A quick warning before this story starts: IT IS VERY MUCH SUPERPHANTOMFALLS! That means that you may not completely understand this story without having seen Gravity Falls through Sock Opera! You have been warned.

Honestly, I really considered whether to label this as Superphantom or Phantomfalls given ffn's two-fandom rule. Given that this story was inspired by sapphireswimming's pm speculating about the afterlife in Supernatural, and I have two sequels planned for this that almost entirely relying on Gravity Falls mythology, I figured it was better to keep the Superphantom label. This story is a bit heavier in DP musing than anything else, so changing the DP label in my mind makes no sense, but if you think this should be moved to Phantomfalls drop a review after you're done and let me know (feel free to drop a review regardless XD)

Photocreds go to BeJuled on Deviantart.

Enjoy!

Bill hadn't been lying when he told Dipper it had been a long time since he last wore a body. In fact, he hadn't worn a body in all the time he had gone by the name Bill Cipher.

He still remembered the day he died. The day Azazel died. Shot in the head by the infuriating wildcard in his otherwise perfectly planned chess game.

The Winchesters were meant to be manipulated in their hunt, not successful: merely puppets disguised as a threat. He had twisted Mary Winchester away from the hunting lifestyle she had longed to escape, after all, he had allowed John to maintain a purpose in the decades Azazel looked over his shoulder to see the hunter so far behind. In a sense, he gave the Winchesters a family together, and a chance to rebuild it after Mary made the fatal error of disturbing him as he extracted payment. He gave them purpose, he gave them bonding, a family business if you will.

They weren't meant to sacrifice so much for each other. While he appreciated John handing him both his soul and the Colt on a silver platter, and Dean giving him Sammy back at the price of his own life, John was not supposed to crawl back out of Hell to kill him alongside his eldest son.

It was the kind of irony that Bill might have appreciated. Too bad Bill Cipher didn't exist back then.

Life after certain death was even more surprising than life after death the first time. Diving headfirst into a deal with Lilith herself, Azazel had known full well what he was getting into, and had a plan ready to go forth and conquer the Pit as he was torn to shreds by her hellhounds. Waking up in the red fires of Hell had been a challenge, but Azazel could adapt to challenges.

Waking up in an endless green void had been a mystery, and Bill had emerged to deal with that.

At first the yellow-eyed demon, now reduced to just an amorphous figure of yellow smoke, had simply wandered through the expansive unknown. After what felt like an eternity but may have been a few months he found the occasional purple doorways leading to any type of environment imaginable, after a few years empty rocky islands began to pop up as well. After an immeasurable period of wandering he finally encountered the some of the other citizens of his new realm.

It was almost enough to make Azazel wish he hadn't.

The creatures, ghosts as they identified themselves due to some apparently having died on Earth before reforming in this plane, were eccentric to say the least. Whether ignited by a lifetime of experience or the pure essence of an idea, Azazel quickly observed that the obsessions that fueled each and every ghost within the "Ghost Zone" gave them a power that lasted far beyond what should have been their deaths. It made their souls strong and invincible, and having worked for so long gathering, torturing, and manipulating the nuclear power plant that is the soul Azazel could respect the reality that some were simply too powerful for even God to permanently destroy, and had instead been hidden away from his more favored playthings.

Azazel would have even gone so far to say he landed in the mythical Purgatory had he seen any of the familiar monsters, such as werewolves and vampires.

Still, none of the logic or semantics behind how a soul reached the Ghost Zone would help Azazel with either of his two main goals: escaping or conquering. Sadly the imbeciles he encountered were a magnificent combination of ignorant and paranoid: ever since the downfall of Pariah Dark, the previous king of the Ghost Zone (who clearly failed in Azazel's opinion in balancing taking outright power with properly playing with his subjects) Walker's prison had restored order and was largely known for carrying millennia long sentences to anyone who stirred up trouble. Not only that, a squadron of ghosts known as the Observers were quite literally obsessed with watching power plays and preventing a King from taking charge again. That, and the logical reasoning that if Azazel found his way into the Ghost Zone by accident, it was entirely possible that some of its residents could be old friends or (more likely) enemies of his, led to him eventually reshaping his yellow haze into a triangle shape and taking on the persona of Bill Cipher.

