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ckret2 · 11 months

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Chapter 23 of human Bill being the Mystery Shack's prisoner is honestly becoming a bigger inconvenience for them than for him, featuring: Bill's ex-girlfriend.

Bill wants to avoid being seen in a human body (humiliating), Mabel wants to know everything about Bill's love life, and Ford and Soos just want to get rid of the safety hazard. And somehow they start here—

—and end up here.

After going through the entire pile of library books on lucid dreaming, Bill found one to recommend to Mabel that had glossy full-color illustrations, simple little meditative exercises, and—most importantly—no information about astral projection. (It was galling enough that her brother had somehow picked up the trick without realizing it; like heck would Bill help Dipper master it unless Bill could think of some way to take advantage of his skill.)

But for himself, Bill elected to follow a slim decades-old guide that advertised full control over your dreams in four weeks or your money back. A frustratingly long wait to master his own dreamscape, but surely Bill could find a way to fend off his execution at least another four weeks. And anyway, Bill was already a dream expert—maybe he could take shortcuts a human couldn't. He'd picked this book for two reasons: it was the shortest of the books Mabel had brought home; and it had Bill's face on the inside cover page, a triangle containing a grayscale human eye. If Bill couldn't trust advice dispensed by his own face, who could he trust?

He flipped to the back of the book, to the section on all the advanced dream tricks the author promised readers could learn once they'd mastered the basics. Telepathically sharing a dream with a lover. Prophetic visions. And of course, astral projection.

He gazed wistfully at the drawing of a body with its humanoid soul floating above it, loosely tethered to its physical shell's belly button by a ghostly cord. When Bill got out, no tether would tie him back to his flesh prison, and the little soul floating free wouldn't look so human.

He hoped it wouldn't, anyway— No. It wouldn't. Surely the Axolotl had only imprisoned him, not altered him... but then, the Ax had strange ideas about mercy.

Well, Bill wasn't getting to those tricks until he mastered the basics. He flipped to the front of the book. Step one of this four-week journey was to establish...

Bill scoffed under his breath. "A dream diary? Seriously?" A primitive travel journal for psychically-stunted creatures who could only peer through the doorway of the mindscape without properly exploring it.

But right now, Bill was one of those creatures. This book was for him, no matter how condescending he thought it was.

He sighed. All right. Dream diary. Fine. Luckily, he'd already assembled all the supplies he needed.

Mabel had spilled out her crayons in front of Bill plenty of times; sometimes she even let him use them. It had taken some careful timing and preparation, but a few days ago he'd grabbed the unloved grey and greenish-yellow crayons—the sharpest in her collection—during a moment she'd left him unsupervised. So that there wouldn't be any gaps in Mabel's meticulously rainbow-ordered crayon box, he'd had to unwrap the crayons, break off the tips and butts, roll out two tubes of Claydough to fill in the gaps, rewrap the false crayons, and stuff them back in the crayon box before Mabel got back. The middles of the crayons were safely spirited away in his hoodie. He was a genius. The humans underestimated him without his powers, but he was the smartest creature in the universe.

Bill was loathe to pull out Ford's Journal 4—he'd entertained some vague fantasy of filling it with the secrets of reality and slipping it somewhere Ford could find it, make him really regret turning his back on Bill's wisdom—but it was good quality paper and it was already in Bill's possession, so he couldn't afford to pass it up.

The lucid dreaming guide recommended keeping the dream diary under his pillow. Considering he was still sleeping on the floor on a couple of stolen couch cushions that he shoved aside as convenient, not likely. If he was supposed to have easy access to it whenever he slept, he couldn't leave it in his usual hidey-hole, either. He pulled the cushion off the window seat, chewed a tiny hole in the seam on the bottom edge, and carefully plucked out the thread to open up a gap along one side where it wouldn't be seen.

He pressed the stuffing out of the way, slid in the journal and crayons, and put the cushion back in place to await his next dream.

As Bill straightened up, he glanced out the attic window—and flinched in surprise.

Just outside, by the trees, was someone he knew. The most beautiful, graceful, desirable person in all the world. Someone he half thought he'd never see again. Bill stared in shock.

And then she turned toward the shack.

Bill ducked out of the window's view. "Heck."

####

"Star girl, we've got trouble." Bill was standing grimly in the kitchen doorway. "My ex is back in Gravity Falls."

Mabel's brain short-circuited so hard that she momentarily lost the ability to see as she processed the revelation that Bill Cipher had a love life. A whole new multiverse of matchmaking possibilities had just opened up. "Your what?!"

Bill pointed upward.

Mabel bolted out of her seat to follow him upstairs.

"Anyway, I assume we're exes," Bill said. "I usually dump people when they die, I'm sure she did the same to me."

