions were always a weird thing. "It's hard to explain."

"When you sense this, does it feel like it's something outside the boundaries of your Self? Inside them? Something like an internal resonance inside with something outside? Something that you're feeling as it enters you or crosses your Self boundaries? Something you have to gather internally first in a pool, then pick apart and look at there?" Bill asked of her next.

"It's clearly not coming from me. But if I'm around it long enough, or if the emotion is strong enough, I start to feel it too. That's generally around the time I start feeding and it becomes part of me. I can filter out the emotion attached to this energy but it takes a little time to do so. I can collect it in a pool if I want but I have to do that actively, my passive feeding just takes it in as is." She paused. "Dad taught me how to filter out the emotions. Back when I was first learning how to use my powers I would get overwhelmed and go nuts because I couldn't regulate or filter it out." (As she said this, Bill made a mental note to discuss self-regulation techniques with her later, and bring it up before they were done here.)

"Your 'dad' isn't actually the Axolotl," Ford put out there. It wasn't as though Stan hadn't told him about that part of it, too. And he wasn't so stupid that he hadn't figure out from last night that-- "You're a demon. The Axolotl would never--"

Bill clenched his jaw for a moment. "--Hey idiot," Bill said, raising his voice slightly, and cutting Ford off, "Newsflash. The Axolotl you don't-know and love GAVE me a 'get out of jail free card' for fiery-deaths, in case you were wondering how I came back with NO issues WHATSOEVER." Ford was staring at his back blankly. "SURPRISE!" Bill got a nasty smirk, as he continued carving away. "What do you think of the stupid lizard now? Still 'good enough' for you?"

Ford didn't say anything, but his face went largely expressionless.

"Ax… kinda has some weird sort of plan for us. Apparently. Dad just told me that I'm supposed to be his opposite. We form a trinity back in my Dimension. Me, Ax and Time Baby. Energy, Space and Time. Like a cosmic equation." Miz spoke up quietly. "Dad usually lets me do whatever I want so long as I don't try to destabilize reality."

"Oh, see, you probably just confused him there, Miz," Bill said, almost sing-song. "Why don't you just go and ask Stanley to explain all about dimensional sets to you, Stanford? I'm sure he'd be happy to!"

Ford, frowning, almost pushed himself to his feet -- then stopped and settled back down, looking angry with himself. He wasn't going anywhere, especially not with Bill acting like this, and wanting him gone.

"Frustration… Disappointment…" Miz continued to list off.

Bill nodded at her absently as he worked. "So, these 'waves' are something you feel against the edges and side of your mental boundaries, and if the pressure-differential is too high, it slowly seeps in?"

"Like osmosis. But...not water." Miz confirmed.

"Does it have to be a certain strength or intensity to seep in? Or do you just need to be around it long enough?"

"I just need to be around it long enough. But the weaker emotions are filtered and purified more quickly." She explained. "I've gotten better at it but most of the time I don't bother because I've gotten better at controlling myself even when flooded with emotions. But...apparently the ones I ended up feeding on last night were… a little more toxic than I thought…"

Ford looked horrified at the beginning of her explanation, and only looked even more and more horrified as she continued. He didn't say anything, but he did look over at Bill.

Bill sighed. "Kid, your 'dad' really did NOT do you any favors," he informed her dryly. "Self-regulation is a thing, and so are layers. You need an actual boundary that will KEEP THINGS OUT. --Not surprising you've been having trouble with it," he told her, "You got conned into making and using vessels. I make and use exoskeletons. They're two very different things conceptually, and not just how they physically operate and how you mentally attach to them."

Miz sighed. "I think Ax just teaches me to deal with the side effects of my powers, rather than how to prevent them from happening. I'm not sure why though."

"Because the stupid lizard is stupid and a jerk and wants to see you fail," Bill rattled off, then paused. "Letting you pick your prophecy is probably some sort of test." It wasn't as though the lizard couldn't just… "Maybe it'll take a request from you, but at the end of the day, it is the one who decides, isn't it?" (Bill wasn't bothered by Stanford overhearing this, and Ford was staring at them both.)

