Miz rolled Search checks for each bandit. "Most of them fall for your ruse. One of them knows where you are, but she's not gonna make the effort to go after a spell-caster's party while her companions are being set upon by ravenous ghosts and ghouls from the nearby forest cemetery and she can't see them." Miz informed them. "If you continue running you'll get away from them."
"I activate the 'flight' charge on my staff, and cast 'Lighten Load' on Pine Tree," Bill said next.
"--And we all get on the staff!" Mabel said with a grin.
"And I mount the staff and help Shooting Star get on," Bill said next. "Shooting Star, roll for--"
Mabel rolled and exclaimed, "Twenty-five!" and looked at Dipper expectantly, and her twin sighed and said, "Fine. I get on, too."
"--With higher than a seven-roll on the 'Lighten Load' spell, poundage should be below the limit, with our characters and the DL variant's calculations on inventory weight," Bill noted. Dipper had to hold back a groan. The DL variant on weight was much easier, and far more liberal on the load limits and calculations. Which was one of the reasons he didn't like it -- it made it way too easy for the dream demon to get away with this sort of stuff!
"I fly us all straight up to the thirty-foot ceiling for our weight total, and turn around to fly us over the bandits," Bill said next. "Shooting Star, roll for Concentration--"
Mabel rolled, and she and Bill both grimaced at the five. "I'm rolling for Perception checks and Intuition checks every twenty feet!" Mabel chimed in next, used to this sort of thing by this point. Usually her character didn't get to be the one on the staff with him, which meant Bill didn't have to do a Concentration roll to see whether he needed to focus on flying instead of being able to both fly overhead and gather data at the same time.
Miz chuckled. "Well, the staff is going to dip down a few feet every thirty seconds--"
"--I cast Feather Fall on the party," Bill said next, and Miz pouted.
"...Dip down three feet every minute," Miz muttered, after a few dice rolls behind her screen, and a sigh, after checking Bill's character sheet and the stats on his staff a bit more carefully than she had initially.
Bill grinned.
"Search grid pattern?" Dipper asked, resigned to this situation. He didn't really want to think too much about why this wasn't any more fun being on the beneficiary end of it, instead of the receiving end at the DM. If anything, Dipper almost felt worse...
They did have to land before Mabel and Dipper -- each performing their checks over and over again -- were able to find the vampire's lair, but with a few hints from Bill on what to ask, they were still, at least, able to narrow down the area significantly to exclude locations that they could be sure that the lair wasn't in.
Once they'd landed, Mabel handed over a mana potion to Bill, and he had his character drink it on the spot. It didn't get him back any more 'spell slots', but it did shorten the timer significantly for raising his spell efficacy level back up a bit -- from two hours in-game to three minutes instead -- for whatever spells he was potentially going to be doing next. (Dipper rolled his eyes, because that should have required a stamina potion, too, and reduced the number of spells he could cast in a row until the next long rest they took. But because they were going by the 'simpler' way, way too easy DL variant...)
"Well, at least we won't be running into anything else anytime soon!" Mabel said enthusiastically, because they hadn't spotted any more encounters nearby, or in, the smaller area they had left to search
Dipper sighed, and got on with it.
Stan and Ford were quietly watching all this. Stan was happy to watch without jumping in as a 'peanut gallery', even though he was used to playing at this point. Ford seemed to be frowning off and on quite a bit, like he usually did with the games he'd watched with Dipper DM'ing for him and Mabel and Bill. Nothing new there, really.
(Mostly, Ford was wondering why the man-eater insisted on playing a variation of the game that discouraged EXP gain. Who was she trying to fool with this fake 'non-violent' gameplay scenario of hers? --That was hardly realistic of any sort of real-life situation at all! The monster races in DDNMD were monster races for a reason. There was no reason to try and treat the killing of imaginary monsters in a game as some sort of moral shameful failure at 'proper' gameplay. And when Ford tried to think on what the demon's ulterior motives might be, outside of the actual game itself...)
(--Surely it was all just a trick, to try and make them think that she might actually care about more than just killing things to further her own transient whims, in 'games' such as this one, or of any other type -- such as their own not a game existence in contradiction to how demons refused to treat their own lives and the lives of anyone else as anything other than one long series of throwaway risks and gambles, with out-and-out mass-murderbeing nothing more than something to laugh off, if not outright about, as part of the 'fun and games'...)
The party eventually found a cave entrance. From the Investigation checks they rolled, it was deduced that this cave was in fact the vampire's lair. When Mabel complained that vampires were supposed to have grand mansions, Miz rolled her eyes and replied, "Not all Vampires are aristocracy." Miz seemed annoyed at this stereotype. "Besides, the only ones with mansions are the vampire Lords and such. Those would require a full campaign, not just one session." Miz then grumbled about a mansion with traps and living armors that had apparently killed one of her characters in an old game she played. (Dipper couldn't help but snort with amusement. He really hoped that her DM that game had gotten a lot of enjoyment out of that one. ...instead of, y'know, getting murdered by an angry demon who'd just lost her character.)
The party made their stealth rolls and snuck inside. Mabel wanted to charge in yelling 'HELLO! ANYBODY HOME??" to the rafters -- or, well, stalactites -- but Dipper managed to convince her to go for the less-boisterous approach.
