Chapter Text
Waking up is a very uncomfortable, odd experience. Mostly due to the fact that he, Bill Cipher, is a being made of pure energy; he doesn’t need to sleep, can’t even remember the last time he did. Being asleep meant you were vulnerable, open. That isn’t really his thing. So waking up from a sleep he doesn’t even remember falling into? Extremely uncomfortable and fucking weird, and that’s coming from him!
He’s laying on his back, eye groggily blinking open and shut a couple of times. Bill lets out a groan, instead receiving a deep croak in response. It wasn’t like he hadn’t made some odd noises at all, so he didn’t think anything of it. Psh. He was a master at making all kinds of sounds. He could do it all! He was Bill fucking Cipher! He was capable of-
Wait a goddamn second, is that the fucking sky?
Bill lets out another croak, scrambling to sit up. The sky. The fucking sky, of Dimenson 46’\! The demon flounders for a bit, having trouble with sitting up. Why can’t he sit up. Why the fuck could he not sit up?!
Moving his arms, which feel strangely heavy for his status of being made of pure energy, he manages to push himself over onto his stomach.
If he was in Dimension 46’\, that meant…
“Hah! That overgrown amphibian finally realized there was no use in keeping me in that place any longer! I told that goody-two-shoes they’d give up eventually, and look what happened! I won! Like I always do.” Cipher thinks to himself proudly, finally pushing himself up onto his feet using his-…
What the fuck.
Wings. He doesn’t have hands, or arms, he has wings. He’s never had wings before, at least not intentionally. Something is wrong. Terribly wrong. This… this wasn’t right. A nervous chuckle pours out from his throat, his voice sounding weird to his own ears. Oh. Oh no.
He looks down at the feet he stands upon; instead of seeing his normal form, he has talons waiting for him. He doesn’t know how long he spends staring, processing this information as best he can. Something is making a clacking noise.
“What is making that insufferable racket?!” Bill snarls, before it hits him. Well, two realizations hit him.
One. That clacking noise? It’s him. It’s him, making that sound, because he has a beak. Clacking it together, unconsciously.
Two. He’s not actually saying anything out loud. It’s all in his head, his new, stupid, feathery head!
Bill Cipher, interdimensional dream demon of chaos, was now a fucking bird, because of that stupid fucking amphibian. What kind of sick joke was this?! He’s all for jokes and a good prank now and again, but this? This?! This wasn’t even funny!
His black iridescent feathers puff out from his body, as he paces around in the grass, wings folded naturally to his sides.
“This isn’t funny, Gills!” Bill yells, only receiving caws instead of his own beautiful voice. “You think this is a game?! Huh?! You’re messing with the wrong demon, pal! This is bullshit! Give me back my body! This thing feels like a soggy blanket covered in dirt!”
Dramatically, his wings fly out from his sides, spreading out his entire wingspan and flapping at the air in a fit. Cipher hops around in a circle, unable to stand still. His crows fill the clearing he currently was throwing a tantrum in, receiving no response but his own echo.
A few minutes pass. His anger was beginning to reach its boiling point, threatening to spill over and scorch the lands with a fury unseen by this realm.
“Seriously Axie, come fix me right now!” Bill screams into the air, only greeted by silence. His anger simmers out, flapping around in frustration.
Maybe if he focused hard enough, he’d burst out of this mortal shell in an explosion of feathers, back to himself. He closes his eye, and channels his energy, as much as he can muster. There’s a shift in the air.
“Yes- yes!” He exclaims, before reopening his eye and-!
…He’s still a bird. In fact, nothing had changed in the slightest with him. This was bad. The gravity of the situation was finally starting to set in, seeping into his newly found hollow bones. Straining his hearing, he can hear the sounds of flowing water. He might as well get a look at this feather sack, if he was going to be stuck in it.
