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Cerulean and violet nebulas with a deep orange swirled in reflected in the fractals that spun endlessly, on and on. Normally, Bill Cipher loved the infinite mirror. His opinion of himself was, after all, of a magnitude that would astonish anyone who realized how deep his conceit truly ran. (It ran very, very deep.)
(So. Deep.)
He adored his bow tie, cherished his top hat, admired his cane and all the ways he could use it, and let’s never, ever forget his triangular shape.
That was the problem.
He was a square today.
This was a problem. A big one. Instead of endless, flatteringly pointy depictions of himself, he was square. His bow tie was no longer the perfect distance from the ends of his body, his hat had nothing to anchor itself on, and he felt clumsy and lumbering with all this extra body.
He was a square. The implications of that were that he was boring and actually meant what he said. He was the OPPOSITE of boring. He was CHAOS and WEIRDNESS and NIGHTMARES. Chaos and weirdness and nightmares did not mean what they said. He was not a square.
What if he turned purple and started whispering “Believe in yourself” to people?
It should have been impossible, but so should his being a literal square. He wanted a refund, but he wasn’t sure how to get one, so he popped into the physical world.
“Aaaand now I’m in a forest,” he muttered. Yep, Gravity Falls forest. No one was around. He wished someone was, so he could take his anger out on them. That would get the stupid salamander’s attention. He’d be sure to give Bill a refund then! But no one was around, so Bill settled for screaming at the trees. “AXOLOTL! I DEMAND A REFUND! I WILL NOT BE A SQUARE!”
“A different form, a different time.” The voice emanated from nowhere and almost bounced about the trees.
“I can’t be a square,” Bill whispered, sinking to the ground. He leaned against a tree. “I CAN’T BE A SQUARE! I am a triangle! I will murder you in your sleep! I’ll destroy your molecule’s molecules! I’ll–”
There was no answer. Panic welled up in him. “Answer me, lizard dude!” He shouted.
Axolotl didn’t answer.
The terrifying possibility remained open that Bill would spend the rest of his life in this clunky shape.
There was no one around, so Bill laid on the dirt with his limbs splayed open and sighed. His dignity was dead anyway. He rolled over and sobbed into the ground. He would never again loom frighteningly over sleeping children. Never cause sharp shadows in the night. Never see himself reflected thousands of times in the Nightmare Realm. He was a square.
A boring, predictable, square. No one would respect him like this. No one would fear him like this. And if he didn’t have their fear, he didn’t have their anything.
His worst fear had come true–he’d been squared.
“No! No! Why?!” He wailed into the sky. The sky did not answer him.
He wished he could tear it apart again.
He sighed, blinking, and–wait. He blinked again, and again.
He’d been staring into the eyes of a Gremloblin.
He shook it off and tried to float away, before remembering the real form he’d been turned into. A shrimp.
Bill Cipher was now a shrimp being taken care of by a family of sentient seagulls, and none of them feared him. It was almost as much indignity as being a square would have been.
Almost.