---
"So… how long are they going to be cats?" Dipper deadpanned as he watched Bill napping in a sunbeam, while Miz ran around pouncing on ants in the backyard.
Stan, who had decided after a few more tours, some overpriced cookies, and plenty of cash rolling in, to give the demons a break since they'd all needed some lunch, and the kid had been starting to get antsy (not during the "scare" show, but he'd definitely been showing it with the way he'd started half-pacing, half-stalking the tourists from up in the rafters), shrugged at Dipper's question, from where he was leaning up against the railing of the porch. "Kid went back into his body to eat earlier. So he don't have to leave the cat body there for another few hours." Whether he could convince the kid to do the petting exhibit thing again or not was a completely different story. And that was assuming that Miz--
Stan blinked -- and Dipper winced -- as they heard a small growl, and they both turned to see that KittenMiz had sprouted antlers and scales as she went half-dragon and half-cat. She wasn't just racing back and forth across the yard, stopping briefly to sniff or bite at some of the green-growing stuff here and there; not anymore. A rabbit had ventured past the woods into the yard, and now Miz was "playfully" chasing it down.
Stan and Dipper watched this quietly for a few moments.
...Yeah, nope. Dragon-lady definitely needed to get some energy outta her system. ...So had Mabel, with the way she'd been enthusiastically "stalking" Miz with her camera around the yard. Looked a lot more like skipping and running, on both their parts. (Mabel had stopped and backed up a little bit closer to the porch, once Miz had started going after the rabbit. She was filming this; she'd stopped "just" taking pictures awhile ago now...)
Dipper twitched as he watched Miz try and pounce on the rabbit again, missing it by millimeters this time at most. It looked like she was playing with it… except Miz wasn't Mabel's cat back home in Piedmont, and it looked a lot more like she was barely missing on purpose and enjoying its terror than... "Should we be letting her do that?"
"Eh, depends if she's gonna eat it or not." Stan shrugged. Killing for fun wasn't good. But killing for food was… well, at least it was a rabbit. He knew what Dipper might be thinking, but he'd seen cats and dogs and stuff go after prey like that when they were full and when they weren't. Miz looked actually hungry there, even if she was enjoying it a lot more than Stan would've thought...
Stan glanced over at the kid, who was lazily lounging over on the porch, flicking his tail back and forth absently, head down, lying down all splayed out on his belly, just slit-eyed watching his little sister with his eyes lidded low. (...If the triangle demon liked playing with people that way… would a working substitute for that maybe be havin' him go after a rabbit or two himself? ...Stan didn't really think so, though. Kid didn't look at all inclined to be jumping off the porch there and joining in; he was too relaxed for it, not watching it the same way.)
Dipper shivered as he watched Miz finally catch the hapless rabbit; she lashed out quickly with claws and teeth -- crunching down on its neck abruptly -- and held it until it's struggles ceased. That was disturbing enough, but then Miz somehow skinned it, tearing the fur off before unhinging her jaw to swallow it whole.
It was one thing to see her do something like this as a large dragon-cryptid of some kind, but she'd lost the dragon claws and stuff as she'd crunched down on the rabbit and it had struggled and struggled and stopped, and... seeing a kitten do that, skin it and swallow it whole like that, was… well, it was really messed up. It was like… like watching a dog eat something the way a snake would, and then just sit there in place with a big bump in the middle of it afterwards; it just looked out-and-out wrong. Dogs and cats weren't cryptids, and Dipper had never thought he'd see something like this. But it was a stark reminder of how Miz wasn't human, not anymore. A human wouldn't think it was okay for a kitten to just swallow some animal whole, bones and all -- and definitely not in front of other humans who would maybe end up having nightmares about larger, grown-up cats trying to eat them later. Miz was a demon now, even if she had been human once.
Ford, who was leaning up against the corner of the railing, on the other side of the porch where Bill was lounging -- within the dream demon's sight, arms-crossed, gun left in his room rather than on his hip, at Stan's discretion (because apparently keeping it on him might be a little too threatening, when both Ciphers were in bodies that barely came up past his ankles) -- was feeling a bit twitchy at watching this. (He wasn't grossed-out or disgusted at her behavior like Dipper was; he'd seen far worse in his years on the other side of the portal, and he hardly thought of her as in any way human at-present. What he was was cautious of was the small predator that could change characteristics -- such as the size of their claws and teeth and antlers -- at will, so easily and fluidly. Not least of which because he'd seen Shifty do similar when--)
"How big of a thing can you swallow?" Stan called out to Miz, thinking about the two kids standing nearby him. At this point, he was hoping that… "Bigger than a breadbox?", was not what she ended up saying. Probably give the kids nightmares if they thought of her being able to swallow small people, and whatnot. ...And if she could, now would be a really good time to have her remember and reiterate upon her promise not to eat anybody sentient or sapient or whatever. (And Ford turned his head and stared at his brother in abject horror, under the wrong impression and thinking that Stan might be wanting to know because he was contemplating what other acts he could ask the man-eater to perform for the Shack's attractions, of all things!)
Miz wiggled. "Dunno. I haven't really checked. But my mouth isn't that big right now. So I don't think I'd be able to fit anything larger than me," she responded as she cleaned off the tuffs of fur from her paws and mouth. Frankly, she'd swallowed it whole because there wouldn't be any blood that way, she thought it would be less graphic and less scary to eat it like so. Unlike the more fun way to eat which would be tearing the animal into strips and savoring each bite. "And I won't eat any people," she added. "If that was what you were wondering. Eating people is… uncomfortable, mostly. I don't like doing it."
"Yeah," Stan said, "And in that other dimension, you talked about not eating people unless they straight-up told you they wanted you to. And that you don't like eating hair. Right?" he prompted her, as he glanced over at Ford. "And we know you get stuff wrong sometimes, just like the kid does, so if anybody does try and tell you that here, figure you'd be better off comin' to me and letting me make sure that that's all on the up-and-up first, before goin' off and doin' anything like that, okay?"
