#moffio

[untiziowo]

doodles of my boys 🥹

[feferipeixes]

Grapefruit Juice

For @skia-oura. You know what you did.

(on AO3)

It was a quiet morning when Bentley awoke, nestled in between Dipper and Torako. Dipper was curled up in the fetal position, forehead resting on Bentley’s shoulder, a clawed hand caressing his other shoulder, little Z’s floating above the demon’s head. Torako, on the other hand, was practically lying on top of him, spread-eagled and snoring loudly. A small smile spread across Bentley’s sleepy face. It felt so nice, in a weird way he didn’t know how to express. He loved waking up next to those two dorks. It felt safe to be with them.

Also, the fact that they were sleeping meant they weren’t wreaking havoc, which was always a plus.

A glance at the alarm clock -- it was early. Too early to really start the day, but too late to get back to sleep. He carefully extracted himself from the bed, making sure not to wake either of his roommates up. Tiptoeing out of the room like a cartoon character, he eased the door shut and then proceeded to the kitchen.

He opened the cupboard to look for something to eat for breakfast. The box of Moffios immediately stuck out to him -- he noticed that the sigil preventing it from being touched was almost worn away. Either Torako had been scratching it out or she’d made some sort of deal with Dipper. He quickly re-inscribed the symbol, and the box took on a glittery sheen indicating that it’d sting any fingers who tried to take it. That should keep her away from it for a few more days.

He grabbed his favorite almond-based caffeinated cereal and closed the cupboard. Setting the box of Nutty Tweaks down on the table, he fetched a bowl and looked through the fridge for something to drink. His usual box of orange juice was nowhere to be found. Bentley rolled his eyes -- no doubt his doofus brother finished it off and forgot to put it on the shopping list. Looked like he was eating dry tweaks that morning.

Except...

In the back of the fridge, he glimpsed a bottle of pink juice. He pulled it out and looked it over for a label. Nothing. It was probably the weird old-timey juice that Dipper would import from Australia, which was apparently the only remaining place where it was made. With a glint in his eye, Bentley poured himself a glass. If Dipper was going to drink all of his juice, he’d just have to return the favor.

His revenge at hand, Bentley sat at the table and started spooning crunchy almonds into his mouth. He considered the box’s promise to get anyone who eats the cereal “absolutely shredded” with “ham wild muscles” and “disgustingly feral abs”. He wondered if people really fell for that kind of marketing. At any rate, it didn’t affect him. He just liked almonds. And caffeine.

...although if he Did happen to get stronger from eating cereal, he wouldn’t complain. He’d be able to draw longer-lasting sigils if he could cut deeper into a surface.

Cereal consumed, Bentley raised the glass of juice to his lips. He briefly wondered whether it really was such a good idea to drink a demon’s juice -- for all he knew, it wasn’t actually juice but rather distilled insanity with blood mixed in (for taste). The promise of vengeance was too much to pass up, though, and he took a small sip.

And then downed the entire glass.

Whatever that stuff was, it was delicious. Weirdly tart with a sweet aftertaste. He’d never tasted anything like it -- no wonder Dipper went to such great lengths to obtain it. Before he knew it, Bentley had drunk the entire bottle. Surveying the casualties of his breakfast, he felt a small seed of guilt sprout within him, but he quickly brushed it away. It’s only what Dipper deserved for drinking all the orange juice.

Out of nowhere, the bedroom door slammed open with enough force to shake the room. Salt and pepper shakers spilled onto the counter. A clock fell off the wall and shattered on the floor. Bentley felt the chair he was sitting on jump a foot off the ground, and his arms shot out instinctively to grab the table so he wouldn’t fall over. Disoriented, it took him a moment to parse what was happening. Then he saw Torako standing in the doorway with a crazed look on her face, and immediately knew his peaceful morning was over.

“Bentley!” she yelled, gesticulating wildly. “You’re eating breakfast? Without meeeee?”

“You were asleep!” he countered. “I didn’t want to wake you.”

He shrank into his chair as she stomped over to him, hands on hips, hair matted and messy. She picked up the cereal box and broke into a mischievous grin. “Bentley’s Getting Buff, I see.” She cackled and tossed the box aside, sprinkling almonds across the kitchen.

“Stop! I just cleaned the apartment yesterday!”

Ignoring him, she picked up the empty juice bottle on the table and examined it while Bentley eyed her suspiciously. It was very likely she’d pick Dipper’s side if a revenge battle broke out because the two of them combined were an unstoppable chaos machine. He had to get her off the topic of breakfast, quick.

“Hey, Tora,” he said carefully. “I was thinking about re-dyeing my hair. Did you wanna...”

Torako cut him off by screaming at the top of her lungs. Bentley winced and clapped his hands to his ears. “What the hell are you doing?” he hissed. “You’re going to wake up the entire building!”

“Did you drink Dipper’s grapefruit juice????” she screeched.

Bentley shrank into his chair again. “Maybe. But he deserved it.” He glanced at the open bedroom door, curious about the fact that Dipper hadn’t come out yet to see what was going on. Maybe he’d been summoned.

“Oh NO Ben, this is BAD,” Torako continued to yell. “Holy shit holy shit HOLY SHIT!”

Bentley started edging away from her. “Is something happening right now? Am I missing something?”

She tore her gaze away from the bottle and stared him directly in the eyes, radiating such delirium that it was almost nauseating to look at. She hurled the bottle into the ground as hard as she could, and it broke through the floor into the next apartment down. Before he could object to this, she grabbed him by the shirt collar and shrieked, “BENTLEY you’re gonna DIE, that was GRAPEFRUIT JUICE, don’t you KNOW, it’s gonna make your ANTIDEPRESSANTS EXPLODE IN YOUR BRAIN!”

He gaped at her. “What are you talking abouuuu- !” He yelped as Torako effortlessly lifted him up and wrapped him over her shoulders. He tried in vain to wriggle free of her grip, but she was much stronger than him. “Let go of me!”

“Hello? Hospital?” Bentley stopped flailing to see Torako talking into a phone wedged between her head and her shoulder that couldn’t possibly have been there more than a second ago. “Yes, hospital! Please come quick! We have a serious case of genius boy brain burst! Oh stars, I can’t do this!” She dropped the phone and started sobbing, prompting Bentley’s anxiety to shoot through the roof.

“Tora? Are you okay? I’m really worried.” Not about himself, because he was pretty sure his brain was not about to explode from drinking juice, but even in her most trickster of moments Torako had never acted like this before and it was freaking him out. “Is this part of a prank or are you... really having some kind of breakdown right now? If this is real then I need to know so I can help.”

“You’re the one who needs help, you poor thing.” She laid him down on a stretcher and patted him on the head. “It’s gonna be okay! The hospital people will save you! They’ll take you to the juicer from Willy Wonka and everything will be okay!”

“What’s Willy Wonka?” Bentley yelled as he was pulled away on the stretcher. He watched Torako get smaller and smaller before finally fading away into the distance. Exhausted, he put his head down and stared up at the inky black ceiling of the ambulance. “This is so annoying. I don’t need to go to the hospital. I need to bust out of here.”

“Please don’t,” Philip said. Bentley’s eyes boggled at the sight of his father steering the ambulance. He gave his son a wink before turning back to face the road. “I’d have to chase you down or I’ll get fired, and I can’t do that. You’re so much faster than me now.”

“Dad?” Bentley breathed. “Why are you driving an ambulance? When did you -- you’re not supposed to -- isn’t it late?”

There was a sigh from the front seat. “Sorry, Bentley, I didn’t mean for you to find out this way, when you’re about to die from grapefruit overdose, but it’s true. I wasn’t making enough money doodling little hearts on pictures of your very handsome roommate. I had to pick up some odd jobs to make ends meet.”

“You what now?”

“It’s shameful, I know.” Philip’s head smacked down onto the steering wheel, and the ambulance started swerving wildly around on the road. “In a perfect world, we’d all be able to sit around and talk about demons all day without worrying about rent or food, but we don’t live in a perfect world and it’s my job as a father to break that to you. I’m so sorry.”

Bentley opened his mouth to respond, but faltered when he heard a hiccup. He flipped over onto his stomach to see his father weeping softly onto the steering wheel. Alarm bells rang in his head. “Dad, please don’t cry. It’s alright.” He attempted to undo the straps holding him on the stretcher, but they only seemed to get tighter. “We can talk about this. Please don’t cry.”

He reached out to him, his fingers gently brushing up against the driver’s seat, hoping that his father would sense his presence and take his hand. But it never came. There was a jerking sensation from beneath him as the conveyor belt activated, and the stretcher started moving away from the ambulance.

“Dad?” Bentley called, his voice heavy with reverberation. “Dad, don’t leave!”

No response. The sound of weeping faded away, and Bentley felt a pit settle in his stomach. He looked around and saw that he was rolling slowly on a track that ran through a landscape of stars. A row of doctors stared at him with blurry faces from behind a glass partition. Half of them gasped as he went by. The other half just looked disappointed, shaking their heads or crossing their arms.

“It’s… the Grapefruit Juice Boy,” one of them choked out.

“That doesn’t make any sense!” he yelled, scowling. “This -- okay, I’m getting suspicious now! Am I dreaming? Is this what a dream that isn’t a nightmare is like? It sucks!”

The conveyor stuttered to a halt and the doctors all vanished. Bentley blinked, and realized he was in a dentist’s office. A pair of hands pulled a paper bib around his neck, and his scowl deepened. “Now what’s going on? I thought this dream was about medication interactions! Why am I at the dentist now?”

“Grapefruit juice is really sugary,” came a voice from behind him. “Your teeth are gonna fall out.”

“Oh, yeah, definitely,” Bentley raged. “My roommates constantly pour sugar into every orifice on their faces, but I have a stress dream about the dentist because I drank a bottle of juice. I’d like to see Torako and Dip- hey wait a minute!” He cut off as the familiarity of the dentist’s voice hit him. The hands appeared again, putting a second bib on him, and Bentley noticed the fingers were tipped with claws. He struggled to tilt his head back, and caught a glint of light off the razor sharp teeth in the dentist’s grin.

“Hi Bentley,” Dipper said.

“Dipper? Why are you the dentist?” He collapsed back into the dentist’s chair and let his limbs fall limp over the sides. “Why are dreams like this? Is there some deep meaning behind all of this? I’d almost prefer the nightmares to Dipper cleaning my teeth.”

“Hey now,” Dipper pouted, putting a third bib around Bentley’s neck. “Maybe I’m really good at dental work. You know how hard flossing is with teeth like this?”

Bentley scratched his head. “Um, I guess not. But then why would I dream- hey wait a minute. Are you a dream Dipper or the real one?”

Dipper dropped the fourth bib he was holding and stepped back, bumping into a table of dental equipment. “Uhhhhh. Dream Dipper, definitely. Your brain just loves thinking about me. That’s it.”

The scowl returned to Bentley’s face in full-force. Sitting up, he tore the bibs off his neck and stared his roommate right in his dumb evil eyes. “It is the real you! What are you doing in my dream? This is all your fault, isn’t it?”

The demon smiled awkwardly and scratched the back of his neck. “Haha, well, uh, yeah sort of. Technically it’s Torako’s fault. This was all her idea, but I’m the one with the dream magic, so it just made sense, like oh who’s gonna keep Bentley in a weird dream so that he sleeps in today, Dipper obviously, and -”

Swinging his legs off the table, Bentley stood up for the first time in what felt like ages, and marched over shakily as Dipper backed away. “You trapped me in a crazy dream world??”

“No! Not really!” Dipper raised his arms, looking panicked. “I mean, okay, I made parts of it, but mostly all I did was stop you from waking up earlier! Sometimes people just have weird dreams, Ben! It’s a natural part of life for your species!”

“I’m putting wards all over the bedroom when I wake up. Why did you do this??”

Dipper shrank down to his 12-year old form and tried his best to look innocent. “No reason at all! You just looked like you needed some sleep! It definitely wasn’t that Torako needed time to break the sigil you made to prevent her from touching the box of Moffios!”

“Oh my stars Torako. This is ridiculous.” Bentley stared at his hands, picturing them each grasping one of his roommates’ hands, thinking about how that was definitely not going to be happening again for two weeks at minimum. “Does this at least mean you didn’t actually finish off my orange juice?”

Dipper giggled nervously. “Yeah, about that...”

Bentley facepalmed. “Wake me up. Right now.”

“Well, uh, you see,” Dipper replied, squirming, “it’s like, there’s a time limit on the deal I made with Torako, and yknow how it is...”

“If you don’t wake me up this instant, you’re gonna have a lot more to worry about than whether or not you’re getting cuddles ever again. I’ll have my dad over for dinner every single night and he’ll ask you every uncomfortable question under the sun! Do you hear me?”

Dipper blanched. “Yes sir, right away sir!” he babbled, standing up straight and saluting. He snapped his fingers, and the world fell away.

Bentley shot upright in bed, the sounds of squealing floating in from the kitchen. He jumped out from the covers, sprinting past the ashamed-looking demon at the door, to see Torako kneeling on the kitchen counter, jabbing at the box of Moffios with a dinner knife.

“Torako! No!” he hollered, racing after her. “I’m never buying Moffios again!”

Her eyes grew big as dinner plates and she took off with the box, running around the table to get away from him. “Bentley! You’re awake! Uh… this isn’t what it looks like!”

“It looks like I’m changing the locks is what it looks like!”

“Dipper!” she cried as she passed the demon, who was watching the scene looking half-concerned and half-amused. “You said you’d keep him busy! We had a deal!”

“He figured it out!” Dipper cried back. “I knew he’d be too smart to fall for this!”

“I’m coming for you next, jerkface!” Bentley roared.

The sounds of screaming and furniture toppling over filled the apartment. The people in the apartment immediately below them hesitated before calling the landlord to complain about the noise. It was, after all, not much worse than Saturdays usually were in the Pines-Lam-Farkas household.

----

A bright ray of sunlight beamed through a crack in the curtains and directly onto Torako’s face, waking her up. She shifted, trying to find a comfortable position amidst the lumpy couch cushions, but eventually resigned to her fate and opened her eyes. She was in the living room, of course, because Bentley hadn’t let her sleep in his room for a week now, which was just a little bit of an excessive punishment if you asked her! All of this and she didn’t even get any Moffios. The sheer injustice of it all.

Sitting up, she yawned and surveyed the room. She scratched her head as she looked for Dipper. He’d been sleeping on the floor next to her since they’d both been exiled from Bentley’s room, but the demon was presently nowhere to be seen, which was strange. He must’ve had an early morning summons. Oh well.

She headed over to the kitchen and opened the fridge. If she wasn’t allowed to have Moffios, she’d at least have something sweet to drink for breakfast. She grabbed the box of orange juice, flipped off the lid, and started chugging it directly from the carton. When it was all done, she collapsed into a chair with a large grin. Just what she needed to start the day.

“TORAKO!” Dipper yelled out of nowhere, blipping into reality directly beside her. “Did you drink my grapefruit juice?”

She yelped and fell out of her chair. “What? No, this is Bentley’s oran-” She lifted her hand, still holding the empty box of juice, but trailed off when she realized she was actually holding a clear bottle with a small amount of pink liquid left inside. She stared at it in shock, then at Dipper who looked equally as horrified. “What? But, I -”

“Torako, you’re gonna DIE!” Dipper screamed, suddenly wearing a nurse’s outfit and pushing her down the hall on a hospital bed. “Your MEDS are gonna EXPLODE in your BRAIN!”

“Noooooo!” she shrieked, flailing around as her parents jogged up beside the bed and waved at her while sobbing. “Bentley was right! This is awful!”

In the real world, Bentley was in the kitchen, applying the finishing touches on a new Moffios-protecting sigil that would last eight times as long. He heard Torako yelling in her sleep from across the room and smiled. “Yeah, it is,” he muttered, walking over. “Next time you’ll think twice before you try something like that on me.”

“Um… do you think she’s had enough?” Dipper asked from his position on the floor. He had his hand on Torako’s head, and when he looked up Bentley could see Torako’s dream reflected in the demon’s eyes. She’d somehow managed to wriggle free of the straps on the bed and was running down a highway in only a hospital gown, being pursued by a fleet of ambulances. “She admitted defeat.”