"...I don't think Dad is trying to hurt me on purpose ...I think he just doesn't realize I don't work like other Bill Ciphers? He told me, back when he first found me, that I wasn't what he was expecting." She frowned. "He says that a lot whenever I do stuff."

Ford's breathing went thready, and he pushed his back up against the tree. He hadn't actually thought… this was just some kind of sick joke, right? The dragon wasn't actually… a…

Ford's hand, already on his gun, started to tighten around the grip of it.

"DON'T EVEN THINK ABOUT IT," was what rumbled out of Bill, in deep distorted inhuman tones that he shouldn't have been able to produce. "We're BOTH demons named Bill Cipher. She WON'T DIE, I won't die, and ALL you will do is piss BOTH OF US off."

Ford froze in place, and his grip on his gun slipped slightly, almost spasmodically.

Miz looked over at him. "You don't know anything about alternative dimensions do you? I've been to a dimension where Bill Cipher was a Bee. A honey bee. An ACTUAL tiny insect. Not all Bill Ciphers are the same. Heck, I'm the way I am and I don't even have the same backstory as big brother over here. And Sebastian is a Bill Cipher who was born as a HUMAN."

"There aren't... supposed to be… more than one…" Ford panted out. He looked faint.

"--Because they all kill each other for having the same name, because it's annoying to not be the one summoned when you're SUPPOSED to be called," Bill ended. "I don't Play by the Rules, Sixer. I'm not going to kill my counterparts if I don't have to. DEAL WITH IT."

Ford looked like he was on the verge of having a heart attack, or maybe a mental breakdown. His legs slowly slid out from under him, and his arms went just as slack.

"That… that…" Ford was barely able to breathe out, eyes glassy. "No…" he started to shake. "No… I…" (There were multiple Bill Ciphers? Had everything he'd ever tried to do been all for nothing? If there were… an infinite number of Bill Ciphers… and they could all go anywhere they pleased once they'd escaped… and so, so many of them had escaped… at least three… that other one that had been here last time hadn't been possessed by Bill, he'd actually been a… a...) Ford stared sightlessly out into the woods.

"I've discovered something about that actually." Miz spoke up. "You know how the AXOLOTL has multiple instances of himself spread out, creating their own multitudes of dimensions to rule over and observe? Well, apparently, they each have different amounts of dimensional sets under their power and they keep their sets away from each other. So… YOUR Ax has many, many, MANY dimensional sets with different Bill Ciphers, which is why you've heard about them. But My Ax only has one dimensional set under his rule. That's why I'm the ONLY Bill Cipher in my world." Miz sat up, excited to finally share this tasty bit of info with someone.

She'd discovered this through just some basic logic: Blue's Ax seemed to have plenty of Realities under his fin, Seb's Ax had at LEAST two Realities… and her dad had never spoken about any other Bill in their multiverse except her. "And it's why my world doesn't have multiple Earths, just alternate timelines that cannot be accessed because they get sent off to be given to a different Ax."

"Interesting." Bill huffed out a breath that was almost a laugh. "Lizards all the way down and around. HMM..." He stopped carving for a moment and thought about it for a moment or two, then started up again, "Makes sense. Infinite realities should be able to repeat, so why not get a bunch of 2's or 3's or 46'\'s several times over?" he mused. "Wonder how they decide all that between them." Bill frowned.

"No idea how they decide. Dad says he's in contact with the other 'hims' so I'm guessing they vote?" Miz giggled. Then she paused and pointed at Ford. "Existential horror. Been a while since I tasted that."

"This is why I didn't want to tell him," Bill told her, after looking over his shoulder at that Stanford, then back again. "Either he'll break, or--"

Ford slowly bent forward and started to chuckle. Then laugh. Then laugh harder. Full-body laughter, like it was just the funniest thing on the world... that started to get a tinge of hysteria in the mix over time. And it grew and grew in volume.

"--he'll do that," Bill grimaced. "Wait for it," he told her next, glancing up at her. "50-50, he either stops and just… stops for awhile, or just starts shooting at us without warning."