After all, it was all too easy to hide the inner schemes of his plans behind the playfully malicious façade of an insane dream demon (he would hang to the term no matter the modification).

It was such a well-crafted illusion that few even bothered to consider the potential plans of the Master of the Mind.

It had been a few years (not that time was easily measured in the Ghost Zone) since Bill Cipher had entered into civilization that his powers begun to develop. It was considered normal for the process to take some time: as the energy that made up a ghost (demon, the Azazel part of Bill would always insist) specialized and bonded to the creature's particular obsession it molded to fit its master's needs. Bill Cipher, unlike most of the resident ghosts in the Ghost Zone, never settled down and found a particular patch of ectoplasm to call home and morph into a lair. It was widely considered to be another trait that just made him an oddball.

No one considered that it was because Bill rather scheme on how to play others, on how to manipulate his way back into the outside world, the one that really mattered, rather than settle down in this one.

If anything, it made the other ghosts misjudge Bill's abilities even more. Without a lair, without the constant well of ectoplasm to gather and bend to your personal obsession, surely his abilities would be weaker, less of a threat and less of a concern to the politics of the Ghost Zone. Bill of course never bothered to correct them, never bothered to tell any of the other ghosts that he could feel his influence snaking through the very ectoplasm of the public expanse he wandered, creeping up to each and every door to nearby lairs with the thin precision of puppet strings attaching to the end of limbs.

Instead of sleeping every night, Aza-Bill stayed up scheming, taking into consideration the obsession and weapons of every single ghost he encountered and heard of. He had heard of the rare communication with the outside world: natural portals that seemingly sprung to anywhere and anytime, with a predictability that called for volatility and a brevity that required meticulous planning. There was talk of a ghost who could open a portal to any place of his choosing at will who Bill Cipher would be enchanted to meet, yet sadly he was a loner, rumor had it no one could understand him.

Azazel was certain that Bill Cipher would make the perfect friend for this special ghost, and was already planning how to go about it, but was sadly always a few steps behind in finding him. Tracking was never his strong suit. Creating an army, molding it, watching as each pawn fought on the battlefield for the right to become a queen was entertaining, but the fun wasn't there without a victim to toy with or loved ones to dangle.

Azazel had been drifting through around the edge of the Ghost Zone one night when he passed the lair of a ghost whose reputation had long preceded him into the ears of casual conversation. Nocturne, like many of the more powerful being locked away by God deep into the Ghost Zone, was far enough away from the pulsating energy core of the realm that the empty void around him sucked away more energy than it provided, casting the ghost and his lair into an ironic state of nearly eternal slumber. The demon was alert and searching, ectoplasm sensing the world around him, manipulating the very reality and bending it at the seams in a way only he had mastered (after all, he was used to the world almost revolving around him), searching for his query when his powers eventually made contact with the door.

And that's when Bill Cipher first felt the dreams.

If the tiny bit he could manipulate reality was fun, the grasp the demon had on the realm of dreams was unbridled ecstasy. He remembered the times he had toyed with Sammy's dreams in Cold Oak slightly before his demise, and the insanity that seeped through Bill Ciphers mask into his personality after centuries in the role found it hilariously ironic how eerily his powered mirrored the Boy King who had been his prize and his downfall. Now he could not only control every piece of his illusion with a snap of his fingers, he could open the gateway into his victim's mind and waltz through as if it was the Ghost Zone itself, each memory a lair to be manipulated, edited, or washed away completely. He may be weaker in this new form than in his previous one, he may be nearly unable to form in the physical realm without showing his hand, but he saw no challenge in forcing proxies to do his dirty work for him and he had always been a master at making deals.

The only issue that remained was returning to the real world, the world before as he really should call it. Despite his changes, Azazel still fully intended on remaining loyal to his true master, Lucifer, not the scum of demons that occupied the lower pits of Hell, and Bill Cipher was born of just enough of that obsession to flawlessly orient itself at the center plans.