Barely listening to him, Mabel gushed, "Bill, you sly dog, you've been holding out on me! I didn't know you dated!" She took his elbow to help keep him from tripping as they headed upstairs. "What's she like? Tell me everything!" Mabel hoped she wasn't evil. She probably was, but Mabel still had her fingers crossed for some sweet alien princess with a taste for bad boys who may yet lure out Bill's tender side.

"Oh—she's a stunner." Bill used his free hand to pantomime a shape that didn't conform to any silhouette Mabel could imagine, "Curves in all the right places... Down for anything..."

Maybe it was that pink Henchmaniac. She had curves. And was also the only one Mabel remembered who looked like a girl. "You must miss her a lot."

Bill grimaced uncertainly and muttered, "I miss what she does to my body, let's leave it at that."

He steered them toward the attic window and heaved a sigh of relief. "Okay, she's still here. Don't let her catch you staring."

Mabel pressed her face to the glass, eager to see who could have won the heart of Bill Cipher, Most Villainous Triangle Ever.

Below, a gigantic veiny eyeball flopped through the air on gnarled bat wings.

Mabel glanced up at Bill skeptically. "The eye-bat?"

"Mm-hm." Bill was biting his lip and gazing at the bat with pained, shiny-eyed yearning. His face reminded reminded her of the time her parents had dressed for a fancy grown-up dinner, and the way her dad looked when her mom came out in a slinky fuchsia cocktail dress.

Well, who was Mabel to judge? Everyone is beautiful to someone. Good for them. "What's her name?"

"Iris." Bill put a hand on Mabel's shoulder. "You've gotta help me."

####

"Hey, Ford? You got a minute?"

Ford looked up as Soos hovered in the door of his study. "I suppose I do now." He swept aside his lunch—his desk was littered with the remains of formerly-undead teriyaki chicken and the cheap wooden chopsticks he'd jabbed through the meat like wooden stakes—and slid the notebook paper with Bill's fowl resurrection spell back into his journal. "What's on your mind?"

Soos stepped fully into the room. "We've got a supernatural problem I was hoping you could help with," he said. "You know those little eye-bat things that hang around the farm? Well, there's a really huge one flying around the shack, and all the tourists are out-of-towners, so they don't know the eye-bats will swoop at your face unless you pretend you're blind? So the big guy keeps attacking the customers. I had to give away all our souvenir sunglasses to let the last tour group escape to their cars."

"A giant eye-bat?" Ford frowned. "How large?"

"Uh..." Soos held his hands apart. "Like a big beach ball? Yeah. One of those novelty oversized beach balls. But not like, so comically large you can't do anything with it. You could definitely still play beach volleyball with it. But you'd have to deflate it to get it through a door."

It sounded like one of Bill's minions. "It's not turning people to stone, is it?"

"No, just swooping at people's faces and being terrifying."

####

Bill watched from the kitchen window as the eye-bat folded in her wings, like a hawk preparing to snatch up a mouse, and dove at a tourist's head. The tourist screamed and ran the other way, chucking her purse at the eye-bat. Bill shouted at the window, "You don't know what you're missing out on, lady!" He dragged his hands down his face, groaning. "Man I wish that was me."

####

Ford nodded. "I'll see what I can do."

It was a welcome distraction. With Fiddleford currently pursuing their best lead to kill Bill, Ford hadn't felt motivated to keep researching long-shot plan B options; but he got antsy without work to do. Maybe dealing with an eye-bat would make him feel useful enough to quiet his nerves.

Soos heaved a sigh of relief. "Thanks. I've gotta head back up now—there's a tour bus coming and I need to scare the eye-bat off with a broom so they can come in."

As Soos got on the elevator, Mabel bounded off. "Hi Soos. Grunkle Ford! I need your help. You'll never guess who's at the shack: Bill's ex-girlfriend! Whaaat!"

Ford opened his mouth. He shut his mouth. He tried again. "His ex-girlfriend."

Mabel nodded excitedly.

Ford was momentarily stunned silent as he, too, processed the revelation that Bill had a love life; although his reaction had less to do with matchmaking possibilities and more to do with trying to reconcile the eccentric, intellectual, standoffish alien that Ford knew with the concept of romance. "She doesn't happen to be an eye-bat, does she?"

Mabel's face fell. "Did he tell you about his girlfriend before me?"

Once Mabel had explained what she knew about the situation, Ford frowned. "This could be gravely dangerous. One of his 'Henchmaniacs' is a potential ally. If he catches her attention..."

"Actuallyyy," Mabel said, "he's super trying to avoid her."

Ford blinked in surprise. "What? Why?"

####

"I can't let her see me like this," Bill told Mabel, pacing across the attic floor. "I'd be a laughing stock! Look at me—stuck in a human body, powers locked away, and hideous!"