"Uh…" Miz leaned away from Ford. "This taste is… weird…"

"In the 'wrong way weird', I bet!" Bill held out his hand and said, "Take these." Three small smooth stones, like the kind you'd skip across a river, were cradled in the palm of his hand. They all had a slew of small markings etched over every last bit of space over them. "Trying the 'shotgun' approach, here!" Bill told her, stealing the phrase from Stanley. "See if anything works that maybe can stick. We can try narrowing it down later if anything does," he told her.

Miz picked up the stones, turning them over in her hands and scanning them. "Just hold them," Bill told her. "They need to be on your person to work, if they're going to work at all. Might need a minute or two, to finish powering up from the ambient weirdness out here." Miz nodded at Bill's words. Ford was still laughing in the background. He'd fallen over onto his side at some point, was curled up around himself, clutching at his sides. It was a little difficult to tell at this point if it was laughter, sobbing, or perhaps both at the same time.

"Is he gonna be ok? Is Stan gonna be mad and blame us for this?" Miz asked worriedly.

"It's fine," Bill told her. "Not like he hasn't broken before."

"Isn't it bad if he breaks?" Miz looked over at Ford.

Bill looked up at her. "There's breaking, and then there's BREAKING. He's doing the first one. --Done it LOTS of times!" he told Miz. "Always comes out of it fine. I told you, he bounces back pretty quick." It was just a thing his Sixer-Stanford felt like putting himself through from time to time. Bill never really understood why he did it. He shrugged at her, moving on. "So, things that move past your outer boundary diffuse almost immediately?" he asked next. "You said that you could collect it in a pool. Is the pool 'inside' or 'outside' or at or along the edges of your boundary?" He wondered how she could tell what emotions matched what waves...

"I collect it inside a bubble if I'm not absorbing it myself. It's outside me and I can carry it around and use the collected emotions for stuff if I wanted. I could give it to someone else to make them feel the emotion, I could just leave the bubble floating around somewhere until someone is unlucky enough to touch it and be forced to feel it, I could use it on myself and just absorb it…"

"So, you are basically homogenous on your interior, then," Bill said to her, confirming it with her. "You never learned how to layer, you never learned how to set up hard boundaries, you never learned to self-regulate, and you never learned how to automatically identify, characterize, quarantine, and expel things-that-are-not-you when they manage to get past your boundaries." (And if Bill had understood the signals his physical body was sending him correctly in that moment, he'd have realized that what his body was wanting to do at that thought was to vomit violently. Because everything he'd just listed off were all basic survival skills, as far as Bill was concerned, and Miz seemed to have absolutely none of them, not a single solitary one.)

"It… never seemed important? I got used to it." Miz scratched her head. "I suppose I never thought about it. I was more focused on learning not to explode randomly or laserbeam people to death…" She blushed. "And then I got distracted teaching myself how to build stuff. Clicking atoms together to form molecules and building the mass until it turned into stuff… I liked doing that. It was fun. And distracting…"

"...And it never occurred to you that the REASON WHY you kept having interior spikes that CAUSED those explosions or laser-beams to come out, might be because things outside of you were PUSHING your insides all-around and CAUSING those spikes?" Bill asked her. He was more curious than judgmental, honestly. He honestly couldn't imagine not noticing the correlation himself, to then LOOK for the causation and determine if there really was a link.

Miz looked down in shame, embarrassed at her own ignorance. "I thought it was due to me being… used to being human…" she admitted softly. "I thought it was because I was… a defective Bill Cipher…"

"Define 'defective'," Bill challenged her. He'd always been offended by the concept, once he'd realized what other people meant by it, and the implications. "I've always been insane. Am I defective?"

"....not what he was expecting…" she said softly. Bill frowned. "Not what who was expecting?"

"Ax." Miz said. "I had thought he said that because I used to be human. I didn't know anything about anything back then."

Bill frowned at her.

"Do you think I did?" he asked her. Then he grinned and threw his his hands out to the sides. "Everybody has to start SOMEWHERE! HAHA!"

"I just thought that any problems I had were just a result of me being… me. Not that there was… my powers doing stuff without me realizing." Miz spoke slowly as she admitted this.