It seemed for a while that Bill Cipher might be trapped in the infernal realm forever. It was funny, in a depraved sort of way, how stupidly the ghosts went about their lives, not caring about the outside world and happy to remain in a childish status quo. They even called a realm-wide truce for Christmas, although it's not as if Skulker's hunting could even truly destroy anything but the most pitiful ectopussy without it simply reforming in its lair or a distant corner of the Ghost Zone in the future, separated from society by a challenge of willpower and nothing more. Sometimes ghosts would exit through a portal into the human realm as it was called, but few enough returned for it to be anything but whispered rumors around the Ghost Zone. Few were willing to take the risk and give up their homes without the safety of returning, the certainty of access to ectoplasm and energy to feed themselves and maintain their immortality.

Bill had spent enough time on the far edges of the universe, where gods slept and energy was drained rather than restored, to know he could feed off of dreams well enough to survive, even prosper in the human realm. It merely took creativity, which the ghosts sometimes had far too much of, and wit, which they were desperately lacking. A part of his demonic pride glowed at the knowledge that his forming so far into the unknown precluded that he was a dangerous creature, although part of him reasoned that it was largely due to the Colt's power that he was thrust so far into this strange death. It only made sense it was difficult to reconnect with the living realm: after all, the Colt wouldn't be known as the all-killing gun if its victims were found coming back to life.

Still, there was a reason ghos-dream demons were defined by their obsessions, and Bill was loathe to let his fade away and risk a final disappearance. No matter how long it took, the demon would search and fight for a way out of this afterlife.

Then one day the answer hit him in the face. Or, more accurately, the answer ripped open a stable, artificial inter-dimensional portal right in his face.

His interest had been sparked by the glowing green light in the distance, but he didn't make a move towards it. After all, sudden glowing green lights were quite common in the only dimension Bill had been in that had a favorite color. It's a shame it wasn't yellow; had it been, Bill may've had an even easier time blending into the background, and wouldn't have to go out of his way to avoid fights. The other ghosts couldn't view him as anything strong or sadistic enough to take pleasure out of fighting.

It was the screams that drew the demon in. Human screams. Inhuman in their agony, but so familiar to the demon after eternity in this madness that he flew towards it as fast as he could. It sounded painstakingly of home.

Then came the matter of how quickly he would leave. Running away would be rushing, and if there was anything Azazel's death had taught him it was that abandoning perfectly good opportunities when victory was in sight was the road to certain failure. Once word spread around the Ghost Zone of a stable and public (apparently there were rumors deeply concealed enough that even Bill Cipher had disturbingly not heard of until now) ghosts began flying out into the world of Amity Park en mass. Better to wait, Bill thought, than follow like a sheep into mass hysteria.

It was a good thing he did, for the boy he met the day the portal opened, now known as Danny Phantom in one world and Halfa in the other, was gaining an obsession of his own.

It was refreshing to watch the boy chase after all the runaway ghosts. Following him, toying with him by taking advantage of his odd ghost-demon status to tickle at his ghost sense just as he was falling asleep, seep into his mind and knock him out of his dreams to point him towards another ghost. After all, watching the boy go about saving people and hunting things was amusing enough to occupy the demon as he gathered his bearings.

It was only 2004 after all, three years before his death all that eternity ago. Portals never did flow into the Ghost Zone consistently, and Bill himself had experienced the effects of inconsistent time flow during his previous lifetime. Still, he had never heard of time going backwards before. It was no trouble in the long term, he simply needed to stay in Amity Park and avoided his old self until Azazel's inevitable demise.

Bill had considered changing things, messing with the fringes of reality as he now mastered it to change his fate and bring all of his old plans to fruition. But that wouldn't be as much fun, now would it? Bill Cipher had his own schemes, but the serious, melodramatic chess had morphed into a much freer, more interesting game. It wasn't like Amity Park was lacking entertainment.

But when time finally passed and the deed was done, Bill could feel at the edge of his consciousness where he needed to go. Danny Phantom was a special kid, one he could intricately mold from the shadows if he so wished. But he was bored with playing with heroes who reminded him of the Winchesters, with trying to push and ply obsessions with heroics into a much more useful, much more sinister pastime.

After all, he had a whole new generation of special kids waiting just for him.