Bentley sat on the edge of the couch and seemed to consider it. “Yeah,” he said finally. “You can wake her up.”

Dipper nodded, and removed his hand from Torako’s head. She gasped and her eyes flew open, looking in all directions before making eye contact with Bentley. She leapt off the sofa and backed against the wall.

“Sorry, Ben! I’ll never Dip into your dreams ever again!”

Bentley sniffed. “Sounds about right. And you?” He turned to Dipper, who looked similarly panicked under Bentley’s purview.

“And I promise I’ll only side with Torako sometimes instead of all the time!” he offered, backing up beside Torako. “Also not to go into your dreams ever unless I really need to, which I totally won’t take advantage of ever!”

“Good. I’m glad we had this talk.” Bentley stood up. “Do either of you want breakfast?”

“NO!” Dipper and Torako both screamed, scampering away at full speed. They ran into the bedroom, dove under the covers, and clutched each other tight. “Never again!”

“Suit yourself,” Bentley said, trying out the shoulder up-and-down thing that Dipper always did to express indifference. He pulled the bedroom door shut and just stood there for a bit, reflecting on the day’s events. Then he walked over to the kitchen, poured himself a bowl of Nutty Tweaks, and took a seat by the window so he could watch the snow fall as he ate.

It really was a very peaceful morning.

(AO3 link)

[a-random-queer-fanpeep]

Torako Just Wants To Do the Dishes

Torako's first time dealing with a high Alcor is... Interesting, to say the least.

AO3

Torako mindlessly scrubbed at the dishes. She didn’t want to do them, but it had to be done. She could wait till Alcor got home, but she didn’t want to part with her beloved Moffios, and her doing it would be a nice surprise for Bentley. She heard a pop behind her and turned to look. Speak of the demon, Alcor had gotten back. Annnnd, his eyes were so blown that if she didn’t know any better, she’d say he was drugged. “Hey!” She said. The demon in question only stared in response, not blinking. “Ooookay then…” Torako scowled, suspicious, and turned back to the plate that had been giving her trouble. She barely had time to start, before she felt a tug on her collar. She twisted around to look, and…. “Are-are you biting my shirt?” Once again, no answer, just Alcor tugging her away from the sink. She tried to get the water off before she was out of reach. She failed. Alcor picked her up, still holding her shirt collar in his mouth, and floated into the living room. He dumped her rather ungraciously on the couch. The same couch from which he promptly began removing all the blankets and pillows, in favor of the floor. There were a lot of blankets and pillows. Torako tried to get up, she had dishes to do, or at least stop the water running. The second her foot touched the ground, Alcor whipped around to look at her her, and growled until she got back on the couch. Then the demon went back to kneading the blankets. “Why are you acting like a cat? Is this revenge for that last blog post? ‘Cause this is some weird ass revenge.” Her apparently-a-cat roommate ignored her. At least, for a few minutes, before he picked her up, he was going to stretch her shirt out, dammit Alcor, and set her in the pile of fluff. They sat there for a bit, so Torako decided it was safe to get up. Alcor pulled her back down. After a few more minutes, she felt something wet on her cheek. She looked, and it was her hair. “Are you licking me?” No response, but he was, he definitely was. “Dude, that is seriously gross!” Torako tried to get up, and the demon licking her hair growled. So she sat down. They did this several times, and Torako gave in. Alcor groomed her, and she wondered if her shampoo would cover demon spit. Probably not. She remembered Bentley telling her about a similar experience, one that happened not long after she met him. Not that she’d realized he came with a demon at the time, but still. Apparently he got like this when he was on yggdrasil, some sort of demon- “You’re totally high right now, aren’t you? Oh my fishes, you are!” She could only take about five more minutes of demonic licking before she got fidgety. “Okay Aldork, I’ve got dishes to get done.” She moved to stand, but before she got halfway up, her demon had pulled her down. And he kept licking.

When a certain Bentley Farkas got home, he heard the sound of running water. Which was distinctly not normal. He pushed down the ice in his veins, turned the corner, and laughed. Torako was pouting from a pile of blankets,which had been on the couch at one point, and Dipper was licking her har into some very interesting patterns. “Bentley, help me.” Tora whined, as Dipper continued his grooming, ruining ruined hair. She shot him her best wounded puppy look. “Nope. This is karma for your Twin Souls fanfics.” He stepped around the fluffy pile, on his way to the kitchen, where he suspected the sound of water had originated. “Bentley!” She called. “Karma,” Bentley laughed. “This is your karma!” He turned into the kitchen, leaving her to her fate.

[skia-oura]

Orange Lilies, 8/12?

A/N: I wrote 11k in 48 hours. Please be prepared to read this in several sittings or not move for an hour or two. I apologize for its length.

Prologue // Previous // Next

Ao3 ff.net-->refuses to accept my copy and paste as non-coded text.

Enjoy!

Chapter 7: Lloyd Remnit is the Victim of a Break and Enter and Subsequent Theft

           It takes several days of ever-heightening tensions to find Lloyd Remnit. In the interim, Torako shouts at Dipper twice to quit hovering (she wants to shout more), Dipper stubbornly refuses to answer any summons (the third time one comes through, he makes a disgruntled expression and mumbles something about an answering machine, whatever that is), and they have a harrowing experience at a Twin Souls convention in South-Central Canada because of a thief. Torako might have enjoyed Dipper’s shock and subsequent revulsion at a graphic Mizcor fanfic reading in room D27, but she was a little busy. Not only was she trying to hunt down the little shit that stole her phone and all the evidence on it, but her period was also square on day two. Yes, she had a MagixTampon in. Yes, she had extras. Also yes, stress fucked her period pain up to astronomical levels, and the cramping was making everything ten times worse than usual.

           Honestly, there were only a few things that saved the convention from being razed to the ground between Torako’s pain-enhanced irritation and Dipper’s Twin Souls related disgust. They were that one, Torako managed to corner the thief between a rarepair merch stall and somebody selling fanart just safe enough to be shown to the public and just raunchy enough to make Dipper squirm, two, Dipper remained stubbornly attached to her hip and was therefore unable to wreak havoc on the convention-goers, and three, the thief apologized in a small, tremulous voice before offering Torako all his money, please, just don’t hurt me I didn’t realize you were this intense. Torako showed mercy. Torako only took half—and she only took it because the thief had wasted time that she could have spent finding Bentley. Even half wasn’t an insignificant amount of cash.

           In the end, however, Dipper managed to find Lloyd Remnit’s residence, and they blipped just outside the walls before continuing on.

           “I still think you should have taken all that dude’s cash,” Dipper said in a (recently) rare display of emotion beyond guilt, protectiveness, or rage. His footsteps were purposefully heavy as they walked up the long gravel drive to Windfall Manor proper. There hadn’t even been a gate, but even with Dipper running interference the hum of the wards they passed through had set Torako’s teeth to vibrating. Rich people, Torako thought.

           “Does this guy even need this much land? This much grass?” Torako said instead of answering Dipper’s question. It was moot point anyways. Torako looked out at the wide, hilly lawn surrounding them, exquisitely cultivated ornamental gardens dotting the landscape here and there. She hadn’t seen so much useless grass in one place in her life. The gardens didn’t even look like they had any fruit- or vegetable-bearing plants in them. It was, quite frankly, insane.

           Dipper did his shrug thing. “Grass was pretty normal a millennia or so ago.”

           “Weird,” Torako mumbled. She stared at a bush shaped like a narwhal as they passed. She half-suspected that it wasn’t even real. “This is a really weird dude.”

           Dipper hummed. They then walked in relative silence, the crunch and rasping squeal of stone against stone the only sound. There was no birdsong, no rustling grass, just clear skies up above and a suspiciously perfect hill just ahead. When Torako took a deep breath in through her nose, she could only just smell wet earth and crisp grass, like a ghost of the real thing. Except, you know, less belligerent and murderous than a ghost. She hoped. Murderous grass was uncommon but not impossible, and she’d already had the dubious pleasure of such an encounter. She wasn’t exactly looking for another one.

           At the crest of the hill, Torako hefted her bag up on her back. It was heavier, after a pit-stop at the grocery store for a bunch of goodies. She’d even picked up a box of Moffios before putting it back. She wanted Bentley to yell at her about sufficient nutrients and the folly of eating something literally made of sugar. And there, on that hill, Torako stared at the mansion for the first time, and felt her heart swell with hope.

           And also vague disbelief. Windfall Manor was located down the other side of the hill and a few meters out from the bottom of the slope. It was one of the most ostentatious buildings she’d ever seen. Bits and pieces of what had to be rooms but weren’t shaped in any way like rooms were floating above the main structure, all elegant curves and impossible spires. There were no stairs, anywhere. So either the floaty bits were yet more ornamentation, or the entire house was connected by a localized teleportation system, which would be completely and utterly ridiculous. It would also be in line with what Torako had seen so far, and so she steeled herself for more extravagance. The walls were a beautiful creamy color that faded in and out of opalescence, and the edges and corners were gilded, shining—gorgeous, but enough that Torako could cry in frustration. The moment the thought struck her, Torako had a bad feeling about the situation.

           “What a piece of work,” Torako said into the still air. Beside her, Dipper was forgetting to breathe convincingly. Oh well, it probably wouldn’t matter much longer.

           “Bentley hasn’t pissed off any rich people, has he?” Dipper asked. Torako raised her eyebrows in his direction and told herself that Mr. Self-Laceration wouldn’t blame Bentley.

           “Sure it’s not you?”

           “Me?” Dipper gestured at the house. “I’m not the owner of that thing, as glorious as the spellwork and as handsome as the mathematical precision is.”

            “No, idiot,” Torako said, frowning. “I mean, have you made any rich enemies that would target Ben in order to hurt you, seeing as you’re kind of hard to hurt yourself?”

           Dipper tilted his head and looked up at the sky. “Not that I remember. You?”

           Torako scowled. They were still standing up on top of the damn hill, having a stupid conversation about inconsequential things and her uterus was set on trying to mimic the pain of being torn apart. She was, perhaps, a little sharper than she meant to be. “Geez, I dunno,  targeting him and then citing you as one of the reasons for kidnapping seems like a pretty good indicator that I’m at fault here. Clearly.”

           Dipper drew in on himself, shoulders up and arms in. He turned away slightly. Torako felt both guilt and a kind of ugly triumph burn through her. She put her hand on his shoulder. She took a deep breath, and tried to focus on what was important.

           “Let’s just…get Bentley.” Torako squinted at Windfall Manor. “I think this place looks promising. Enough money to have enough space to hold somebody, and definitely enough money to do whatever it is to dampen your connection to Ben.”

           “Maybe,” Dipper said. He waited for her to step forward, her hand trailing down and off his arm, before he followed. Torako didn’t know if she felt more like a mob boss or an unwitting mother duck.

           “Do we have a plan for this, anyways?” She asked a couple minutes later, just an arm’s length from the front door. The glass set into the front was frosted, but was also animated to swirl in aesthetically pleasing patterns at random. The door jam was adorned with gilded scrollwork, which in turn were inset with tiny runes and wards. Some of them were actually augmented with literal gemstones, which explained the thrum tugging on the edges of her ears, settling into her fingerbones. Torako whistled. She was looking forward to smashing this dude’s face in and then dragging Bentley out before suing the rich shit for all the money she could give to charity. And also invest in therapy for Bentley, because she’d be damned if a cent of his money went to fix things that he wasn’t even remotely responsible for.

           “A plan?” Dipper came in closer and peered at the runes and wards. He didn’t touch her, didn’t drape all over her like she was his and he was hers. “I was just thinking find Ben and crush this place into dust.”

           Torako tilted her head and grinned a little. It felt plastic on her face. Her eyes ached. “Sounds good to me. Want a pack of gunny bears in exchange for shutting down the Manor defenses?”

           “It’s a deal,” Dipper said. They shook hands. A moment later, there was a harsh crack, the smell of burned ozone, and the gild had melted over splintered gemstones into a mess of dripping gold. It was somehow still elegant. Torako hated it.

           The door, now unshackled by layers of what had to be intricate spellwork, drifted open. Torako reached out, pushed it in, and she and Dipper stepped into Windfall Manor. When she held out her hand, Mizar’s Cultbasher was deposited in it, heavy and comfortable in her grasp. It slid down until the end of it, the hilt of it, pressed into the edge of her palm and pinky finger, grounding her.

           The door closed behind them. Dipper kept his feet on the ground, but that was probably because he liked how his steps echoed in the large reception room around them. Torako looked up and around; the ceiling was like that of a giant greenhouse’s, glass set against glass impossibly smooth. The floor was tile, patterned in giant floral swirls of color. It was cracked, in places, runes and wards and deployment circles cut into unsalvageable bits. Torako swung the bat up to rest against her shoulder.

           It was quiet.

           “Any sign of Ben?” she asked, surveying the empty room around them. It looked like on the end of the far room there was a chair like a throne, but it was empty. There were walls all around, walls of glass. No hallways. No way out except for the way they came in, and they weren’t leaving empty-handed.

           “No,” Dipper said, a tightness in his voice. It sounded like he was on the verge of trembling, but from what Torako couldn’t guess.

           “What about the other one? Lloyd?”

           Dipper didn’t answer immediately. The silence had a cant of unsureness, a measure of disbelief and a dash of exhaustion.

           “Dipper?” Torako turned to look at him. He had risen up, shedding the remains of his human form until he couldn’t be taken for anything but supernatural.

           He avoided her gaze. “I’ll take you to him,” he said, and held out his hand.

           Torako narrowed her eyes, swung the bat off her shoulder. “What price?”

           “Just a small candy bar.” Dipper was quiet. The hair rose up on the back of her neck. Something was wrong, this wasn’t guilt-quiet, this was a dread-quiet.

           “Dipper,” Torako asked, “what’s wrong?”

           “Nothing—” Dipper glanced at her and met her eyes for a second before looking away like she was the one who inspired instinctual fear. “Bentley’s gone, that’s all. Let’s—just get me the candy bar, and I’ll take you to—to Lloyd. Remnit. Him.”

           Torako didn’t want to give the candy bar up until she found out what was wrong with Dipper. The room seemed to yawn around them, the space wide enough to swallow, wide enough to take the mere half-meter between them and twist it into an abyss. The false sunlight peering through was almost oppressive, the sparkling of the split tiles below vicious, like teeth, and Torako was hit with the sudden realization that they needed to fix whatever was between them, without Bentley there to cover up the divide and make it all better. But that was the thing, she thought to herself. Bentley wasn’t there. Bentley had been taken from them.

           Torako stuck out her hand. “Deal,” she said.

           Dipper shook it without ceremony. There was no flash of blue flames. He didn’t smile, roughish and dangerous in the corners or between the press of his teeth. Instead, there was the familiar sensation of being tugged somewhere, and suddenly they were in a bedroom.

           It was dark. The curtains, heavy and thick and embroidered with giant moths, were drawn over one entire wall. She could just barely see the outside light hemmed in on the floor below what had to be windows. Torako walked over to them, traced the exquisite workmanship, the painstakingly stitched forms soft ridges under her fingertips. She looked back at Dipper, who was staring at the bed and the figure under the covers. They were snoring, just slightly. Dipper’s shoulders were slumped, but she couldn’t quite make out his features in the dimness, just the golden glow of his eyes.

           She set the nailbat down, clenched the heavy curtain in her fists, got a feel for the fabric and the heft. “Dipper,” she said, quiet. The relative smallness of the room, the darkness, dampened the sound into something comfortable. Dipper turned his head to look at her.

She tilted her head, held her swathes of curtain up a little. Light billowed stronger onto the ground below, carpeted, spotted with burned magic.

           “Okay,” Dipper said.

           Torako took a deep breath. She closed her eyes, centered herself. Bentley, she told herself, and then she pulled the curtains back as hard as she could.

           Sunlight shone in like a sound, like the sudden blare of a trumpet or the screech of bow against strings, harsh against the preceding silence. The curtains slid, silent, across an invisible track of magical technology. Torako squinted her eyes a little against the invading light, and looked out the window, across the land surrounding them.

           It all seemed so small, from so far up.

           A few moments later, Torako heard the man in the bed groan a little. She turned around, bent down, picked up her nailbat and stood, back to the window. It would disconcert, possibly even frighten, Mr. Remnit. Dipper made no such move, but he was a demon, which was kind of intimidating enough.