Meanwhile, Bill was laying down explosive traps that they could set off on the way out if things went to 'heck in a handbasket', as Grunkle Stan liked to put it.
...Which was also usually the job of Grunkle Stan's character, not Bill's, now that Dipper thought about it. (Dipper looked over at Bill and wondered what he must have given up in his inventory to be able to… And then Dipper remembered. Right. They'd all started out at Level 5, not Level 1. Ugh… so Bill must have added all sorts of amazing items to his inventory...)
(Dipper looked away, grimacing, and wondered if he could manage to snag Bill's character sheet from Miz after this. It'd be a good idea to get an idea now of the sorts of stuff Bill was going to try to pull in their upcoming campaign, once Bill moved up to a higher level from his current -- as-yet still unallocated -- Level 3 character -- having only just moved up from his current Level 2 at the end of the last session that had ended the previous campaign. Dipper hated getting constantly blindsided all the time by the stuff that Bill kept on pulling on him; he really needed more time looking over Bill's inventory in advance of those sessions in order to plan against him better… but Bill always seemed to mix things up on him in town, swapping out all sorts of junk that left Dipper unsure just what he was planning on pulling this time, and eventually frustrated all over again when the dumb dorito then did it, because it always, always felt super-obvious in hindsight that of course that had been what Bill was going to do...)
They walked down the dark cave tunnel, Dipper's character (Tyrone) cast 'Firefly' to give everyone a bit of light so they could see. Bill's character (Bill) was rolling Investigation checks every nine feet in search of secret passages and other errata. Mabel's character (Mabel) was taking this time to check over her spell list.
"26," Bill called out after Mabel rolled the dice for him again, "Plus my skill modifier, makes it 36," just two shy of the highest number the DL variant capped everything and everyone at, a 38. Miz nodded at him as a section of the cave wall shimmered and a tile appeared with an image of a Snake on it. Further investigation showed that it wasn't a button and no one could do anything with it. So the party moved on. Bill found several more tiles as they went, all hidden in different sections of the wall: a Hawk, a Lion, a Wolf, a Crocodile, and a Shark.
"What are these for?" Dipper asked, frowning.
Miz shrugged, "I can't tell you. You have to figure it out yourselves." Mabel nodded at that. It made sense to her. They managed to sneak past another pack of wolves -- far less friendly and a lot more murder-y than the ones they'd run into outside the cave, as confirmed by Dipper's druidic-based skill-check -- and found a few corpses in the cave beyond them, which Bill noted aloud had likely been dumped there by the vampire after he'd finished with them, to feed the wolves said vampire had likely tamed to be useful to him as guards and watch-wolves. (The bodies were blurred out somewhat by Miz, so that the gory details weren't visible. Luckily, she'd thought about what her sister would think of showing something like that to a pair of thirteen-year-olds, before showing it in full.)
Bill's Medical check (a specialized subvariant of the Investigation check, which of course he had, too...) showed that those bodies had been drained of blood. Dipper grimaced at the news. "So this really is the vampire's lair, then."
They eventually got to a dead end. Oddly, it had been a straight tunnel with some twists and turns -- not a maze like Dipper had been expecting -- and there was no more tunnel to go down. But there was a wall with a bunch of tiles with animals pictured on them. And these ones looked like they were buttons.
"So… we push the ones that we saw on the way here, right?" Mabel asked. Dipper leaned forward to get a better look at the wall. "I think so. Everyone stay back, I'll press a button from afar." They all backed off as Dipper used his own wooden staff to poke the Snake tile. It pressed down and stayed down. They all waited warily but nothing happened.
"So…" Mabel looked around. "We can press the other buttons now?" Dipper nodded as he reach his staff out to press the Hawk, Lion, Wolf, Crocodile and Shark, in the order that they'd found them. Nothing happened. Dipper made a frustrated sound. "What are we missing?"
"I didn't succeed in all my Investigation checks," Bill said simply. (...Yeah, because anything below a '38' was something Bill considered a 'failure' for an info-check.) "We probably need to press more tiles. If I had to make an 'educated' guess..." Bill hummed for a bit, then continued, "We probably don't have to press the puzzle tiles in the order we saw them on the way in, because it's just a straight-line tunnel. We could go back and spend more time on each section of wall until we found them all in order; that's not a very secure 'password' to get in. So there's probably some other pattern to which tiles need to be pressed or not, to get in. Something a vampire would think of as obvious, in case he had other guests coming to visit."
Dipper nodded, that made sense. Vampires almost never fought each other in DDNMD, given the lore, so there would be no reason for one to make it hard for some vampire they didn't know to get in. Which meant they simply had to find the pattern to which animals needed to be pressed or not.
Rabbit
Deer
Crocodile
Zebra
Giraffe
Elephant
Tiger
Snake
Hawk
Gazelle
Shark
Owl
Bear
Wolf
Lion
Mabel gasped. "Ooh! I know!" She raced forward and began pressing the tiles as Dipper freaked out. "Wait, Mabel!"
"-and~ BOOP! Done!" Mabel sat back and grinned as the wall beside the tiles shifted forward slightly, and then slid away to reveal another corridor. Dipper stared. "What? What did you do?"
Mabel shrugged. "It was meat-eating animals versus the plant-eating ones!" she chirped.
