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Ford was so tired of being Bill’s dress up doll. Time had flown strangely since he’d been released from his golden prison— minutes or hours or days could have passed and Ford still wasn’t entirely sure which was which anymore. Bill interrogated Ford relentlessly about the formula, using means of physical and psychological torture to press the man into breaking the weirdness barrier. He refused to budge. Ford expected this, he knew first hand what Bill’s cruelty looked like, and was willing to die in the effort to thwart him.He didn’t know how to handle these moments. Bill would pause all torments at random, instead trying to bribe Ford with decadent luxuries and treats. Fine wines and whiskeys, chocolates and pastries, teas made from exotic and endangered plants: no expense was spared. They were promises of what Ford could have if he gave in. It was insulting, really, that Bill still thought he was so shallow and naive to be wowed by petty trinkets.Worst of all was when he would put him in little outfits. Some of them were to Ford’s style, flattering suits, cozy sweaters, and fine leather boots, but more often than not they were dresses. Pink feathery robes and black silk cocktail dresses, gowns that shimmered gold and frilly French maid uniforms. Today, it was the regalia of a queen, a monstrosity of crinolines and hoop skirts and ribbons that Ford kept desperately ripping to shreds, only for a more ridiculous gown to take its place.Regardless of if he liked the outfits or not, Ford made a point to destroy them every time. If nothing else, the scraps could be tied together into a rope, should Ford ever find the opportunity to escape. After the fourth time the dress had restored, Ford just sighed and flopped down on the horrible human leather couch.“What is the joke here, Cipher?” Ford glared at the dream demon sitting across from him. “I’m not so insecure that putting me in a dress will make me upset.”“It’s like I said, Sixer,” Bill cackled, “you’re my property; so you’re going to wear what I tell you to wear!”“But why this,” said Ford, annoyed. “This looks like something Marie Antoinette would have called too much. If I didn’t know any better….”“If you didn’t know what, Sixer,” Bill snapped.Ford held his breath. Finally, he took a risk:“If I didn’t know any better, I would say you’re enjoying yourself too much.”Bill froze a moment too long before replying: “Oh thathubris Sixer, thinking Bill Cipher, god and king of this dimension, would ever think about someone as pathetic and weak as you—“Stoically, Ford tore the bodice off his dress, revealing his bare chest to Bill in the dim firelight of the penthouse suite. Ford watched as Bill’s eye widened, a pink glow brightening his neon yellow outline, and heard what sounded like a tiny mumble of the word “goddamn.”Ford began to laugh: it was a negligible victory, but it felt good to embarrass his captor after years of torment.“Okay, fine, so you got all GILFy, whooptie freakin do,” Bill snarled. “That doesn’t change a thing, Fordsy. You either give me the formula willingly and get to be the third sexiest minion in my gang, or I torture it out of you if you keep being stubborn! Make a choice!”“I’m proposing a compromise,” said Ford evenly. Without breaking eye contact, he stepped out of the ruins of the dress until he was completely naked. “I don’t want to wear your outfits, you want… what you want. I’ll let you have it if you just let me have my own clothes back.” This was a risky gamble. At worst, Bill would immediately reject this weak attempt at seduction and disintegrate his molecules. (At least the barrier won’t be broken?) At best, Ford expected Bill to laugh at him and brag to all his horrible demon friends about this embarrassing encounter. Never in a million years did he expect this to work. He was still thinking that long after Bill had crawled on top of him.“Finally!”A blue forked tongue emerged from under Bill’s eyeball and slithered down Ford’s throat, a cruel parody of a real kiss.Ford made a note to update his research on Bill’s anatomy once this was over. On the condition he survived, of course. (He strikes me as the kind of creature who eats his partners after mating.)Skittering, insect-like claws began tugging at his chest. Somehow, Bill had managed to avoid every erogenous zone and just kept pinching at his skin. Ford was about to push Bill off and ask what the hell the demon was doing when Bill pulled away and said “Ford, is something wrong with you? When is the milk supposed to come out?”Ford blinked. “I’m sorry, what?”“The milk, brainiac,” said Bill condescendingly. “You’re a mammal, I thought milk was supposed to come out of your milk duds when they’re stimulated?”“Bill, I'm not a cow,” said Ford dryly.“You’re dodging the question!”Ford, upon realizing that Bill was being dead serious, burst into hysterics.“Oh my god,” he gasped, “you don’t have any idea what you’re doing, do you?!”Bill floated away from Ford and turned a violent shade of red.“You listen here, you sad, pathetic, virgin loser! I’m the best thing that’s happened to this backwater dimension since frontal lobotomies! I’m doing you a favor by giving you the opportunity thousands of beings would rip themselves inside out for, and you’re trying to tell me I ‘don’t know what I’m doing?!’ Oh that is just too funny!” Bill let out a laugh as harsh and artificial as store brand cola.“Okay. Find the prostate.”Bill was knocked out of his rage by this demand.“The. The what—““The prostate. Find my prostate. If you can figure out where it is without me telling you, I’ll take back what I said.” Ford smirked at Bill as he spread out across the couch, his attitude not unlike a mermaid luring drunken sailors to sharp rocks across the shore.Bill growled, “Fine!” Hundreds of hands emerged from the horrible triangle, probing across Ford’s body. Fingers scraped against his jaws, under his arms, through his hair, but none came close to their mark. “Give up?”“No! I’m not giving up,” snapped Bill. “I just have to go get something, be right back!” “You do that now.”“QUIET!”Bill flew out of the room, slamming the door behind him. Ford was finally alone.Working quickly, Ford tore the remains of the dress he’d been forced to wear into long strips. He braided them together, strengthening them into a strong cord.He found his original clothes bunched up in a corner of the penthouse suite, and Ford, before even putting on a single garment, dug through his coat pockets. He had managed to keep a coil of rope hidden away in the lining of his old coat, along with a magnet gun. He took the former out first and began to add his new rope to its length. Once upon a time, he had learned sailors knots alongside his brother in preparation for adventures on the high seas. This… was not the context in which he expected to use this skill. “If I make it out of this, perhaps me and Stan— Stan and I will laugh about this later.”The rope was sturdy and it was long. Not long enough to reach the ground, certainly, but perhaps enough to get him close to a metal building. That’s when the magnet gun would come in— he’d make the jump, and soon be out of Bill’s grasp, even for a moment.Ford put his pants back on, but tore his sweater and coat into another length of rope. I can’t be stingy. If I can get out of this, I can help other survivors, fix the mess I’ve gotten us all into.He cautiously crept out of the room and snuck down the halls of the Fearamid. The closer to the ground he could get, the better. He found himself just outside of the Throne Room, where Bill was laughing it up with his grotesque cronies.“So you won’t believe it, but he practically threw himself at me, begged me to jump his bones, and of course, you know me, I almost felt sorry for the guy! So I decided to throw him a bone!”The Henchmaniacs howled with laughter; Bill continued: “and just like that, all of a sudden he’s all ‘oh god, Bill, help, I don’t know where my own prostate is, can you help me find it?!’ And I just about died of secondhand embarrassment, ha ha, isn’t that crazy? Wouldn’t it be so funny if one of you guys found a human anatomy diagram and we showed him where it was?!” The laughter stopped.“Um…. I guess,” said one of the fiendish friends, shrugging.“Yeah, a total riot,” said one eager sycophant. “Totally!” An awkward pause filled the air. “So uh… you guys wanna go find one for your old pal Bill? Like now?”“Uh…”“I SAID NOW!”Ford ducked behind a tapestry before the Henchmaniacs came running out the door, flailing around in search for any sexual education materials for their master.Once the coast was clear, Ford snuck to the nearest window. He ignored how devastated the landscape had become under his former Muse's rule, he would make sure Bill would pay for it later. Ford looped a rope to a load baring column, tied it tight, and began to ease his way out the window. Down the face of the Fearamid, he crawled like a spider down a thread of silk. Once he ran out of stone to crawl upon, and faced the cruel open air, Ford took a deep breath, said "Hup!" and jumped.It wasn't his first time jumping out of a building, and with any luck it wouldn't be his last. Ford tumbled through the air, trying to keep quiet so as not to alert Bill or his minions. He had to think quickly: one wrong move, and he'd be dead on the pavement below. He caught sight of a weather vane just atop the ruins of the town library. It was a 50-50 shot, but it looked to be in range of the magnet gun. Pulling the gun from his holster, Ford shot at the weather vane, and felt the elctromagnetic pull towards the building. Ford laughed, and held tight with one hand the gun, and grabbed a knife from his belt, slicing away from the rope at last.Ford glided through the air and landed on the roof in relative safety. Once free from the weathervane, he ran for the exit, feeling his way down the stairs until he hit the main reading room. It was too close to the Fearamid to serve as a permanent base, but there was something a little wondrous about having a library all to yourself.Ford took a moment to breathe. He raided the staff room for water and long abandoned snacks in the fridge, it had been too long since he’d had something to eat. In the lost and found he was able to find a loose fitting t-shirt. It depicted a spray painted picture of Shimmery Twinkleheart, uncharacteristically smirking and smoking a hand rolled cigar. It still wasn’t his style, but he thought it unwise to run around bare chested in this desolate landscape. At least it’s comfortable, he thought. He couldn’t afford to sleep too long, but he curled up in a squishy chair near the computer lab and took a quick nap. This was how Ford spent his few hours of freedom.He woke to the sound of a conversation near the library window. Knife in hand, Ford hid behind a shelf of werewolf romance novels and glanced outside. A group of survivors, some of whom he recognized as Mabel’s friends, were scavenging the wasteland for supplies. They looked scared and tired, but Ford was relieved that the kids had somehow managed to survive that long. Ford stepped towards the exit to join them, when suddenly, he heard a voice that made his blood chill to ice.