           “What the…” the man groaned. He waved a hand at the light coming in. “Wals, I gave you the day off so I could sleep as much as I wanted all day, goddammit.”

           Torako glanced at Dipper. Dipper was still staring at the man, at Lloyd, like he’d broken his favorite toy and then kicked a puppy or two. Alright, then, no help coming from that corner, so Torako opened her mouth and said, “Well, that explains why the place was so gosh darned empty! And why you’re still asleep at four in the afternoon. You’re wasting daylight!”

           God, she was turning into her dad.

           The figure on the bed didn’t move for a long moment. Then he snuggled back down into the blankets and pillows, grumbling something about awful dreams.

           Torako closed her eyes. Then, she opened them and looked up like the ceiling held answers, but no, there were just—lots of images of coquettish, nearly-naked people of all species and gender. One of them winked at her. She felt herself flush, and looked back at the bed. Torako was hit with the sudden thought that maybe, possibly, this man was naked under the covers.

           Torako steeled herself. She had endured horrors few others had, had seen dismembered corpses that still gave her nightmares, had come home to an empty apartment and evidence of kidnapping. She could handle one naked man.

           “Sorry, buddy,” she said. “This isn’t a dream. Isn’t even a nightmare. Out of luck there. Yo, Dip, do you mind making our friend here a bit more aware of the situation he’s in?”

           Dipper stared at her. She pantomimed pulling the sheets off. He stared at her longer, then looked back at the sheets, at the figure stubbornly underneath them, and then lifted his eyebrows in what was clearly a, he might be naked under there, do you really actually want me to do that? gesture.

           She pressed her lips together and nodded once, short. It was her best attempt at a nonverbal no, I really don’t, but this is probably the best.

           Dipper slowly reached his hand out and curled his fingers into the folds of the sheets. He looked back at her, almost pleading. She tilted her head at him and held up a free hand, because what else could they do?

           Wide-eyed, Dipper pressed his lips together. He tugged the sheet once, sharp, but not hard enough to dislodge it. Before Torako could do more than wonder why exactly he was being so weird about it, he opened his mouth and spoke. “I don’t think you want to know what we’re going to do if you don’t get up.”

           Lloyd Remnit shifted in bed, turning around enough to get a glimpse of Dipper. He blinked, then rubbed his eyes, and sat up. He definitely wasn’t wearing a shirt. Torako looked just enough to get an idea of physique; arms a little toned, but mostly old muscle and normal levels of fat for his age. He was a bit aged, Torako thought, but more like uncle than grandfather. Then he leaned back against the headboard, all casual, and smirked down at Dipper.

           “Well, aren’t you a treat?” Lloyd Remnit said. He looked Dipper up and down. Dipper stepped back a little, clearly unnerved by this turn of events. Torako felt a well of anger at Remnit and stepped forward to put herself between Dipper—who clearly knew something she didn’t and was made uncomfortable by it—and the man they’d come to interrogate. That was working well.

           The moment she did that, though, Remnit burst into action, slapping a hand against the closest bedpost. It lit up for a split second before cracking further, green sparks flying out to die, harmless, mid-air. Remnit stared at the bedpost. Torako smiled as she finished blocking Remnit’s view of Dipper.

           “Yeah, we took care of that,” she said, affecting nonchalance and confidence. Even though the room was small, everything in here was clearly quality that would take a decent chunk out of her parents’ paychecks, even before donating a great deal of it to charity. “Any more questions?”

           Remnit squinted at her. “Could you get out of the way? I’d at least like some eye candy to look at.”

           Torako’s smile thinned. She made sure to heft her bat up again, so that Remnit clearly saw what exactly was in store for him if he didn’t stop with his shit. “I’m not eye candy enough for you?” she asked.

           “He’s more my taste,” Remnit said.

           Dipper put a hand on her shoulder. She raised her eyebrows at Remnit, even though she was really raising them at Dipper. There was a moment of silence from him, and then Dipper said, “It’s okay, Ra. If he wants eye candy, I’ll give him eye candy.”

           Torako obliged, and stepped out of the way. Dipper strode past her, got closer to Remnit, and sat on the bed. Remnit seemed a bit taken aback by this gesture.

           Then Dipper held up a hand, and Remnit recoiled, screaming. Sweets poured onto the bed. Torako connected the dots and had to swallow hard at the mental image that came forward.

           “What the fuck!” Remnit screamed, on the other side of the bed. “What the fuck??”

           “You don’t have to eat it,” Dipper said, quiet. “You just said you wanted to look, right? So here it is.”

           “What the fuck are you?? Why are you here, holy fuck!”

           Torako shifted so that she could tackle Remnit if need be. He might try to run. They weren’t going to let him. She would break his arm before letting him go. There was a wardrobe half in the way, but it would slow him down just enough to help her catch him easier.

           “We’re here for an important friend of ours,” Dipper said. There was an undercurrent to his voice that had Remnit paling. “And last thing we found pointed to you.”

           “In case you need reminding,” Torako said, an easy smile back on her face, “it has to do with a fridge you commissioned. Could transport live bodies?”

           Remnit’s dark eyes, somewhat familiar, flickered between the two of them. “I have…hypothetical knowledge of that,” he whispered, then wet his lips. “What’s…in it for me?”

           Torako laughed a little. “What do you think is in it for you?”

           “You should probably answer wisely,” Dipper said, eyes clear, still on the bed. Anyone who didn’t know him wouldn’t see how wrong he was arranging himself into something casual, unaffected.

           “I…” Remnit said. “I…didn’t get to where I am now by settling.”

           Torako smirked, but she was watching Remnit’s hands. They were twitching in a way that seemed half-controlled. She thought about the level of magic set into the house, how much everything relied on it.

           “Dipdop,” she said.

           “I know,” he said. “He won’t do anything.”

           Remnit’s movements faltered. “What?”

           “He won’t want to tell us anything either,” Dipper said. He shifted. “If he’s anything like the man I once knew…is this about family, Lloyd?”

           “I haven’t met you before,” Remnit said. He took a step back, back against the tall, ornate wardrobe Torako had noticed earlier. It was very clean, light glinting off it like the wood was alive. Torako’s smile felt frozen to her face.

           “Not that you remember,” Dipper said. “And I guess that makes all the difference, doesn’t it? I’m not family, somebody else is. The somebody who has Bentley.”

           “What are you even on about?” Remnit snapped. He slapped his hand against the wardrobe, transferred whatever spell he’d been crafting between his fingers into the wood. It crackled, distorted, then shot at both Torako and Dipper. Torako tucked into a smooth roll and slammed the nailbat into the wood hard enough to punch holes, the enchantments on the bat combating with the enchanted wardrobe.

           Dipper had tessered right up against Remnit, who sucked in a quick breath and stilled. Torako stood, watched.

           “Bentley,” Dipper said, “is my family. You were once, Stan. But that was lifetimes ago, so I can’t blame you for not being now, right?”

           “Dipdop,” Torako said.

           “What the fuck?” Remnit whispered.

           “Except I will blame you,” Dipper said. He set his hand against Remnit’s forehead. “Your loyalty has been given to the wr̢ò͏n͏̢g̨҉ person this time, Stan. Tell me where m̘ͦͥ͆ͯ̀y̳̩̘͉̑̉̄̀̇ͨͦ ̡̈͊̚s̬̹̗͎̲͂̈́ì̥̩ͅst͇̙͙̝͓e̝̹̟̹̮̯͒̒ͧ̇̈́r̴̗̝̖̭̫͌̒̚ ̧͓͈̠̯ͦ̅́ͤ̑̆ͦi͓̞͕̮͉̳̫͡s̡̩̪̰̋̌ͧ̏.”

           Torako’s smile slid off her face. She stepped forward.

           “I don’t know,” Remnit said. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

           “Who did you commission the stasis fridge for?” Dipper crooned. “I will give you what you desire most if you just tell me who you commissioned that stasis fridge for.”

           Torako took another step. “Dipper, stop. You’re getting out of hand. Dipper, stop.”

           Remnit paused. Then, he laughed, hard and long, startling Dipper enough that he pulled away just a little, just enough for something in the air to loosen and for Torako to breathe a little easier.

           “Nothing,” Remnit said, “is more important than family.”

           Dipper didn’t even breathe. He canted his head back towards Torako. “I agree,” he said. Torako read the question in the quirk of his pointed ear, in the set of his hand on his hip. She pursed her lips.

           “There’s no other way?” she asked.

           “Stan is stubborn,” Dipper said. “I admired that, once.”

           Torako readjusted the grip on her nailbat. “A bag of Octopods and a bag of Chocolate Chicken Waffle Chips?”

           “And a lock of hair,” Dipper said.

           Remnit had lost some of the courage he’d pulled together only moments before. It had, Torako thought, evidently fled in the pieces he’d finally put together. “No,” he said. “My wards, they’re too strong.”

           “And a lock of my hair,” Torako said, “in return for the knowledge of who took Bentley, and where they live.”

           “Who are you?” Remnit hissed. He held up a hand, desperate energy crackling in it, and shoved it into Dipper. Dipper looked down at it, then grinned at Remnit.

           “Ḓ̸̥̯̈ͣ͌ͪ̇̏̎͢e̸̥͕̼̎̂͂ͤa̶̡̼̰͉͓ͭ̽̉ͤ̊ͭͅl̀̈̍̋͡͏̥̙͖̤̻̬͍̠ͅ,” he said, blue flaring high, and set his hands on Remnit’s head like he was going to pluck the strings of a harp, delicate but firm.

           Remnit didn’t scream. He let out a hitched sob. Dipper withdrew something from Remnit’s mind, and then flung it out. A heartbeat, two, and then Torako knew.

           Torako stared at Remnit. He was collapsed on the ground, a puppet with cut strings, a man whose base morals had been violated. Torako remembered Bentley, kneeling at his father’s funeral, accepting orange lilies with shaking hands. She remembered dark, flat eyes. Something dark and horrible and scared welled up in the pit of her chest, nearly choking her. She wanted to scream. She wanted to cry. She wanted to kill Remnit.

           “How dare you,” Torako told Remnit, voice shaking. “How fucking dare you hide behind family to justify their actions. You fucking supported them! What the actual fuck?”

           “You took it from me,” Remnit whispered to his hands. “You took it from me.”

           “And your nibling took my partner from me!” Torako screamed.

           “Torako?” Dipper asked.

           Torako lifted the nailbat. Her hand hurt from how tight she was gripping it. She wanted to drive Mizar’s Cultbasher into Remnit’s skull, over and over. How dare he. How dare he.

           Bentley was more important.

           “Dipper,” Torako said. She dropped the bat, stared at Remnit, heartbeat roaring in her ears. “I will give you another bag of candy, one in my bag, to make sure he can’t warn anybody about what’s coming for them. He can’t tell anybody we were here. He can’t tell anybody we’re coming. He can’t tell anybody what was done to him. He can’t let anybody know that they’re in danger.”

           “I mean, okay, but Torako?”

           “Do we have a deal or not, Alcor?” Torako snarled. Remnit flinched at Alcor’s name, started crying.

           Dipper was silent for several rapid heartbeats, then he said, “Deal.” Torako’s backpack lightened again, and Dipper put his hand on Remnit’s head again. Blue flames flared, then died, and Remnit curled over, hiding his face in his hands.

           “Let’s get out of here,” Torako said, after a long moment. She felt vindicated, and terrible, and angry and scared because Bentley had told them he was Mizar.

           “Torako, who was it?” Dipper caught her arm, talons digging in just a little. Torako looked into his eyes. Her body was light, carried on a wave of turbulent emotion.

           “Once we get out,” Torako said, and no sooner had she spoken were they on the lawn by the wardstones, right at the beginning of the gravel path. The sky was still, there was no birdsong, and the grass under their feet was artificial at best. Everything was wide and open and wrong.

           “Tell me,” Dipper said. She couldn’t stall any longer.

           “Dr. Fantino,” Torako said. “Their name is Vallian. They gave Bentley orange lilies at Philip’s funeral.”

           Dipper froze, eyes wide in horror. The air was suddenly like syrup, pressing down on her shoulders and leaving her slow, heavy. “The one that Bentley…”

           “Cursed.” Torako gripped Dipper’s hand with everything she had. She laughed a little at a sudden thought, high and on the hysterical side. “Bentley really did piss off somebody rich, I guess.”

           Dipper snarled. The air around him turned dark, almost misty. Everything around them seemed like it was moving, but Torako felt nothing. His wings curled and grew into a shroud around them, at once shielding and suffocating. “I̢̛͉̳̓̓ͯ̔ ̵̶̷͙͉͔͈̱̫͚̑̀̏̐̌ͫ͒ͅw̷̝̜̜͙̯̻ͧ̇̑̍͌ͅi̶̸̗̲̿͆l̵̖̻͈͈̙͙̱͉͑ͤ̽ͤ͑̇̔͢l̹̤̥̼̼ͦͦ̾̉͜ ̞̬͇̥̖̻̖̓̊̾̓͌̑̿̃͝d̸̶̮͍̠͇̂ͥe̛̝̻̖̰̥͕̓͌̍ͤs̛͕̭̟̔͗ť̬͔͍̍̽ͩ̌́̚͜r͋͂̀̊͏͏͙͈̥o͔̪̥̲̠̎͛ͧ͢ȳ͍ ̯͇͇̗̱̘̭͈̻́ͮ̊̌̊̇̒́͝ḩ̤̠̘̮̳̠̞̐ͭͩͤ͡i̴̼ͯͩ̈́͐ͣ̋m̪̫̠͑̓ͩ͊́͆ͥͩ̇͘͟,” Dipper said. “I̤̣̭̹̻̾̽̓͊͋̍̏̈́’̺͈̪̲̪̖̘͂̿̈̔͞l̞͇͈͔̩̩̙͙̗̊̋ͧ̚͘l̢̧̰̾̀ͩ̓ͭͭ͋͘—̛̬͕̗͍͇̲̜̫ͬͪ̇̐̾͘ͅ”

           Torako’s phone chimed, the chime from Lata’s parents. It cut through the syrup around her; the last she’d heard from Lata’s parents hadn’t exactly been positive news. Her heart in her throat, she pulled it out, navigated to messages. She choked, her fear rising above her anger. Bentley was important, but Lata was—Lata was a baby.

           “Dipper,” she said. “Lata’s missing. Lata’s—we have to find Lata.”

           Dipper let out a noise that was more squealing tires and thunder than human, tugged her close, and they left Windfall Manor more abruptly than they’d arrived.            

           Bentley had lost track of time.

           He also lost track of what it’s like to actually chew or ingest food orally; all of the nutrients his body requires have been supplied to him so far by a NutriPatch, even though those are really only supposed to be used short term. He should know, he visited Torako in the hospital and got that lecture from the nurse on Torako’s behalf. That had been a little uncomfortable. Maybe not as uncomfortable as the saline drip embedded in his arm—that was sure to leave a scar and he was high-key avoiding those thoughts—but certainly not fun.

           Bentley had also lost track of what it’s like to move more than five steps at a time. He was always strapped down to the bed when people come in to check his vitals, take DNA samples for some awful reason that he would freak out over if he thought about it, so he didn’t. He also was reduced to dragging around his IV drip with him, because there was some sort of non-tamper seal on the drip and he hadn’t managed to get his hands on anything that would allow him to sigil it off. He wanted to save the last-resort of using his own blood as a medium until he had a clearer chance to escape.

           What Bentley had gained, had slowly been gaining, was energy.

           Not quickly. No, residual, fragmented nightmares kept him from actually getting the sleep he needed to make a decent recovery. At the same time, he also wasn’t being actively sucked of energy in order to fuel his own nightmares and keep him locked in a mirror hellscape funland of his own imagining, so, the pros were outweighing the cons at the moment. Bentley was going to take whatever the fuck he could get.

           Which, he thought as he sat in a corner in the dark, pale hospital gown pooling around him, wasn’t exactly a lot.

           He pressed his chin to the valley between his knees, looked out to where he knew the vase of orange lilies sat in a protective alcove. For somebody who professed not to ascribe to acting based on illogical emotion, Bentley thought, Dr. Fantino was really, almost hilariously petty. It made him really angry.