Miz rolled over onto her back and purred adorably. "Okay. I won't eat anyone here, just in case they didn't actually mean it the way it sounded to me," she agreed, wiggling her little limbs in the air as Mabel made her way over and started rubbing her belly. (Mabel had been a little pale at the rabbit death and subsequent consumption, but she'd seen all sorts of documentaries on snakes doing that stuff before, so… she hadn't been too horrified at it like Dipper had been. Dipper still had that thing about all those alien snake people or whatever going; she knew snakes were still kind of a touchy subject for him. She was definitely relieved to hear Miz tell them that she wouldn't eat any people at all now, not even if they straight-up asked her to.)
"Good!" Mabel told her, as she petted her and rubbed her stomach -- because positive reinforcement was a thing! "Grunkle Ford's still kinda upset about the body-eating you did last time, so not doing that while you're here's a really good thing."
Miz pouted. "Seb told me to get rid of it. And there was no soul inside, it was an empty vessel."
"But he didn't know that," Mabel chided her. "You know that, right? He got really scared!"
"...Yeah." Her ears drooped and then she looked almost chastised. "...I might have wanted to play a little prank on Ford, I didn't know he'd react that badly though." She flipped over onto her stomach and tucked her tail in. "I'm sorry for my prank not being as funny as I thought it would be."
Mabel sighed. "You should really tell Grunkle Ford that, you know, if you mean it." She glanced over at said grunkle. "...Or maybe tell Grunkle Stan to tell Grunkle Ford for you. When Grunkle Ford isn't around... to hear you ask him to tell him for you." That would probably work out better. Grunkle Ford still got mad whenever she said stuff like that even in front of him.
Miz glanced over as well before she got to her feet and toddled over to Stan, peering up at him from where he was standing on the porch, staying in the grass a step down and away from him herself. "Um… mister Stan. Can you tell that Stanford that I'm sorry I scared him way back when, when I ate Seb's vessel? I was trying to prank him, but it didn't end up funny." To everyone else, Miz hadn't said anything at all, just meowed; her words being projected to Stan alone.
"What was that?" Ford said, frowning over at the man-eater suspiciously. She hadn't been meowing at anybody up until then, so why was she--
"Yeah, maybe later," Ford heard Stan tell her, and then glance over at him. "Nothin' to get all worked up over, Ford. Forget it." At Ford's continuing frown, Stan sighed and added, "Dragon-lady just asked me somethin' she don't want to screw up sayin' out loud in front of you herself. Like I asked her to," Stan emphasized.
Ford was still frowning at this, but the character of it changed slightly -- high suspicion became a slightly more disgruntled look. (Stan figured that was the best he could do just then. Stan squatted down, reached down, and -- slowly, he knew the kid was watching him like a hawk, here -- petted Miz a bit, scratching her on the head gently, and then behind the ears, before pulling his fingers away slightly and ticking his chin back at the open yard slightly.)
Satisfied that she'd done what Mabel had asked (and without Ford or anybody else getting super-mad at her even!), Miz bounced back into the yard to play some more, running around and tumbling across the grass, getting back to burning off the hyper energy she had inside. All that worship from the tourists was buzzing under her skin -- it felt great!!!, but this vessel was so very small, she needed to use it up before she caught fire or something.
After awhile, Miz thought of something she thought was fun and dashed off towards the woods (which alarmed Bill for a moment, who leapt to his feet and turned towards in the direction she'd run off) before coming back with a small stick in her mouth and practically dropping it to the ground right in front of Mabel's feet. ...And, well, that got Mabel going all right; she finally put the phone away for good and started throwing the small stick for her to play fetch. It was more of a dog thing, but Miz liked playing with her. At a bit of jumping-prompting from Miz, Mabel even began throwing it high into the air as Miz leapt for it, once again growing dragon scales as her energy churned and shifted her vessel to allow for such high jumps.
Dipper still looked a bit upset at all this, almost squirming in place a bit where he sat as he watched Miz go through yet another transformation again. He got back to glancing up and down between this, and writing in his journal again, though. Because somebody ought to be cataloguing all this, and as much as he wanted to intervene and tell Mabel to stop because this really didn't feel right to him, he knew she was having too much fun to stop anyway. He was probably just being paranoid about things; it had finally occurred to him that the reason he wasn't liking what Miz was doing here was because she wasn't sticking to just one form -- it reminded him waaay too much of the shapeshifter, and... And Grunkle Stan and Great-Uncle Ford were right there. They wouldn't let anything bad happen to Mabel. Especially not from Miz. Dipper forced himself to take a deep breath.
Soos came out to the porch after awhile, and Dipper saw Grunkle Stan basically wave him off, back in to the Shack (with a salute and a "Sure thing, Mr. Pines!" from Soos), then slump a little bit in place and loosen his tie. ...So they weren't gonna be doing the cat exhibit thing again, and Soos was going to take over the tours for the rest of the day as Mr. Mystery again. Okay. That was probably a good thing. Dipper was pretty sure that Miz wasn't gonna be up for any more sitting still again anytime soon. So, a good call there. ...Huh. Guess Grunkle Stan really wasn't pushing it with her. That was weird. He usually pushed things as hard as he could when he was making that much money...
So Dipper sat where he was on the porch, taking notes, and Mabel kept on running around the yard with her own store of boundless energy, playing fetch with Miz (with an old frisbee she had a lightbulb moment over and ran over to go pull out of the bushes next), while Ford and Stan watched from the porch, and Bill watched all of the rest of them, too. And this was how things generally progressed for the rest of the afternoon, until a little after the Shack's closing time finally hit.
...at which point Miz finally seemed so start running out of steam, and ended up trotting back over to the porch, to slump down under it, right below where Bill was still sitting, all sprawled out, head-down, and breathing on his own paws quite calmly. Ford did let out an involuntary snort when he saw Bill's tail twitch absently, Bill almost half-asleep where he was laid out, draped down almost right in front of Miz's nose, and…
--Miz immediately batted at Bill's tail, which had the older "cat" blinking his eyes open and pulling it up again (almost reflexively?) before dropping it. (Ford blinked at this, because that was rather odd. Bill didn't have human reflexes; not really. He'd had to 'work at' those with Stan. But that motion had looked rather natural--)
But when Miz started grabbing at it with her little paws as he twitched it back and forth, with something of a 'what the heck was that?!' eyeball-look… Ford couldn't help but let out a snort, as he watched the older demon finally shove his head over the side of the porch and give the younger demon a very put-upon look…
...but Bill didn't actually, actively stop her from doing it. He didn't actually pull his tail up to the porch until several more battings later, and even then he didn't turn around and snap at her for it, for pouncing up to the porch herself and rather continuing to...