"Don't say that," Mabel said reassuringly. "You know I think you make a really beautiful human, right?"

"True, but that's like saying Caesar is delicious for a salad. It still doesn't compare to a hot fudge sundae, does it?" He pointed toward the window. "You have to hide me."

####

"So do you think you can help?" Mabel asked.

Ford reluctantly got to his feet. "I suppose there's not much choice, is there?"

"Wait—" Mabel stood in front of Ford, blocking him with her arms. "You can stay here! I just meant if you know how to make some kind of magic anti-eyeball forcefield or something! You don't have to—you know—talk to Bill..."

It was sweet of her to try to spare him. "Unfortunately, I do. I don't trust his story." Why would Bill drive away a Henchmaniac, ex or not? Maybe this "ex" was actually Bill's enemy—some sort of interdimensional bounty hunter or law enforcement officer hunting for him. Bill was too sly, too opportunistic, too manipulative to throw away a useful ally.

But then, Bill was also vain and arrogant. Once the portal was finished, how fast had he thrown Ford away?

Ford headed toward the elevator, gesturing for Mabel to follow him. "Come on. Let's find out what he's really up to."

Mabel cringed, but followed.

####

Bill's face lit up as Mabel came in from the gift shop with Ford. "Look at you, Shooting Star, you brought reinforcements!" From his position seated cross-legged on the cushionless sofa, Bill gestured grandly at the unoccupied living room chairs, like a lord inviting two guests into his parlor.

"Yeah," Mabel laughed nervously. "Reinforcements. Sure." She took the chair closer to Bill.

Bill beamed at Ford. "Welcome back to the surface world, Stanford. If I'd thought you were coming up, I'd have made tea."

Ford remained standing. "Cut the chatter, Cipher. Why is your 'girlfriend' back on Earth attacking people? How did she get here? Is she looking for you?"

Bill's eyebrows raised in surprise at the abrupt confrontation; then he slowly leaned back in his seat, his expression cooler. "How should I know? Maybe she never left Earth."

"How? The rest of your thugs were dragged back into the Nightmare Realm when you died."

"So I've been told," Bill said dryly, glancing at Mabel like he trusted her eyewitness testimony over Ford's.

Mabel nodded. "Like they got sucked into a big invisible rainbow tornado!"

Bill spread his hands in exaggerated bafflement. "Then I don't know what to tell you. It's not like I was around to see it. Maybe she was out visiting family when you kicked out my pals."

"Of all the absurd—family? On Earth?" More likely she had been sucked out with the rest, but found her way back to Earth through—what?—a small rift they'd failed to seal that Bill was trying to cover up...? "For once in your life, why don't you give a straight answer?"

"You wouldn't know what to do with a straight answer if I did give it! You walk in looking for a fight and act like I'm the one who picked it." Bill gestured between Ford and Mabel, "You think I can't see you two trying to pull some good cop/bad cop routine?"

Defensively, Mabel said, "I'm not—!"

"I'd be happy to give you straight answers about anything you want, Stanford," Bill said, "but if you're treating this like an interrogation instead of a conversation, then I'm pleading the fifth until my lawyer gets here. And you do not want to meet my lawyer."

Bill had lost the privilege to have "conversations" years ago. But—as much as Ford hated to admit it—starting a fight was a poor way to gather information. "Fine." He forced himself to sit down. He wasn't about to be nice to Bill, but he could at least hate him civilly.

Bill made a gracious, open-handed gesture, as if to say proceed.

Now that Ford had taken a moment to turn over the idea—perhaps Bill wasn't lying about the eye-bat visiting "family." Here were two facts: there were eye-bats in Gravity Falls; and there were much larger eye-bats in the Nightmare Realm who'd been there before the dimensional portal ripped open. Ford hadn't been able to inspect Bill's variety, but... "That's another mystery I've been wondering about. What's the nature of the relationship between your eye-bats in the Nightmare Realm and ours in Gravity Falls?"

"Pfff, come on." With an air of smug intellectual superiority, Bill rolled his eye and said, "You clever little pattern-seeking humans want to find connections everywhere! Who said there's any relationship between them at all?"

"You did," Ford said.

"A few seconds ago," Mabel added.

Bill's smug look disappeared. He considered that. "Hm."

So much for getting straight answers out of Bill. He couldn't go one minute without contradicting his own lies. "Unless you're saying she was 'visiting family' because she is from Gravity Falls? Not one of your Henchmaniacs," Ford suggested. "Just some local eye-bat you mutated and magically enthralled into doing your bidding when you arrived?" Bill wouldn't like that.

