Chapter 2
In a sudden flash the dream demon, better known as Bill Cipher, appears in front of a small cupboard under some stairs. He is momentarily confused as to where his being might be, until he realizes that it must be in the cupboard… for some reason. He reaches for the small door, but pauses as he sees his arm.
It’s… unusually human.
The muscles narrow into fixed joints, his fingers work like hinges and his wrists and elbows merely bend and swivel. Yet, what he now recognizes as his skin is blackened and his fingertips are sharpened claws. At this revelation he looks down at himself.
His body is long and slender, widening into a round pelvis and hips that continue smoothly into distinctly human legs. He looks over and sees his reflection in a mirror. His face, which is now crowded onto a head, is thin and dark, although not the charcoal black of his arms. His one small visible eye glows a bright yellow, while the other is covered with an eyepatch of his true form. There’s a protrusion in the middle of his face with two (2) holes under it that seem to take in air, and further down is a slit that he can open and close. The small bit of raised skin above it is black while the differently shaped bit at the bottom is tinted a slight pink.
It opens at his command and inside are razor sharp teeth, one of which is gold, and a thick reddish-pink muscle. There’s a hole in the back that constricts and relaxes. Attached to the top of his new head are short yellow strands that transition into black at the ends on the left side and are entirely black on the right. Luckily he spots his top hat floating just above it, or he would have panicked.
He is human…
Mostly.
He assumes it was done so he would better fit in this dimension, and possibly to make him less threatening to the being in the cupboard. The thought makes his new face grimace and sneer. Why should they get to change how he looks in order to please some random, he assumes, human.
Although he can admit… he does look good, by human standards at least.
Maybe Sixer would be able to… appreciate this form.
The thought both calms and angers him. Why should he care about what that backstabber would think? Yet he could imagine the pupils of those big brown eyes dilating at the sight of him, and his stomach feels like it’s folding in on itself.
But enough about Ford.
There’s a human in the cupboard that he’s supposed to be taking care of.
He leans down, bending at the waist with a straight back, curls the new phalanges in and hits the knuckles on the little door. After all, he wouldn’t want to be rude to a potentially helpful human.
There’s no answer. Not even a rattle of the doorknob.
Rude.
Then the demon notices the latch on the outside of the door. How odd. Why would a human lock itself in a cupboard? Then again, he can think of a few reasons. Although the lack of noise makes him assume it’s hiding. He undoes the latch. Only then does the little door crack open, and a big green eye stares up at him.
“You can't be here mister. I’ll get in trouble.” It whispers.
“Well to bad kid, I’m supposed to take care of you, so you’re stuck with me!” He replies with a wide smile stretching across his face. The human seems to flinch back at his words and the volume of his voice.
“Please mister, you’ll wake up my uncle.” It replies, starting to grow scared.
It takes a hot minute, and shoving aside the fact that he must have lost his critical thinking skills while trapped in the Theraprism, to realize that this human must be a child. The brats' voice should have given it away, and the fact it was able to fit in the tiny cupboard with enough space to move seemingly freely.
“Look kid, why don’t you get out of there and we can talk.” He prompts, getting impatient.
“I’m not supposed to come out without permission.” It says.
Oh, great, he got one of the abused ones.
“Well kid, I’m the one in charge of you now and I give you permission to come out of there.”
He’s pretty sure that’s how that works. He vaguely remembers how particular humans are when it comes to who gets to care for the kids, something about legal guardians. Stupid human laws. But it would make sense that he would be made the kid’s legal guardian if he was supposed to care for it, right?
He’s just now realizing how little information he was given, and that he really should have asked some questions. He pushes the legality to the side, he could always go look at that later and if anything he could just kidnap the thing and pull a few strings in people's minds. Would that count as harm? It doesn’t really hurt anyone. It would probably fall under Necessary Harm™ anyways, since it would be for the kid.
The human in question hesitates at first before slowly pushing the door open. Its a tiny thing with huge rags hanging off its thin frame. The black mop on its head is matted with cobwebs and dust falling out of it with every move. The bright green eye that had peaked out from the door apparently has a mirrored twin, both of them popping out against the dark color of its skin and staring up at him.
“Names Bill Cipher, but you can call me your new Lor-” He stops, having to remind himself that this isn’t the apocalypse that he has been reliving every so often during his imprisonment.
It was so hard to differentiate between the memories of the past and what was, at the time, his present sometimes.
“You can call me your new guardian.”