And Mabel got it all on her phone and was texting it off to pretty much everyone that she knew. Which Dipper saw, and it left her brother groaning.
Dipper wasn't sure what his life even was anymore.
---
"...So the demons are actual cats now." Pacifica deadpanned as she showed Dipper the footage from her phone (having received all the texts from Mabel documenting the 'adorable' occasion). She was following Dipper and Melody around as they walked through the grocery store, the closest they could get to a 'private visit' with Dipper and Mabel still on Mr, Pines' 'must be babysat at all times outside the Shack' supervision-punishment-thing. (She didn't particularly appreciate the sentiment, given how it was making life that much more difficult for her, but at least the Pines twins weren't stuck at the Shack for the duration anymore.) Dipper had used the excuse of going out with Melody to buy some supplies to go visit her (which Mr. Pines had, for once, actually okayed), while Mabel stayed at the shack to keep the demons occupied. Luckily, Melody also seemed perfectly fine with this arrangement, as Dipper had checked for Pacifica in advance on the other side of his texting as she'd requested.
Dipper groaned at the footage in front of him. "Yeah."
Pacifica raised an eyebrow. "...And? What have you learned from this?" Because she'd gotten quite a lot, and she had a whole list of questions she wanted to ask him, better discussed in-person. --Such as, why was the demon lying there on the porch looking so very calm? Had he been doing that the whole time? Because any time he showed up in the frame, he was in the same spot, lying there, not doing anything. And Pacifica remembered Weirdmageddon; oh, how she could not. That demon had acted anything but calm and relaxed and chill at any point during it; he'd been practically bouncing off the walls doing whatever he wanted with a completely manic and crazy energy about him, instead. So what the hell was going on there? Not to mention that the two of them had apparently been one of the Shack attractions?! Hadn't the demon been mostly avoiding most people in town up until this point? Hadn't that been the whole point of what Mr. Pines and Dr. Pines had been trying to do? But Mabel had texted an off-hand comment that had made it sound like what Mr. Pines was actually trying to do was--
"That Mabel really can't resist a cat," Dipper deadpanned back, interrupting Pacifica's line of thought. Pacifica let out a little huff at this; she didn't like that Dipper didn't seem to be taking this (or her) seriously. "Also, that Bill's surprisingly good at being a cat." Dipper added, pretty annoyed at this fact. "If he wasn't talking to people, and didn't have the whole blue fur thing going, I'm pretty sure he could run off and we would never find him." And it was clear that that worried Dipper a little bit.
Meanwhile, Melody was politely giving them some space to have their conversation, keeping herself a little ways down the aisle looking through various fruits. She could still see them both, but couldn't quite hear what they were saying. (She knew how frustrating it must be for the twins to be babysat like this, and she certainly wasn't trying to be some kind of gulag jailer, listening in on all of their private conversations. As long as they were following the letter of the law Mr. Pines had laid out, she was fine with what they did. She knew Mr. Pines only wanted someone to be ready to look out for them if they got into any trouble, and not to go running off into trouble all over again. She'd told Dipper that, and they'd worked out their line-of-sight deal; he stayed within sight and didn't go running off, and she didn't have to look over his shoulder all the time, breathing down his neck.) And that was good enough for her. It let her concentrate on other things, like what she was buying. Because now that they knew more about what Bill could and couldn't eat, she knew what to look for.
Melody had a feeling that it would be good to stock up on a few more things that Bill could eat, both as a cat and a 'human-ish person', since Bill still had to return to his human-ish body to eat, to keep it nourished. But she'd asked him the first question that had come to mind upon hearing about that, and he'd told her in an almost-aside murmur that he could eat plenty of other things in a 'cat vessel' like that one; anything a cat could eat, he'd confirmed to her, straightforward but quietly, when she'd asked it of him. (And he'd looked about as surprised and then pleased at her response to that as most cats did when they got a surprise petting in passing. So she figured she was on the right track for Mr. Pines there...)
Pacifica frowned slightly at Dipper's comment about 'losing Bill' that easily. But it also reminded her of something, as she looked down at the video that was still playing on her phone, as she watched as Miz transformed on-camera as she jumped after… a common stick. Because seeing this, and hearing that from Dipper, left her coming back to the thought that she'd first gotten from Susan, when she'd talked to her about the two demons. About how Susan had called Bill a cat, but called Miz a dragon who wanted to be a cat but should stop pretending to be one, and...
...well, looking at the cat-dragon creature that Mabel was playing with in the recording that was playing on her phone, it did seem like Miz's dragon-ness was leaking out through and into the cat body even when she was 'pretending' to be an actual cat, whenever the younger demon was paying too much attention to something she was pouncing at, rather than… staying calm enough to act only excited about everything going on around her? (Or was she doing it on purpose?) ...Like when Mabel began wiggling some string at Miz, who had then pounced at it. Or the stick. Or the frisbee. Or the rabbit. (Ew. Pacifica let out a huff at this, though what she really wanted to do was sigh and pinch the bridge of her nose. That would ruin her makeup, though.) This all reminded her of that thing with the flying robots Bill had been moving around in that other video that the twins had sent her. While Miz hadn't gone 'dragon' on them that time, despite looking like she was having fun pouncing at all sorts of things while she was supposedly supposed to be acting human then...
And yet in this video, the younger demon had a long snake-like tail now, that she was whipping back and forth as she played. --So what was different between the last time and this one? Did it have to do with being inside the Shack's barrier versus being outside in the yard? Why didn't Dipper question these kind of things?
"Well, he does have the whole 'blue fur thing' going," Pacifica informed Dipper dryly, "So thank goodness for that." She let out a sigh. "Mabel knows that Miz isn't a cat, right?" Pacifica pointed out, feeling more than a little exasperated with her friend at this point.