And sure enough, Bill laughed harshly. "I'm flattered you think I can woo someone that fast," he said, blithely gliding past Ford's implication that mind control might have been involved, "but no. She came with me from the Nightmare Realm and we've been going out for... I don't know, a century and a half now?"

This information immediately activated the household romantic. Mabel gasped. "What! Bill that's so long! You're basically triple married."

Bill shuddered. "Yeesh, don't say that. It was a casual physical thing! We were seeing each other until we found better options, that's all. She's hot, but not my type."

"You have a type?! What's your type?"

"Don't answer that," Ford said. (Mabel pouted, but didn't argue.) "How is the same species in two places? Are the eye-bats in Gravity Falls descended from the eye-bats in the Nightmare Realm...?" But how would they have gotten in?

"Other way around," Bill corrected. "A few leaked into the Nightmare Realm from Gravity Falls. I wouldn't be so rude as to call them an invasive species, but they've taken really well to the place! I'm proud of the gals."

"But then how did the eye-bats get into the Nightmare Realm before the portal was complete? That's the whole reason you needed the portal—there was no other access."

Bill hesitated—and Ford got the sense that Bill had once again accidentally talked himself into a corner. Then there was some other passage to the Nightmare Realm, and Bill didn't want them to know about it. But what? Where else in Gravity Falls was there an opening to other dimensions?

The answer came to him before Bill had a chance to try to make up one. "The bottomless pit," Ford said. He couldn't believe he'd never made the connection before. "That's it, isn't it. The eye-bats could have fallen through. One of its exits leads to the Nightmare Realm. You said so in my journal."

There was a flash of irritation across Bill's face, and then he was all smiles. "Oh, you finally figured out that code, did you."

"Please, it was a simple substitution cipher. It wouldn't have taken me nearly so long if someone hadn't kept me sleep deprived for weeks."

Bill didn't respond to the jab—but it was clear from the way his mouth twisted that the restraint took an effort. "I'm not making any plans to jump into the bottomless pit, before you get worried." Said like somebody who had definitely considered jumping into the bottomless pit. No wonder he'd been so evasive about his eye-bats' origins. "The odds I'd actually make it back to the Nightmare Realm are way lower than the odds I'd either end up right back here or somewhere worse."

"'The lady doth protest too much,'" Ford muttered. He'd have to find a way to seal off the pit. "Is that why the eye-bat wasn't sucked out with your other minions? It has some... ancestral, genetic link to this world—?"

"What, do you think the fabric of reality is running DNA tests to see what does and doesn't 'belong' here?" Bill scoffed. "Most universes aren't sentient and yours isn't one of the exceptions. Still, you might be on to something. Most of my guys are built on biological blueprints and laws of physics that aren't compatible with this dimension; I had to use some of my power to 'translate' between their bodies and your universe. That magic connection probably reeled them back into the Nightmare Realm. And the eye-bats were the only ones I didn't do that for."

"Really." Ford's fingers itched to pick up a pen; he wished he'd brought his journal. "If you were supporting them, why did they get sucked back through the rift when you died? Rather than just dying when your power dissipated? Was that some sort of safety measure you left in case—? No, that's not like you." In order to plan for his death, Bill needed to admit he could die. "Is the source of your power in the Nightmare Realm?"

Bill said, "Frankly, I'm taking your word for it that they survived at all. I wasn't exactly around to watch."

"You're dodging the question." Trying to get anything out of Bill was like chasing a dancing ghost while wearing lead boots. "I want an answer."

"Then ask a different question."

"Fine!" Ford had plenty of questions. If Bill wanted another one so badly— "Why did you need the interdimensional portal?"

Bill stared at Ford. "What?"

"The bottomless pit is ancient—and you clearly knew about it. If you already had an opening into Gravity Falls..."

"The pit only goes one way."

"So why didn't you build something on your end of the exit to reverse its direction? You certainly had the time to work out the science! Or—there are thousands of openings from other dimensions into the Nightmare Realm, natural and artificial alike. Why did you never use them?"

Ford had wondered for decades during his travels through the multiverse. He'd told himself he would never know, that Bill's motives were incomprehensible—ineffable like a god's, unintelligible like a madman's. But Stan had asked the same question a few days ago, and Ford hadn't been able to get it out of his head since. "If you had a trillion years to refine your plan, then why did you give me blueprints for a portal that would tear my universe apart, instead of any other design? Why here, why now? Why me?"

He expected some catty quip or a dismissive brush-off. But instead, Bill gave Ford an appraising look. A chill ran up Ford's back. Bill's face was blank now—no trace of the smirk he'd worn while tossing out contradictions and cryptic riddles—but his eyes had the same hard, heavy look he'd worn in the penthouse, talking about "liberating" his dimension. Bill asked, "Do you really want to know?"