Bill stood up and reached out with his free hand. He flipped his knife closed and stowed it, while he laid his other hand on her head. "There's nothing wrong with you."

Miz sniffled. Her shoulders shaking a little. A lot of her repressed self esteem issues had to do with feeling like there was something wrong with her. She wasn't the Bill Cipher Ax expected… maybe she wasn't the one he wanted and hearing Bill, another Bill, a proper Bill, tell her that she wasn't wrong, she wasn't a mistake just caused everything to come spilling out all at once. She brought her hands up to try and muffle her soft sobs as she cried. "I… I'm not wrong… I'm not a mistake right? You… you really mean that?" she sobbed.

"Ah," Bill said when she started sobbing. He patted her on the head just as awkwardly as before. "Yes, I mean it. HAHA. --Why would I say it if I didn't mean it? You are not wrong, or a mistake." He tilted his head at her. "I'm pretty sure we were all made the way we were on purpose. But YOU..." He crouched down in front of her, hand still on her head, and his eyes brightened up like stars. "YOU broke the mold, is what I'M hearing, and YOU did it MUCH SOONER than I did. You're doing it BETTER, FASTER, breaking all those Rules so early!" He grinned at her, very very proud of his little sister's accomplishments so far.

Miz laughed through her sobs. She gave him a shaky smile. "I-I guess so… that's a good thing?"

"I KNOW so!" Bill enthused, still grinning at her. "And yes, a good thing. A VERY good thing. Those lizards DON'T know what they're doing," he informed her.

"Even if I so-somehow skipped all the beginner steps?" Miz asked. She had felt like such an idiot for not knowing things that, to Bill, seemed obvious.

"Yeesh, kid," he told her. "You just DON'T GET IT, do you?" He gave her a sideways smirk. "YOUR Axolotl was so worried about how quickly you'd just go on breaking absolutely everything, that it HAD to intervene. It HAD to talk to you early, RIGHT AWAY. It HAD to set you going in ALL the WRONG DIRECTIONS, teach you ALL the WRONG THINGS," he told her, "To TRY and SLOW YOU DOWN. --You've got it ON THE ROPES and RUNNING!"

Miz blinked away some tears. "Oh… I hadn't… thought of it that way?" She wasn't sure Ax was running, that lazy butt just sleeps all the time but… "Well… I mean… I DID create an entire dimension as my first use of my powers… by accident…"

Bill grinned at her again. "EXACTLY. --Who DOES that?" he laughed out. "That's supposed to be IMPOSSIBLE! Right?" He tilted his head at her expectantly. "It even ACKNOWLEDGES that you're POWERFUL on the same level as IT is ALREADY." At least, as long as it wasn't lying about that… "If not MORE powerful than it is, already."

"I… I've never tried to test my power against dad before…" Miz played with her tail in thought.

"WELL." That was a bit faster than he'd thought she would get there. Hadn't she not really wanted to kill it dead, before? ...Then again, she had progressed to realizing that the stupid lizard was flawed and did lie, since the last time he'd seen her in the fleshy-flesh. That said… "If you DO want to try and take it on, you'd BETTER be SURE that you're going to WIN. Probably won't get a SECOND chance if you can't pull it off. That's more of a ONE-SHOT thing."

Miz made a face. "I don't… really want to fight dad. That feels kinda rude."

Bill nodded. He wasn't about to push her. "And you'd better be ready to take its place right away if you DO win, if you ever do that."

Miz gasped. "Take his place? Like… take over the recycling of Souls and creating new dimensions?" Bill nodded. "Maybe. If you WANT to do it that way. I wouldn't recycle them. I'M planning on cutting that stupid lizard out of the loop entirely, on that front, LONG BEFORE I go up against it!" And it wasn't as if she didn't already have the 'creating new dimensions' part down. It was the very first thing that she did! Right?

She blushed. "I-I don't know if… what if I mess up? That's too much responsibility!"

"Well, you don't have to do it RIGHT AWAY!" Bill told her. "I'M NOT. --Just because I've got an All-Seeing Eye," he hesitated, "that needs some WORK on it now…" he added a bit more honestly, then continued on with the same level of energy as before, "DOESN'T mean that I can SEE or KNOW EVERYTHING ALL-AT-ONCE yet." He shrugged. "I know I've still got a LONG WAY to go!" But he was going to get there. Eventually. It would just take some time… But Bill was convinced he could do it. He would find a way. He had to.