Dipper sighed himself. "She knows that. Yeah. But you know Mabel. Miz looks like one right now, so Mabel wants to play with her." He watched Pacifica roll her eyes at this, and Dipper privately wondered if getting Mabel to play with her had actually been Miz's plan all along. (Kind of like how he'd had trouble not treating her like a normal cryptid when she'd been a dragon, when they'd been stuck in that other dimension. Mabel had been better about it before than even he had been, just like she was with Bill; Dipper was starting to think that his sister was just better at wrangling demons than he was, period, hands-down, just like she was with everyone else who wasn't a demon or an out-and-out jerk. But when Miz had started doing the whole kitten thing...)
"...and, Miz is a dragon." Dipper blinked, because had Pacifica just phrased that like it was almost a question? Dipper nodded at her.
"Yeah, Miz is a dragon. Grunkle Stan even calls her 'dragon-lady' sometimes," Dipper told her, and… Oh right, Dr. Pines had mentioned that to her before, back at the mansion, too. But Pacifica hadn't thought he'd meant it literally. --Yes, there had been those pictures that Mabel had taken of her looking like a dragon in that other dimension, but... Wait, more to the point--
"Dipper, what is a dragon?" Pacifica asked him. Yes, she'd done some research on the subject, but it was mostly folklore and fairytales. She didn't know how much of it might actually be real or not, or even be based in any fact at all, so when it came to the actual real life magical definition for dragons…
Dipper gave her a weird look. "You don't know what a dragon is?"
Pacifica barely stifled (most of) her irritation with him. "I know the basics. I'm not writing a fantasy novel, here; I'm asking about what real dragons are. --What are they? What are they like?" Pacifica clarified to him. Because her research into dragons, both western and eastern had been… mixed, to say the least. (And she was still rather disturbed by a note she'd found about how Chinese dragons in particular were generally written about in legends as being almost exclusively attracted to older men…which had reminded her of how Miz apparently had a minor crush on Dr. Pines, so saith the Mabel. Via text. Frequently.) "Like, is Miz just some fire-breathing lizard? Or a force of nature given form?" Or a minor god, like some sources claimed? Which had only gotten that much more confusing and worrying, once she'd begun connecting that to the ancient Egyptian worship of cats, and the Egyptian pyramids, and what Bill Cipher and his own floating pyramid had actually looked like...
Dipper paused. "I'm not really sure. The journals never really talked about dragons, probably because there aren't any here in Gravity Falls, but I think Great-Uncle Ford knows more." Pacifica nodded, and closed out the video on her phone to make a note to herself, a reminder to ask Dr. Pines about that later (in front of the demon, if at all possible, because she'd be damned if she was going to sneak around about talking with him, after what had happened in the-- no, no, that was a stupid and terrible idea, and probably exactly what the demon wanted her to do--).
While she was in the middle of a little deep breathing, trying to calm her unmistakable (and unhelpful) rage down, Dipper ended up accidentally helping her out with a good distraction from her earlier thought, by opening his own journal and flipping it around to hand it to her, forcing her to put away her phone for the moment.
"This isn't on dragons," Dipper prefaced this with, as he handed his open journal over, "But here are some of my own observations about Miz, so far." He held it out to her, and he didn't have to wait long before Pacifica took it from him and started reading it. He couldn't help but give her a small, lopsided and slightly embarrassed smile, as he saw her blink at seeing the words 'A study on Miz Cipher' written across the top of the page where he'd gone and opened it for her.
There were sketches of Miz in both her human and 'dragon' forms, and not that badly drawn. There was a new sketch of the kitten form that Dipper had to have done just that afternoon, and a few of the different kitten-dragon forms as well, travelling across the bottom of the next page. Pacifica blinked at them. (She still thought Miz looked like a weird snake as a dragon. The demon didn't have wings, which lent to the idea that she was an eastern dragon, if there was anything at all to the legends. She also noted how Dipper had left space for potentially a few more forms, and turned to the next page.) There were notes about how Miz loved to eat. Where and how she liked to be petted, in both dragon and cat form. How Miz had incredibly strong magic and could create things out of almost nothing, make plants grow, shape plants into different forms (something about a piano?) and was both telepathic and (apparently also) empathic (though Pacifica had no idea what the latter might refer to -- she inferred that maybe it was something like the ability to telepathically send emotions, rather than thoughts? If it was, that would be horrifically dangerous in close-quarters with a large group of people nearby...).
Pacifica read on about how Miz said she could make 'deals' with people just like Bill could, but hadn't outright made one with anyone here yet. There was a large list of warnings, with a triple-underlined part about how Miz was afraid of getting into or being too near any cars, and would also freak out if she was grabbed by her wrists, with a warning to never attempt to do such a thing. (Pacifica had narrowed her eyes at this, expecting to read something about how Bill would do something terrible to them all, next. But instead, Dipper had wrote that the reason that nobody should do it was because Miz's magic went out of control whenever she was scared or ended up panicked. And that was just terrifying to consider. Because if Dipper had written that instead of a warning about Bill, knowing full well what Bill was like even when he wasn't angry and hell-bent on tearing up the town, then… exactly how bad would Miz's powers going out of control have to be, to be worse even than that? Pacifica remembered how Miz had talked about her powers needing to be kept in check constantly, during the sleepover, but hadn't thought it was that serious, or known about the cars thing. ...She'd have to keep this in mind, but only as a last resort. The younger demon could be lying, and who knew if it would actually work on Bill himself. She didn't remember the demon being scared of anything; he'd seemed to take nothing seriously during that whole Weirdmageddon thing he'd had going on. ...And he'd driven away through the sky in a car, after rearranging her own father's face. Pacifica highly doubted that the demon had a problem with cars.)
Weirdly, there was also a note from Dipper about how when Bill had possessed his body, he had put on a seatbelt when he was in a car. That… was… (Pacifica pulled in a breath. ...Right. Demonic possession. Apparently this was a thing... which had happened to Dipper... by Bill… at some point. Got it.) Pacifica read through the page some more and paused at the… transcript that was written there? It appeared Dipper had written down a conversation that Miz had had… with herself? She raised her incredulous gaze up to meet the other teenager's eyes, and Dipper shrugged at her. "I… recorded it on the phone, if you wanna watch?"