           Even after what felt like at least a week of knowing the lilies were there, they made Bentley want to cry. The slight against his father had been turned into something worse, something to taunt and goad Bentley with rather than an honest, if despicable, act. Dr. Fantino, Bentley knew, was using Philip to get under Bentley’s skin, and it was working. When he wasn’t too exhausted to feel, or too stressed and sad to think, Bentley was constantly furious. Dr. Fantino being absent whenever Bentley was awake only fanned the flames higher; they had the gall to kidnap him, subject him to torture that was sure to set him back years’ worth of therapy, and then? They didn’t even? Interact? With him?

           Bentley hugged himself tight, digging his hands into his legs. He was losing weight. His hair was uncomfortably long. His nails were kept trimmed and soft, but they would be longer than he was used to if they hadn’t been. Bentley was losing time.

           He closed his eyes, started to doze in the corner. He woke an indeterminable amount of time later, feeling space closing in around him, crushing him, welding his throat shut and unable to make a single sound.

           Bentley yelled at the walls to make himself feel better until nothing came out but a raspy, whistley noise. Then he couldn’t make noise with his throat, and it was awful, but drumming his fingers on the floor helped, standing and moving just because he could helped. When he was able to think again, Bentley set his forehead against the wall and closed his eyes.

He lifted his hand, one finger outstretched, and began to trace the shape of sigils into the wall. “Fire,” he said in a whisper, tracing fire and then breaking it. “Water. Earth. Lightning. Air. Connection,” and so on, creating and detonating in his mind’s eye. Every so often, he traced Alcor’s circle into the wall. Said please. Waited long moments in which he knew nothing would happen, but hoped anyways, before moving on to more complicated, more powerful, more theoretically dangerous things. Bentley wondered, absently, why Dipper hadn’t come yet.

  Then, the lights came on and they gassed the room to knock him out. He drooped down the side of the wall, throat sore, and watched the blurry images of the nurses come in to bundle him back into bed. He was harmless. His limbs didn’t move. They showed no fear.

Bentley was losing time, but there was nothing he could do but bide it.

           Lata was in Australia. Lata was safe. Lata was happily playing with a very tired woman Torako’s never met, who Lata apparently has and who Lata had also successfully conned into letting her visit. The woman did not yet know this. Lata had whispered it gleefully in Torako’s ear because Torako was the Fun One, right before Dipper had pulled Torako abruptly aside to demand they destroy everything Fantino held dear.

           Torako had to convince Dipper that that did not mean it was time to lambast Fantino’s house, under her breath and doing her best not to let the woman whose house they were in know that, you know, she had let a demon inside.

           “It’s home,” Torako hissed to Dipper. “Yeah it’s where he lives too, but you’ll go overboard and cause another international incident, beyond the mysterious glass found in the middle of the desert. Yes, I saw that article, you didn’t hide it nearly well enough.”

           “Bentley could be there,” Dipper hissed back, his face inhuman because he wasn’t looking at the Australian woman—Torako thought her name was Tom, or Tam, or something. “We need to get Bentley and make that man pay.”

           “We don’t even know if Ben’s in the house,” Torako said.

           “We don’t even know that he isn’t,” Dipper retorted. Their faces were close in order to facilitate better hearing at lower decibels, and also in order to increase the intensity of their glaring at each other.

           “Whatchu doing?” Lata asked, flopping over Torako’s back. Torako tipped forward at the unexpected weight. Her face smooshed into Dipper’s, her nose almost jamming into his eye.

           “This is a private conversation,” Dipper said, tense but trying not to make Lata cry. Torako braced her hands on his shoulders and pushed herself back upright. Lata giggled.

           “This’s private property, and it’s seven fucking thirty in the fucking morning,” the Australian Woman Tom Slash Tam said.  “You got something to say, say it loud’n clear.”

           Dipper and Torako exchanged a look. Torako turned to face Tom Slash Tam, and said in the flattest tone she could manage, “Lata did not tell you that their parents had no idea they were going to Australia.”

           Tom Slash Tam stared. “What.”

           “I got a text, just earlier today—” which was not a lie, just a very misleading turn of phrase “—in a panic about where Lata had disappeared off to. I need to let them know where they are. Dipper thinks we should return immediately. I think you need to be told what’s up.” That was a lie. They hadn’t even discussed it.

           Tom Slash Tam gaze shifted to the limpet on Torako’s back. They had their face pressed into the back of Torako’s neck. “Lata,” Tom Slash Tam said.

           Lata whined and squeezed Torako’s neck tighter. Torako choked a little and tapped Lata’s crossed arms furiously.

           Tom Slash Tam crouched down lower. “Lata,” she said, voice low. “Did you lie to me?”

           Lata whined again and kicked their feet against Torako’s butt. Torako pried their arms from around her neck and breathed a little easier, but didn’t move to make Lata face the other woman.

           “Lata,” Dipper said. Torako glanced at him. His eyes were white and brown again, which was disconcerting every time she saw them like that. “Answer Tommy, please.”

           Lata said something into Torako’s neck.

           “Speak up, please,” Torako said.

           “I said I don’t feel they right now, I feel she,” Lata said, directly into Torako’s ear.

           Tommy nodded. “That’s fine, thank you for telling us. But Lata, did you lie to me about coming over?”

           Lata paused. “No,” she said in a bald-faced lie.

           Torako raised her eyebrows at Tommy. Tommy raised hers right back. They shared the look that adults do when kids decide to be more difficult than the situation calls for, and then Tommy pressed on.

           “Then did…Torako, was it? Right, Torako. Then did Torako lie?”

           Lata paused again. Torako knew that she was going to be thrown under the bus as last-minute sacrifice when Lata said, “Yes.”

           “So,” Tommy drawled, “you didn’t actually try to pull the wool over my eyes by fabricating—making up—several messages saying that yes, they’d be glad to let you come see me, yes they were happy to’ve meet me and make sure I wasn’t some sort of creep after their kid and I made a real good impression, can you take our kid in a couple days?”

           Torako did not point out that the whole situation was unrealistic. She honestly didn’t understand how Tommy could have been fooled by a five year old.

           “Yes,” Lata said. She dug her hands into Torako’s shoulders, and Torako hissed in discomfort. “I’m only five.”

           Tommy narrowed her eyes at Torako. Torako sighed, pulled out her phone, and navigated to the message in question. Tommy took the phone, read the message, and sighed back at Torako. “I’m a fuckwit,” Tommy said, before pulling out her own phone to call Lata’s parents and walking a few steps away.

           Lata leaned into Torako and whispered, loudly, “You sold me out!”

           Torako looked, unimpressed, at Dipper. At the look on his face, her expression faltered. “Dipper?” she asked.

           “Are you done?” Dipper asked. He’d sunk his fingers into the floor, curved and rigid in ways human hands were never meant to be. Torako’s heart sunk, and she felt Lata scrunch down more behind Torako’s back. “Lata is fine. Lata is safe. We should be finding Bentley.”

           Torako narrowed her eyes. “We’re not going to the CalFed.”

           “It’s our only clue,” Dipper hissed.

           “And they will know you’re there,” Torako said, straightening up. Lata slid off her. “Because you will have no chill while you’re there, and then they’ll find out that I’m involved, and we’ll never be let back into the country.”

           Dipper snarled. His eyes flashed black and gold before they turned back to brown and white. “You’re worried about being let back in to the country?”

           “My family lives there,” Torako snarled right back, nastiness blooming in her. “We are not putting them in danger.”

           “They won’t be in danger.”

           “Tell that to the glass in the Sahara Desert,” Torako said. She leaned forward and bared her teeth. Dipper bared his right back, sharp like sharks’ and wide enough to clamp around her throat. Torako didn’t back down.

           “Do you even lo̕v̡e Bentley?” Dipper sneered, and it was like he’d stabbed her in the heart. “You’re messing around here and he’s in the hands of an egotistical shit who knows who he is and if you l̸o̸v͠ed̢ ̡ him, you’d go s̛͝͡av̵͡è̀͘ ̵h̵̵̡im͢.”

           Torako moved through shock, to hurt, to grief and then back to anger fast enough that if it had been turns on a roller coaster, she’d have suffered whiplash. She surged forward, pushing her face up into Dipper’s and grabbing a fistful of his shirt. “Who was the fuckhead who ran off and wasn’t there for Bentley in the first fucking place?” she said, voice low, deep like it was coming from her chest.

           Dipper’s face twisted in guilt and fury. His eyes flicked from her eyes down to just below her chin. She lifted it, exuding as much I’d like to see you try as she could. Deep down, underneath her hurt and anger, something was screaming at her to back down, to get away and to stop threat-posturing in front of something that could crush her without a second thought.

           “What the fuck is going on here?”

           Torako blinked. She remembered, suddenly, where they were, who they were with. She realized, a split second after remembering, that Dipper’s face was sporting some decidedly unhuman features, and she tugged Dipper in closer so that Tommy couldn’t see. Torako looked up at Tommy.

           “We’re…fighting,” she said.

           Lata was standing next to Tommy. Her eyes looked suspiciously shiny, and Torako watched as she tugged on Tommy’s well-worn shirt. “They said Uncle Ben is gone, and they gotta find him.”

           Tommy crossed her arms. “I think you need to explain what batshit fuckery is going on. Not on the floor. We paid for the fucking couches, and so you’re going to use them and be civilized about it, not like a couple of pixies fighting over a scrap of magic in the local tarot reader’s dumpbin. “

           Dipper stood. Torako knew that he hadn’t put his human guise back on by how Tommy inhaled sharply and took a step back, herding Lata behind herself.

           “We don’t have time,” Dipper said. There was a buzz against Torako’s skin, like a cacophony of cicadas pressing into her. She took a deep breath. “Bentley isn’t safe, he is o͘u҉rs, he is m̧i̸͟n͏e̵̴, and he n͢͏̸e̷̴̕e̴͟͢ḑ̸͏s͟͞͠ ͜t̶҉o͜͠ ́b͝ȩ ͝s̛̛͜av͡͏ȩ͢͞d̡̛͟.”

           Tommy looked between the two of them, eyes narrowed. Torako stood up, angling herself between Tommy and Dipper. She didn’t know which one of them she was supposed to end up stopping, if it came to blows.

           “Dipper,” Torako said. “I told you, going to Fantino’s house isn’t going to help anything.”

           Dipper dug his hand into her arm (again, what was with him and her arm lately) and spun her around. Something inside her strained at the manhandling. “Y̴̡o̶̵̢u͜ ́k��ņow̢͘ ̷͡no͜t͡h́͝i̶n͞g of where he is,” he said, static peppering his voice and burrowing beneath her skin. The tone, the words, made that strained something snap, and Torako stood tall. “You are m̢͟͟͠͠o̡̡͜r̷̴̶̀͟ţa҉́͏̛ĺ̵̶͢ ̢̢̀͢͞  and you can’t b̴́e̵̢gin͠͠ t͠͞҉o͢ ̕u̢̕n̶d̡̢͢e̡r҉̴s̢t̴̢͞a̴n͏͟d͡ ̷͏w̶h̀͡a̢̕t̡ ͞it’̴̧͟s̡ l̴í̵͝k̕é—”

           “I love him too,” Torako said, pushing right back, grabbing his arm right back and squeezing tight, curling her fingers as much into claws as she could. He had melted back into his suit, void-black and snow-white and intimidating as all fuck to people who didn’t know him, which was most of the planet and more. She knew him, though. She wasn’t fucking intimidated by his fancy-ass suit or his impossible fabric or even his goddamn teeth. Torako stared him down, using her height to her advantage. If he wanted to float and be taller that way, he’d have to shove her face out of the way. “I love him, I told you I love him more than I love myself—”

           “Ć̷ĺ̴ęa̵̸͜r̡͢͞l̸y ỳo̧̕͘u͢ ͜d̴̛o҉̧n’̷͘t̛̕͟,̷͘͠ ̢b̡̛ȩc̷̡a̶̡u͝s̶͠e ̀y̷͡ou̸̕ ҉a̵r̵͟e̵ǹ̵̡’̷̧t̢͜͢ ̴͡ w̴͡í̴̡͝l̶͡ĺ̵͜͡҉i̕҉n̕g̢̀͡҉ t̸͠ơ̴͠—͟͞”

           “I do, you absolute fuckface, and you also don’t know where he is, that’s the whole fucking reason he’s still not safe—”

           Somebody was crying, but Torako didn’t care because Dipper needed to be shut down and also kicked a little, probably.

           “I kn̶ow͏ m̸ore t́han y̧ou, y̵ou̧ w͝oul̸d ̶kn̡o͢w ͢nothi͠ng ҉i̷f̸ it ̵w̵eren’t̢—͝”

           “And neither would you, because you left, you left and went off to have a fucking pity party instead of being with us—”

           “HEY!”

           Torako, without looking, snapped over her shoulder, “Shut up and stay out of it.”

           Dipper hiss-snarled from around her shoulder. His wings had come out, sharp and wicked and shadow. Torako drew herself up even further and pushed down on his arm.

           “Stop l̛̀͠ò̡̧͝o̷̷̧͘͞m̴̴i҉̨̛n̸̢͠͞͏g͠҉̵̕,” Dipper growled.

           “Stop hurting me,” Torako growled right back.

           “Jus̶t̡ ͟imagi͡ne wh̴at͞ Bȩntl̵ȩy’s ́g̛oinģ thro̷ug̴h͘,̡” Dipper said, “bec͞au̷se y͏o̢u ̧woưl̷d͞n’͠t ͘l̷e͠t̢ m͏e̛ ͏ t͏e̴a̛r ̢͞t̸͞h͏̸a҉t̶̷̨ p͢e͘r҉s̷̷on͠’̧̀s̴ ҉h̸͜o̢m͟e̡͠͠ ̷͝͡a̕͜p̸á̢͏r̸̡͡t̴҉ ̵̧t̕͞ǫ͝ ̵́́fín̨͟d̀ ͟͝hìm̕͠͏.̧”

           “Just imagine what Bentley would feel,” Torako said right back, “when he found out you decimated the place he grew up because you weren’t thinking straight.”

           “J̛́u͜s͜t̡ i̴͝m͢a҉g̸͝i͢͢ńe͏̧,” Dipper started, but never finished because suddenly there was a deluge of icy water being splashed on them. Torako shrieked. Dipper jumped up in the air and stayed there, blinking the water out of his eyes. Torako wiped soaking hair from out of her face and tried to process what had just happened.

           “You get to clean that up, by the way,” Tommy said. Torako looked over, finally, and Tommy was holding Lata in one arm so that Lata could press her face into Tommy’s chest. There was a bucket in her other hand. “Towels’re in the bathroom. Get your arses dry and mop the floor up and then come sit on the damned couch. Stop making the kid cry.”

           Torako, dripping water, exchanged a guilty glance with Dipper. Dipper caught her eye, and looked away.

           Yeah. Torako nodded, fight gone, and turned around to go get some towels. If she took a while coming back, and if her eyes were a little red when she finally emerged, then nobody would say anything.

           Dipper curled up on one end of the couch. Torako was curled up on the other, a towel around her shoulders. There was as much space as possible between them.

           Dipper hated and needed it all at once.

           Across from them, on a ratty armchair that looked as though it was held up only by layers and layers of threadbare spells, Tommy nursed something slightly alcoholic and stared them down. Crackles of amber irritation lanced through her aura. She’d sent Lata to another room to play with their dog. Dipper hadn’t even noticed the dog, coming in, too caught up in Fantino, and Bentley, and the all-encompassing need to save and fix.

           “So,” Tommy said, finally. “I’ve got a fuckin demon in my house.”

           Dipper scrunched his shoulders and crossed his arms. He looked away at the bookshelf, which held an eclectic collection of physical books, datapads, storage drives and also various animal skulls.

           “Which one is he?” Tommy asked. Dipper hunched over more and noted one book was about astrophysics. More specifically, he realized, the mingling of magic with astrophysics, and postulation as to whether or not there was a limit to how far magic extended from Earth, and if it was an Earth-only phenomenon or one that extended throughout the entire universe, or something inbetween.

           “Alcor,” Torako said, quiet and not quite like herself. Dipper wondered if she’d ever been herself, since Bentley had been taken. He’d been too wrapped up in himself to notice.

           “Of course,” Tommy drawled. “Of fucking course. I threw water on one of the most powerful known entities in the universe.”