“Are you sure about this? I thought for sure all those books would have caught fire by now,” hissed one of Bill’s Henchmaniacs, the horrible pink cyclops with the big… horns. Ford ran back to his hiding spot and watched as the horde filed inside the main reading room from the back room. “Look, boss is clearly having some kind of episode,” replied another monster, Pacifier from the sound of it. “So I don’t think it’s wise to return unless we have something about this… what was it again?”“I think it’s called a Phosphate?”“Did anyone manage to write down the name,” Pacifier called to the rest of the crowd. The monsters just shrugged in confusion. “Well, guess we’ll have to buckle in for the night and search,” sighed Pyronica. They began to tear the library apart, searching high and low for books on human anatomy. Ford had to move quickly; if he remained in the building for too long, surely he would be caught!Ford crouched low, treading softly across the room towards the exit. He had to get out, had to warn the survivors that Bill’s followers were close by! He ducked behind the circulation desk when Pyronica took a seat at a study table, deeply engrossed in a copy of Why Am I Sweaty? Just a few more feet, Ford thought. Just as he was about to make a run from it, a loud bang shot echoed up and down the street. From the corner of his eye, he saw that one of the kids, a blonde girl wearing a potato sack, has tripped and fallen into a line of trash cans. If this sudden noise hadn’t gotten the Henchmaniacs attention, Grenda Grendinator loudly screaming “Crap Dang it, that looks like it hurt!” certainly did. “Did you hear that?” Pyronica looked up from her book, and was soon joined by 8-Ball and Keyhole. Ford, taking one last second to savor his freedom, jumped up from behind the circ desk and head butted Pyronica.“The library’s closed!”Ford kicked 8-Ball’s feet out from under him, and dashed further into the library, far away from the street where the kids were wandering.“Oh crap,” screeched Kryptos, “the boss’ pet got loose!”“Who’s turn was it to watch him,” asked a panicked Keyhole“Who cares,” screamed Pyronica, “let’s get him!”Ford knew he was outnumbered, cornered in a tiny room filled with monsters, but that didn’t stop him from kicking the everloving shit out of as many of Bill’s minions as possible. He toppled a bookcase on Kryptos and Amorphous Shape, roundhouse kicked Hectorgon out of a window, and bonked 8-ball in the head with an unabridged copy of War and Peace. He couldn’t last too long: Pyronica raked a flaming, clawed hand across his chest, and burned three long rips through his shirt. Ford cried out in pain, which the rest of the Henchmaniacs took full advantage of as they jumped on top of the old man, punching and kicking until Ford was on the ground, hands pinned behind his back.Pyronica stepped on Ford’s face and hissed, “Let’s get you home; you’re gonna get it when boss finds out what you did today…” Ford was dropped at the foot of Bill’s throne of human agony, battered and bruised after the fight in town.“We caught him trying to escape into town,” Pacifier told Bill. “And we got those books about prostates you were asking about,” added Pyronica cheerfully.“What is a prostate, anyway,” asked Teeth.“Yeah Bill,” sneered Ford from the floor, “tell you followers what a prostate is, in detail, without consulting the books first, per our agreement.”Bill glowered down at Ford before shooting a bolt of electricity right into his gut. Ford writhed in agony, but refuses to give Bill the satisfaction of hearing him scream. “Wait, what agreement,” asked 8-Ball, confused. “What’s he talking about?”“Yeah I thought you said he threw himself at you,” said Pyronica, “and that he’s the one who didn’t know what or where the prostate was?”“He came up with that excuse exactly where the prostate is located,” replied Ford in a superior tone. “Right up his own ass!”“Don’t listen to that old man, he’s senile,” said Bill with an unmistakable note of panic in his voice. With a mischievous grin, Ford reached up and tore the remains of his shirt to tatters, leaving himself bare chested once again.Bill turned a shade of bubblegum pink and cried, “goddamn it…”“Ooooooh, boss has a crush on the human!” The Henchmaniacs cackled and mocked Bill for a solid three seconds before Bill crushed them all under a big rock. He then turned his rage to Ford, threatening all manner of bodily harm to his defiant prisoner, but the man didn’t care. He may still be a captive, and the town still lay in ruins, but he’d saved some survivors, beat up some monsters, and humiliated Bill Cipher. They were small victories, but victories none the less.