"I would." Because she couldn't possibly be reading this right, and context was everything in these matters. Pacifica held out her hand imperiously for the twins' shared phone.
The video was taken from behind the door frame, peeking out at Miz. (Okay. Dipper must have been sitting at the base of the stairs. She recognized that part of the house from when she'd been there for a few days during Weirdmageddon.)
"-ello dino skull~" Miz said to the dinosaur skull that Stan kept in the living room. Miz was casually wiping the dirt and dust away from the stairs, swiping at it with her paws and somehow shifting it out and away from the stairs, gathering them into a pile at the base. "Hello Miz. Miz responded to herself, as the dino skull, shifting her voice in pitch. "What are you doing today dino skull? "Oh you know, just lying around." "Doesn't that get boring?" "Well, it's not like I can do much about that, you know? What with being dead and all." "Awww… that's unfortunate." Miz nodded. "Can't you help me?" the 'dino skull' pleaded. Miz frowned. "Help with what?" "Bring me back. Set me freee~" Miz wiggled. "I… don't think I'm allowed to do that." "Sure you can! Just reanimate me." Miz shifted around in place, looking uncomfortable. "But I wouldn't be able to bring you back as 'you' anyway. You won't be the same." "So what? At least I'd be alive. Anything is better than being dead here, having my body used for decoration." Miz seemed very uncomfortable now. "I… can't…" She whispered. Then, louder, she declared "I don't wanna talk to you anymore. You're not fun!" before she scrambled to her paws back up the stairs.
The video cut off not long after that. Pacifica lifted her eyes from the phone screen and stared over at Dipper.
"...Did she know you were there?" Pacifica asked first. Because this had looked even worse than the transcript had been. She'd thought that she must have been missing something, and yet...
Dipper shrugged. "I don't know. But… I've actually seen her talk to herself like that a few times. Once when she was out in the yard, talking to the ants? I was in my room and watching from my window, don't think she knew I was there. There was another time she did it, while she was cleaning the kitchen, after Grunkle Stan said she was allowed to clean if she wanted to. I think she was talking to the sink." Dipper rubbed his arm, looking pretty uncomfortable. "I didn't get to record those ones though, or really hear what she was saying; Mabel had her phone at the time, and I was too far away, anyway." (Right, Dipper considered it to be his sister's phone; even though Mabel had freely and happily admitted to Pacifica when she'd asked that they were supposed to be sharing it.) "But she does seem to just… talk at and as things, sometimes."
"So she really is crazy," Pacifica deadpanned. Great. She'd known the demon was nuts, but the fact that his sister was apparently talking to random objects like they can talk back to you nuts, was...
Dipper shrugged. "They both are." (Pacifica stiffened at this.) "I have a theory that all demons are probably crazy in some way." Oh, this was bad. Did Dipper even realize how bad this was?
Pacifica frowned down at the phone and Dipper's journal, trying to remain calm as she tried to confirm from him... "So, Miz talks to inanimate objects and… ants?"
"I think she'd talk to anything, if bored enough." Dipper pointed out. "The only real issue is what'll happen if the thing she's talking to actually manages to convince her to do something."
"Well, duh," Pacifica said. For a moment there, she'd been worried that he hadn't realized it. She had no idea how he was remaining so calm about it all, though. ...And given what Miz thought things like Stan's dinosaur skull decoration apparently wanted from her, when Miz was left to her own devices without anyone else in the same room with her to talk to, Pacifica suddenly realized exactly why Dipper and Mabel were so worried about Miz getting bored.
And now for the next question, which she really hoped wasn't going to end up being what she was worried it might end up being. "Where was Bill when all this was going on?" Pacifica asked him. Because if Bill had been left alone to his own devices, too…
Dipper sighed. "Asleep, probably. --No, really," he told her, at her look of disbelief. "Bill sleeps a lot. And I mean a lot. I think Miz gets bored when she's awake and he's not, without him." Dipper frowned in thought. "I don't think Miz sleeps as much as Bill does. --Not that she doesn't get enough sleep," Dipper rushed to assure her, "I'm pretty sure Grunnkle Stan would've said something if she was doing that, but…" Dipepr frowned for a moment. "I think if Miz wasn't here, Bill would just go back to spending most of the day sleeping, again. He used to do that, before she came. Even if he didn't freaking admit that that was what he was doing, out on the picnic tables outside; those aren't meant for sleeping on," Dipper complained. And what was worse to him was that the crazy demon would never admit that was what he was doing out there when he did it, and Grunkle Stan really didn't want any of them calling Bill out on it, for some reason. And it was just stupid. The dumb dorito chip did it every time; he went out there, he lay down on top of it, and he fell asleep. ...And then he tried to act like he'd just been 'thinking' or something, instead of falling asleep, later.
And for some reason, this had Pacifica staring at him like she'd never heard of people falling asleep outside before. "He does what?" she asked him.
Dipper let out a sigh of frustration. "Bill sleeps a lot. The dumb dorito can spend hours just sitting or lying down doing nothing. He just stares up at the ceiling, says he's doing a whole bunch of thinking, but I swear he just passes out and doesn't do anything."
"He's thinking? Scheming?" Pacifica pressed him.
"No," Dipper said, "He's sleeping."
"And you've never seen Bill talking to himself, or any other inanimate objects," Pacifica asked him next, and--
--Dipper paused at that, because what? "Uh, no," he told her, feeling a little weirded out all of a sudden. "I don't think so. But… Miz definitely does," he told her, starting to see what Pacifica might be looking for, here. Her questions today had definitely had a pattern to them so far, "And… I mean, sometimes it seems like Miz is just the opposite of Bill, almost. Grunkle Stan called it, like, 'looking into a funhouse mirror'," And Dipper almost also told her right then about how Grunkle Stan had also said that sometimes, a lot of times, Bill was 'mirroring' them -- whatever that meant. But Dipper didn't really get it, and he'd gotten kind of made at Grunkle Stan for saying it -- because none of them were like Bill at all. He seriously doubted that Pacifica would go along with something that their Grunkle Stan had said just like that, let alone something made that little sense to anybody. And there was just no way that Bill was really going to leave them alone, just as long as they 'don't do anything to the kid that you don't want him doing to you', anyway. So he didn't even bother to try telling her that. He didn't want her thinking he was trying to insult her, or anything. That would just be stupid.
