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tysonrunningfox · 6 years ago

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Ripped: Part 6

So much happens in all of these chapters, like, oh my god guys, I’m so stoked about this

Also, @thisisnotberk drew the most beautiful fanart today and it’s my favorite thing and PERFECTLY timed because this chapter is all about Hiccup and Snotlout and you should see how beautiful they are because they’re beautiful. Thank you again!!!!

AO3

Hiccup doesn’t realize his arm is still around Astrid’s shoulders until the front door of her apartment building is securely shut behind them, the hallway quiet except for his heart pounding in his ears and the echo of a scream rattling around his brain.

“Sorry,” he lets go of her arm, hand hanging awkwardly at his side, “I didn’t, um—”

“What do you think that was?” Astrid looks back over her shoulder as she climbs the stairs, keys jingling in her hand. “Should we report it?”

“What like call the cops and say someone screamed downtown?” He follows her, too addled to feel uninvited and too warm from walking back so quickly. He unzips his jacket as she unlocks her front door and leaves it open behind her. “Last time I checked, screaming isn’t illegal.”

“Have you seen the noise violation laws?” She kicks her boots off and starts pacing back and forth in her living room. The walls are bare aside from a single frame that holds what looks like a diploma and the only furniture is a chair and a beat-up coffee table. It looks less like the crime scene photos with Astrid living in it, vibrant and not as scared as she probably should be. Gearing up for a fight more than running from one.

“Have you?”

“Yes, the new ones are extensive,” she pauses to stare at him, blinking a couple of times to herself, “right, Tuffnut’s dossier.”

“Whose what?”

“My friend, Tuffnut,” she hands him the binder from a stool by the door serving as another tiny table, “that’s what he calls his dumb Grimborn theory binder.”

“Oh, right. Thanks.” He tucks it under his arm and looks down at the toes of his shoes butted up against the threshold to her apartment. “So umm…that wasn’t quite how I wanted to end that tour, but are you ready to subscribe to my daily Grimborn text service? It’s free for the first week.”

Astrid has an uncanny way of catching his eye even when he’s trying to avoid hers. More than that, he doesn’t feel his usual urge to shut her out when she sees through him too easily, past whatever front he put up to keep her back. Maybe his fronts aren’t up to their usual standard though, because he kind of likes feeling like something she’s trying to figure out.

He’s used to being the one with the clues, but when she treats him like a curious piece of a puzzle she’s trying to put together, it makes him interested in the final product.

“How did you want to end it?”

“I don’t know, my usual lecture about how safe Berk is now,” he tucks his hand in his pocket, “like the buildings themselves learned from the blood and I don’t know, it probably wouldn’t have worked on you.”

“That’s really corny,” she rests her hand on the doorknob, “I still think we should tell someone what we heard.”

“Tell you what, I’ll check it out on my way home, it’s right on the way.”

Astrid’s frown is impossibly familiar even if it’s not directed at him this time, more through him, and his heart stutters when he realizes it’s protective.

“You’re walking home?” She tucks her hair behind an ear that sticks out adorably far, “shouldn’t you get an Uber or something? Or ask your cousin for a ride?”

“Right, like Snotlout would give me a ride,” he scoffs. Snotlout would, of course, but it’d be more painful than it’s worth.

Plus, Hiccup has been exploring those alleys for five years now and he’s never heard anything like that. Sure, he’s been mugged once or twice, but those people were just desperate and once he started helping with Gobber’s shelter and gaining some notoriety, people just started asking him for help instead of taking what they thought they could.

Astrid’s frown deepens and it scares him when her eyes flick to her lonely chair, like she feels like she has to invite him inside. It’s not that he doesn’t want to stay longer and maybe level out the playing field a bit, given he told her about his dad and he hardly gave her a chance to talk, but well, echoing screams in Berk alleys have forced him on her enough.

“Are you worried about me?” He teases, flinching when she smacks his upper arm hard enough that he almost drops the binder. Or no, the dossier.

“That’s for taking me on a really creepy tour at a really creepy time.”

“That’s…fair—” He guesses it’s about time for something about this tour to be normal, and a stinging arm traded for Berk to go back to the generally safe place he knows doesn’t seem like too much of a trade.

Then she kisses him on the cheek, quickly like she’s hoping he’ll miss it, like that’s a possibility in any reality. When she pulls back her face is red, bright against blooming circles under her eyes as she steps back, leaning on the doorknob.

