Chapter Text
Gideon Gleeful knelt in the center of the throne room of the Fearamid, only just barely holding back the desire to scream at the various...things lollin' about at their leisure. When he had first entered the chamber, a few of them had done things like shoot beams of fire at him just to watch him flinch (and he could swear he could smell a few of his precious hairs burning from the top of his pompadour!) but they had finally lost interest in him and gone back to some bizarre game they had started before he'd arrived, using petrified humans as games pieces. As if he was of no more significance than the humans which made up the throne in front of him!
That, of course, was some psychological warfare on their parts. The thing he couldn't determine upon was whether that was a coincidence, or if Bill had ordered it. They were all servants of the big pointy guy, but while Gideon had seen their collective Lord and Master for All Eternity (as Bill had taken to calling himself; Gideon, as a lifelong reader of Preacher's Digest, didn't approve, but he kept that thought to his little ol' self) lash out at the Henchmaniacs, too, if they disappointed him, or were just in the same room when something else disappointed him...well, even if Gideon hadn't known he was not as high in Bill's favor as he might have been, the fact remained that the members of the gang of interdimensional criminals and nightmares that Bill called friends were still usually not forced to do anythin' as demeanin' as kneel just to Bill's empty throne itself while they waited on him....
Gideon realized his eyes were driftin' up toward the throne again and he jerked them back to a more neutral position. The throne, with so many people from the town still clearly recognizable on its outmost layer, was an object Gideon carefully avoided lookin' too closely at. He didn't, of course, care or nothin' like that, but he hadn't seen his parents in any of the parties of survivors he and the other Discount Auto Warriors had apprehended since the first day of Weirdmageddon, and they definitely weren't at the discount auto lot anymore, either....
Not, of course, that he cared. The world was bein' made anew, and family loyalty - loyalty to blood - that was the kinda thing that didn't go over too well with the boss. It smelled too much like order, and law, and all those other things that were verboten in this better, funner world that Gideon and his henchmen and the demons were all buildin' together. No, he definitely did not care what had happened to his momma or daddy; it was just a matter of establishin' dominance over these here demons. That would get a lot harder if it was pointed out to 'em that a Gleeful was as easy to petrify as any other human. That was all. He definitely didn't care, and he definitely didn't think sometimes about what, exactly, Bill might have in mind for him once all the other humans and monsters native to the town had been rounded up. Promises had been made to him, after all. He would live forever, with Mabel as his queen and Gravity Falls as his fiefdom, as soon as his end of the bargain was complete. But still.
Just about the time he thought his knees must surely give out, there was a sudden wave of cacklin' with no identifiable source in the air and a burst of cheerin' from the demons. A shadow swept through the room before resolvin' itself into Bill Cipher, his perimeter flashin' through all the shades of yellow and his stark black arms extended to the sides as if to welcome more cheering. Gideon panicked, not sure if that meant he should cheer or prostrate himself or what -
Only for Bill, without crossin' the space between them in any way that Gideon could see, to appear beside him, suddenly not much larger than he was, and throw an arm around his shoulders.
""Well, well, well, well, well, well, well! If it isn't my favorite sheriff in town," Bill said cheerily. "C'mon, get up, Gideon, I can't talk to you while you're so close to the floor! I've still only got one eye, you know, it gets hard to see you down there!" The Henchmaniacs found this hilarious; Gideon forced a smile as he slowly got to his feet. Bill was in a good mood now, but Gideon had learned fast enough not to count on him stayin' in one long enough at any given time to ever get too honest with him. "Hey, Eighty-Eight-Face, throw me one of those humans you're playing with, mine needs a chair!" The creature with eighty-eight faces laughed, all eighty-eight faces doing so at once, as it (they?) skidded someone across the floor: Gideon didn't look away quite fast enough and so recognized her for a split second as Susan Wentworth. Bill poked her with one finger, bringing her back out of stone, but before she had time to do much more than moan, Bill had floated her into the air, bent her into the rough shape of a bench, and then held her up in front of an eye bat outside the window until she was re-petrified. "There you go, kid! Second-best seat in the house, all for you! Pull up an old lady and give me the latest reports!"