"Bill just wants to lie down and do nothing all the time," Dipper continued. "But Miz is completely different. It's like she gets all stir crazy or something, and needs to actually get up and do something, or she'll practically explode." Which was a little more like Mabel, kind of.
(Dipper didn't realize how on the nose he was about Miz exploding. If he'd known, he'd have been way more worried. Having a literal nuclear bomb walking around nearby was a terrifying thought.)
Even Dipper didn't exactly like sitting and doing nothing for that long, either; and he meant actually nothing -- no reading any books, no writing in his journal, no staring at his conspiracy wall, nothing. His thoughts started going in circles when he did that, and he always started feeling really bad and anxious, worried, and maybe kind of a little paranoid. (--Not that that happened very often; it usually only happened on long car trips, if he forgot to bring a second book with him or didn't have a game to play. But even then, he could pretty much always count on Mabel to be doing something nearby, to notice and speak up and say something, to help talk him out of whatever.)
(It was one thing if he was working on a problem, a cipher or a code, or reading a book or something, but just… lying down and doing nothing, really? Just… 'thinking about stuff' while not writing his thoughts down, and trying not to fall asleep from boredom, or get up and start pacing from stress? He could barely understand how most people could do any real thinking without writing things down!)
And while Dipper was lost in his own thoughts, unaware of Dipper's internal monologue, Pacifica's own thoughts were stuck on the idea of how different these 'Bill CIpher's really were from each other, rather than similar. Sleeping versus active. Different kinds of crazy. ...And were they anything like the differences between a cat and a dragon, or not? Because cats did seem to nap a lot, like Dipper said that Bill was doing. But... were dragons less likely to sleep as much... because they had to watch out for people trying to steal their treasure, or something? Pacifica internally grimaced at this, because she didn't really like the idea of maybe having to 'cat sit' Susan's cats for her again sometime, to try and figure this one out. And she also felt like she was starting to take this animal metaphor way too far, or too seriously. Maybe both.
"Okay, so, what's our plan on this going forward?" Pacifica asked of Dipper next.
"Miz shouldn't be left unsupervised," Dipper told her promptly, though he didn't feel too happy about it. "She gets bored if there's nothing to do around the Shack, or people that she can interact with." The problem was, she said really horrible stuff when anybody talked with her for too long, so it wasn't like Dipper or Mabel could do it. (Dipper really didn't know how Mabel kept on talking to Miz or Bill as much as she did without losing it completely.) And Great-Uncle Ford was out, because there was no way any of them were going to let Miz do anything like that to him, again. Once out in the forest had been enough, and she was still plenty terrible enough at mealtimes. "...Maybe we can get her to help Melody out in the gift shop, to sit with her more." Dipper wasn't all that sure that they could get Miz even wanting to do that, though, because it wasn't like he or Mabel had ever found it fun to sit out there with Wendy, even with it being Wendy, and...
Dipper paused for a moment, when that thought suddenly sparked something else. "She might be feeling pent up, restless, being stuck at the Shack all the time," he realized. He and Mabel being grounded for a week had been annoying for him, but really really bad for Mabel. They were both used to just coming and going whenever they wanted -- okay, well, whenever they could get out of doing work for the Shack like they'd had to do all throughout last summer every day the Shack was open, anyway. But Mabel hadn't stayed inside all the time even during those 'forced' work hours last summer; sometimes she'd either 'escape!!' and run around indoors or outdoors or wherever, or she'd roll around on the floor of the gift shop, or something. But with this whole 'babysitting' thing, they'd had to not only stay inside most of the time and not go into town or the woods exploring, they'd also had to have somebody in the same room as they were… And since Melody had been the one watching them most of the time, and she'd been the one manning the gift shop… they couldn't even go out in the yard or just sit out on the porch there together, because Melody had had to stay indoors manning the cash register. And Grunkle Stan had either been watching the demons or cooking stuff mostly, so unless the demons were upstairs he hadn't been able to 'tap in' as another babysitter for them, and Grunkle Stan hadn't been all that free all that often. And Great-Uncle Ford could take one of them at a time places, but not both of them, but he'd spent most of his time down in his basement labs, working, and neither of them had wanted to interrupt him for something that stupid and silly-sounding and not nearly as serious or as important as trying to figure out how in the heck to finally stop Bill for good. ...Which meant he and Mabel had had to spend more of that time indoors, in the gift shop of the Shack, with Melody. Which meant they'd had to stay inside almost all of the time, for the entire week. And being forced to stay in the Shack 24/7 had been… stifling. And they had complained about it a lot at first, but Grunkle Stan hadn't given in.
...And Bill didn't want Miz being in the same room as Grunkle Stan without him. Dipper remembered that first morning that she'd been there. Bill had practically tossed himself down the stairs, looking for her. He'd seemed almost scared, frantically searching for her until he'd found out where she was. And then he'd straight-up said out loud that he didn't want her being in the same room as Grunkle Stan without him; he hadn't seemed like he was lying about wanting her to stick to that, either. Dipper didn't know why the dumb dorito had demanded that, but he was. Maybe it had something to do with the whole 'we adopted each other' thing? And that had just been the first day that they'd started being all officially brother and sister with each other; Grunkle Stan had said that they'd only 'decided on that' just the afternoon before. But after that, Miz had always stayed close to Bill; as far as Dipper knew, she barely left Bill's sight while the older demon was awake, other than stuff like the sleepover, and Bill had stayed in the same room as Miz every chance that he got. The number of times that Miz had come downstairs without Bill right there with her had been… not a lot. Dipper knew Great-Uncle Ford had a more accurate count, but Dipper was pretty sure that she didn't leave the attic often when Bill was asleep, and she definitely never went too far away. And Bill had only ever left Miz's side when he had to deal with his body's needs (like the bathroom, or getting something to drink from the kitchen), and even then it was never more than a few minutes -- assuming that Miz didn't just follow him into the hallway or kitchen, to wait for him there.