Bill nodded as well, with a smile. "Good job, Shooting Star," he told her. (Dipper blinked at this, because Bill had said that almost the same way they'd all heard him do it with Miz. Except… Mabel didn't seem to think that it was weird for him to have told her that at all. Why...?)
The party faced a few more puzzles as they continued on, including a pitfall trap that required some careful searching for a switch that flooded the pit with water, so they could then swim across. (It had been a rather forced solution. The ceiling was too low to fly across, since the minimum starting height for a staff-flight like Bill's -- no matter the weight limit -- was a mandated initial rise to ten feet in the air due to the DL variant they were using. That said, the vampire himself would likely just turn into a bat and fly across. Vampires generally couldn't swim, after all, which made the trap little eyebrow-raising for Dipper. ...At least, it was until they spotted a boat sitting in the next stretch of hallway before the next room, and Miz made an offhand comment about "How else would he transport the people he's captured across such a trap?")
The party had a few hair-raising minutes (for Dipper and Mabel, anyway) when they almost lost Dipper's character to a bad dice roll -- he failed an Acrobatics check for another trap. The floor fell away and he could see the spikes at the bottom of the trap. His use of the 'Vinewhip' spell to grip onto the waist of Bill's character saved his life (as did Bill using his own staff to brace himself, instead of cutting or burning the vine off of his own character in spite). After that, the twins both stopped trying to run or walk ahead of Bill down the hallway, moving instead at a much slower Bill-set pace, one that allowed Bill to stay in front of them and properly check every last inch for more traps after that point. (Bill, for his part, did not comment on this beyond the initial complaint that he'd made -- as he usually did with Shooting Star -- when they'd both started doing the exact opposite of what he'd recommended when it came to traps and his own maxed-out Inspection capabilities. Because the more-general Perception skill only went so far, and when he'd had to choose between Investigation and Inspection when it came to maxing things out… well, it wasn't as though he hadn't had an idea of how things might go and what he should probably prioritize in a one-off character, for a 'vampire'-related campaign...)
With letting Bill lead like this and him being as frustratingly thorough as usual, with no Grunkle Stan telling him otherwise, they actually had to stop about partway through their search for lunch. (The kids were getting antsy, and Bill was staring to snap at them more and more -- "Don't rush me!!!" -- for trying to 'rush him'.)
So they took a lunch break, as per Grunkle Stan's 'mandate', and they mostly ate in silence pretty quickly before getting right back to it.
...And, finally, they eventually actually got to the vampire's den.
"How dare you invade my home!" the vampire sneered, as he spotted them immediately when the Alarm runes he'd placed around the doorway lit up.
Dipper raised his staff. "We're here to rescue the villagers, you monster!" (Bill rolled his eyes.)
The vampire grinned. "Oh? A rescue mission?" He brandished his hands and the 'kidnapped' villagers all stood up. "What if they don't want to be rescued?" The villagers all had glazed expressions and faint smiles on their faces. Dipper grimaced. It was clearly a Charmed effect.
The villagers the vampire had kidnapped were enthralled by his Charm and he ordered them to fight the party. Mabel and Dipper had trouble with that, not wanting to hurt the people they'd come there to save. (Bill just went around smacking the Charmed people in the head with the end of his now-electrified staff without comment, downing them one after the other after the other.) Mabel declared this to be 'unfair', but Miz shrugged. "Well, that's just how it goes sometimes."
Ford muttered bitterly about how Miz must have experience with doing this type of thing, and Miz bristled. "I don't mind-control people!"
Stan let out a sigh and stepped in before things got ugly again. "--Ford, you didn't go knocking Mabel when she killed a couple of bandits in one of Dipper's games, or Dipper for playing that crazy necromancer guy for everybody else to fight, what with all the 'rabid humans' and zombies. Let them just play the darn thing."
Finally, after the last Charmed person was downed -- by Bill, because he'd been paying attention when Miz had said it was going to be an undead campaign with at least one vampire in it, unlike the twins who hadn't specced any real non-kill options for either of their characters for it -- Bill had his character stride up to the vampire and tip his feathered hat. "Well, well, well. That was a very rude how-do-you do! We come in here and get accosted by your rather boorishly-mannered human brigade, and here we just wanted to talk!" the sorcerer-bard said to the vampire smoothly.
Ford winced heavily at this, almost a cringe. Stan glanced over at him.
Miz rolled a few dice, then rolled her eyes. The vampire huffed. "Well, you did invade my home. And your friend called me a monster! I'm allowed to try and throw out an intruder who's trying to steal my food. I went to a great deal of trouble to acquire them all, you know!" The vampire glared at Dipper.
"They're not food! They're people!" Dipper protested, gripping his staff. The vampire raised an eyebrow, because, to a vampire, those were one and the same.
"--Very tasty people, with whom I unfortunately share a species, but luckily don't have to share my intellect with, let alone converse with, if I don't want to," Bill sighed out, casting a glare Dipper's way.
Dipper glared back.
"Some people are not so very enlightened, despite being halflings and elves who have no real stake in said potential for being part of your food supply," Bill added, and Dipper nearly slapped himself in the forehead as he remembered that neither of those species were considered particularly appetizing to vampires. (Not when compared to humans or dwarves, since the more innately magical a species was, the harder the blood was for a vampire to 'convert' as it digested it.) "So, really, when it comes to a discussion, they're more of the unthinking and inedible 'muscle' to get me here in one piece to talk to you, rather than the 'brains', if you catch my meaning."