Getting rid of the stupid lizard wouldn't be good enough, Bill knew, because something would have to take its place. Otherwise, everything would eventually run down; SOMEBODY had to keep the party going! And Bill didn't trust anyone else to do it other than himself.

Miz nodded slowly. "I don't know if I even want to take Ax's place. That's… so much… so many things I would have to keep track of. Hell, I'm god of several planets and I have my hands full governing THEM. Let alone an ENTIRE dimensional set…"

"Well, maybe you'll feel differently when you're older," he told her. "I learned a few things about that stupid lizard that made me angry enough that I'm going to do it. ...And if I can pull it off here," he told her. "Eventually I'll be able to pull it off everywhere. I can do it for you, if you want. --Or I'll just toss it down without killing it and you can keep it as a PET!" he snickered. Because there was probably a way to cut a piece of they-it off from the rest of the whole It, come to think of it. Right?

"I'm… I guess I'm still considered young huh?" Miz mumbled. "Not even a trillion years old yet." She blinked as she caught his last statement. "I don't know if I'd want to keep dad as a pet. But if you do kill the Axolotl, I would be happy if you left dad alive. I don't want to lose him," she told him. She wasn't going to stop Bill if he wanted to kill the AXOLOTL, as long as he didn't kill HER AXOLOTL. It would have been a problem but Bill said he would take over Ax's duties, and as long as someone was in charge, that was fine.

Bill nodded. "Kind of figured that out out from what you told me, and Stanley, before. I'll SEE what I can do!" he told her, then gave her a bit of a cagey sideways look. "...Let me know if you change your mind?"

Miz snorted softly, wiping the last of her tears away. "Eh, I dunno. I love dad, even if he's an idiot. And if I do get mad at him, I wanna berate him myself. I'm working on my scolding voice!" Scolding the AXOLOTL, the idea was ridiculous. She let out a hysterical giggle at the thought.

Bill smiled at her.

"...So, what emotional waves are you feeling from me and that Stanford over there now?" he asked her.

"You're Triumphant and Giddy. Ford is…" Miz glanced over "...Resigned?"

"Ah well, guess I'll have to try something else, then," Bill said of the runestones. Maybe he should just share the basic theory instead. He glanced over his shoulder at Stanford. "Really? Resignation? He's moved past overwhelming-and-all-encompassing-despair and the panting cloudy haze of no-real-thought already?" It hadn't SEEMED like they'd been sitting there talking that long…

"Well, your emotions right now feel really nice. I like the way they taste. You're happy. That makes me happy." Miz assured Bill. "Mm, that's fine for now," Bill said, wondering exactly how much energy was leaking out from him; he'd generally considered (and re-tuned) himself to be rather self-contained. (Was it all coming from his stupid human-ish body instead? With the anchor, he couldn't exactly jump out of it right now and ask her if she could still sense anything from him, to narrow down if it was actually 'mental' energy or truly 'emotional' 'waves'.) "But I'm also always mad. --From the sound of things, you aren't a threat to us and our own mental integrity. We're a threat to you and yours."

"I just have to keep actively filtering any problematic stuff out and I'll be fine. Actually, back home, whenever I get too upset, I go to Xanthar. He's always got Calm and Content coming off him."

"Kid, you don't get it," he told her. "It's ALL problematic, because it's all NOT YOU. And you can't actively filter when you're asleep. Can you? --You're medicating yourself on other beings' emotions, instead of feeling and containing your own."

"....I like feeling them sometimes. A few of them taste good."

"Sometimes is fine," he told her. "But you should also have control over how much of them you feed on at a time, too, and how strong you want what you internalize to be, relative to the rest of what you're actually feeling at the time that you do that."

Miz nodded. He was right after all. "I'm guessing I need to add layers to my mental defenses?"