Bill still went outside sometimes, but he'd stopped falling asleep out on the picnic tables while 'his sister' was here, from day one. And Dipper still didn't know why that had changed. The last time he had talked to Great-Uncle Ford about it, he'd said it was because Bill was being smart and didn't actually trust Miz because she was a demon, that sleeping under the unicorn hair barrier was helping to keep Bill safe from her doing something to him in his sleep. But that didn't make sense to Dipper, knowing what he knew now. Bill's room up in the attic wasn't 'under the barrier' in the same way as the rest of the Shack was; he could do whatever magic he wanted up there. And the two of them had slept together, right next to each other, all the time when they were all in that other dimension with the younger Stans. No mystic barrier there. So that couldn't have been the reason. Dipper shelved that thought for now, getting back on track.
Anyway, Miz was practically getting 'big-brother' stalked by Bill, now that Dipper thought about it, and Miz hadn't complained about that, or about being indoors with Bill so much of the time, not aloud like he and Mabel had done. And sure, Bill snuck out of the Shack sometimes, and sometimes he even said it straight-out in front of all of them during breakfast, but that didn't mean that they were going outside together very often. It also didn't mean Miz hadn't been feeling cooped up and understimulated most of the time that she'd been here so far. Miz had seemed really excited that time Stan had said he was going to take her and Bill into town, and he and Mabel had seen how much happier that Miz had seemed after their grunkle and great-uncle had taken the two demons out shopping to buy a bunch of meat and supplies at someplace or another in the area.
Heck, Miz had gone out to the lake the other day with Bill, and eaten trash and liked it (though Dipper tried not to think about that), and she'd been nothing but happy when they'd both gotten back. So clearly she did want to go outside, leave the house, and do stuff around other people.
"Maybe… getting Miz outside more often…?" Dipper said, but he was already grimacing as he said it. Because yes, Miz could sort-of pull off 'being human' in a crowd, sure… as long as she didn't have to talk to anybody, and didn't get all too excited. Or crowded by strangers. Or stared at too much by said crowd of strangers. Which meant she didn't actually last very long before something went wrong and Grunkle Stan had had to step in, in that other dimension. The longest that Miz had gone around other people so far without stuff going weird had been today, with her... "...as a cat, maybe?" Dipper said slowly, trying not to wince as he said it. "Might keep the damage down a little, at least."
"Somehow, I doubt that," Pacifica told him dryly, and Dipper sighed.
Yeah, he knew that wasn't a good idea. Because Miz didn't exactly stay a cat, even when she was trying to be one, for starters. And she liked running around in the yard, outside the barrier. Dipper hadn't missed how Great-Uncle Ford hadn't had his gun on him, or how he'd kept shooting looks at Grunkle Stan every time he'd started going to reach for it. And if Great-Uncle Ford had seen something that was that off, that many times? And he'd thought it was important enough to still be at least watching her out there, in person, even without having his gun on him to be able to do something about it when she did something wrong, because Grunkle Stan must've said something to him about it? Then that meant that even having her run around outside probably really wasn't a good idea at all. And if Grunkle Stan took Miz out into town again...
...Bill would go with her again, too. Bill really didn't like going into town, or interacting with any of the tourists either, so that was just asking for trouble. ...Which reminded him. "Miz really likes being around people, but I'm starting to think that Bill doesn't actually like being around other people at all," Dipper told her. "I mean, he talks to us, but he doesn't exactly go looking for us to talk to us. He only really talks to us if we're in the same room as him." Dipper frowned. "I can count on one hand… okay, maybe two hands. But, the number of times he's walked into a room looking for us is…" Dipper's frown deepened. "I know we kind of have to see him at mealtimes, but other than that… almost every time he's actually gone looking for us to say something has been when he was taking Mabel out to the spaceship." And that was weird, because before Weirdmageddon? He'd seemed to love doing so, just out-and-out taunting them whenever he could.
But now Bill almost ignored them when they were in the same room as them. ...Okay, not really, but the more that Grunkle Stan said he was working things out on the 'mental attack' stuff, the less Bill talked to any of them at all...
...unless they started talking to him first. Dipper snorted. Figured. Of course the dumb demon wouldn't be able to think of anything nice to say at all to any of them. It wasn't like he was even trying to get along with any of them, really. And it wasn't like he was ever going to say 'I'm sorry' or apologize for anything that he'd done to any of them ever at all.
And that was kind of the whole problem, right there. Nobody really wanted Bill around, because he was awful, and Miz wasn't really that much better than Bill at not saying horrible things to people all of the time. They couldn't take either of them anywhere without the other one coming along, and when the both of them were anywhere doing anything together was just a mess and a half.
"...I'm not even sure how the lake is still in one piece, after them going out there the other day. Did you hear anything at all about that?" Dipper asked Pacifica, then he hesitated. "Uh, the lake is actually still in one piece and all the townsfolk are okay, right?" Dipper asked, starting to wonder if--
"I heard that 'that young punk staying at the Pines' place' was out in Mr. Pines' boat on the lake again," Pacifica told him, "But I didn't hear anything about Miz being out there with him."
Dipper looked at her, aghast. "So they lied?" Then he shook his head. He didn't know why he was so surprised about it. It wasn't like Miz hadn't gotten him and Mabel in a lie before, with those glasses.
Pacifica frowned. "That depends. What did they say?" Pacifica asked him.
"Bill said that they both went out to the lake. And Miz…" Dipper frowned. "She actually hummed a bunch of stuff. Grunkle Stan asked Bill to 'translate' for her." Dipper rubbed the side of his arm. "I don't get why Grunkle Stan wouldn't call them on it, though. He's pretty sure he can tell when they're lying."
"How many times have they said that they've been out at the lake together?" Pacifica asked him. Dipper frowned and flipped open his journal to the dates and times to show her, and she diligently wrote them down. "I'll look into it," she told him. She couldn't remember hearing of anyone ever seeing someone else with 'that blue-haired, teen-aged punk' at the lake, but if they'd split up in the woods before the older demon continued on there, it was worth finding out where the younger demon had been going instead. That said...
"But they did leave that hovel together. And returned together?" Dipper started to say yes, then stopped himself.
