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Obsession. What a funny word. What a funny, meaningless, insignificant little word. What did something like that even mean? And what could it mean to him? Practically an all seeing God, a deity of unparalleled proportions, that spanned millennia?
Bill stared, eye fixed on the flame before him. Always burning. Always engulfing the space around them. Like a supernova, but instead of burning out and sucking into the cold oblivion, he just kept on combusting, kept consuming, a living, breathing ember of life. The flames that just kept growing hotter. More intense.
Power. And lots of it.
So strange. So bizarrely strange. The irony couldn’t be lost on Bill. Once that meatbag had held such a different power in his freakish, six fingered hands. Power of the dimensions. Power to break them apart, to give into Bill’s greatest desire. Power of some things even he hadn’t known then, seen then. Maybe that he didn’t see now, funny enough, not quite. (And for a being whose job was to see and know everything , that was saying something).
And now? Now, it was a different kind of thing. One more tangible. More actual. There was an irony in how it played out, so similar as before, but still so, so very different. In how it kept playing out.
“Let me through, Sixer.”
“No.”
“Let me OUT.”
“Warden.” He spoke, calm and easily, a smile on his voice which was lightly mocking.
The eyes in that vast of fury and ember opened, in the heat, the gaze itself incapacitating like that of an actual burning star. Those eyes hot, naked white and furiously alive, wild with life and empty of color. The brows furrowed, gaze narrowing against his smaller, triangular form, a scowl of determination set there like steel against it.
“Still at it, eh?” Bill asked jovially and tilted his martini glass, surveying the being before him coolly, giving him credit where it was due.
His Sixer. His little human freak .
Not so human now, he supposed.
And oh, how he’d molded the dumb kid before him, even in so many ways, to what he was now. So small, insignificant was the life of a human. A bright spark of the flame, a small lick of fire, before it was out, snuffed into the dark. He guessed it was some measure of irony that his little pet had ended up surpassing that title entirely, all to keep him, Bill, in his place. How rich. All the power of the cosmos, and he’d used it for that pursuit alone. Containment . He could taste the word on his tongue and while it certainly tasted foul, there was a kind of…delight there too. Something rich to the deep, black and bitter flavor.
And once again some deep irony in it all, he supposed, that couldn’t be denied. In that it was…actually the opposite of what they’d once been trying to achieve really. Not that Fordsy had realized it then.
All of it was…almost flattering. Almost.
The kid may have outgrown his human weakness. But he had never outgrown the first pale of idiocy. Keeping to that…human attachment. And the need to be controlled. To be captured by his own skilled hands and molded into who he was to be.
No matter how many years passed, no matter the form the human took or the metal plates sealed to keep him out, he’d always belong to him. Be shaped by him. Even the way he’d devoted himself, transformed himself to become steel to Bill’s demise, even as cute as it had always been to see him use what little sparse time he had on this plane just to defeat him, to stop him, a God, in the way a dog played with a soggy ball, adorable really, there was something to be said in how it had been Bill that had consumed his freakish human’s every movement. Every devotion. Every waking and sleeping pursuit. The dog had become a wolf now, in its own way, but never uncollared. Ever obsessed . It tasted…delicious. And bitter. Full of rage and…almost, almost it seemed, at times, a kind of desire .
There was a thirst there, in that, which lingered in Bill. The more powerful the other got only seeming to draw it out more deeply inside him. The desire to collar him. To dominate him. The more the spite, the vengeance, the fury of determination and self sacrifice propelled IQ into remaining here, just the two of them, in the endless void of a dimension between dimensions, the stronger it got. The more it fed on him. Keeping the both of them pitted here, bound together, in a capturing of space beyond space. In this space, there they were and there remained a hunger that took the demon. A hunger for that power . And knowing, on a certain level, he’d already won. Just time. Just time was all. And he was so, so very good at playing time.
After all. This was all a part of the game the two played. And had been playing for for so long already.
Fordsy here was just at a disadvantage, Bill knew. And it was almost amusing to think because he had so much experience already in being imprisoned in a decaying realm and too without another to keep company. Having to fabricate and mold minions and beings into existence from nothing but his mind and spark them into life. Having to twist and shape reality to his will. Oh, no, Bill had been stuck in a cage, trapped in a doomed dimension, driven into madness for much longer than this. Ford’s prison, the prison Bill had forged for him once, when he’d taken to old Sixer’s mind like a playhouse, had been momentary. A flash. And this? This was just the start. Soon enough this kid would realize who was who’s warden in this empty realm.