Gideon winced as he perched himself on Lazy Susan's back. Just pretend it's Stanford, he told himself. Hey, that might be a good use for him. My throne. Just think about it bein' Stanford....
"We've reached the edges of town with our sweeps now," he informed Bill, concentratin' on what was important. The triangle snapped his fingers and a glowin' plate, heavy with cookies, appeared in front of Gideon. Gideon took a cookie nervously, tryin' not to think about where they came from or what they might really be made of under their delectable-lookin' sugary outsides. "We - uh - we got at least ten gnomes out of a basement on Caramel Street, and a handful of humans - "
"Yeah, yeah, yeah, whatever," Bill said, wavin' this new information aside, and Gideon felt his stomach twistin' into knots as he realized that he was about to be the thing that made Bill not so happy. There was no way to predict what would or wouldn't make the road sign of doom lose all his composure - some days he laughed off the same things that threw him into a ragin' fury on others - but he definitely wasn't goin' to be too happy.... "Let's get to the part where at least one of them knows something about the whereabouts of our special friends, huh?"
Gideon swallowed hard. "Well - uh - I did get that one, you know, who said they saw the Ramirez boy leavin' town with what they thought was Stanford - "
"That's because it was Stanford, genius! Tell me something I don't know!"
"Well, that's where it gets - sort of complicated, Bill, you see, because - well - someone we got today was Steve from the sheriff's office, and he swore that his cousin had called him from the county hospital just before - uh, just before your glorious appearin', and his cousin was sayin' that Stanford Pines had just been dragged off by this federal agent after a fire started there! So how could he have been with the Ramirez boy hours before that, if he was supposed to have been in the county hospital? He'd have to have been in two places at once!"
To Gideon's puzzled relief, Bill just laughed. "Oh, don't worry about that, Gideon! I could tell you, but it'll be more fun to see the look on your face when you figure it out for yourself!" Gideon forced a chuckle, hopin' that was what Bill wanted, but the smile dropped like a stone when Bill's eye suddenly narrowed. "That can't be all you've got, can it?"
"Bill, you know that the moment I hear one word about where the Pines twins are, I'll tell you right away, I wouldn't think of withholdin' information - "
"Are you sure about that? You wouldn't, maybe, try to make a deal with Shooting Star? Something about maybe letting Pine Tree escape if she...." Bill paused for a moment, then concluded, "will do whatever it is that you want to do with her, you strange, strange little half-man?"
"No! I swear! I'd never betray you!" He was goin' to have to grovel, he thought with revulsion. He threw himself off of Lazy Susan's back and back onto his knees. "You got me out of prison. You gave me everythin' I have! I know you'll give her to me, too, just like you promised! You're the best friend, the best help, the best lord'n master I've ever had! And anyway - even if I hadn't sworn on my soul to serve you for all eternity, Bill, right now, if Mabel said that, I'd know she was lyin' anyway, because Stanford and Dipper did so much to poison her against me! She'll only understand what's meant to be after they're gone!"
For a long moment, Bill studied him, his eye still dangerously narrow. In the background, Gideon could hear dull roars of flame and clicks of claws, and the murmurs of the demonic legion. Then, Bill started laughin' again.
"See, this is what I like about you!" he crowed. "You're so predictable! You knew I wouldn't just buy all that loyalty stuff, you had to tell me why it's in your best interests! I like that in a guy!" He reached out and waited until just after Gideon flinched to start pattin' him on the head, disordering his hair. It was almost physically painful not to reach up and try to straighten it out again immediately, but Gideon resisted the urge. "A villain through and through - that's what they'd call you in the old world! Good for you that you're here with us instead, huh, buddy?" Gideon pasted on a grin and nodded emphatically while the Henchmaniacs laughed with Bill, until Bill abruptly cut off the merriment again with a wave of his hand. "Just make sure you always remember, Gideon - I'll like it a lot less if it turns out that you predictably fail!" Bill suddenly turned red, his eye going black. "SO LOOK FASTER!"