“That’s for everything else.” Astrid mutters something that sounds like an amalgamation of ‘goodnight’ and ‘good morning’ and ‘goodbye’ and shuts the door, once again leaving him with a click and his own awkward hands and pounding heartbeat.

It’s still dark outside, the buildings blocking even the idea of dawn on the horizon, and if it weren’t for the heavy binder under Hiccup’s arm, he might believe that none of that just happened. From Astrid saying she’d go on a tour in the first place to asking about him instead of Viggo and mostly, to the scream they heard that cut everything short. He offered to check it out mostly hoping that Astrid would drop it and not inform the police where they were, since they were technically trespassing on condo conglomerate territory, but now he’s curious. Curious and way too restless to go home and try and sleep before his next set of tours.

They were almost to the fourth site when they heard the scream, so he takes a shortcut, skirting through a torn section of six-foot chain link behind a new construction site and ducking under a semi full of lumber that’s blocking a wide, modern alley. He can hear the broken ‘Closed’ sign in the Ripped Tavern’s back window shorting from the rain, flashes of red light pulsing along with a blooming feeling of dread in Hiccup’s chest as he turns the corner and freezes, staring at the shadow under the street lamp.

Blood looks black in yellow light. Hiccup remembers the stain on the pavement after his father was taken to the hospital, brick red then chalky like a blackboard under the halogen buzz. This blood is fresh though, steaming on the cold concrete as it draws a stark line to the drain.

“Hello?” He calls out, stepping hesitantly forward then running when he thinks he sees movement. He’s on his knees beside the body before he realizes it was a trick of the light, his brain shielding him from something he doesn’t want to make sense of.

Unlike some worse-adjusted Grimborn enthusiasts out there, Hiccup has seen a dead body. Once, when he was twenty and shaky, a splotch on pavement engraved into the insides of his eyelids, and it wasn’t an experience he ever wanted to repeat.

This isn’t a repetition, it’s an expansion.

An anatomy lesson he didn’t sign up for, glittering with high budget HBO special effects instead of the sepia tone of a century between the camera’s snap and his own understanding. He jumps to his feet and staggers backwards, dropping everything in his hands and leaning against the nearest wall. It makes more sense from here, Mary Johnson, Grimborn’s last confirmed victim, sprawled out and cut open. Dispersed.

But it’s not Mary Johnson. The longer Hiccup looks, the clearer he can think, and the bolt of recognition jabs him again.

It’s the homeless woman he escorted to the shelter last week. What was her name? She was going through a divorce, she was…Jennifer. That’s it. Jennifer something, did she give him a last name? He doesn’t remember.

His phone buzzes in his pocket and he fumbles for it, seeing Snotlout’s name on the caller ID and picking up with a shaking hand.

“So am I interrupting you and Astrid having—”

“There’s a body,” Hiccup’s own calm voice shocks him. He doesn’t feel calm, or maybe he does, maybe the shock is fading into something analytical.

“What the fuck are you talking about?”

“I was on my way home and earlier we heard something funny, so I came to see what it was and there’s a body.”

“What? Like a dead body?” Snotlout pauses whatever he was doing in the background of the call and suddenly, Hiccup can make out the sound of tires on the salted road ahead and feet on the sidewalk. Splashes of red and blue light swirling on the walls. “Did you call the cops or just get straight to studying it, fucking hell, Hiccup—”

“Looks like they’re already here.”

“Fuck, I’m on my way,” Snotlout hangs up and Hiccup barely has time to get his phone back in his pocket before an officer is rounding the corner, flashlight flicking between the woman on the ground and Hiccup’s face.

Hiccup puts his hands up slowly and calls out, “I don’t suppose it would do anything for me if I told you I could explain, would it?”

One time when he was fifteen and deep into his Houdini phase, Hiccup handcuffed himself and tossed the key out the window. His dad was furious, it was one of the few times Hiccup thought that the offer to let him try and Houdini himself out of an actual jail cell was legitimate. Instead, he had to spend his allowance on a metal detector to scan the street for the key and ultimately found it in a storm drain and had to spend more money on a magnet powerful enough to pull it out. It was an expensive enough hassle that he considers it an unintended consequence that followed being handcuffed, and since faux fur lined handcuffs don’t incur unintended consequences, he would say that this is technically the second time he’s been in cuffs.