"So, if you're really here to talk, then talk." The vampire sat down on his chair, crossing one leg over the other primly. Dipper took this chance to look around the room and blinked at the fact that it really looked like a house on the inside, here. It actually… kind of reminded him of that makeover that Mabel had given the Handwitch's cave, but less… colorful.
"Tell me," Bill said, "Exactly how annoying is it to have to feed and water these easily-Charmed idiots, only to have them still drop over dead on you, one after the other, within the span of a single lousy month?"
The vampire groaned. "It's the worst!" he complained. "You know they can't survive on just eating rats and things? They need fruits and vegetables and all sort of other stuff, or they start getting sick. And they drank half the water out of my spike trap reservoir just the other day! --Do you have any idea how hard it is to refill that thing all on my own out here?!" the vampire griped out next.
Dipper stared at this. (Ford slowly pulled his knees in towards his chest, then buried his head in his hands. He looked like he wanted to be literally anywhere but sitting where he was, listening to what he was, just then.)
"Well--" Bill began, with a grin on his face and lacing throughout his entire tone.
...and Ford shuddered in place.
"--Hey, hold up," Stan said, feeling more than a little worried about his brother just then. Dipper and Mabel glanced over at him, then over at their other Great-Uncle, and they both didn't just stop at looking worried at him -- they both shoved themselves to their feet and moved over to sit down beside him, on either side of him.
Mabel snuggled in close. Dipper sat very close by him, not quite comfortable enough to do what Mabel was doing without something of an invitation from his Great-Uncle.
"Ford…" Stan said slowly, as his brother took in several deep breaths, and then let them out again.
He saw his brother shake his head twice, but not raise it, and Stan glanced over at the kid, who had only now turned to face Ford, blinking.
"Bill--?" Stan began.
"--No," Ford said quickly, and he sounded a little shaky. Stan frowned at this.
Bill blinked slowly, and then his eyelids fell a little low.
"Other dimensions he hasn't talked about to you yet, I'm not supposed to talk about first. Remember?" was Bill's contribution to this mess. "I could talk about a few things here--"
"What?" Ford breathed out lifting his head abruptly, then looking more than a little alarmed. "--No!!"
"--but that Stanford doesn't know about any of the things I did here that are similar enough… to…" Bill trailed off, then looked away as his expression shifted around several times, looking as though he was about to -- but not quite going so far as to -- choose (or transition) between a nasty wide grin and an annoyed frowning grimace.
Ford was looking pale as anything now, and looking at his hands where they were gripping the sides of his knees, his knuckles were almost white.
"Don't--" Ford began, as he went paler, and paler. "You can't--" And paler still. "Don't--"
"...talk about anything in your Mindscape?" Bill said slowly, as his expression finally began to levelling out. "That counts as 'events in this dimension' too, you know."
"Don't--" Ford said, and he sounded even shakier.
"Bill--" Dipper began, sounding like he was winding up for a 'stop'.
Miz sighed. "Should we take a break?" she asked, looking around at everyone.
Bill closed his eyes for one long moment, then let out a sigh.
"My character pulls out that fireball scroll from my side pouch and casts it," Bill said, sounding neutral, even though his expression was one of pure annoyance, as he turned back around to look at the vampire his character was facing. "Aim centered on the vampire's feet; unique boots make a unique easy-to-focus-on target there, shouldn't be able to dodge that as a target too easily, even if the 'talking monster' does make his 'shrink-down-into-a-small-bat-before-I-die, oops that didn't work because he didn't aim at my head or chest like an idiot!' roll."
Miz rolled her dice, grimaced and the vampire screamed as he ignited from the five-foot radius fireball that hit him, unable to make his DEX save (neither into vampire bat form, nor to dodge away from the high-level 'homing' fireball spell either given the target Bill had defined).
Dipper and Mabel winced as the vampire burned. The fire blurred out the details but it wasn't a very nice image either as he died and slumped over, dead beyond undeath. Undead had a weakness to Fire damage after all, and taking a Fireball head-on… after rolling a crit fail on his save (adding insult to injury) was...
"Congratulations, Pine Tree," Bill said blandly, pulling his knees up to his chest and resting his arms and then chin on them himself. "You get your dead vampire. Hooray. Problem 'solved'."
"Kid," Stan gritted out at him, slowly rising to his feet, because how the hell was that helping--
"He's better with watching me killing people than talking at them," Bill said flatly, as he watched the vampire's corpse finish burning and crumple down into dust, and then closed his eyes fully. "In case you hadn't noticed that yet."
...It didn't help that when Stan glanced away from the demon, fists clenched at his side, to look at his brother...
...that Ford did seem more relaxed already, as he stared at the still fairly grisly-looking scene. --Not that Ford was relaxed relaxed -- Ford wasn't looking relieved or anything like it -- but he wasn't hunched over quite so much anymore, and he wasn't gripping at himself quite so tightly, and...