           Dipper thought of the glimpses of his future, aching loneliness and power enough to burn whatever he touched. He didn’t like thinking about that, so he started thinking about magic and astrophysics again, while half-paying attention to the conversation going on in the same room.

           “It happens,” Torako said.

           “And you!” Tommy said, louder. “You were going nose to nose with that overpowered soulsucker, what the fuck are you?”

           “His…friend? Partner?” Torako paused. “I’m human, if that’s what you’re asking.”

           Dipper switched his attention to the couch under his hand. He started to trace the weave with his claws, dulling their edges so that he didn’t snap the threads on accident.

           “You arse-tipped dick-waffling crazy shit,” Tommy said. “And there’s…another one of you, right? The one that’s missing?”

           Guilt and grief and anger gripped Dipper so tight he forgot himself, punching a hole into the couch. Seized by terror, he checked that connection between himself and Mizar again—still dampened, still there, butterfly-wingbeat-weak against his senses.

           “My couch,” Tommy said.

           “Sorry,” Dipper said. He glanced over at Tommy, aura a confusing mix of colors, and then away. “Sorry.”

           “Yeah,” Torako said. “Bentley. Um. It’s a long story.”

           “That’s fine,” Tommy said. “Give me the important shit.”

           “Um. I guess. Bentley got kidnapped, about five days ago? I can’t remember exactly. I was useless the first day, and after that things have gone so—so fast. We finally found out who took him, today, and we know why, but we don’t—we don’t agree on what to do next.”

           “Shit,” Tommy said. “And you’ve only had each other for company for five days?”

           Torako laughed. Dipper concentrated on curling in on himself as much as he could at the bitterness there. “Yeah. We—we’re kind of a mess, aren’t we?”

           “Fuckin understandable, though,” Tommy said. She paused. “Is it normal for him, to, uh, do that?”

           Torako shifted. She huffed a little, but when she spoke there was a bit of a smile in her voice. “Dipper, your tween is showing.”

           Dipper looked back at her. She seemed a little larger than before, and with an aura dulled with emotional exhaustion it meant that he’d shrunk again. Dipper put his face in his hands.

           “I take that as a yes.” Tommy was sitting with one leg crossed over the other, drink held loosely in one hand. “Not the weirdest thing I’ve seen, though.”

           The front door opened. A voice floated in, strong and upbeat. “Darling, you called just a bit ago? Is everything all right?”

           Dipper stared at Tommy over the tips of his claws. Tommy took a long, languid sip of her drink before answering. “In the living room, Filara! We’ve got some…disastrously interesting guests. Lata’s in the bedroom with Fuzzles.”

           “That’s right,” Torako said, a little faintly. “You have a wife.”

           “I do,” Tommy said, a kind of proud, self-satisfied grin on her face.

           “She…going to be okay with this?”

           “Well, she might be able to help you. She knows a bit of everything. Smart woman, my Filz.” Tommy’s grin took on a shit-eating cant. “Also the reaction’ll be balls hilarious.”

           Dipper groaned. Pathetic. All-powerful demon and Acacia’s troublemaking nature always made him quail.

           “What’s that about your balls?” Filara asked. Dipper looked at Filara, and then kept looking, because that was Lionel and what was Lionel doing married to Acacia?

           “Our guests might have a couple of questions for you,” Tommy said. She gestured to the both of them, sad and huddled on the couch, like she was unveiling some great and wonderful monument to the world.

           “Oh, I’m happy to answer…” Filara looked from Torako to Dipper and trailed off. She stared. Dipper stared back, still lost in the mental gymnastics of but this is my dad but that is my niece but this is my dad and my niece married???? and only distantly aware of the fact that he looked like a prepubescent non-human in an impossible suit.

           There was a beat of silence born of mutual surprise.

           “Uh,” Filara said. “Darling?”

           Tommy took another sip of her drink. Out of the corner of his eye, Dipper could see smug pinpricks of orange-lilac in her aura. “Yes, Filz?”

           “Ignoring the gorgeous woman on our couch,” Filara said, “there’s…a thirteen-year-old on our couch?”

           Torako made a gurgling noise. Dipper was almost impressed. Most people pegged him for ten or eleven. Nobody overshot his age (even if it was just barely) in this form.

           “Kind of,” Tommy said.

           “And he’s…they’re…she’s…not…human?”

           “That’s speciesist. Wow Filz. I expected better of you.”

           Torako kind of half-raised her hand. “He’s a demon.”

           “Yes, a demon. Thank you, gorgeous woman whose name I don’t know.” Filara took a half step forward as Torako gurgled again, and shifted her corrective lenses. He almost hadn’t seen them. “Darling, why is there a demon on our couch?”

           Tommy hummed. “Ask him.”

           Filara took a deep breath, then turned to face Dipper more squarely. “Why are you on our couch?”

           Dipper gestured at Tommy, and every answer except for, “She told me to” escaped his mind in that moment.

           Torako supplemented the information. “I got a text from Lata’s parents. They didn’t know she’d come here, though I think they know now, and they know where the bill for the ticket to get here came from.”

           “Ah.” Filara said. She waved her hand, and a rocking chair appeared from nowhere to settle in next to Tommy’s threadbare monstrosity. Dipper recognized the echo of Lionel’s taste in furniture in the cushions, firm but not flat. “That explains a little more, but not enough. Start from the beginning?”

           Dipper opened his mouth.

           “Not you,” Filara said, and proceeded to point at Torako. Tommy took another smug sip of her alcohol. There was lemon in it. Dipper bet that it was something Torako would like. “You. Mr. Demon seems a little useless information-wise, and no offense but I’m not sure I would trust him. Also,” she said, glancing back at Dipper, “can I get a name so I don’t call you Mr. Demon? It seems a little odd to, especially when you’re being so quiet and polite and not actively bartering for my soul or my left arm.”

           “I’m Tyrone,” said Dipper.

           “He’s Alcor,” said Tommy a heartbeat later.

           Filara settled back in her chair with an air of confusion and also mistrust. She looked at Torako.

           “He’s both,” Torako said. “I call him by a nickname. You’d know him as Alcor.”

           “Cool,” Filara said. “Cool cool cool, I’m just going to ignore that he’s Alcor in my sitting room. Please tell me why you’re here and what’s on your mind, Ms. Gorgeous.”

           Torako gurgled again. Then she obliged.

           “…and then we got into a big fight in front of Lata and your wife,” Torako said before taking a sip of the drink that Filara had insisted on getting for her. Lata had come out at some point, and was clinging to the Hangars’ beagle mix between Torako and Dipper. She was also asleep, so everybody was trying to be as calm as possible. Aside from a couple of tense moments, mostly because Dipper said something snide and Torako said something snide back, they had succeeded.

           “She threw water on us,” Dipper said. “It was effective.”

           Filara hummed. She seemed less concerned with the fact that Dipper was in the room and more preoccupied with what Torako had said. “And you said that Alcor said that he couldn’t feel Bentley very well?”

           Torako nodded. “He can explain it better than I can, obviously.”

           “Explain, please.” Filara pulled a stylus and pad out of what seemed to be thin air. Tommy had long since gone to the kitchen to make food. It was lunchtime. They had been in this house for hours. Torako was very, very hungry.

           “So, it’s like he’s in another dimension,” Dipper said. “Except nobody should be able to do that? So it has to be a pocket dimension, but it doesn’t feel like a pocket dimension. It’s like, there’s more layers between us, muffling everything. I should be able to feel how he feels, but instead it’s hard enough to tell that he’s still alive.”

           “A little creepy, but all right.” Filara jotted down notes, appraised them. “And you said the kidnapper has access to significant funds?”

           “Yes,” Torako said.

           “And also used cutting-edge technology to use a sophisticated but also very traceable way to transport Bentley while in forced stasis slash nightmares?”

           “Also yes.” Torako took a swig of alcohol, closed her eyes at the sharp burn of liquor and citrus. It grounded her. Torako did not necessarily want to become an alcoholic, but by everything good was it helping. She had needed this.

           She also, desperately, needed some of whatever was cooking in the kitchen, because it smelled absolutely wonderful.

           “Interesting.” Filara continued taking notes, switching from her right to her left in order to gesture at the bookcase Dipper had been staring at earlier in sullen silence. A couple books and a datapad floated over to her. One title was in a language Torako couldn’t read, and the other was made up of such outdated terminology that Torako could barely understand it was about warding theory.

           “Is it okay to be here, though?” Torako asked. “You came back from somewhere really early in the morning.”

           Filara flapped her hand at Torako. “It’s fine, that contract was paying me pennies for the work they wanted anyways. I only took it because I was bored. I’ll find another short-term job soon enough.”

           “Isn’t the Australian job market kind of bad right now?” Dipper asked. He was leaning back, a little more gangly and teenager than he had been earlier.

           “That’s why I can’t find anything not short-term,” Filara said. “Also why I decided I’d throw my net wide instead of deep, so to speak. More variety of possible jobs. I let Tommy specialize.”

           “Park management?”

           “With endorsements in both mundane and supernatural creature handling,” Filara muttered. She flipped the warding book open to the back, indexed whatever she was looking to find, and then started turning back to the relevant page. “Specifications which are archaic and vestigial leftovers of an age shocked by the sudden appearance of unprecedented species, both sentient and not, but whatever they want, I guess.”

           Torako saw Dipper perk up at the nerdspeak. “I agree,” Dipper said. “It’s literally been over two thousand years since the Transcendence. Why, with the evolution of language, do such—currently—arbitrary classifications exist?  It would make far more sense to align everything on a scale of sentience alone. The laws of science have changed so much, and possibilities have altered to an extent that nullifies the importance of separating non-sentient and originally non-magical creatures from non-sentient and originally magical creatures.”

           “True,” Filara said. “Okapi were once seen as utterly mundane until scientists observed the emergence of magical traits conducive to predator and sustenance detection…”

           Torako tuned them out, looked down at the drink in her shaking hand. She swirled it a little, then watched the tumbler continue to tremble, ever so slightly. Torako admitted to herself, under the safe umbrella of being momentarily ignored, that she was tired. She was stressed, and scared. And she had begun taking it out on Dipper. And maybe, just maybe, Dipper was the same, and he’d started taking it out on her.

           He was unstable without Bentley, even though they kept stressing to him that he had to be stable without Ben. Though, Torako thought, a wry smile on her lips, maybe she wasn’t so different. She felt pretty unstable herself.

           They were going to be lucky to get out of it all in one piece. They were all definitely going to need therapy, group and individual. Torako wanted to laugh and cry, but there was a dull edge to her emotions that pressed the urge down into something less overwhelming. Where were they going to find a therapist that would take them seriously and not report things like Bentley being a reincarnation of Mizar, or Dipper being Alcor, or Torako breaking and entering and bartering for demonic force as a tool to suppress and punish people outside the court of law? Dipper and she had discussed it, back when Bentley had first been taken. Dipper had promised that he’d take care of it, but…somehow, that seemed like a really bad idea. Would it be better than no therapy? Worse?

           Torako didn’t know. She swirled her drink again, then took another swig of it.

           “Torako?”

           She looked up. Filara had a manic gleam in her eyes, which shone a faint purple. Probably from magic exposure. “We figured something out, maybe.”

           “It seems pretty possible,” Dipper said.

           “Lay it on me,” Torako said, and leaned forward.

           “So, this is highly theoretical stuff, and I’m definitely not a specialist in any practical sense so I don’t know how possible it is,” Filara said, drumming her manicured fingers on her knees in excitement. “But because extradimensional travel, like to legitimate other dimensions, is impossible by human means and, Alcor assures me, highly improbable even by demonic means, there’s only an infinitesimally, insignificantly small chance that Bentley has been spirited away to another dimension. Which means that to fit the parameters of ‘not being in this world proper,’ Bentley has to be in a pocket dimension. Which, in and of itself, is not sufficient, because Alcor can sense Mizar through those, right?”

           Dipper nodded vigorously.  

           “Have to wonder how your kidnapper knew how to counteract that, but no matter. Might just be plain paranoia, which is healthy to have when kidnapping a Mizar attached to a very very powerful demon. Anyways!” Filara flicked up a screen and began to draw a quick sketch. It wasn’t very artistic. “so you have the pocket dimension, with Bentley in it, with Alcor here, and there’s extra stuff inbetween. It has to stop demons from entering. More than that, it has to stop a very strong, the strongest, demon from even sensing through it. Which is hard. It’s like, you have a window, so you can’t pass through the window, but you can see through it and sometimes even hear through it, right?”

           “I get that,” Torako said. She set her drink on her left knee. “So something that would stop that would be, like…sigils, right?”

           Filara blinked, stopped mid-drawing of a window with a person looking out of it. “Actually, yes, maybe? But there aren’t too many people who use sigils to that kind of degree, and they might be a little too finicky to mesh with a pocket dimension the way this kind of near-airtight technology requires. As it is, the pocket dimension is probably a bit destabilized by this. The theory is old, but incredibly difficult to actually execute. So if you’re looking for something reliable…”

           Torako snapped her fingers as she connected the dots. She grinned. “Wards.”

           “Right. Runes don’t pack enough punch and can get a little frisky, but wards are solid. They’re dependable. Reliable. They’re like a middle-aged rottweiler.” Filara drew a stick dog on the screen between them, then put a smiley face on it. “Loyal, and forgiving, but also capable of turning nasty if you poke it enough with the right stick, which is why this is still theory. Maybe. It might be real if Alcor’s unable to sense Bentley.”

           Torako’s stomach turned and her good mood evaporated nearly as quickly as it had come on. Dipper was quiet, which could mean several things. She hoped he wasn’t going to sink into a brooding spiral again. “Which means Bentley’s stuck in something potentially unstable.”

           “Unfortunately, yes.” Filara pinched the screen back into nonexistence. “And because Alcor is as powerful as he is, even the ward alone might not be enough. There’s possibly another element, which would destabilize it even further. Bentley could be younger when he comes out. He could have grown extra limbs. Maybe he knows more languages than he knew going in. Maybe he loses the ability to write, but gains the ability to telepathically communicate. Everything we know about unstable pocket dimensions comes from a long time ago when they were new and unrefined, and when you add magic to magic, weird things happen.”

           Torako closed her eyes and took a deep breath. “Okay. Okay. So we need—we need a good wardist. Who knows their stuff, and is connected to the warding professional world, and it can’t be Meung-soo because I hate her and also I don’t trust her to know enough after being kept in the dark about her own nephew. Fuck.”

           Next to her, Lata slept on, curled around Fuzzles the beagle. Torako wished she was five and the world was uncomplicated again. She’d also settle for a long nap, at this point.

           “I’m sorry,” Filara said, quietly. “The downside of casting your net wide, is, well, you don’t really know the super serious pros very well. Especially ones who don’t thinktank, and do stuff instead. I can’t help you there.”

           Dipper straightened up. He looked solidly in the realm of his 20s now. That was both a promising and frankly miraculous sign, considering the situation was ‘Bentley trapped in an unstable affront against the laws of dimensional boundaries’ and his reaction to Bentley’s situation before this particular calamity. Torako was unable to wrap her head around how his brain worked, sometimes. “I do.”

           Torako couldn’t even muster the energy to raise her eyebrows at him. “You do.”

           “Yes.” He nodded, and stood. “Soos’s reincarnation’s mom is a wardist. She told me.”

           “Who?” Torako asked. She couldn’t remember a Soos. Then she registered the word ‘reincarnation’ attached to Soos, and not knowing made more sense. Except, “When did you meet Soos’s reincarnation?”

           “Last week,” Dipper said. “She gave me ice cream in exchange for homework. It was a nice deal. But, Soos’s reincarnation’s mom. She can help us. Definitely.”

           Torako narrowed her eyes in confusion. “But…does she know you’re you?”

    ��      Dipper reached over Lata and grabbed Torako’s hand. She swore as she fought to keep her alcohol right-way up. “If she doesn’t now, then she absolutely will in about five seconds!”

           “Wait, wait, where are they, Dipper?” Torako asked, but it was too late—she felt the tug across her body, and they were elsewhere.

           Filara stared at the place Torako and Alcor had once been.

           “Darling,” she called, after a few moments.

           “Yes?” Tommy yelled back.