It’s less stressful than his second time seeing a dead body. He didn’t do anything wrong besides some mild trespassing and they give him coffee at the station, which he knows to be a gesture of good faith from all the times his dad made him deliver coffee as a gesture of good faith.

Snotlout makes his best case for uncuffing him, but gets shut down and sent to his desk, so Hiccup spends the next hour stuck to a table in an interrogation room, nursing cold coffee and trying his best to remember what he saw for a witness statement. They have his phone, so he doesn’t know what time it is when a detective finally enters, but the man’s expression leads Hiccup to believe it’s still uncomfortably early in the morning.

Early. Astrid. Crap, he didn’t get a chance to tell her, she’s going to hear about this on the news. She’s probably going to hear about him on the news.

“Detective Eretson,” he introduces himself, shaking Hiccup’s cuffed right hand and sitting down across the table with a manila folder. “You told your arresting officer that you had an explanation—”

“I do, I was just on my way home—”

“At four forty-five in the morning?”

“I, uh, well it wasn’t a date but—”

“I’m not here to ask you about your social life, Mr. Haddock, I’m here to ask how you came to be standing above this woman so soon after she was murdered that she was still warm.” Detective Eretson slides a crime scene photo across the table, the flash illuminating what Hiccup could only guess at in the dark. “Do you have an explanation for how you got to the crime scene so quickly?”

“I wasn’t that far away,” he tries to gesture but the cuffs catch a couple inches above the table, “I was going from 324 Harbor street to the north side of East street, just past the park, I took a shortcut and well, you know the rest.”

Detective Eretson nods, unconvinced, and there’s a knock at the door a split second before it opens and Snotlout sticks his head in.

“Can I get you anything?”

“Coffee,” the detective barks without looking up.

“Ok, I was talking to the witness, but you could say please.”

“Two coffees, Snotl—Officer Jorgenson.” Hiccup glares at his cousin, “please.”

“How do you know Officer Jorgenson?” The detective asks as soon as the door is shut again and Hiccup folds his hands together.

“Is that pertinent to this investigation?” He clears his throat, “sir.”

Detective Eretson would be intimidating in any circumstance, but the combination of his chin tattoo and intensely unamused gaze in particular makes the chill around Hiccup’s wrists sink in deeper, reminding him there’s no way out of this but through. And the noodle arms thing is still unfortunately true, not that Snotlout’s gym time would make him any better at busting out of here right now.

Thinking of Snotlout makes him appear, sloshing coffee down his arm as he wrestles the door open and walks inside. He sets the half empty cup in front of Detective Eretson and stands arms crossed at the side of the table, making no move to leave as the door shuts itself.

“Can I help you with something?” Eretson asks without looking and Snotlout huffs.

“I don’t know, can you?” He grumbles before standing up straighter, on tip toes if Hiccup isn’t mistaken. “I was on the phone with the witness at the time he discovered the body, I requested to assist in the interrogation—Interview. The interview”

Great, it’s an interrogation, that’s excellent news.

“I thought you weren’t on duty today,” Eretson sounds like he prefers that concept and Hiccup tries to get Snotlout to leave with an important look at the door.

“I’m not, and I’m not asking for overtime, it’s called over-achieving, look it up.”

“If we could just get on with this interview,” Hiccup hedges and Eretson stares at him for a second before turning back to his folder.

“What’s this?” He pulls out another photo of a non-descript gray binder and Hiccup’s face goes pale.

“It’s a dossier.” His voice cracks, “detailing a friend of a friend’s theory about Viggo Grimborn, it’s a joke.”

Snotlout’s glare bores into the side of Hiccup’s head and he tries to scratch his temple, only to have his wrists catch on the cuffs again.

“Viggo Grimborn?” Eretson frowns and Snotlout leans back against the wall, obviously on tip toes now, arms crossed tight as he refuses to even make eye contact with Hiccup.

“Oh, you don’t know who Viggo Grimborn is? That’s not one of the many infinite things that you know?”