Damnit. What the hell... "How the hell is you talking to other people worse than…" Stan wasn't getting this at all. It wasn't like the kid had been doing anything completely out there, with this. The kid hadn't been trying to mess with Ford. And yeah, this thing had been a little messed up, with the vampire talking about people like 'livestock' and the kid (in character) not calling him out on it like Dipper had been. But the kid had made it pretty clear real early on in the campaign what he was planning on doing once they'd gotten to that dumb old vampire in its lair. There were no surprises there; he hadn't sprung anything ugly on the kids at the last second there. And hell, Stan had been more worried about what the kids might think of it than Ford, up until Ford had… It had just seemed like your standard negotiate-and-grab to him, with maybe a setup for some stab-in-the-back later if need be, in case the vampire-guy tried to pull some kinda double-cross or them or something. Stan had pulled some fast-talking stuff during some of their sessions, and...
Then Stan blinked as he realized... he had pulled all the fast-talking stuff during those sessions. Not the kid. The kid had let him take the lead in everything, including the talking. Stan had effectively been the party leader for those sessions -- either him or Mabel, while Dipper had been DM'ing. The kid had been playing a supporting-role almost exclusively, every single time something had come up, and had always passed things over almost immediately to Stan (or Mabel, if she went and cut in all bubbly-excited and stuff over things), once the Persuasion stuff worked well and long enough for Stan himself to...
"Some fates are worse than death," Bill said, looking down and away from the hologram in front of him. "Guess what one of those things that causes those 'fates' is, that that Stanford consistently puts on that list, right at the very top of it."
...Oh. Oh, shit. Stan looked over at Ford, who was… refusing to look at him at all now.
Oh, goddamnit. That-- shit. --No wonder Ford had completely lost his shit at Stan 'taking the kid's side' in that other dimension. Because with the way Ford had acted over the thing that had happened with the demon-kid talking to that teacher, and the way Ford was acting about stuff now... He must've thought that the kid had talked him around, into--
Stan almost told Ford off all over again -- that the kid was on his side, not the other way around. But he stopped himself, barely, because he knew that wouldn't help. Ford didn't see it that way; heck, the kid barely saw it that way himself. And Ford would just think… hell, that he was lying, maybe, if he tried to say otherwise? Because that was maybe what somebody the kid had talked into doing whatever for him would try and trick Ford into thinking, for him?
Hell, Ford had got paranoid about this kind of stuff, still, even before Bill had come back; that Stan might be being controlled by Bill and lying to him, or pretending, or something. He'd had a couple bad nights on the boat, way back when, a whole bunch of months ago now, where he'd practically tackled Stan to the bed and demanded to (read: forcibly ripped off Stan's glasses and then physically held him down to) perform a check of Stan's eyes, looking for 'yellow slits' or whatnot...
(After the first couple of times, Stan had mostly just given up, rolled his eyes, and let him do it, instead of trying to shove back or complain or anything else. It had been easier -- and less stressful on Ford, who had pretty much refused to calm down until he'd checked Stan over -- to just let Ford do what he'd needed to do, to convince himself that stuff was really fine, and all that. That Bill wasn't controlling or in-control of his brother, and really-truly-actually still gone. But now…?)
Stan let out a deep sigh. Damnit, this was worse than he'd thought. Having Ford check his eyes out again wasn't going to fix this one, not when Ford was afraid that the demon-kid maybe might've done one of those convincing-inspiring 'enlightenment' things to him.
...And now he was starting to see the larger problem, of the kid not killing his problems anymore maybe making Ford lose his damn mind over the kid not doing that. ...Which was really just great there, leaving the kid damned if he did, and doubly-damned if he didn't, when the 'didn't' was what Stan wanted out of the kid most days. (Damnit. No wonder the kid thought he wouldn't be able to pull this thing off, to get Ford to go along with this stuff, why the kid had insisted Ford was going to be a problem to the agreement that Stan couldn't 'solve' -- not really protesting all that hard from the get-go, but only after Stan had started insisting that he--)
Stan let out a sigh and scratched the back of his head.
"I'm thinkin' we can probably call the session done now, yeah? If nobody says 'no' because they want to keep goin' to figure out the rewards back at town at the end," Stan said, looking around at all of them. The twins nodded, and Bill didn't respond. (Damn. That was a big one, the kid giving up the chance to negotiate terms on a payment come due.) Miz seemed to shrug it off, luckily, taking down the hologram and starting to clean up her DM area behind the screen, thought she didn't look entirely happy as she did it -- either at the ending outcome, or at having to leave it there.
"Kid," Stan said slowly (as the kids slowly relaxed as they realized Ford was feeling a little bit better), because damn it all, if he didn't ask this now... "There a reason why you haven't talked about anything that happened inside Ford's head--"
--Stan was taking a quick reflexive step back, and he didn't really realize why until about a second later, when he realized Ford was on his feet and--
"--That's why," Bill said, turning his head to look up at them both -- with a very pale Ford standing not two feet away from Stan, shaking in place and halfway through the swing of a punch, barely keeping himself from following through on it, even though Stan had already visibly and physically backed down from asking his question.
"...Grunkle Ford?" they both heard Mabel breathe out, and Stan watched as his brother went even oaler still.
"It's okay," Stan said slowly, as he tried to keep his breathing even, rather than panicked. "It's okay, Ford. I won't ask…" (And Stan wasn't entirely sure how he managed to keep his voice mostly level there. Because Ford had looked about ready to take his head off at the neck with one punch and still kind of did…)
"And I won't tell you if you do," was Bill's (surprising) contribution to that. "Not unless you override Pine Tree, who is against mental attacks, and that Stanford sees that as one, clearly." Bill looked away from them both and stood up slowly himself, brushing himself off. "And maybe not even then."