"I can check the footage with Great-Uncle Ford," he told her. "I really don't want to take Bill's word for it."
Pacifica nodded. She really didn't like the idea of either of these demons slipping out from under her, for lack of a better word, surveillance net. "But when at least one of them is known to be at the Shack, they seem to be together a lot? Both of them normally seem to be there together at the same time?"
"Usually," Dipper told her. He pulled down on his cap as he thought about this. Because… he felt like he should be doing something else, he just didn't know what. And it all left him feeling oddly uneasy.
(And Dipper realized only later, after talking with Great-Uncle Ford about it, and watching him panic at the thought of not knowing where they'd gone, or what they might've been doing while they were away and outside the barrier, able to do who-knew-what to a bunch of other people so easily… that, that was it. Panic. The thing he hadn't been doing was panicking like Great-Uncle Ford had. Panic was a normal reaction to hearing about a crazy dream demon being out on the loose. But Dipper hadn't felt that way about it at all, and he didn't know why...)
"Well," Pacifica said, "If divide-and-conquer won't work for them, we might as well try to take advantage of them both always wanting to be in the same place, at the same time -- at least, reportedly." If Miz really was uncomfortable with the idea of venturing too far from the older demon, with Bill also following along to where Miz went if she did want to go somewhere… well, then. That sounded like bait for a trap, if any of them ever managed to actually get that far without getting killed first. "In the meantime, we should find something else to occupy Miz's time, to keep her distracted. And we can use her wanting to be in a particular location to lead and keep Bill in that same location as well," the blonde suggested. "Should I send over my library of Japanese animation?" Her butlers had improved upon her collection significantly after the movie night showing.
"That actually might work," Dipper told her, "But you might end up losing your own day because of it, if she wants to do another marathon showing." Dipper paused. "I'm not even sure if that would work again for anything she doesn't already like a lot. She hyper-focuses on stuff once it's caught her attention, but if it doesn't, then she gets really easily distracted away from whatever it is she was doing," Dipper warned her. "She can't even sit still when she gets excited about something sometimes."
"What do you mean?" Pacifica asked him. That sounded a little foreboding.
"Well, I saw her get excited earlier when Mabel put a ribbon on her head -- one of the sticky bow ones, on her forehead, uh, right between her cat ears? -- because Mabel was trying to get Miz to sit still and let Mabel brush her fur, to play dress up with her? But it didn't work. Miz just sprung up and started running around back and forth, up and down the Shack's hallway." She hadn't just been running up and down the hallway, either. She'd been doing that cat thing where they race up the side of the walls a little bit with their claws, leaping off the walls, and squealing the whole time as she did it. Luckily, Mabel had been her usual easygoing self, declaring all Miz's running-around craziness to be super-cute and giving up on dress-up time completely; Mabel had settled for just watching the kitten go crazy running around the Shack's living room and hallways instead.
"So, they really do act like cats when they have the bodies of cats," Pacifica said, with a tired mental sigh as they circled back around to their original discussion. She hated going in circles like this on things. She resisted the urge to rub her temples, but only barely. "But Bill apparently has two bodies now… one body, and one cat 'vessel'," she self-corrected before Dipper could -- yes, she had read his texting on the subject. "And while he's a cat, his actual body is left behind somewhere else. --Can we use this?" She wondered if they could steal it, maybe lock it away somewhere. Would that help to stop him, somehow? How powerful could he be, as just a simple housecat?
"Not gonna work; he's been keeping it up in the attic and there are all those protections he put in up there that keep us all out. Great-Uncle Ford made some comment about him being stuck without a body earlier if his 'nine lives' run out, because he'd have to get through the barrier to get it, and Bill basically told him off for that one. It sounded like, however this stuff works, the dumb dorito wouldn't be stuck outside the barrier, while his body stays stuck inside the barrier, inside the attic. He straight-up told Grunkle Stan not to worry about it, that he can't get trapped outside of it, outside his 'real' body, if somebody killed the cat vessel that he was in. Even Great-Uncle Ford seemed to think that killing that vessel wouldn't kill him," Dipper told her. "Plus, even if we did take his body and hide it or something, he'd probably be able to still find it and get it back; I'm pretty sure that Miz would help him out with that."
"What would happen if we killed him while he's inside the cat… vessel?"
"I'm pretty sure he'd be fine. The way that everybody was talking, it sounded like he'd just leave the dead cat and return to his own body." Dipper made a face. "And Miz would probably eat it."
"Wait, eat the body?" Pacifica said. She grimaced when Dipper told her, "No, the vessel," because that didn't make it any better.
And of course Dipper was serious. He'd seen the tape; they all had. There was a reason why Great-Uncle Ford called her a man-eater. ...Though, in this case, would it be cat-eater instead? Dipper nodded.
Why would she do that?" Pacifica asked him in disgust, and Dipper just grimaced and shrugged. "Well, the first time she came here, she was with another guy. Great-Uncle Ford captured him, but he was kind of like Miz? He was in a vessel, too. Just like Miz is in one now. And Miz ate his vessel after he left it. She'd said something about not letting it go to waste or something," Dipper told her, sparing her the gruesome details. On the surveillance footage of the bunker, they'd all seen Miz set the vessel on fire, then put it out and twist off the head off, before tearing off a leg to eat for starters. And she hadn't stopped there… "But hey, at least she promised Grunkle Stan today that she wasn't gonna eat anybody that could talk to her while she's here?" Dipper gave her a long look, which Pacifica did not mistake the meaning of: this was something that had actually needed to be asked of her, in order to try and make it clear that she should not be doing it.
Pacifica held down a shudder at this news. Because this was… disturbing. And she was not going to think about that too hard when they were standing not three yards away from the meat case, with all its red steaks and pork cutlets. "Alright. What else have you learned about them in the meantime, since we last talked?" she asked Dipper instead. It looked like his babysitter was getting close to leaving, given how full the cart she was moving around was, and she wanted to get as much information out of Dipper as she could while he was here. Melody would be heading to the checkout aisles soon, and she doubted that Dipper was going to want to leave Mabel at home, trying to keep the demons distracted all by herself without him.
Frankly, Pacifica didn't like the idea of that one all that much, either.
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