“He was a serial killer in the late eighteen hundreds, I know the alleys so well because I am a Viggo Grimborn tour guide who does an informational tour about him, that’s how I knew about the short cut. Snotlout is my cousin and roommate and he called to ask when I was coming home, that snapped me out of my…utter and complete shock at what I’d found and then an officer came around the corner—”

“We had a tip of a disturbance in the area,” Detective Eretson looks levelly at Hiccup for a second, “while you were taking your shortcut, did you see anyone else?”

“No, I didn’t. I mean, except for Jennifer’s body—“

“You watched that without me?” Snotlout hisses and Eretson slams his hand on the table.

“Jorgenson, out!”

“You are not my commanding officer, actually—“

“And you can thank your lucky stars for that,” Eretson stands up and opens the door, looking pointedly at Snotlout until he goes reluctantly flat-footed. “You’re interrupting my investigation with a suspect that you know, is that something I should tell your commanding officer about?”

“No,” Snotlout deflates, looking at Hiccup one more time before trudging out of the room.

“Sorry about him,” Hiccup tries when Eretson closes the door, but there’s no sign that the detective hears him as he crosses the room again and slams his hand down, next to Hiccup’s cuffed ones. His looming should be intimidating or even frightening, but Hiccup feels disconnected from it, like he’s watching it instead of living it. Like he’s still back in that alley, seeing the future play out.

“You recognized the victim?” His voice is low and serious, toeing the line too carefully to be deadly.

“Yes—“

“So I’m supposed to take it on faith that you know the alleys because you do a serial killer informational tour and on your way home at odd hours, you stumbled across the body of someone you happen to know?”

“Know is an overstatement,” Hiccup tries to gesture again, the chain catching and clanging against the table, “I walked her to the shelter the other night, she was arguing with one of those Neighborhood Watch Force wannabes about crossing the center of town while they were trying to say curfew. Gobber, the guy who runs the shelter, can vouch for me. That’s the only time I’ve ever met her—“

“But you recognized the body—“

“Yeah, apparently I have a photographic memory when I’m in shock,” he laughs, feeling frantic and suddenly needing to escape, “every day you learn something new.”

“Well,” Eretson pulls a key ring from the pocket of his slacks and flicks past a couple of near identical keys to find an all too familiar one. Hiccup rubs his wrists when the cuffs fall away, because he’s seen people in movies do it, and maybe it’ll help with the bands of bone deep chill or the soreness from accidentally flexing against metal one too many times. “I’ll be looking into your alibi.”

“But I’m free to go?” Hiccup stands up, stumbling on his numb right foot and catching himself on the table. He has to pee, but he’ll go in a bush outside and risk a second arrest for public nudity before he stays inside the station a second longer than he has to.

“For now,” Eretson opens the door but stands in the way, looking Hiccup up and down like there’s a clue stuck to him that just hasn’t been spotted yet. “Don’t leave town.”

“I’ll cancel my knitting retreat then,” the last shred of Hiccup’s patience evaporates as he slips around the detective, running his hand through his hair and stalking towards the front door of the station. Someone at the front desk stops him and gets his information, like they don’t have that already. They give him his phone back too, but the case is on upside down, like someone tried to unlock it a little too diligently.

Snotlout is outside talking to a coworker Hiccup doesn’t recognize, but he immediately jogs over when he sees Hiccup heading for home.

“What’s going on?”

“What’s going on?” Hiccup laughs, slamming his hand against the crosswalk button with a little too much force. “Detective Eretson will be checking into my alibi.”

“Right, which is no, you weren’t murdering anyone, you were giving some girl a tour of places someone else murdered people,” Snotlout throws his arms up, “fantastic!”

“Astrid,” Hiccup stops short, patting his sides like he somehow stashed the binder in a pocket he forgot about until now, “the binder—“

“Is evidence because it’s a creepy handmade book found at a murder scene,” Snotlout catches Hiccup’s shoulder when he tries to turn into a familiar alley, “where are you going?”

“Home,” He gestures, wincing at the dull pain in his wrist, “it’s quicker this way.”

“Yeah and the last time you took a sketchy shortcut, you got arrested—“

“It’s not sketchy, it’s just cutting around the stupid condos that I hate to look at,” Hiccup sighs when Snotlout steps into the mouth of the alley and crosses his arms. “You know, no one notices that you’re shorter than them until you start with the tiptoes thing.”

“Yeah, and no one notices that you’re weird until you show up at a crime scene with a book about murders.” He snorts, “oh wait, they already knew you were weird, never mind.” He only crosses his arms tighter when Hiccup bends his knees, threatening to dodge around him. “Just walk the long way past the stupid condos.”