It felt like they were back in Ford's dreams, and his fickle, wonderful muse had finally decided to stop teasing, get serious, and tell his student some precious secret. It felt like he was about to get a real answer. Ford did want to know. Of course he did.

"No."

Bill would only lie. Everything he'd ever said about the portal had been a lie.

Disappointment flickered across Bill's face.

Before an uneasy silence had a chance to fully settle over the room, Mabel shifted in her seat. Ford started; she'd gone so quiet, he'd almost forgotten she was here. "Grunkle Ford, is that everything we needed to know?" It wasn't like her to sound so timid. "We know she's not looking for Bill, she just—got stuck here last summer. Right?"

Why were they talking? "Right." The eye-bat harassing the tourists. Ford shut his eyes and took a deep breath. "And the eye-bat is from the Nightmare Realm, but it's descended from Gravity Falls' eye-bats—which means it has the same weaknesses as local eye-bats. Right?" He opened his eyes again, directing the question at Bill.

"Oh, now you're interested in what I have to say?"

"Good point; I'm not." Ford stroked his chin. "I have a recipe for an eye-bat repellant spray I learned from Old Lady Sprott, we could use that to keep it away from the shack. I wrote it down in... my first journal..."

"Ah," Bill said. "You mean the incinerated one." He said it so coolly, like he wasn't the one who incinerated it.

"Actually," Mabel said, "after everything went back to normal, Grunkle Ford's journals got un-incinerated!"

Bill made a poor show of trying not to look surprised. "You don't say."

"Yeah, good as new! They regrew their torn pages and everything," Mabel said. "And... then we kinda chucked them into the bottomless pit."

Bill cracked up, kicking out a foot in mirth. "You what?! You idiots, don't you know you had an invaluable occult encyclopedia in your hands? The second journal alone was the most important human grimoire of the last five hundred years!"

Ford was too irritated to be flattered. What business did Bill have mocking him, thirty seconds ago Bill had thought he was the one who destroyed the journals. Ford snapped, "I didn't want to keep anything you'd tainted."

He was gratified by how fast Bill stopped laughing. "Then burn down your shack and lobotomize your hippocampus," Bill muttered. "Fine! Are we talking about the eye-bat repellant made with gnome wizz?"

Bless this insufferable, all-seeing pest; maybe he was good for one thing. "That's the one! You know the recipe?"

"That's the only ingredient I remember."

Ford mentally retracted the prior blessing. "It's the only ingredient I remember." He sighed. Maybe Old Lady Sprott had taught her son...

Bill said, "But wasn't that was back before you turned into a hermit, when you were still interviewing the human neighbors about the freaks in the woods? All those little interview notebooks—"

"Yes! That's right, I'm sure I kept them somewhere—"

"Filing cabinet under your globe. Second drawer."

Ford shot Bill a dark look.

"You're welcome," Bill said.

The insufferable all-seeing pest didn't need any blessings, he was smug enough already. Ford got to his feet. "Then as soon as I find the recipe, we can chase this eye-bat off and put this whole mess behind us."

"Finally," Bill sighed. "Always a pleasure to work on a project with you, Sixer."

Ford glared at him again; but as he turned to go, his gaze fell on Mabel. Sitting in her chair with her hands under her thighs, with that big-eyed small-mouthed look children got when the adults were talking about something they had no part in but they were paying keen attention to it anyway. Ford winced at himself. "Mabel. I'm sorry that got... a bit heated."

She gave him a small smile. "It's fine—"

"And whose fault was that?" Bill cut in. "I was being perfectly helpful."

Ford swallowed back the urge to retort.

Mabel didn't. She blew a raspberry at Bill. "When you weren't lying to us?"

"When did I lie! Tell me one lie I told—"

Ford wasn't getting dragged into this. "I think you can handle him from here," he muttered to Mabel. "I've got work to do." He escaped back to the gift shop; but the tension in his shoulders didn't start to loosen until he was back in his study.

####

The door swung shut behind Ford; and Mabel waited a few more seconds before she said, "Sorry about that." She sighed. "I thought Grunkle Ford could think of some way to help. I didn't think he'd actually come and talk about it."

"Not your fault." Bill smiled ruefully. "He was probably looking for an excuse for another confrontation. And to think, for a moment I was excited when my old friend showed up." He sighed deeply. Oh, how poorly he was mistreated—

"What?" Mabel laughed. "What are you talking about? You're not friends—"

"Hey! Shush-shush-shush!" Bill blocked Mabel's words with a hand. "Shooting Star, I'm about to tell you something that'll put you ahead of the competition for the rest of your life. Once you've figured out lucid dreaming, go back to the library—"

"Are you about to give me more homework?"