"...Yeah?" Stan said, and he wondered why Ford was looking even a little more panicked at this, even as his brother began to lower his arms...
"Yes, 'yeah'." Bill let out a slight huff of breath at this, one that Stan couldn't even call a laugh if he was being charitable. "And you people think that I can't keep secrets. Really."
"Fine," Stan said, blinking at this. This was new. (How much of this was because of…?) He forced himself to take in one slow breath. "You keep on doing that," he ground out at the kid. Because, hell, that wasn't what he'd been expecting, right there. Not outta the kid. But...
"I--" Ford stopped mid-sentence, shivered in place again, a bit wide-eyed, then swallowed. "I'm… going to my bedroom," he said finally, as he slowly pulled back away from Stan, and Stan couldn't help but wince at the way his brother was balancing on the balls of his feet, like Ford was (still) expecting a (physical) hit from any direction. (...So he'd been meaning to take the first swing first?) "You can finish out the session if you'd like," Ford said lowly, as he backed up, then half turned away from them as he began to walk off, "But I am not watching or listening to any of it."
Stan watched him go, as did the niblings. Miz stopped what she was doing, and glanced back up at them. (Bill, meanwhile, seemed to be thoroughly ignoring him.)
Dipper glanced around at them all, shifting from foot to foot and feeling unsure how he should feel about any of this.
Stan looked after Ford, then looked down at the niblings and let out a deep sigh.
"Yeah, okay. Might as well finish it all out, then," Stan said, making the decision there and pulling the trigger. "Figure you all can take the five minutes or whatever to do that, make it a clean end to the session or whatever." He slowly walked the few steps back over, to sit back down where he'd been sitting before, in his chair.
Dipper didn't really want to do that, and from the look on her face, neither did Mabel, but...
(Dipper really didn't like weighing 'five minutes and Great-Uncle Ford will probably be feeling more calmed down without us there, than feeling worse because we're there with him and he's feeling so bad that he can't hug us, and worse because he'll flinch away again if we try' against a 'what if this time he actually needs us right now, instead?' Knowing that Grunkle Stan probably didn't really want them stopping the session part-way if they could help it -- because he'd not wanted Bill to walk away from the table as a player from a game without a 'clean end' either -- because he didn't want to set a bad precedent for future sessions that Dipper would be DM'ing...)
...At least Bill himself didn't look all that thrilled to be finishing it all out either, even if Miz perked up a little.
They piled up the ashes in a small bag as proof, Bill generally not doing much other than what Mabel asked him to do -- and even then not being very vocal or 'high energy' about it. (Dipper guessed that Bill was still pissed off at using the fireball scroll instead of finishing the deal he'd wanted to do; Dipper didn't really get why that was, though. He'd thought that Bill liked doing both things equally: making deals and killing people, or whatever.)
Even when Dipper and Mabel helped the villagers up and led them back out of the cave, got them all back to the village safely and had a celebration in honor of their success, it felt worse than hollow to Dipper.
Mabel didn't look like she'd enjoyed this ending either, though Miz tried very hard to make it better, having Remus and his pack become allies with the humans in the village, protecting them from other monsters in exchange for being left alone to their territory in the woods.
The NPC woman had a tearful reunion with her (luckily, still-alive and fine after the Charmed status wore off after the vampire's death) sister, and she thanked the party profusely. The mayor of the village granted them a lot of gold and even their own plot of land within the village. Still, Dipper couldn't really feel happy with any of it. ...And he was starting to think that it didn't actually have anything to do with playing with Bill in the same party, or having the demon who'd hurt their Great-Uncle before (multiple times now) DM'ing it, or…
Dipper hadn't really been enjoying the game before Great-Uncle Ford had lost it at Bill being Bill. And now he just felt distracted and worse as he worried about what their Great-Uncle must be thinking of them, continuing to play the game without him watching, continuing to play it through with the two demons even though he had felt...
They got to the end of it, and both Stan and Miz called it. Mabel was up and out of the living room almost immediately, heading for Grunkle Ford's room like a shot.
Miz took her time in packing up everything, then handed it over to Dipper and looked down at her lap.
"You know, back when I was human, there was a boy in my group that most of us didn't want to play with," she spoke up, as Dipper took his things back from her, and Dipper paused in place. "He wasn't a bad kid, a little annoying maybe, but he always treated the game like he could do whatever he wanted without consequence."
Dipper frowned at her. "...Okay?" he said, not knowing where she was going with this. (Was she talking about Bill?)
"Like he never treated the NPCs like they were people." (Yeah, okay. Definitely not Bill, then. Bill treated NPCs like people; he just didn't treat people very well.) "And he would get mad when they didn't do what he wanted them to do." (On second thought… were they talking about stuff not in-character in the game, or…?) Miz smiled wryly. "Like when he wanted to ask an NPC girl out on a date." (Dipper blinked at her, feeling kind of weird about this already.) "He came to her with flowers and all but demanded that she go out with him. She turned him down. He insisted, claiming that he killed the man who had harassed her a while back, as if she owed him a date for doing so." Miz's smile turned more bitter. "She refused him again. And, since she was at work, had security escort him out of the premises. So every one of us at the table told him to stop, because he was being rude. But he made his character wait outside the girl's workplace until she got off work, at night, and then tried to follow her home." Miz was outright glaring at this point.