Hiccup stands back up straight and runs his hand through his hair, tugging and lamenting how much longer it’s going to take to get home and rinse the interrogation room and murder alley scum off.

“Detective Eretson is really under your skin, huh?” He starts walking again and Snotlout almost doesn’t follow. “Oh come on, are you going to take the shortcut?

“Maybe.”

“You know you always get lost back there.” Hiccup points up at the condo roofline, “If you’re making me walk past those monstrosities, at least come with me.”

“Fine,” Snotlout gets all of two steps down the sidewalk before he’s ranting, “and I don’t know who Eretson thinks he is, he’s been here all of five minutes, he doesn’t even know who Virgo Grimdeath—“

“Viggo Grimborn, he’s not an astrology card—“

“Whatever, he doesn’t even know who he is and he thinks he owns the place. And he’s got the stupid accent and the muscles and he’s like eighty feet tall—”

“Do you hate him or have a crush on him?”

“Shut up, Hiccup,” Snotlout narrows his eyes, “you’re a little tall yourself to be messing with me right now. Toeing the line between normal and too tall,” he snorts, “well, toeing halfway.”

“Was that really necessary?” Hiccup shakes his head, looking out at the bay to avoid glaring up at the condo façade. A seagull is eating some leavings from a gutted fish and it makes him think of what he saw in the alley and he glares at Snotlout to avoid gagging.

“We’re even.” Snotlout flexes his arm, “and it’s not all bad, I’ve been going to the gym a lot more lately because Eretson was acting like he owned the place—“

“No one thought you were a stripper, Snotlout, I don’t buy it.”

“Yeah, and you got a date with a hot girl who called you a hair fetishist, crazier things have happened.”

Hiccup doesn’t have an answer to that right away and they walk the next few blocks in silence. The earliest commuter traffic is starting to pile up on the road and the sun feels a little too bright, scalding through Hiccup’s retinas and reminding him how long he’s been awake.

“It wasn’t a date,” Hiccup stands back to let Snotlout unlock the front door of the apartment, following him in and immediately losing the mental battle not to flop into his dad’s old leather chair. He’ll clean the murder gunk off of it later. Maybe. He should have peed before sitting down but the night is catching up all at once. “She did kiss me though.”

“What?” Snotlout sets his holster on the table by the door. “And you don’t believe that one person thought I was a stripper? But I’m supposed to believe that a girl as hot as Astrid kissed you?”

“On the cheek,” Hiccup reaches up to touch his face, the static of the dry brush of Astrid’s lips lingering even though the rest of the morning, warm where the rest of him is cold, like the handcuffs chilled more than just his wrists.

“Wait, like your cheek or your actual cheek?” Snotlout raises an eyebrow and gestures at his own ass, “like am I impressed or did the middle school dance go really well?”

“My cheek on my face,” Hiccup pulls his right shoe off and lobs it at Snotlout, missing by a few inches. It leaves mud on the wall and out of the corner of his eye it looks like blood.

“Oh, so it’s lame—“

“I don’t know why I tell you anything.”

“Because if you don’t talk you explode?” Snotlout snickers, finally setting his badge on top of his other uniform accessories and walking towards the bathroom. Dammit. “I’m going to bed, dude.”

“Sounds good.”

He pauses and looks back, “you’re good about, you know, seeing the dead person, right? Because you know after I had to respond to that thing with the train I was all kinds of freaked out,” he finishes the thought with a shudder. And as annoying and overbearing and nosy, and oh, disgusting, as Snotlout can be, Hiccup feels the genuine warmth of his concern.

“Nah, I’m good, I see pictures all the time, right?”

“It’s not the same.”

“No. It’s not.”

He must fall asleep at some point because he wakes up to his phone buzzing in his pocket, a string of texts coming through all at once.

Astrid (12:00pm): Murder? Astrid (12:02pm): we heard a murder?

#ripped #httyd fic #hiccstrid #modern au #serial killer tour guide au #blood mention #i kept away from the gore though

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skia-oura · 7 years ago

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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 ́k̨ņow̢͘ ̷͡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.

#orange lilies #my fic #fic #tau fic #dipper #torako #bentley #ensemble cast #transcendence au

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