"I'm giving you more homework. Go look up the law of attraction. Master that, change your life. If you want something to happen, the first step to making it happen is saying it's happened. Say it until you believe it; believe it until it's true. So I don't want to hear any of your negativity, buster."

A thoughtful look crossed Mabel's face as she considered that. She was such an attentive listener once you figured out what caught her attention. Best student Bill had had in eons. She'd go far. "So..." She lowered her voice. "That means you really do want to be friends with Grunkle Ford!"

"That's not what I said. I said we are friends." Bill was sure she'd pick it up. It was an easy game and she was a quick study. "Even if he clearly doesn't know it. Sixer's such a grump these days." He sighed, again. Woe was him—

"He's not that grumpy! Only around you," Mabel said.

"And how is that fair? After everything I did for him—"

"You mean everything you did to him?"

Bill shot her an exasperated look. Mabel's impish grin stretched wider. Bill said, "Whose side are you on?"

"I'm on the side of truth and tough love!"

"Oh, truth. Truth's a fickle god. Does your version of the 'truth' include all my contributions to his work that he never brings up—"

"Nope, I don't care about what you're saying!" Mabel bounded over from her chair to join Bill on the couch. "We're done talking about your dumb grudge and pretending you're not evil."

"'Pretending'—!"

"There's only one thing I'm interested in!" Mabel leaned into Bill's face. "I wanna know everything about your love life."

"Wh—?" Bill's train of thought veered off track as the conversation swung from Ford back over toward Iris. "I'm flattered by the attention, but don't you think 'everything' is a little personal?"

"Nope!" Mabel got comfortable in her seat. "So have you ever gotten married?"

This was what Bill got for being so open and forthcoming with the personal details while Ford was in the room. He'd wanted to look like he was an open book, and what happened? Now Mabel thought he was an open book. Funny how that worked out. "You don't even know if marriage is a thing where I'm from."

"Is it?"

"Next question."

"Do you want to get married?"

"Next question that isn't about marriage."

"Who do you consider the top ten most attractive people or creatures in Gravity Falls."

It was beginning to dawn on Bill that he was in danger.

####

Soos passed from the gift shop through the living room. (Mabel had put on the Color Critters Valentine's special—Prisma the Rainbow Fairy and Glory Unicorn were explaining to Misty Dolphin why it was important to give a Valentine to all your friends, even the ones you weren't as close to, because it might hurt their feelings to be left out and including everyone might make you a new friend.) Bill was sitting upside down, legs hooked over the back of the sofa and head bright red, as he said, "No, I just don't see relationships as eternal. Romance is a short term commitment. Like a fashion trend, or, or—"

"Like gum?"

Bill snapped his fingers. "Yes! Exactly like gum—"

"Hey dudes." Soos awkwardly squeezed around behind the TV to avoid blocking the screen. He looked at Bill's face and said, "Hey, all the blood's rushing to your head. Be careful, Abuelita says if you do that too long your head could pop."

"She's right," Bill said.

Mabel said, "He's making his face red on purpose so I can't tell when he's blushing."

"Not true! You little tattler!"

As he headed upstairs, Soos heard Mabel say, "So when a romance starts to lose its flavor, you just—" and Bill cut in, "You spit it on the sidewalk, grind it under your heel, and float away without looking back, never thinking about it again..."

A few minutes later, after changing out of his Mr. Mystery suit into a more comfortable question mark t-shirt, Soos headed back downstairs. Bill was still talking, "... and all you get out of it is sickly sweet spit, you're just—swallowing all this sweet spit until it makes your mouth sour and it's dripping out around your eye, and you're hungrier than if you'd never eaten at all, and all your friends say 'oh Bill, you're always griping about your gum, why don't you settle down to eat a proper meal,' and you say 'how about you mind your own business, Kryptos, I don't lecture you about your diet,' and then your other friends accuse you of choosing inedible snacks so you don't have to commit to swallowing them, because they don't get that you're a flawless energy being, you don't need 'nutrition' or 'sustenance,' this is just a hobby to you—and finally you just, you get sick of the taste of gum altogether, you never want to chew gum again as long as you live, it's always so needy and your jaw hurts, and everyone thinks it's your fault if you can't focus on chewing the stupid thing all day every day, like maybe you have a life of your own, did anyone consider that? And at this point you're so disgusted by the very idea of gum that you burn down a gum factory so you don't have to look at their stupid ads! And then an eon later you find yourself craving a stick of gum, so you find a different brand and cram a new one in."

Mabel, who'd been listening to Bill's monologue in wide-eyed stunned silence, finally smiled in relief as he landed on a familiar sentiment. She pumped her fist in the air. "Yeah! Cram a new one in!"

"You get me, kid."