Dipper frowned. "Um… okay," Dipper said. "So the guy was being a real creep and a jerk. Why are you telling me this?" (And it was about this point that Dipper slowly glanced around and realized that Grunkle Stan was no longer in the room…)
(He was fine; Grunkle Stan was probably with Great-Uncle Ford in his bedroom down the hallway. That was within yelling distance, and then some. And it wasn't like Bill or Miz could go casting 'no sound' spells inside the mystical barrier, down here...)
"We kicked him off the table. For obvious reasons. But not before the DM was forced to have his character arrested and sent to an asylum, to show the kid the consequences of his actions."
"...Okay?" Dipper said. That seemed like a standard kind of DM response to bad behavior at the table, to him. What was wrong with kicking a bad… wait. She wasn't trying to say that Great-Uncle Ford had been acting…? --He hadn't even been playing! And she'd been the one to upset him, along with Bill, not the other way around! Dipper's frown started to turn into more of a glare.
Miz shook her head. "The problem was, the kid never realized what he was doing wrong. He didn't see why the NPCs and the three girls, including me, in our game group, were so upset by his behavior. Because he didn't see why it would matter what he did in the game, since it was just a game." Miz looked up at Dipper. "And you know, for someone who can just throw around their power to do whatever they wanted, like killing people for EXP or being able to just buy magic items that can let you reshape reality itself, that type of mentality is sadly quite common."
"Because it's a game," Dipper said, frowning. "But if everybody at the table's okay with letting loose once in awhile, what's the problem with that? People play 'bad guy' characters that are evil sometimes, too." That was what the alignment system was for.
"OH? --You should be careful when you talk about DDNMD with that Stanford from now on, Pine Tree," Bill said, staring off and away through one of the windows of the Shack, not really facing him. "He might think you're starting to sound too much like ME."
Dipper was taken aback at this. "You don't play DDNMD like that." At least, he hadn't since they'd been playing… Wait. Had Bill played DDNMD with Great-Uncle Ford? (...Oh no. If he had, then that would explain--)
Bill looked over at him, then, and then rose to his feet, giving him a wide, wide grin.
"Really, Pine Tree," Bill drawled out at him. "Why should I care about what happens in some silly game? --With you, with Shooting Star," he said, gesturing about, though not looking away from him all the while, and Dipper glared, "With that Stanford, for thirty-three years and counting…" Dipper took a step back, eyes widening. "Why should I care about consequences, when everything is so much fun! --Murder-hobo that vampire," Bill gestured down at where that hologram had been, feeling more than a little off-balance all of a sudden, "Toss that puppet off of that water tower--" (Dipper went straight-backed, sucking in a quick breath.) "Why not?? --There isn't really any difference there, between any of it, is there, Pine Tree?" Bill said to him, "As long as it's FUN?" he added, getting right up in his face with that grin.
Dipper flinched, shaking his head at Bill -- who was being-- why was he?! This wasn't--!! He could see the look in Bill's eye, and he was being--
--sarcastic, even if he didn't look or sound like it otherwise, you had to look at his eyes to really see it and check, and Bill was being--
And Dipper felt confused and dizzy for a moment, at the way Bill had been jumping back and forth between the DDNMD game and reality, reality and the game. But only for a moment.
And then Dipper finally got it.
"That's… you…" He shivered slightly in place and slowly looked away from Bill, and over at Miz. "That's a little like..." He swallowed. "A demon. ...Right?" Because Great-Uncle Ford… some of the things that he'd said, down in the basement… treating everything like a game and not caring, because… people weren't real people to them?
...Just like how the NPCs in DDNMD didn't really matter ...unless the other players thought that maybe they didn't want to play things that way, that session?
"Welcome to The Game," Bill practically purred out at him, as he straightened up and tossed his arms out to the sides in an all-encompassing gesture, grinning even wider. "We can die, but that's half the fun! --After all, we don't stay dead like you do!" Bill dropped his hands and leaned forward towards him a little bit (and Dipper fought the urge to back up away from him, though he did clutch the DDNMD box to his chest and lean back a little bit). "Why worry about the little people living and dying and doing anything and everything in-between," Bill added, still grinning widely at him, "When you can just spin up a new role, and try and try again!"
Miz sighed. "I don't like games where you're forced to kill in order to progress. But most games are like that. Especially RPGs." she shrugged. "And sometimes, life feels like an unfair RPG…"
"--Among other things!" Bill enthused out at him-- at them both.
Dipper twitched. "Real life isn't a game!" he told them both, to which Miz sighed.
"Tell that to the people who think it is," she grimaced. Immortals and gods, those who were powerful enough to do whatever they wanted without anyone being able to stand against them...
"--Demons, not 'people'," Bill said. "Unless they're delusional or worse! --Let's be clear about our terminology, here. Don't want to get Pine Tree all confused about things!" he said next.
Dipper glanced between them. "Do you think real life is just a game?" he asked Miz roughly. He had it from Great-Uncle Ford already that Bill Cipher sure did, and the way Bill was acting just then was doing anything but proving Great-Uncle Ford wrong.