* * * * * * * *
Once Gideon had been, none too gently, returned to Earth, Bill floated up to hover in front of the great triangular window made in his own image. He (not an accurate word, he'd gathered over his millennia of dealing with humans and their short-lived languages and shallow ideas, but 'he' was the human concept which felt fractionally less wrong than the other ones these overconfident fireflies had for such things) folded his arms behind him, twirling his cane idly, and allowed the symbols to begin to rotate through the center of his eye.
Pine Tree, Shooting Star, Holy Mackerel, and a Hand With Six Fingers. Question Mark, Mended Heart, and Star Eye. Ice, Spectacles, and a Llama, Probably.
Ten images - one for each of the humans who, because the big frilly jerk had to have his little laugh, collectively were allowed by the universe to pose a threat to Bill. He had known about the little pictures for centuries, of course, ever since the 'ancient' (human notions of time were hilarious!) people of what was now Gravity Falls had somehow become aware of them, but he had never identified any of them with certainty until recently. It had only been fifty years, give or take, since he had first spotted Stanford and Stanley through a peephole in their old man's pawn shop, and it had only been after Stanley inherited The Hat that Bill had realized that Stanley wasn't supposed to be the Pine Tree....
"Uh, boss?"
Bill turned to see Eighty-Eight-Faces. "What?" he asked irritably.
"Can I have my piece back now?"
Bill stared at it, then remembered: oh, yes, he'd borrowed a person. "Sure, I don't need it now! You need it back in the original shape?"
"Nah, should work anyway. Thanks, boss."
"Any time, any time! Except when I need an extra chair, of course!"
"Haha, of course!"
A completely different face spoke this time. Bill was not sure if his limited depth perception was a blessing or a curse when it came to dealing with Eighty-Eight-Faces. It made his eye water if he looked directly at the guy too long. It was worse than the prospect of speaking to Stanford and Stanley at the same time, and if you took away Stanley’s hat, those two looked so much alike that it made telling the differences between them and other humans roughly their size seem easy, even though all humans looked more alike than Bill thought made any sense.
Stanford and Stanley, though...there were a few positions he still wasn't completely sure about, but there no way that the Six-Fingered Hand wasn't a representation of Stanford, not while Ford's brother bore one of the other nine symbols and had even unwittingly assigned two more of the group their identifying garments. Question Mark and Pine Tree; it was too bad Stanley was the useless twin, Bill thought, because Question Mark and Pine Tree and Shooting Star would all have been a lot easier to use against him than against Stanford. Stanley, though, was a lot like Mended Heart: only important insofar as his inability to get along with people went.
That was the secret of the Zodiac, the one he was confident that not even Stanford knew. It wasn't just that Destiny had randomly selected ten people. Somewhere along the line, every one of them had had a scarred or conflicted relationship with at least one of the others; the magic operated on the deliberately organized cooperation between enemies and people who'd hurt each other as an antidote to the chaos magic Bill used. As long as Pine Tree and Mended Heart still hated each other, then - or as long as Stanford and Stanley couldn't learn to control their tempers and egos - or as long as Shooting Star didn't do...whatever...with Gideon, and as long as Gideon still failed to comprehend the word 'no' - as long as even a majority of the circle couldn't form, Bill was perfectly safe, and he didn't really anticipate any of those guys deciding to overcome their personality flaws and ancient-by-their-standards grudges any time soon.
Still, though...five of them - well, four plus Sixer, at the very least, and Question Mark and the kids were irritating enough that they'd probably adopt Sixer whether he wanted them to or not - identifying as a family...that had been unexpected. Two sets of twins, too; the Axolotl liked twins, so that was ominous. Bill thought he would rest a lot easier once he'd contained those four, and once he'd disposed of at least one of them along with Question Mark and Mended Heart and Gideon....
"Uh, boss?" Eighty-Eight-Faces was still floating there for some reason; Bill had half-forgotten him again. "Why is it so important to get those humans you were telling that half-human half-pig thing about?"
"We owe two of them a thank you, Eighty-Eight," said Bill. Several faces started laughing at once. "And I've got unfinished business with three of them," he added, and didn't notice at first when Eighty-Eight-Faces stopped laughing, or when flames began to dance between his own hands. "Important business."