Bill nodded. "There are a lot of different ways to do it. I have my favorite methods, but they tie into and depend on a lot of other self-reconfigurations I've done to my own energy form over the years. ...I'm not sure what will work best for you. We may be the same, but we're also different."

"Well, I've got time to test out different methods. I have enough control over myself that I won't go around exploding anymore, so that's good."

"Basic cross-spectrum control is good," Bill agreed. "I think we should start with what I'm starting with here -- exterior modifiers," Bill told her, pointing at the unhelpful rune-covered stones. "Figure out what you're actually doing first, by what does and doesn't have an impact, and then worry about interior incorporation later."

"I could make a deafen barrier and set it to not-sound." Miz picked up a nearby rock and rubbed her hands over it. "Careful with the material interactions," Bill warned. "Most forms of magic I've ever Seen usually have that problem."

"Well, quartz would be the clearest type of crystal to work with." Miz squeezed the rock between her little hands and it shifted, changing in shape and molecular structure until she was holding a large piece of transparent quartz crystal. "They have a very steady frequency so I can check for any changes and adjustments to the spell more easily…" she said as she poked at the crystal, carving little runes into it.

She blinked when the quartz pulsed lightly. She looked up at Bill and frowned. "Nope. I can still feel you." He nodded, and pulled his knife out again, along with another three stones from his pocket, to continue his own efforts to help, slow as they were. She looked back down to her own work herself and reversed the runes on the quartz, making it so they were never carved to begin with, and began carving a different set. Another experiment. She did this easily, as if rewinding an action that changed the physical properties of an object could simply be undone, like turning back time specifically on an object as opposed to the world around them. (Because it could be! ...at least if you knew how, like she and some other Bills had taken the time to figure out.) She did it multiple times before frowning and declaring, "I'm hungrier now." She had used up a pretty large portion of her power altering reality.

Bill looked up at this pronouncement and asked, "Your own Self is hungry? Or that vessel needs food for messy fuel conversion-to-energy?"

Miz thought about it. "A little of both. I have to use twice the amount of energy to do stuff here than back in my own world." She patted her stomach. "And eating physical food helps somewhat. Also, I just enjoy tasting things."

"Ah," said Bill. "That's normal, I think. This dimension isn't yours; you don't get any optimization here, because you can't just lean on anything, you have to force it." He thought about the second problem, and stowed his knife, to reach for his 'cloned' 'smart'phone. With the way her vessels seemed to integrate with her better than his exoskeletons did, the 'eating' and gaining some energy from physical 'foodstuffs' somewhat seemed like a possibility, depending on how her Self might be connected to it.

"It felt like this in Seb's dimension too." Miz admitted, and Bill nodded at the confirmation. "And for food, I could technically eat anything and my stomach tears them apart on the molecular level and I feed on the energy released when their bonds are broken." She paused. "Kinda like a reactor."

Bill blinked. Then blinked again. Oh… He must have misunderstood her before. "You aren't in the Mindscape all the time," he stated. "Even when you aren't in a vessel? Except in your 3rd dimension?" he tried to restate.

She considered that. "I guess? I don't spend a lot of time in the Mindscape, I prefer a vessel because I don't like being ignored by people." She was unseen and unheard in the Mindscape. It was lonely.

"Right," Bill said, blinking again. He must have suffered from a logic blip there. "Your Self is homogenous. You only have a stomach in the vessels you create; you create your vessels to always have a stomach that exhibits those properties, to help you refuel," he stated, to confirm.

"Yeah. It's more efficient." Miz felt proud of this aspect of her anatomy. Being able to use every bit of what she ate without wasting anything was something she felt good about. Bill paused for a moment. "...If you're having overenergizing problems sometimes, couldn't you just disconnect the stomach-reactor part from your Self?"

"Well, even if I disconnect it, I still have the excess of energy to deal with."

"But it would help you to keep your overall levels down, until you learn how to self-regulate and store and release excess energy differently," he pointed out.

"True. But being able to break things down on a molecular level means I don't have to… ah… defecate…" Miz blushed. She was very disgusted by waste production. "...You could always put a wormhole in there instead?" Bill said, tilting his head at her.