           “Our guests left with a towel and a tumbler of your lemon cocktail,” she said. She tilted her head at Lata and Fuzzles, and added, “Also, they left sans child.”

           There was a clang. Tommy appeared moments later at the entrance to the sitting room, staring at the empty spots on the couch, then at the backpack still on the floor.

           “Dipshits,” Tommy said. She sighed. “I’ll call Lata’s parents and update them on the situation, then.”

           “Thank you, darling,” Filara said. She stood, and stretched, and then stepped over to give Tommy a kiss on the cheek. “I appreciate it.”

           Tommy grinned, kissed her back on the cheek. “Always, dear heart.”

           On the couch, Lata shifted next to Fuzzles, but kept sleeping.

[transcendence-au]

So, out of curiosity, what exactly are moffios?

Sugar bombs which are only considered cereal because they’re marketed that way. The grain in them is only there to hold the sweet stuff together and keep it from completely dissolving into the milk. They come in “flavors,” including tropical twist, chunks-o-chocolate, and super sour stars (glow-in-the-dark!), but Torako favors the original. Bentley maintains (from his limited experience) that there cannot be any discernible difference in taste between these varieties because the pure saccharine hit to the tastebuds would surely override anything else. 

They’re most popular with college kids and young adults who, upon attaining freedom from parental oversight, feel free to indulge in all the sugary goodness they maybe weren’t allowed very often (if at all) as kids.

Sometimes there are limited edition pop-culture flavor or marketing variants. The one time they came out with an Alcor the Dreambender blend (demonically delicious), Torako ate nothing but moffios for breakfast for months.

[untiziowo]

summer fun

[untiziowo]

[untiziowo]

roommates

[skia-oura]

Orange Lilies, 5/?

A/N:  HEY HEADS UP At the end of the chapter, there is a very short section with non-consensual kissing. This is a dream. It doesn't actually happen to the character in question. BUT it still happens and you need to be aware of that.

Also please do not expect another chapter so fast because this was a literal miracle. Also I was excited to write this, so it happened. :D Enjoy!!

Prologue // Previous  // Next 

Ao3 ff.net

Chapter 4: Olla Summons a Tutor

           Wednesday went by in the same rush of slow-cook tension as the day before it. Torako, exhausted from her bout of sleep paralysis the night before, and Bentley, exhausted by the idea of her targeted by the very demon she’s hunting, decided to take Thursday afternoon off. Bentley invited Meung-soo over for dinner, reasoning that it was less expensive anyways. Meung-soo agreed and was apparently excited enough to send Bentley a virtual sticker. He gushed over it for ages. Torako agreed to be on call for the evening in exchange for not having to physically be at the police station. Most of it was a waiting game at that point, and Torako would rather be called in when she was needed rather than sit around and do nothing. The magical creature disappearances had died down after they’d been connected to the cultists, the robbery at the magitech appliance store had been labeled a dead end, and nobody was turning up incapable of moving. Torako worried, of course—why did cultists need that many magical creatures? Why was the demon taking so long to strike? Were they summoning more demons?—but there was honestly nothing to do about it.

           Which is why, at 15:22, she was pushing a cart along at the closest Mizzle Twizzle Market and pulling things off the highest shelves for Bentley. For example, a package of assorted specialty fruits from the Californian Island Federation that he needed for dessert.

           “Why do they insist on putting that stuff up high, anyways?” Bentley groused, ticking the fruits off their shopping list on his phone. “It’s so stupid.”

           “Not priority for shoppers,” Torako said. “Or they hate short people.” She put the bag in the cart and leaned against the shelf. “What’s next?”

           Bentley muttered to himself for a moment before biting his lip. “I have a bunch of veg on the list next, and after that is fish, but I could swear there was something else before we got there. Bread? No, not bread.”

           “Were we just shopping for tonight or for later as well?” Torako bent over and looked at the list from above. She wasn’t a champion at upside-down reading, but she was pretty proficient.

           “I was only thinking tonight,” Bentley said, moving out of the way of another shopper and their two rambunctious children. “But I just can’t think of what other fruit we’d need for dinner…”

           Torako scrolled down the list with her forefinger and let out a sound of realization at the same time Bentley did. Nearly in tandem, they said, “The pineapple!”

           “Canned or fresh, though?” Torako said.

           “Canned, of course,” Bentley said, as somebody who’d grown up in a household with a stricter budget. “Superior to fresh in taste.”

           “But in terms of nutrient value, isn’t fresh better?” Torako asked. She grinned at him. “You know, for somebody who always reminds me about how awful Moffios are for you…”

           Bentley groaned and pushed the cart into the vegetable section. “Skies above, Tora, the Hellsugar is in a completely other league. Don’t even compare them.”

           Torako ruffled his hair, then reached around him to snag a package of long-stemmed mushrooms from the aisle display. She tossed them into the cart. “Okay, okay, I won’t. So if we’re just shopping for tonight, I’m going to guess we aren’t going to pick up some sugary stuff for our buddy Dip? Like—oh! Dip-paddle-pops for Dip-paddle-pops. He loves ice cream, it’s practically his name, it’s perfect. He’d love it and hate it.”

           Bentley made a small noise. He hefted an onion in one hand, weighed it, and then put it back. “I’d usually say no, but…maybe? And maybe some Gummy gums too?”

           “You planning on calling then?” Torako said. She relaxed her shoulders, cocked one hip and set her hand on it. Parent with two children between the fruits and the vegetables, two kids throwing oranges as hard as they could at the floor just to see them bounce up off the produce shield. Centaur looking at the assorted donuts and shifting his hooves like he was indulging in some guilty pleasure. Hooded figure heading from breads to meats, cart filled with an alarming number of apples and a single loaf of pumpernickel. There was nobody close enough to overhear Ben and Tora’s conversation.

           Still, better safe than sorry. She was pretty sure the police station had contacted businesses about installing mics and cams to catch cultists with more ease. Torako wasn’t so sure about that move, but desperate times, desperate measures. The cultists needed to be caught, the demon needed to be removed. Period.

           Not that they’d been having much luck on that count, but it was better than just sitting and doing nothing.

           “I’m thinking about it,” Bentley said. He found an onion that met his standards, set it in the cart, and then pushed down to the eggplants. “He hasn’t been home for days, not since he went to babysit Lata.”

           “I mean, everything’s fine, right?” Torako made a face at one of the cucumbers for sale, and set her sights higher up the pile in the hopes that it would be better quality. “Do we know that?”

           Behind her, the cart’s anti-grav boosters hummed a little as the cart was moved. “Actually, Kanti sent me a mail this morning while I was at work. She wanted to know if she could get into contact with him through me, because the usual methods weren’t working.”

           “More babysitting?” Torako snagged one cucumber, and then two because she couldn’t remember how many they had in the stasis fridge. “So soon? That’s odd.”

           “Mmm, no, not babysitting.” Bentley, when she turned around, had moved on from eggplant to squash, phone in his pocket for the moment. “She just wanted to talk with him. Apparently, Lata’s learned several new words in the space of a night, and that she has a new friend named Tommy and that she and her Uncle now have a Big Secret and she Can’t Say What It Is.”

           “So, she’s understandably concerned.” Torako put the cucumbers in the cart.

           Bentley nodded, picked up a smaller sweet-squash, and turned around. He held it in his hands, and looked down at it while leaning against the produce display. “Honestly, I am too. Maybe a little about Lata, but…”

           “This isn’t like him, I get it.” Torako leaned over the cart and stroked Bentley’s cheek with the back of her fingers. “We can try calling him on Friday, maybe? It’ll give us time to double check the house, prep, all that.”

           Bentley leaned into the back of her hand and let out a soft breath. His shoulders slumped. She leaned in closer and pecked him on the forehead. As she did so, Bentley whispered, “You sure we can’t do it tonight? Before dinner? I’m feeling a little anxious about it. What if something’s happened?”

            “He’s a strong guy, he can take care of himself.” Torako pressed her forehead to his. She could smell his shampoo—coconut milk, hint of cinnamon. “At least, he can for another day. Nothing can get him down for long.”

           “Except himself,” Bentley murmured. He pressed back, probably shifting his weight from his heels to his toes. “That’s what worries me.”

            “I know,” Torako said. She pulled back a little to look Ben in the eye and lowered her voice. “But things are…pretty tense. With the situation, you know, and I don’t—I don’t want a mistake on our end to ruin things for us. I know the wards have worked before, but…We’ve come so close in the past. I don’t want that. We don’t have enough time before your aunt comes over to…make sure. That calling him would be fine.”

           Bentley’s mouth twisted. He looked away, squash still in both hands. His brow was wrinkled, and the skin at the edges of his eyes was tight. “I know,” he whispered. “I don’t like it, but I know.”

           Torako stroked his cheek again to get him to look at her. “I get it, sweetheart. I don’t like it either. But we’re—we’re not in college. We’re not as young anymore, we’ve got to take things a little more carefully.”

           Bentley laughed. “We’re twenty-seven,” Bentley said. “It’s not like we’re fifty.”

           “Still,” Torako said with a little grin. “I’d rather be cautious. I don’t want you going anywhere, no more than I want Dip to.”

           He reached out and punched her lightly in the shoulder. “Well, good thing I don’t plan on going anywhere. You don’t either, right?”

           Torako reached out and ruffled his hair. Bentley squawked and tried to hit away her hand with one of his. “You’re stuck with me, Benny-boy. What’s next on the list?”

           “Fish,” Bentley said. “And some chicken. Ready to go over to the meat section?”

           Torako waggled her eyebrows. “Only if I get to know it real well first.”

           Bentley sputtered and smacked her, squash still in one arm. She cackled and danced out of the way.

           “That was a good one, and you know it!” she crowed. She missed Dipper backing her up, but she could handle it on her own for a bit. Besides, Dipper was missing out—Bentley’s embarrassed, indignant face was the best.

           “I should never take you shopping!” Bentley said, putting down the squash. “Never! You’re a menace!”

           He still followed her to the meat section, though.

-

           “Immortality sucks, you know that?”

           Grocknar the Destroyer opened one of his three eyes. He did not look very impressed, but Dipper didn’t let that stop him from continuing.

           “I know it’s not actually immortality,” he continued, aware in a very dim way that as all things end, so too would he, “but it may as well be. I exist so much longer than…than them.”

           Grocknar the Destroyer had just come back from giving some poor kid a nightmare about centipedes crawling up her body and devouring her bite by bite. He was pretty exhausted, which was why he hadn’t moved like all the other nightmares had once they realized Alcor the Dreambender was in a Mood. Dipper didn’t even know how long he’d been sitting there with his nightmare sheep before he started speaking.

           “And when you pair the immortality with omniscience…” Dipper trailed off. He reached down and tugged grass out of the ground, one strand at a time. It always grew back. At least the grass looked and acted the same when it did that.

           The nightmare snorted and turned onto his other side, back to Dipper. Dipper was the boss here though, so Dipper didn’t care what his minions did. He just kept pulling grass, mentally pulling all his thoughts into order.

           “I keep seeing them die,” he confessed to Grocknar. “I keep seeing all the ways they can die, and I was able to push it aside at first because it didn’t happen too often, but—”

           But then Philip died. Philip died, and Dipper had never told Bentley but he’d seen that possible death of Philip’s. He’d seen Philip trip and fall and die for absolutely no reason. And Dipper shook it off, because Bentley was eighteen and had just gotten back from that nightmare school tour and he needed comfort in his father. He didn’t need to be told Dipper had seen Philip die—like he had seen Philip die at eighty-seven, of stress due to overwork, or peacefully at a hundred and four, or in a magical storm at sixty-two. So he’d put it aside, and then forgotten about it, until days after Philip’s funeral when Dipper had the sudden realization that he’d seen Philip die like that. He never, ever wanted to tell Bentley.

           “After that, I tried so hard to keep it down, but they came more and more often and I keep thinking what if? What if it actually happens like that? I can’t—I can’t save them. Not from something like that, not without something big in return.” Dipper dug his claws into the imaginary earth of the Mindscape, envisioned what the granules of dirt would feel like and willed the sensation into being. He kept staring down at the ground. “And now I just keep thinking—is it worth it? They’re here for such a short time, and it hurts so much when they leave. The more people I know, the more it hurts.”

           He clenched his hand so hard the pressure could turn earth into stone. He imagined that too, made it happen. When he pulled his hand out of the earth, Dipper opened it to see an unassuming rock, brown and rough and completely solid. “But—but Bentley said it’s not fair to just rely on him,” he said. “So I can’t do that. I can’t hurt him, and if I’m not there, I’m not hurt when he leaves too. Win-win, right?”

           Dipper didn’t see it, too engrossed with being God of the Mindscape along with his relationships with mortal beings, but Grocknar the Destroyer opened his other two eyes and then rolled them all. Dipper did hear him baah, though.

           He dropped the rock and looked over at Grocknar. He scowled. “Really, Grocknar?”

           Grocknar stared at him over one smoke-wool shoulder.

           “I am not being dramatic! This is completely legitimate thinking!”

           The nightmare had the gall to baah him in the face. In the face. Dipper sputtered.

           “You—you insolent—really? Seriously? You went there?”

           Grocknar shook his head in an equivalent of “well, if the shoe fits,” and Dipper stood in a huff. In a fit of pettiness, he waved his hand and removed the grass from the ground around them, as far as a mile out.

           “I’ll show you dramatic,” Dipper hissed. Grocknar made a noise of discontent and finally stood up. He stared Dipper in his eyes, and they glowered at each other for who knows how long.

           A summons tugged at Dipper. Dipper had originally brushed all them off—especially small ones like this one—but he decided that he needed a distraction. From Grocknar, but from everything else too.

           “I’m going,” Dipper said. “Because I have a job to do, an actual job that keeps all of you safe because it builds my power levels and I don’t eat you unlike other demons. No need to thank me. You’re welcome.”

           Grocknar bleated out something along the lines of “I wasn’t going to thank you, good riddance.” Dipper bristled, made the ‘I’m watching you’ gesture, and then blipped off to answer his summons. Like a good demon. Emphasis on Good.

           Dipper closed his eyes as he materialized, and then boomed out, “W̕h̷̡͘ó ̷̀͜ d҉aŗęs͞ ͘҉̶ s̴u̕͜mm̴̀o҉̕n̡ ͢ Alc̴or ̨҉̧ t̀͘h̛̀e̸̢  ͡Ḑré́͠a̡̕͡m҉̀͠b͘͢e͟n̢d͏͜e҉͟r̡?”

           “Woah, dude, that is so wicked,” a young person breathed. Dipper cracked one eye open and stared at the kid that summoned him. Their hair was pulled back into braids, ribbons tying each end in a haphazard cacophony of color. Dipper opened the other eye and stared a little more, feeling his metaphorical heart sink.

           Of course the first summons he answered was that of a reincarnation.

           Dipper scowled. “What do you want, Soos?”

           “Cool nickname but nah, I’m Olla,” she said. Her accent was very British. She snapped her fingers at him and grinned wide. “Last name is Sussally, though, so maybe Soos would catch?”

           Dipper inhaled deep. “What. Ìs̴ ͏i͡t?”

           “Like, okay dude,” Olla said, scooting their desk chair over. It hovered over the floor, complaining a little at the food wrappers on the ground. “So, some ancestor of mine apparently did this, so like, you’re open for homework deals, right? Because Tech class is still kicking my ass and we’re ending term. I’m screwed if I don’t get help now!”

           “And your parents are…” Dipper asked. He screwed up his mouth into a scowl and sat mid-air, reclining as elegantly as possible.

           “Haha, Mom’s not really big on Tech stuff? She’s into wards. Big into wards. No room in her head for other stuff, you know? All her brain power is,” Olla made a sound that was maybe supposed to sound like an engine, and wiggled her fingers. “occupied, you know? And Dad’s away on business. Busy busy dude, over in Kabul. Doin some kind of construction business for his boss, right? So I don’t have anybody.”

           “Friends? Teachers? The police?”

           Olla hummed and kicked her legs. Her toes brushed just shy of the air contained by the circle, and Dipper watched them with an absentminded hunger. Like, he wasn’t consumed by it, but also he wouldn’t say no if somebody offered him a bite.

           “Nah. Too late. Homework due tomorrow. Left it too long, you know? I tried to get it, but none of the answers turned out right. Secondary’s pretty hard, and this year is A-levels.”