Probably none of Soos's business, but he thought Bill needed to work on his relationship with gum.

He took the elevator down to Ford's study. "Sup, dawg."

"Hm?" Ford was sitting on the floor in front of an open filing cabinet, completely surrounded by skinny reporter's notebooks like the kind Abuelita used for shopping lists, intensely focused on flipping through one. "Soos. Yes?"

"How's the eye-bat problem going?"

"I'm working on it," Ford sighed. "Somewhere I have a recipe to repel eye-bats, but it's been thirty years since I've seen those notes, so..." He shrugged helplessly. "But I'll find it before I go to sleep and we'll deal with the eye-bat tomorrow."

"That'd be great. Thanks, Mr. Pines."

"In return, can I ask you to take care of something?"

"Sure, what's up?"

"Could you find a way to block access to the bottomless pit? If Bill gets outside the shack, he could use it to escape to his own dimension."

"Yeah, no problem. I've got the perfect thing for that," Soos said. "Hey, don't stay up all night, okay? I kinda think the eye-bat's attracted to bloodshot eyes."

"That's not the worst thing she's attracted to," Ford muttered. "Thank you, Soos. I won't be too late."

That was, of course, a lie.

####

(Took a week longer than planned, but it was worth it to get this hammered out properly! As always, I DEEPLY appreciate any thoughts, comments, and feedback y'all have—hearing from you guys is what saves me from feeling like I'm just shouting thousands of words into the void. Thanks for reading!)

#bill cipher #human bill cipher #mabel pines #grunkle ford #stanford pines #gravity falls #gravity falls fanart #gravity falls fic #my writing #my art #bill goldilocks cipher

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a-m-w-worlds · 15 days

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Danny Phantom Writing Prompt: Half-Nightmare AU

Most oneirologists scoffed at Jack and Maddie Fenton's outlandish beliefs on the nature of dreams and deemed their work nothing but parapsychology, after all, the dream world being a real place people could subconsciously travel to in their sleep? Ridiculous! And what about their belief that nightmares were actual monsters in this dream world that could in theory be captured, studied, and eventually eradicated? Pure science-fiction!

The Drs. Fenton knew the only way to prove their theories was to capture a nightmare, and the only way to do that was to create a portal to allow waking humans to enter the Nightmare Zone. The only thing they didn't account for was that the portal works both ways…

Danny Fenton wasn't interested in his parent's parapsychology bullcrap, the crystals littering the house that were supposed to "enhance astral projection", the dream diaries they nagged him and his sister to keep, not even the swirling purple portal in their basement. All he cared about was that their lab (if you could even call it that) was the best place in the house to take a quick cat nap. Dimly lit by flickering candles, heavily scented by fresh lavender, and filled with plenty of pillow-covered nooks to accommodate all sleeping positions, Danny fell asleep instantly. It was peaceful at first, until the nightmare came.

Every human is psychically linked to their own personal nightmare. This link is normally dormant while we're awake, only activating in our sleep. Active links magnetically draw our astral forms and nightmares together, allowing us to briefly glimpse into the dream world. But when you fall asleep in a room designed to enhance psychokinetic energy, next to a portal meant to allow for physical traversal between planes, something might just decide that link doesn't have to be one sided...

Danny awoke suddenly, terrified and frozen in place by a white-haired creature perching on his chest. Its skin was made of swirling shadow and its amethyst eyes glowed the same color as the portal. The link between Danny and his nightmare, supercharged by the environment and them both being in the same plane, was too strong to break when Danny woke. It glowed, crackling and pulsating between them, drawing them closer until the last things Danny saw were glowing eyes followed by shadow as the creature lunged. Its essence poured into Danny through his mouth, nose, ears, and eyes, seeping in through his very pores until the nightmare was completely gone from sight. Danny's eyes flashed purple for just a moment before they rolled back in his head and he passed out.

The next time he woke Danny found himself in a hospital. He had been in a coma for three days. The doctors, not finding anything wrong with him, let him go home that same day. Despite this, Danny felt like there was something seriously wrong, he didn't really understand what though until that night. In his pajamas and lamp lit bedroom with his family already in bed and sleeping is when it happened. Danny's hand happened to slip into the darkness outside of his table lamps radius, where it disappeared. Only its barely visible, smoky outline remained. Panicked, Danny jerked his hand back into the light where it became fully visible and tangible again. Danny slept with the light on that night, scared of what would happen if he didn't.

The next day at school, after whipping around a corner while being chased by the school bully Dash Baxter, Danny accidently found himself careening into a shadow-filled dead end. His entire body devolved into a hazy, wispy outline. When Dash turned the corner, he did a double take; Danny had simply vanished. Dash couldn't see Danny in the shadows at all, not even the glowing purple eyes staring directly at him. This was how Danny learned he could camouflage in shadows.