"That…" Miz paused. "I could do that. I've teleported stuff I eat to somewhere else before. But I normally do that so I can eat it later. Like a stockpile of emergency rations." And because her taste buds were different in her different forms and she liked feeling the difference.

"HA! --That's called 'external storage' kid. There are a lot of different ways to do that." Bill shrugged. "I don't usually go with breaking down physical matter, usually takes me more energy than I get back out of it," because anything he was 'eating' in the 'Nightmare Realm' was at least partially destabilized, given where it was, and he couldn't ingest destabilized energy without issues without stabilizing it first. "But you don't have to process everything into energy before setting it to the side. Original-form storage is a thing, too." So were different forms of time-stop and stasis to prevent changes or decay in said externally-stored materials. He used to toss things through the wormhole under his hat for that, after stabilizing those things.

Ford finally moved. He was gripping at the grass, knuckles white, still trying to recover from everything he'd heard from them earlier. (He wasn't there yet.) He'd been in and out for awhile, and not a lot had registered for a good while there. But some of the things they were saying now… only served to let him know exactly how badly he was off, because he was having difficulty following any of it, still lightheaded in the extreme…

Oh. Was he dreaming? He had dreams like this sometimes. He banged a hand against the side of his head, felt the resounding clang, and then slowly relaxed, collapsing down against the ground beneath him. ...Yes. He had the plate in. He'd met Jheselbraum; she'd put it in to help save him from Bill's madness. So Bill wouldn't able to… Oh. Ah, yes. He was dreaming. Of course. That was why nothing was making any sense...

Miz looked over. "...is it wrong that I actually feel bad for him?"

"Stanley will likely be thrilled," Bill drawled out. Then he let out a short laugh. "WELL. 'Thrilled' would be the wrong word for it. But I think you understand what I mean." Bill dialed a number on his 'smart'phone and put it to his ear, waiting for the house phone to pick up.

Miz nodded as she continued to watch Ford. She got up to approach him slowly, as if approaching a scared animal. "Are you...ok?"

"I wouldn't," Bill cautioned her. It wasn't like he hadn't Seen this before. That Stanford likely thought he was dreaming, that everything that had been going on wasn't real. Just the same old, same old. (...Well, except that that Stanford usually did this sort of thing while he was asleep, in his dreams, and Bill could physically move him someplace completely different while he was asleep to let him keep on thinking that… since that had been what he'd wanted. For everything between two set points to have been seemingly a dream. --Really, the idiot was getting even more inconsistent over time.) "He's probably not even sure how far back it goes yet."

She turned to Ford, blushing faintly since her glasses were off but if she just gets used to it, she would be able to acclimate. "Is there something I could do to make you feel better? As a proper apology? Since I don't know how else to do this?" She just wanted things to be friendly again. "I'm going to try to make it up to you, and not get mad at you...but I don't know how to do it. I just don't like how things feel here right now..." She frowned. "Though I admit, I'm only offering because I actually feel bad about you being like...this-" She guestured to how blank and confused he looked.

"Evvvvvvverything's fine," Ford giggled out. "Whyyyyy wouldn't it be fiiiine?" He shivered where he was on the ground. It turned into a grimacing shudder, as the thought occurred to him that… when had this started? What dimension was he currently in? ...No matter. It was fine. He'd find out whenever he'd wake up, and he didn't have to wake up just yet, did he? And with that thought, Ford slowly relaxed again. After all, this dream was overall on the whole nice. --He was back home, Stanley didn't hate him and he didn't hate Stanley, he-- they-- had… niblings visiting them, because Shermie had had grandkids… Bill was there, but not killing anyone? Bill was always there in his dreams, sooner or later...

Miz nodded slowly. "Well." She said simply. "Well…" She turned a helpless look at Bill. "Would Stan be mad? I don't want him to be mad again."

"Not at you," he told her, as he got up, to walk over and stand next to her. "Don't worry about it."

"But this was sort of my fault? And I still want to apologize in a way that would work." Miz crouched in front of Ford and tilted her head at him.