Miz sighed. "Well, I don't…" She paused. "Well, I don't go around killing people willy-nilly for fun or 'EXP', my dimension doesn't grant it for killing people. But I won't lie and say I haven't gotten frustrated and taken out my frustrations on people before. But I don't kill them. My dimension has Time Baby breathing up my ass about rolling back stuff, so I can't just make it so the things I've done never happened. I have to live with the consequences of what I do. And there have been people I've killed when I lost control of my powers, which was my fault and I still feel bad about." Miz grimaced. "And dad snatches up the souls of anyone who dies, so I can't bring them back to life unless I'm right there to grab onto them before he does. So I can't just go around killing people, nor do I want to. Even if dad wasn't snatching stuff up, I don't like to kill innocent people because I don't like how it makes me feel bad."
Dipper stared. He'd barely followed any of that. She had a Time Baby that was stopping her from messing with time, okay, but… her dad was stealing people's souls? The heck???
"I--" Dipper was starting to feel a little freaked out. He wanted away from them now.
"Look, I like people, most of the time. Even if they don't like me back." Miz rubbed her arm. "And I can go around and do what I want, if I wanted, I'm strong enough. But it makes me feel bad. Emotionally. When I do that." she seemed almost embarrassed to admit it. "So whether or not everything might be a game…" (Or a children's cartoon show...) "I don't…" Miz rubbed her face. "I don't think of you as 'just some NPC', alright? You're a person and I respect that." Because Dipper might be a cartoon character, but Miz still thought of him, and everyone else she'd ever met in this life, as a person.
"And you're my Zodiac," Bill contributed to the discussion with a smile. "You're mine."
"R-right," Dipper said a little shakily, as he backed up a step. "I'm, uh, I'm gonna go see Great-Uncle Ford now..."
And with that, he turned and quickly walked off and out of the room, DDNMD box clutched to his chest.
Miz watched him go and sighed. "Why is he so afraid of me?" she asked quietly. "Why is everyone always so afraid of me?"
Bill placed a hand on her head. "Because you're capable of hurting him."
"...even if I've told him that I won't?"
"Yes." Bill nodded. "He doesn't trust you. He has no reason to. And he's smart enough to know that you could just change your mind at some point, and he wouldn't be able to do anything about it."
"And how is making me feel unwelcome supposed to prevent me from changing my mind…"
Bill turned his head to look down at her. "Do you feel unwelcome?" he asked seriously.
Miz rubbed at her eyes. "Sometimes. But I feel like maybe I've done something to make people not like me. And I don't know what it is."
Bill chittered with an annoyed look. "Well, if that Stanford wasn't being so difficult..." Then Bill shook his head. "Your problem is likely me," Bill told her next. "People who know me make certain assumptions about the people I associate with. So…" In most dimensions, that meant people being very careful to fall all over themselves to please, or else. It also meant a lot of fear, overall. Sometimes, it meant a great deal of respect, too -- but that was almost restricted solely to dimensions in which Bill had almost complete and utter overwhelming control. Ones where he was worshipped, almost like a god...
"...but I don't want to not associate with you, just because they don't like you. I like you." Miz bit her lip. People who stopped being friends with their friends just because they wanted to be popular were awful people and she wasn't going to be like that. She liked Bill. He was her big brother now, and she loved him. He… he wanted to be her brother, he wanted to be her family-- that...
(He had accepted her so easily, wholeheartedly loving her back and trying in his own clumsy way to be a good brother to her, even when he had no idea how--)
"I wouldn't be angry with you if you did," Bill told her. He would be sad, yes, but not angry. "Just tell me first, and I can help." Because he would help her sell it. (It would be difficult to talk with her after, what with him not being able to get into the Mindscape currently, because of the anchor currently holding him down, but…) She was his little sister. If improving her reputation meant her distancing her reputation from his own, somehow, then...
"If I was the type of person who would throw away someone I loved just to get other people to like me, then I'd really be an awful person." Miz leaned against Bill, pressing her face into his chest. "I'm not going to do that. I love you big brother."
"I love you, too," Bill told her easily. "But that doesn't mean that you have to agree with me in fights with others, or defending me to others, all of the time. --That's MY job as big brother, not yours." Bill smiled and patted Miz on the head again before he had to head off to deal with some of his stupid human-ish body's needs. (For one thing, there was the bathroom, and for another, more food. He was paying a little closer attention to his stupid human-ish body these days, and when he started feeling that particular version of annoyed… that usually meant more food was needed.) Miz took a glance out the window and saw that the sun was beginning to set.
---
The game had lasted for most of the day. They'd taken a lunch break in the middle and the sun was going down now. It was almost time for dinner. Miz was slumped over a beanbag chair in the attic while everyone else was getting ready for dinner.
"Did I do good? Or did I mess up again?" she asked herself about the DDNMD game. No answer came since she was alone in the room, but Miz sighed and rolled over.
There was something she'd been putting off. Mostly because she still wasn't sure how to do it, and partially because it was so awkward.
Apologizing to that Stanford.
After meeting Mini, and hearing about what sort of person Fister had been...
...well, that Stanford almost seemed nice in comparison. And was definitely a better brother to Stan than his original brother. Not that Stan knew.
Miz sighed. She wasn't even all that mad at him anymore.
So she didn't have an excuse to not apologize.
"Uuuugh~ this is gonna suuuuck~" she groaned.
---