“Aren’t ya sick of standing guard, kid? Why not relax a little. Come oooon, our big anniversary’s just around the corner!” He weedled, prodding a finger in the other’s direction. “We gotta celebrate!” And the triangle snapped, another martini appearing between them, floating against the void to match the one he currently held.
Ah, just look at his little Sixer. The power in that form. It was a sight to behold. It truly was. Bill would have to be an idiot, blind at that, not to see it. It matched his own, in its own way. A different flavor, a bright red fire to his steely blue ice, a burning star to his moon. And seemingly infinite as well. Never ending. Never running out. Just on and on and on and on.
The other surveyed him in a cold, icy sort of defiance. In a solitude of silence. He always did love to play Mr. Serious. That hadn’t changed one bit.
“You already know the answer to that, Bill. I’m not going to play your games….I already told you . We’re going to be stuck here. Like this. Forever , Bill.” He paused, emphasizing the last part, “Until the end of time. ” And the man twisted into a dark and bitter smirk, deliberately repeating those words, that phrase, in the way he did from so long ago. And Bill laughed. He really did. Oh, Sixer. Poor, poor delusional Sixer.
“You know, that deal’s never left the table. I’d still be willing to have you being on the right hand of my throne, maybe once we peel that metal plate out of your skull. What do ya say?” ‘At my feet actually, chained there.’ He neglected to add. Imagining the other now, like he was now, kneeling before him was…appealing. In its way. Something he felt the need to chase.
Obsessed .
There was that word again. And where did it come from…? Really. Ridiculous. He wasn’t obsessed . Just…struck by fancy. A specific vision. A specific want. A very, very, very prominent, particular idea.
He could almost hear his minion putting the word out there, at the edge, in timid, underhanded ways.
“Hey boss. Don’tchya think that maaaybe you’re being a little….obsessed?” Pyronica asked, shrugging, back in the day, back when he’d first invaded Ford’s mind. First spent countless years, countless days remaining there with him. And even after, along the multiverse, when he’d failed to trap the human in his realm, when he’d slipped passed his reaching fingers, causing all of havoc and chaos and endless torment in response.
Obsessed . Him. Hardly. Did he ever obsess?
He got distracted, sometimes. Sidetracked . His eyes trailing off onto something, and him catching in to take it. What Bill wanted, he had . What he desired, he took . He could have anything. And he’d wanted Sixer.
If anyone was obsessed , it was obviously the human before him.
Fordsy could go ahead and write a whole long book about it, all starring Bill. He knew that to be the truth, clear as anything.
“All I want to do is liberate your universe, Fordsy, how can you fault a guy for that?” He asked slyly.
Ford’s gaze narrowed, a solemn expression met there against his.
“…You’re evil, Bill.” Ford’s eyes were now shut again, focusing back in on their containment. Bill tutted, swirling a finger against the rim of his glass casually.
“You know, I always figured you were beyond those kinds of pointless, human rationalities. Evil? Please. Come on, Fordsy…you talking like that is just too much . Besides! All I want to do is spread real liberation all across the multiverse, make a new, fun existence, something unimaginable, beyond any extreme, take it to every corner, and you call me evil?” He shook his head with a chuckle. “Pu-lease, Mr. Nice Guy. I’d say that’s pretty considerate all considered, right! So a few quasi-limbed, two eyed creatures get a slight raw deal. You all live, what? 90 years at most? A flicker, Six, a faint poof and gone. My world? Heck, we can all be eternal there, buddy.”
But Sixer wasn’t responding. He was caught, molding into that blaze of fire, into that light, keeping his attention on any and every crack and fissure Bill’s tendrils may worm their way against. What he didn’t know was that Bill wasn’t doing anything of that sort. Why fight, when you could play a game? Why break, scream, cry and tantrum when you could wait, settle, and observe your opponent’s next move?
This was a game of chess, between the two of them, between him and IQ. Like days of old, exactly the same, here they were keeping on with this game. Like then too, inevitably he was sure, he would win. But maybe, just maybe he’d let Sixer have a few. Let him think he was creeping up to take his Queen. Let him just close enough to victory that he’d get over zealous. Over confident. To become too bright, too full of that beautiful, ravaging flame. And then…well, then, he would take what he wanted. And Six would be his.