"He did it to himself," Bill told her, then reminded her that: "He wanted us to 'consider his presence nonexistent', so when we talked to each other, we did just that. And he didn't tell either of us to 'stop'." Miz considered it and nodded. Well...yeah, Ford DID say that. And he didn't tell them to stop talking. So...yeah? "Should we bring him back to Stan now? And then explain what happened?"

Bill let out a huff, hung up -- finally giving up on the main house phone, which had just kept RINGING and RINGING -- and tried dialing Shooting Star's phone instead. "Working on it." Finally, he head a pickup. "Hello? Shooting St-- Pine Tree, fine. Hand Shoot-- ... Fine. Does Melody have the pancakes done? --Good, except there's a PROBL--. Yes. --No, it's more of a, hm, 'fox-chicken-seed-farmer' problem, and-- no, I don't know which one Miz is, but Stanford-- … No, he-- … No, he's HERE-- … … … …What?" Bill listened to what was being told to him on the other side of the audio connection, and glanced down at Stanford Pines in something of a little bit of shock.

Miz was slowly approaching Ford in a crouch to see how he was doing. The man was still giggling softly. "Come on sir, do you want to go back inside the house? Sit down, get a nice cup of warm milk…" she asked gently, softly. Now she was worried he'd hurt himself somehow. It was hard to stay mad at someone when they looked so… sadly broken.

"No, he's not all right, he's an idiot-- No. --He didn't tell us to 'stop'. --We just talked like he wasn't th--!! FINE. FINE, YES. … --No, she's wide open, there's no effect on any of you unless she actively-- she won't. ... No, not yet, which is why I am going to stay here, and you-- … --Then ask for volunteers," Bill snarled out at Dipper over the phone.

Ford just curled in on himself further, more giggles escaping him at odd moments, oddly smiling. He had one arm wrapped over his head in a not quite protective warding gesture, and the other wrapped around his midsection, half-hugging himself. Miz reached forward cautiously and held his hand gently. Loosely, so he could pull away if he didn't want her touching him.

Ford didn't react much to her touch physically, except that his giggles started to sound slightly more like sobs, because the last time he was certain that someone had willingly touched his hands had been...

"FINE." Bill tapped the 'hang up' button on the 'smart'phone screen, looking thoroughly annoyed. He let out a breath in a huff. "That idiot told them all to stay inside," he told Miz. "They thought he meant him, too." Bill glared down at him. "They didn't know he was out here with us." ...which meant Stanley hadn't 'signed off' on him being out there with them alone, or even gotten the chance to decide whether he wanted to come out with him, or do something else. Stanley hadn't known.

Miz gently held Ford's large wrinkled hand in hers and began petting it with her other hand. "Shhh...it's ok...you're ok…" She said softly. He kinda reminded her of Xanthar, back when she'd first found him. Broken and scared… though Ford seemed way more out of it. "Do you want to go back inside? Wouldn't that be nice?" She tried to get him to stand up, gently squeezing his hand.

Ford didn't want to get up. In his experience, his dreams usually lasted longer when he didn't try to move around inside of them -- and at that point, he was out of it enough to assume that he was still on the other side of the portal. Because why would he have any reason to believe that Bill could escape from the Nightmare Realm and then still be stopped and defeated in the middle of an entire unstoppable Weirdmageddon? Even for just a little while? And who would touch his hand so gently like this? Not anyone, not any real Bill Cipher… so he had to be asleep with the metal plate in his head in...

Miz looked a little strained at the emotions coming off him. She couldn't quite understand what they were. Human emotions were always a lot more difficult to understand than any alien she's met, more potent too. She continued to pet his hand gently. "What did you do to him?" she asked Bill. She's only broken someone a few times in her long life. She never liked doing it. Messing with people's dreams to make them paranoid and jumpy was one thing, actually breaking them always left a bad taste in her mouth.

"You're asking the wrong person that question," Bill told her. "I TOLD you -- he does it to himself." Bill found it annoying, really; he always had.

Their conversation was put on hold as they heard the crunch of footsteps through the underbrush. Shortly thereafter, Stanley, Soos, and Melody came into view.

Stanley was glaring, but he still took the container Melody was holding from her and thrust it into Bill's chest as he went. "We are talking about this later," Stanley said, not well-pleased with the demon at all right now.