Walking, he finds, is not exactly easy. His legs don’t want to cooperate with him, talons snagging on bits of rock and tangled weeds. Hopping around is much easier. He flaps his wings experimentally, while in the air from hopping. He gets a little extra boost. Huh. Well, that wasn’t so bad. What was it about birds again? Bill never really bothered with them in any dimension. Small, insignificant, dumber than a bag of rocks in his opinion; there was nothing interesting about them aside from the occasional colorful sort.
Finally, he reaches a running stream. Arching his head over, he gazes at the reflection given back to him. He was not a colorful sort. Bill stares, and a raven stares back at him from the water. Raven. Where did he get that from? Must’ve been buried somewhere in his million years of existence. He twists his head, getting a better look at his eye- still singular. That stupid fish must’ve thought they were funny for that. The iris is a deep brown, instead of the brilliant gold it and the sclera took upon itself while he possessed a creature. His other eye simply wasn’t there. It was nothing more than an empty socket, with a deep abyss pooling within it. Churning, like it was filled with liquid instead of a true empty socket.
Opening his wings to get a better gauge of what he was working with, upon his secondaries and secondary coverts is a pattern. One big false eye, in the center of each inner wing. Colored a sickly yellow. Oh, har har. The Axolotl must be just cracking up.
His beak is rather large, he finds- he’s rather large for a bird, actually. At least if his memory serves him right, ravens were usually bigger. Which was better for him, at least he wasn’t some tiny little songbird.
A strange growl emanates from his throat as he continues to stare, squinting at the water.
Ah, yes. That anger was returning.
“Fucking asshole.” Cipher snaps, feathers once again puffing up. The action makes him look even larger than he had been. Hmm. He likes that. Something gnaws at him from within. The feeling, at first, is confusing. Then it registers in his brain as pain. He’s feeling pain. Not in a fun sort of way, the disconnect between the body and himself making it feel funny- no, this was pain pain . Giving himself a quick once over, he doesn’t find any obvious wounds or injuries. (not that he’d even know what he’d be looking for, really. Couldn’t he be given some sort of pamphlet for this thing?)
The gnawing continues, in his… where he thinks a stomach would be. Did these have stomachs? He’d think so, most beings in Dimension 46\’ had them in one way or another. Freaks. Couldn’t they just immediately vaporize whatever they ate or drank straight into more pure energy, like a normal person?
Ugh. How tedious. These mortal bodies needed nourishment to live.
He knows that; Ford would spend hours, even days neglecting his needs for food before subsequently crashing and burning, making Bill take over. Eating was not an experience he enjoyed while in Ford's body. Because first off, where did it even go? Apparently not the eyes. Second, having to turn your food into paste with constant repetitive motions got so boring; and frankly, the texture was disgusting. Third, the feeling of said paste sliding down your throat? No thank you!
Cipher vowed to never do it again, wanting to put the experience behind him completely. Or, alternatively, he forced Sixer to take moments to step back and eat so he wouldn’t spend precious portal building time being passed out.
But that begged the question, what did this body eat? It didn’t have a mouth like Sixer did, it didn't even have any teeth. Maybe human food would still suffice. Mission set, mostly because he couldn’t ignore the pain any longer, he leaps away from the stream.
Bill searches his surroundings. He’s in a forest. Tall pine trees stretch above him, grass and bushes plentiful, stones and pebbles littered about the ground. It shouldn’t feel so familiar. It shouldn’t. This was a forest, could be any forest anywhere-! But something was nagging him, in the back of his mind, that this place was where it all went down. However long ago that was.
Gravity Falls, Oregon.
Bill shouldn’t feel this way. This… this feeling, welling up inside of him. He hates it. He hates it, he can’t be truly feeling this way.
But despite it all, the demon feels soaked in dread.
His stomach twists within him, pulling him from his thoughts and back to the mission at hand. Well, if this place was Gravity Falls, he should have no problem navigating it! After all, he knew this place like the back of his hand! But, uh…
Cipher spins in a circle, scanning. Being surrounded by nondescript trees with no defining geological structures made things just… a little bit more complicated. But it was no match for him! He was a god! Something so stupid like navigation would not defeat him. Huffing, he sets off again into the forest.