           “So you summoned a demon.” At least the candles were scentless.

           Olla shrugged. “Hey, dude, desperate times.”

           Dipper stared at her. Olla didn’t know desperation—but she would, he knew, because he saw her in five years, just shy of twenty-four years old and homeless as England suffered its worst economic downturn in two centuries, and she starved on the street with the other homeless people until she tried to interrupt a scuffle between two people over a discarded slice of pizza, thin and sad and two-days-in-the-snow, because then one pulled a knife and stabbed first her in the gut then the other in the throat and she laid there, bleeding out and wishing that—

           “So, you know,” Olla said, blind to his inattention. He shook himself out of it and concentrated. “I figured that great great whatever-greats gramps Cass did it, so why can’t I?”

           Dipper’s mood soured further. Not only was this Soos, but her ancestor was a Cassie reincarnation. Of course. Of course! What was next, her father was Candy? Mother, Pacifica? Maybe Stan was her brother! Ford her Uncle! Lionel could be her second cousin twice removed. Why not?

           “Like, I figure, a bowl of ice cream a question is a pretty good deal. They’re long questions. Nobody was really clear on how Gramps Cass did it—not like he kept a record, you know? Whaddya think, dude Alcor? Bowl of ice cream,” she held up the bowl in question, reaching back to her desk, “filled with like what, three scoops per question. I got like ten of the suckers, so that’s like thirty scoops. That’s so many scoops.”

           Dipper blinked in interest. His stomach—kind of—gurgled, especially after days of no deals plus eating Torako’s sleep paralysis with 0 reward whatsoever. Maybe he could deal with Soos and his army of reincarnation relatives. “How big is the scoop?”

           Olla held up the scoop in question.

           “Holy shit,” Dipper whispered to himself. Olla nodded solemnly. Dipper stared at the bowl of the scoop, which was probably the size of his fist. Dipper could definitely deal with Olla and her probable army of reincarnation relatives. Especially for Soos. Soos was great, whatever reincarnation, even if he was maybe going to die at fifty flat, caught in a malfunctioning elevator that just wouldn't open, until she was so starved that she died on the way to the hospital.

           Dipper closed his eyes, and counted to three. Then he used the promise of a deal (tilted way in his favor, because that was like five, seven tubs of ice cream right there) to push the flashes of omniscience down. “What flavor is the ice cream?”

           Olla’s face lit up. Her eyes were wide, bright against her skin. “Oh dude, I’ve got the best flavors! Turtle Tracks, Loch Ness Mint, Platypus Sweet Potato, Cookies and Cream, you name it! We love ice cream. I mean, I’m gonna have to tell Mom that I used a bunch to summon you, but she’ll understand. Probably.”

           Not like Dipper was going to complain about parenting and listening to one’s elders in the face of a deal like this. “All right kid, shake it and you got a deal.”

           Olla grinned wide and stretched her hand out. Blue flames lit up their hands. Dipper felt that heady rush of a deal course through him, and shuddered with the force of it. It felt so good. And it would feel better when he got his ice cream, so he held out a hand and gestured ‘gimme.’ “Payment?”

           Soos’s reincarnation laughed. She dragged a freezer bag out from under her desk and opened a tub of Platypus Sweet Potato. Dipper tracked her hand as she took the ice cream spoon and dealt him one, two, three heaping scoops of heaven. If heaven existed, Dipper was sure it would be ice cream.

           (more seriously, he sees himself with all the people he has loved, with Mabel and Mira, Henry and Lata, the same soul split into all the different faces it’s taken, and everything is good, clear blue skies in Oregon where the summer never ends, it never ends and nobody grows old, nobody suffers, and he is normal again, but Dipper knows that will never happen)

            “So lay it on me,” Dipper said, taking the spoon Olla gave him because eating with his hands has not been very well received in the Pines-Lam-Farkas household, “what do you need help with?”

           Olla reached over for her school pad, propped between two thick books that look well-loved, and turned it on. She handed it to Dipper, who held it between his thumb and index finger while looking at the question.

           “That’s easy,” he said after five seconds. “The first answer is the Lili’uokalani Sequence, named after Ilana Ming’s favorite historical monarch. There you go, answer given, write it down and we’ll go to the next part of the question.”

           “Not so fast.” Olla took out a physical pen and paper and settled into her chair, looking at him expectantly. “I don’t just want the answers. You have to explain. Ilana Ming made this sequence? What sequence is it? What does it do? Why do we use it?”

           Dipper stared at Olla. “You…” he said, “don’t need all that info to answer the question?”

           Olla rolled her eyes. “Dude, I know that. But, like, I need to remember it so the more I can connect it to, the more I’ll remember? I know my brain, you know.”

           He couldn’t help it. He laughed, smile a little too wide and laughter too reedy, but he did it anyways. “What’s your favorite subject then, kiddo?”

           “Like, books, of course. English lit. I mean, I dunno that I want to do it, like research it, for a living—teaching seems super cool though—but like, you looked around my room at all, dude? I guess ice cream is pretty distracting though, so you get a pass.” Olla waved one hand around as she spoke.

           Dipper looked around, and sure enough, there were books everywhere. Most of them were fiction, but there were a couple non-fiction scattered around. There were a couple of old Twin Souls books in the corner—but Dipper told himself they weren’t there, and there were plenty of other good books in the room that he could ignore the awful presence of the Hell Books. As it was, though, he was never introducing Olla to Torako. Never.

           Batoor, on the other hand, would benefit from an English conversation partner, so maybe Dipper should offer to get them in contact with—

           Dipper shut that thought down hard. Maybe he was making an exception for Soos and delicious ice cream, but that didn’t mean he was going back to everybody. Not yet. Not until he had everything figured out. Not until he figured out if it was worth it.

           (he thought of Bentley and Torako and hoped, really hoped, that it was)

           “All right then,” Dipper said. He swiped to a new note-taking tab and started to write out the sequence. “When Ming did her stuff, she was looking for a way to more smoothly integrate magics into technology…”

_

           It turned out that Torako was right about not having time to summon Dipper before Meung-soo came over at six thirty; they had just finished setting the table with all the food when Meung-soo showed up, nervous and fiddling with her jewelry.          

           “Come on in!” Bentley said, stepping aside and letting his aunt over the threshold. “We just finished everything, Torako’s really excited to meet you.”

           “I’m excited to meet her too,” Meung-soo said. “I’m sorry your other partner couldn’t make it.”

           Bentley swallowed down the disappointment he felt at Dipper’s absence. “It’s okay, he just ended up being busier than any of us expected. We thought he’d be back in town, but he’s not around.”

           “Oh,” Meung-soo said. She took off her shoes in the entryway, then stepped into the dining room. Bentley shut the door behind her. “What does he do?”

           “A little of everything, honestly,” Torako called from across the kitchen island separating the kitchen from the dining room. “He’s selling stuff right now I think? Honestly, he picked up the job so fast he didn’t have any time to tell us about it. Hi, I’m Torako, it’s nice to meet you! I’d shake your hand, but they’re wet so give me a moment and I’ll be right there.”

           Meung-soo laughed, one hand partially covering her mouth. She had a really nice laugh, Bentley thought. He felt a little warm and giddy, the emotions slowly pushing aside his worry and upset about Dipper.

           “I’ll do that,” Meung-soo said. She smiled at Bentley. “Where should I sit?”

           There were four chairs at the table. Bentley pointed at the one that wasn’t Dipper’s, and said, “Right there, if that’s all right! Can you eat with chopsticks?”

           Meung-soo laughed again. “Of course I can! Anjan grew up in Korea and insisted we be able to, even if Ma was Mexican and Mama was, in her words, a Jamaican-European mutt.”

           The grandparents again. Bentley kept smiling anyways. “Oh! Do your names come from any particular heritage?”

           “Korean,” Meung-soo said, standing by the chair. “But Soo-jan and I were raised Catholic, like Ma wanted. I eventually left the church, but Soo-jan practiced a little. Did Philip ever raise you in a religion?”

           Bentley shook his head. “No. He explained them to me whenever I was interested, and took me to whatever services I was curious about, but nothing was ever enforced. Torako?”

           “Buddhist, with a sprinkling of Islam from Dad and Christianity from Momma Mai. Don’t really do much of any except for watching the New Year’s broadcast from Kyoto, though. We’re not super religious.” Torako walked up to Meung-soo and stuck out her hand. “Torako Lam, nice to meet a relative of Bentley’s.”

           “Meung-soo Ellig,” his aunt replied, setting her hand in Torako’s. They shook hands. “It’s good to meet you too. I’m glad you’ve been there for Bentley; as a fellow introvert, I know it’s hard to make friends. Especially ones that last.”

           Torako shot Bentley a grin. “Well, I’m pretty hard to say no to. I was really persistent in High School, and I’ve tempered it a bit but I’m still hard to shake. Aren’t I, Ben?”

           “It’s true,” Bentley said. “Please sit down! Would you like anything in particular to drink? We’ve got some wine, or something non-alcoholic if that’s more to your tastes.”

           “Non-alcoholic if you don’t mind,” his aunt said. She sat down. “Do you have some tea?”

           Bentley thanked whatever power that was out there (that wasn’t demonic) that they had thought to pick up a bottle of barley tea. “Yes, actually. Torako?”

           “Water! What’re you getting?”

           Bentley flicked her shoulder as he passed her on the way to the fridge. He pulled out the tea, then reached into a pocket in the right that cooled rather than chilled, and withdrew a bottle of white wine. “Well, I figure that since I’m not on call tonight, I can have a glass.”

            “You’re a little shit,” Torako said. Bentley laughed and pulled down two regular glasses and one wineglass. “Really,” she continued as Bentley poured their drinks, “I should be the one running away. Bentley looks sweet, but he’s a vicious bugger.”

           “Oh?” Meung-soo said. “I wouldn’t have guessed that!”

           “I live with Torako and Tyrone,” Bentley said. He looked up and caught Meung-soo’s eye before cocking an eyebrow. “It’s a survival trait that was bred in me. I have to be nasty sometimes, what with the shenanigans I put up with.”

           “Yeah, we were pretty awful in undergrad, weren’t we,” Torako mused. She leaned on the table, resting her chin on the palm of her hand. The light from the fake window up above, reflecting weather from the sky outside, lit her up and surrounded her in a warm glow. It didn’t quite reach Meung-soo, but it glinted off her earrings and the metal hoops around her wrists, inlaid with wardic spells he didn’t know the meanings of. Bentley thought about the dusty art supplies somewhere in the office room’s closet. He thought about crafts, or painting, for the first time in ages. Maybe he would dig them out on Saturday or Sunday.

           “I think most undergrads are pretty awful,” Meung-soo said. “They’re still children. Just…transitioning into more responsibility.”

           Bentley picked up all three drinks in both hands. “Not that graduate students are that much better. Look at Torako; she’s still in school.”

           “Hey, I’m better!” Torako protested, taking her water from him. Meung-soo reached over to do the same, and Bentley sat down.

           “Says the woman who tried to keep my face red the entire time we were at the grocery store today,” Bentley said. “Starting with penis jokes and not really straying outside that realm of humor.”

           Meung-soo choked. Bentley felt embarrassed for a moment for letting that out, and Torako guffawed. “You’re doing plenty fine for yourself there!”

           “Shut your face,” Bentley muttered. “You’re stupid and your opinion doesn’t count.”

           “So,” Meung-soo said as Torako stuck out her tongue. “What’s for dinner? It looks delicious.”

           Bentley praised his aunt for her diversionary tactics. But not out loud, because he’d embarrassed himself enough for one evening. “I did a few dishes! There’s cucumber salad, and tomato with mozzarella drizzled with soy-sauce, steamed sweet-squash sprinkled with cinnamon, fish-chicken pinapple-ginger stir-fry with noodles, and then fruit dessert afterwards.”

           “I can’t say I’m much of a vegetarian,” Meung-soo said carefully, side-eyeing him with an expression Bentley found hauntingly familiar but was unable to place on her face, “but I won’t say no to a good meat dish, and it looks very appetizing.”

           There was silence for a moment. Meung-soo turned bright red, and then Torako smacked the table twice and pointed at Bentley. “Oooooh! OOOOH!”

           Bentley stared at Meung-soo. He mentally rescinded his praise of her. “Why would you do that,” he asked, tone flat.

           She buried her face in her hands. “It seemed like a good idea at the time,” she said.

           “You’re my aunt,” Bentley realized in horror. “My aunt made a dick joke at me. Why is this my life.”

           Torako cackled louder. “You’re stuck with her! I love her already. Meung-soo, I love you. Can we keep you?”

           “I’m sorry,” Meung-soo said between her fingers. “I’m in a committed relationship, and while I’m flattered by the attention, incest and women aren’t…really my things.”

           Bentley wanted to slide under the table. This time, he covered his own face in horror, and tried to drown out the sound of Torako laughing so hard she couldn’t breathe. He almost wished she would choke.

           At least Dipper wasn’t there, Bentley thought. It would have made things about ten times worse.

           After that, dinner passed in a manner that was less inundated with sexual innuendo, thankfully. The food was good, the company was better, and they were on dessert when Meung-soo asked Bentley if he’d be willing to see her off on Saturday.

           “Of course! Which port?” Bentley gathered all their dishes and set them on the kitchen island to be cleaned later. “Is it Hames Memorial?”

           “If that’s HMM, then yes. I’m set to leave at eleven, but with security and everything I need to be there by ten.” Meung-soo sipped at her tea. “We could meet up for breakfast, if that’s fine? All of us?”

           Bentley looked at Torako. “Does that sound good?” He was only dimly upset with the prospect of having to wake up early. It’s not like he could see his aunt every day, after all.

           “As long as I’m not called in to work, sure!” Torako said. She swirled the water in her glass. “I’ll put it down to a tentative yes.”

           “They’d better hire you after all of this,” Bentley said. He sat back down, held his wineglass in one hand. “What kind of intern is on call?”

           “The demonology kind, where all my coursework is literally this internship,” Torako said. “But yeah, I’d be pretty salty if they didn’t at least offer, with this last case especially. I hope they pay overtime. I keep forgetting to ask.”

           “When do you graduate?”

           “Mid-may, thankfully,” Torako said. “I’ll be so happy when I’m actually employed. Sure, I get some insurance through the school, but job insurance is like ten times better. Just another month! I can do this!”

           “Good luck then!” Meung-soo said, smile wide and eyes creased shut. “Let me know the date and I’ll make sure to send something. Are your parents coming out?”

           “Of course they are,” Torako said. “They’re getting a hotel, but they’ll be there for the ceremony and it’ll be great!”

           Bentley knew that another thing that would happen was Torako’s parents pestering her about coming home, about how there were plenty of demonology jobs in the CIF, even if that included listings not on Minte de Daos. It was safer there. Demonology laws were tighter. She never could explain that that’s why she couldn’t go home, that she didn’t want to go back. Bentley…wasn’t looking forward to that conversation.

           “I’m so glad,” Meung-soo said. She opened her mouth to ask something else, then looked at Bentley and her expression shuttered. Bentley could guess what the question was, and was relieved when she changed the subject. Torako’s parents might have come out for him last year, but it hadn’t been the same. “Oh, I’m sorry, what time is…”

           “8:30,” Torako said. The light above had dimmed halfway through dinner, prompting their lights to slowly turn on. “Busy night?”

           “I just have a very early meeting tomorrow,” Meung-soo said. She stood up. “If it’s not too rude of me…”

           “Of course!” Bentley said, standing up as quickly as he dared. “You’re here on business, you don’t have to feel obligated to spend all your time with us. Really, meeting you has been…it’s been so nice.”

           Meung-soo stared at him, almost like she wasn’t seeing Bentley. Then she smiled, eyes soft with heartache, and reached out to hold his cheek, the bracelets sliding down her arm. He let her, a little stunned.

           “Thank you, Bentley,” she said, softly. “It has been my pleasure as well.”

           He smiled back as she dropped her hand. “I’ll see you Saturday, though! We’ll say goodbye then.”

           Meung-soo stepped back and laughed a little. “Of course! I’m sorry for being so sentimental and silly. We’ll see each other again.”

           Bentley and Torako saw her out the door, then retreated to the kitchen to do the dishes. They spent the first few minutes in silence, bodies moving around each other on autopilot, comfortable in their spaces and comfortable with the routine of cleaning.