Several nights later, while practicing how to camouflage and un-camouflage at will he stuck an arm into one shadow and saw it appear out of another shadow across the room. He yanked it back in surprise before replicating the action with the same results. Tentatively he stepped into one shadow and stepped out of the other. This was how he learned he could shadow travel.

Another couple nights later while practicing shadow traveling around the house, Danny sees something slither out of his parents dream lab in the basement. He recognizes it instantly as a nightmare. The nightmare doesn't pay him any attention, darting between the shadows and creeping upstairs. Danny follows quietly, at a safe distance and watches as the creature slips beneath his sister Jazz's bedroom door. Danny steps into a shadow and emerges from the darkness under his sister's bed. In horror he watches Jazz's nightmare perch on her chest before making the same move Danny's had over a week ago. Danny makes a wild grab at the creature, catching hold only to be absorbed into Jazz's mind alongside the nightmare. This is how Danny learned he could dream walk.

When Danny opens his eyes, he's standing inside Jazz's dream. It's pretty standard, just a classroom setting with only one desk where Jazz sits taking a test. She doesn't seem to see Danny. He walks around aimlessly, unsure of what to be doing, until the nightmare appears. The creature is far more substantial and menacing here. It takes the clock off the wall and places it on Jazz's desk where it transforms into an hourglass with sand trickling through it way too fast. Jazz's calm expression turns panicked as she rushes to fill in the test. With the flick of a wrist the nightmare manifests a dozen extra desks all occupied by students jeering and mocking Jazz. Danny realizes he has to do something but is unsure what. He confronts the nightmare, only to be pushed aside. The walls of the classroom begin closing in and Danny can feel his sister's anxiety morphing into genuine fear. She stands abruptly, hyperventilating as the jeering students are forced into her space. She pushes through them and races out the classroom door. Danny follows her into the hallway that's warped strangely in on itself. Ceilings were floors, floors were ceilings. "Jasmine…" The nightmare stands in the doorway. Jazz finally seems to see it and she and Danny start running, the nightmare launching itself after them, truly on the hunt now, growing larger and more frightening in pursuit. After seconds or an eternity it corners the siblings in a dead end and reaches its hand out for Jazz. She screams.

Danny and the nightmare are both forcefully ejected back into the physical world as Jazz, the real, physical Jazz, screams and bolts upright in bed. Before Danny can make a move, the once again smoky, insubstantial nightmare, who's eyes glow more brightly now, disappears into the darkness. Danny, camouflaged in the shadows, retreats as well when he hears his parents outside of Jazz's door.

The next day, after mulling over the night's events, Danny decides he needs to find a way to capture Jazz's nightmare if it comes back. He heads into his parent's lab (a place he's been avoiding), and tracks down one of the knick-knacks they believe can attract and trap "bad energy". That night Danny is prepared and waits for the nightmare to return, which it does. He follows it into Jazz's dream again and this time captures it easily. He manages to leave the dream under his own power this time and pats himself on the back for a job well done. This is how Danny Fenton learns he has the power to capture nightmares.

It's a good thing to, because with more and more nightmares finding their way into the physical world, the people of Amity Park were going to need a hero if they ever wanted a good night's sleep again.

I swear this was supposed to be a writing prompt, not a ficlet! I just had SO MANY IDEAS!

Everyone knows that the original show did not like to acknowledge the darker aspects and implications of ghosts (ya know, like them being dead) and even retconned them into being straight up interdimensional monsters later in the series. So, I found myself wondering, if they weren't going to use ghosts to their full potential, what could they have done instead? BOOM, Half-Nightmare AU!

Danny's powers in this are heavily inspired by Twyla Boogeyman from Monster High (one of my favorite characters!). Shadow travel and camouflage, being able to see nightmares and enter people's dreams, and eyes that glow in the dark, are all abilities that Twyla has demonstrated at one time or another. I also like imagining that this version of Danny often uses closets and underneath beds for shadow travel, just to play even more into the idea of a good boogeyman.

The choice to make the portal and Danny's alternate eye color purple instead of green was also very deliberate. Even before getting into Danny Phantom I heavily associated the color green with ghosts, so I just wanted to give this AU a little bit of color distinction. And I also felt that toxic, radioactive green was probably a little too harsh a color for the dream world.

I don't have any intention of actually doing anything with this AU, but I thought it was interesting enough to turn into a prompt and see if any artists or writers wanted to adopt my plot bunnies!

P.S. Oneirologists are neurologists who study dreams!

#danny phantom #dp au #danny phantom au #danny phantom headcanon #dp half-nightmare au #dp #danny fenton #writing prompt #dp writing prompt #danny phantom writing prompt

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