           It was when they were halfway through dinner dishes, Bentley drying the serving bowl they had used for the cucumber salad, that Torako said, “I like her.”

           Bentley grinned at Torako. “Right? She’s really nice. She’s trying.”

           “What has she said about Philip?”

           Bentley set the bowl on the counter. “Not a lot, and nothing one way or the other. Apparently, they disagreed about some stuff after Mom died, and that’s why there’s been radio silence on her end. Anyway, most of it’s been about my mom, and some about my grandparents. Her parents.”

           “The ones you never met,” Torako said. She set a few sudsy spoons in the sink for him to rinse off. “The ones who never sent you like cards or anything.”

           “Yeah.” Bentley shrugged. “But I think she loved them, and they loved her, so of course she’ll talk about them. She really loved my mom too.”

           Torako hummed. “You think that’s why she got in contact with you?”

           Bentley laughed a little. “I don’t have to ask to know that’s why.” He dried the spoons, opened the cutlery drawer, and set them in there. “But…I guess that doesn’t mean I’m not glad to meet her.”

           She didn’t say anything back to him, just bumped her hip into his and kissed him on the top of his head. “I’m happy then,” Torako said. “I’m happy for you as long as you’re happy.”

           They continued to clean in silence, broken only by the occasional, off-tune strain of hummed song from Torako. When she was just finishing up, Bentley said, “I…I can’t say I don’t wish I had somebody of Dad’s, though, you know?”

           “I get that.” Torako reached over with sudsy hands and rinsed the last dish before giving it to him. “But, I guess if nothing else—you have us? You have me. And Dipper, when he comes back.”

           Bentley swallowed. “If he comes back.”

           “He will,” Torako said. “Even if I have to summon him and drag his ass back here myself. Which we’re doing tomorrow night, remember? After we check all the wards.”

           “All right.” Bentley took a deep breath, and tried to push any fears about Dipper’s nastier tendencies out of mind. “All right, tomorrow.”

           “Also, speaking of wards, just of a different flavor,” Torako said, reaching over him to snag the pile of plates, “do you know what the ones on her bracelets were? You saw them, right?”

           “I keep forgetting to ask, or remembering at a bad time,” Bentley said. He handed Torako the bowls, watched her stretch to set them on the shelf. “If I had to make a guess, I’d say they were memory enhancers?”

           “You can read wards?” Torako’s eyebrows shot up.

           “Oh no,” Bentley said, shaking his head and holding his arms up in an ‘x.’ “No, I can’t. Meung-soo just mentioned how her memory was much worse than my mom’s, but she kept remembering things I’d said about sigils even though that’s not her field at all.”

           “Makes sense,” Torako said. She looked at him out of the corner of her eye. “That does mean you need to be even more careful about what you say around her, though. If she’s augmenting her memory with a wardic spell, then who knows what she remembers?”

           Bentley nodded. “Yeah. I like her, but…” She hadn’t even met Dipper. He wasn’t sure yet that he would ever introduce Meung-soo Ellig to Alcor the Dreambender.

           “All right then, good talk, good talk,” Torako said, patting him on the back. “What should we do tonight? Watch a couple movies? Make some nifty new shirts that we can throw in Dip’s face when he comes back?”

           Bentley dimmed the lights in the kitchen as they moved to leave it. “Well, who says we can’t do—”

           Torako’s phone rang. She pulled it out of her pocket and answered the call before it had even rung a second time. “Torako, what’s up?”

           Bentley leaned against the kitchen island and watched her expression shift from serious to shocked to determined.

           “That’s—okay, right, I’ll be right over, Officer Nathan. Do I need to—got it, it needs to be broken. Salts? You have all the materials? Right. Right. See you ASAP.” Torako hung up and moved to the front door, calling over her shoulder as she went. “They found proof of a victim, relocated the poor kid to demonic curse-breaking in the hospital general. They’re going to need all the help they can get, because it sounds like a doozy.”

           “Kid?” Bentley asked as she pulled on her jacket.

           “Yeah. What fucker would do that to a kid? Seriously?” Torako turned around and gave him a short kiss on the cheek. She went to leave, but at a sudden, chilling thought, he pulled her back and pecked her on the lips.

           Torako blinked in confusion. “Hey, what’s that for? That’s rare. You usually don’t like that.”

           “I just love you,” he said. “I just…be safe, okay?”

           “Hey, I’m not tackling this on my own,” she said, ruffling his hair. “It’s in a contained area with a whole bunch of other people working to solve the problem.”

           “I mean, if they were nasty enough to go after a kid, who knows what they’d do to the people in charge of the investigation? They’re still out there.” Bentley zipped up her jacket, pulled her close. “Just come home, okay?”

           She hugged him tight. “I will. I’ll keep an eye out and tell the others to too, okay? I love you.”

           “So much.” Bentley whispered into her jacket. Reluctantly he stepped back. “Okay. Do your job, even though you’re just Intern Torako Lam.”

           Torako saluted. “Aye Aye, Head Practitioner Farkas! Reporting to duty!” She winked at him, kissed him on the forehead, and then was gone.

           It was just shy of nine o’clock. Bentley looked at the clock, then at the television set, then at the bedroom. The house was so dark. So quiet. Too quiet. Bentley reached over, and locked the door behind Torako.

           He made himself a hot cocoa, drank it while watching knitting tutorials. He finished them. Then, he washed the mug, showered, changed, and went to bed early with his nightlight on and curled up under the covers on a bed that felt too big for him alone. Bentley slept.

_

           Bentley dreams. He dreams that Dipper comes home, normal, all smiles and laughter until he reaches Torako, and then suddenly she is on the ground crying, her arm ripped off at the elbow instead of just broken. He dreams that Dipper opens his mouth, wide, wide, wide, darkness in its maw and Bentley cannot stop Dipper from swallowing Torako whole. Dipper keeps laughing, and when Bentley hits him, demands to know why, why, why, he turns to Bentley and runs a razor-sharp nail along the wide contour of Bentley’s cheek.

           “B̖̫͊̽́e͑̉̂̄̿̎c̸̞̔̔ͨͤͪ̊̓à̛̜̙͓͕̜̓̀ͣ̾̌ü̫͇̦͎͍̪̒ͬͬ͡s̻̻̻̮̫e͆̇ͪ͠ ͯ̈́y̮̯̙͉͓̯͚͐̾͋̌o͍̥͇͔̅ȕ’͐r̨̹̫e̦͉͖̱̭̜͗ͅ ̖̣̪̽͋ͧ̑ͭ̈́m̳̮̦̤̰y̒ͯ̓̍҉̟͙͔ ̞͉̪̀p͎̮̔̋̄ͦ̊ͫ͞r͛̅̓ͭ̂̔e͖c͈͈͈ͥ̋ͩ̐͟iͭ̿̿̿͏̗͉̲̙o̴ͧ̿̉̌͆͐ͤú̹̾ͤ͊ͨ͛͜s̳͌͐ͤ̃ͮ̚͡ ͚̜̬̰͓̒̌͂M̺̜͙̬͜i̛͚͔z̿͌a͈̜̟̟̘̚r̼̣̠͎͂̀̃̿ͭ͛̏,” Dipper says, in a crackling croon. “A̶̷n̕d͝ ̶y̡͟o͝͝u̷͝ ͏a̡͏re͜ ̛m̨̡͏į͜͝ņę̀,̵҉ ͢mine,̶͜ M͍̫͓̪̜̟̼͕̝̄̽ͫ́̔ͭ̍̈̿̏͆̑͆̋ͥ̐͌̀̚Ḯ̵̡̠̖̻̘̲̝̮̭̻̠̰̈͌ͯ̿͋͒ͦ̇͋̾Ṅ̵̗͖̟̫̪͇̬͓̤͓ͦ̅̓̍̉̽͑ͯ̕͠É̳͔̻̻̈ͧͧ̔́͜͠͝.̴̧̰͍̮̬̦̒ͥ̎ͮ̌́͠͞”

           Dipper leans forward and kisses Bentley, hard, his teeth shredding Bentley’s lips and swallowing his screams the way he’d swallowed Torako, his nails digging into Bentley’s shoulders as he struggled to get away and—

           Bentley dreams. He dreams that his father is at his desk, at home, is alive and well. Bentley walks forward and hugs his father from behind, love bubbling up in his chest, and whispers, “I missed you so, so much, dad.”

           His father continues working. He doesn’t even acknowledge Bentley is there, and the lack of attention makes Bentley pull back a little. “Dad?”

           “Oh, you’re finally home, are you?” Philip says. “Finally could be bothered to come back, then? How magnanimous of you.”

           “Dad?” Bentley steps back. Philip continues to work. “I—I came back as much as I could. It’s just—school was so busy, I was so busy. And I didn’t want Torako to pay for my ticket every time I came back, so I had to work. I’m—I’m sorry.”

           “Those are just excuses,” Philip says. He opens a book, the rasping of its pages loud in the abnormal silence of his office. Where was his music? Bentley always remembered music, but there’s just a loud buzzing sound in the back of his mind. “You were glad to be away from me. Away from your stupid dad who was obsessed with stupid things that alienated him from his family, from his wife’s family, from his friends and from his own son. I bet you were glad when I died.”

           “No!” Bentley steps back forward, his fists clenched. “No, I—I could never be happy about that! I was heartbroken. I still am heartbroken! Dad, I love you!”

           Philip finally turned around. He smiled at Bentley, eyes flat and cold behind his glasses, flickering with static and without reflection. There are orange lilies sprouting from his chest, bright, brighter than anything. “Oh, Benny-boy,” he said. “Don’t lie to yourself. You know better.”

           Bentley opens his mouth to refute, to say that he really, really does love Philip, but—

           Bentley dreams. Bentley stands in front of Torako and Dipper, who are holding hands, staring down their noses at him. They’re frowning, like him being before them is an unpleasant surprise.

           “Guys?” Bentley asks, voice shaking. He doesn’t know why, but Dipper—Dipper makes him remember nightmares of being kissed, of his desires being ignored and his fears being dismissed—and Bentley steps away from them both.

           “What did I ever see in you?” Torako asks, cocking an eyebrow. “You’re not even pretty, and you’d never love me back the way I do you. You’d never give me what I want. Why did I even stick around?”

           “You stuck around for me, darling,” Dipper says, tipping Torako’s face towards him. “I had to stay around my Mizar, so you stuck around for me. I’ll give you what you want. I’m pretty. I can even try to love you. Isn’t that so much better than that thing over there?”

           “Tora? Dipper?” Bentley feels himself crying. “What are you saying? Why are you—”

           “We’re not saying anything you don’t deserve,” Dipper says. He looks at Bentley with accusing eyes. “You can’t live up to the Mizar name. You’ll never live up to it—you’re not as outgoing as her, you’re not as vivacious, you’re not as colorful or bright or anything. You’re not even the right gender,” he sneers.

           “That doesn’t matter, though!” Bentley says. “You told me, it doesn’t—”

           “You’re not Mabel,” Dipper cuts over him, smooth like plasma through steel. “You never will be. At least Torako is Torako to me. She’ll always be Torako to me, won’t you darling?”

           “And you’ll always be Dipper,” Torako says, running the pad of one finger down the side of his cheek. She ignores Bentley, and Bentley can’t decide if that’s better or worse than the absolute derision in her gaze earlier. “My Dipper. My Alcor. I’m so much stronger than him, so much more outgoing. I can be your Mizar, if you want.”

           Dipper purrs, low and dark, and holds Torako closer. Her eyelids flutter lower, half-mast, in a way that Bentley has only seen when she’s playing chicken with Dipper and never for long. “Oh, Torako—I wish you were Mizar. Then I would never have to put up with that thing.”

           Bentley takes a step back as they start to kiss, then another, his heart in his chest as they shut him out entirely. “Guys?” he asks, except his voice is so small he can barely hear it. “Guys?” He—

           Bentley dreams. Bentley does not wake.

Bentley didn’t wake.

_

           The ceremony was long, and vicious. Alû’s claws were sunk deep in the kid, a young cyclops (Ethan, his name was Ethan) whose parents had no shady past and no known enemies. It took Torako, Officer Pillage, and Officer Hsiksa five hours to break the connection, and another half hour to make sure that nothing of its influence was left on the child. He would be traumatized for a long time, and Torako sat with him while his parents and the police talked therapists, talked PTSD and potential sleep-deprivation disorders. Ethan couldn’t do more than shake and stare at nothing, but Torako made sure that she was holding his hands, that he had a physical presence nearby to know that he wasn’t alone.

           He was only nine years old, and Torako was so, so angry, and tired, and frustrated with how reactionary everything they did was. She kept thinking, on the commute home, of ways they could have been more proactive: paired with nonprofits or government agencies to strengthen anti-demon wards, issued pamphlets to families and community members on recognizing the signs of demonic sleep paralysis, anything. More stringent patrols to capture the cultists, stronger penalties for summonings of this nature, more collective responsibility on the part of citizens. Anything. Anything.

           It was almost three AM by the time Torako got to their apartment. She opened the door—odd, Bentley hadn’t locked it?—and slipped off her jacket. Then the hair on the back of her neck, on her arms stood up on end, and she froze. Slowly, she thumbed on the flashlight application on her phone, and pointed it up at the corner formed by the ceiling and the far wall.

           There, Bentley’s sigils were ash-black, dead, stark against the white paint behind them. Torako inhaled deep and sharp, because those should be invisible. That they weren’t meant the sigils had been broken. That they weren’t meant that something had gotten in, something not-Dipper, something demonic, but what could have gotten—

           Magical creatures had been disappearing. The cultists had used those creatures as sacrifices to summon Alû once. They were still out there. There was literally nothing, nothing, stopping them from summoning Alû again. She could hardly breathe. She dialed Officer Nathan and put him on loudspeaker as she began to slowly walk through the house.

           He answered on the third ring. “Torako? What are you calling me for, was there a complication with—”

           “Officer Nathan,” she said, noticing how high her voice was but not caring. “Officer Nathan, my apartment was broken into and the sigils are black.”

           Officer Nathan was quiet for a moment, and then—“Fuck,” he said. “Fuck. Okay. Was Bentley home? Was Tyrone?”

“Bentley was,” Torako said. He wasn’t on the couch. Wasn’t in the kitchen. She moved back to the bedroom, where the door was closed and it was never completely closed, she was so scared.

“If it was Alû, it will fine, you can pull him out of it—”

“Officer Nathan, I think somebody was in my home.” Torako’s breathing was harsh. She reached out to open the door, but didn’t want to just in case—“The bedroom door is shut, it’s never shut, never, not when Bentley goes to sleep because his print is coded not to, what do I do, what do I do?”

“Take your sleeve and open the door,” Officer Nathan said. “I’m coming over. I’m staying on the line, but I’m sending a message for the others to convene at your place.”

“Okay,” Torako said. She could feel herself starting to cry. “Okay, I’m opening the door.” She slid the sleeve of her jacket over her hand and pushed the button to open the door. It couldn’t read her finger, so it just—opened. No silly pre-programmed fanfare, no slow-motion, nothing.

The lights flickered on. The room was empty. The bedsheets were mussed up, the nightlight was on, but Bentley wasn’t there.

Bentley wasn’t there.

“Torako? Torako, is he paralyzed?”

“He’s not here,” Torako said, voice shaking. She couldn’t stand. She dropped to the ground, stared at the empty bed. “He’s not here. He’s gone, he’s gone Officer Nathan, he’s gone.”

“What do you mean—”

“He’s not here!” Torako said, voice shrill and loud. “I fucking mean he’s not here at all, there’s nobody here the house is empty except for me!”

“Did you check the other rooms in the house?” Officer Nathan asked. “Check the bathroom, the office, he might be there—”

“The lights would be on and they’re not, they’re not, they’re not he’s gone Officer he’s gone!” She was crying, crying fuck she never cried she hated crying.

“Torako, I know you’re scared, we’ll be there soon. Just—stay as calm as you can, stay with me Torako, stay with me.”

She couldn’t. Torako dropped the phone onto the ground and held her face in her shaking hands, and tried to control her breathing. But she couldn’t, and by the time Officer Nathan found her, she was bent over, forehead to the ground and hyperventilating into her own hands.

Bentley was gone.