It was a beautiful summer evening in Gravity Falls, Oregon, and the front yard of the Mystery Shack was filled with half a dozen people running around frantically, punctuated with the occasional shriek.
The water balloon fight was proving to be quite the success.
"Take THAT!" A squinting Mabel hurled a bright red water balloon at Grunkle Stan, the balloon bursting apart upon hitting his shoulder.
"Oh no you don't!" Stan lobbed a blue balloon at Mabel in return, but it missed its mark, instead breaking harmlessly at Melody's feet.
Melody's throw hit Ford instead of Stan, and Ford reciprocated the attack, and on and on they went, until all members of the Pines family ended up soaked and exhausted and smiling from ear to ear.
They were just starting to run low on ammo when the fight was interrupted by a loud, high-pitched laugh that echoed through the woods.
Six heads turned to face the source of the noise, which came not from the ground but from the sky, where above them floated a yellow triangular demon that they knew all too well.
The group responded to his appearance with a flurry of "no"s and a single half-mumbled swear.
"Oh, it is good to be back!" Bill swerved downwards towards the Mystery Shack's yard, his eye glancing at each member of the group in turn. "So, how've things been? I think we've got some catching up to do!" Bill raised his arm as he spoke the last few words, and all six of those below flew upwards in unison until they stood face-to-face with the demon.
Mabel was the first to summon the courage to speak.
"Hey, what gives? I thought we got rid of you four years ago!"
Bill's eye closed as he burst into laughter, the trees shaking with every laugh. "You would think that, wouldn't you!"
"But- but how?" Dipper pointed his index finger at the demon. "We destroyed you!"
"Yeah, and no thanks for that one."
"You were wiped off the face of the earth!"
Bill rolled his eye. "Maybe in this universe."
Ford glared at the demon, eyes blazing.
"In this universe?"
.
A dark-haired woman hummed merrily to herself as she trudged up a hill, staring as intently at her phone as at the scenery around her. It was a beautiful summer evening, the perfect time for a hike, but that wasn't why she came here; no weather, no sleet or hail, no heat wave or snowstorm, could keep her from her destination.
For once, she was proud of her hometown, glad to have been born and raised in middle of nowhere, Oregon, where she knew her animal neighbors better than her human ones. Because the spot was right there, practically in her backyard, ripe for the taking.
And she was going to be the first to find it, come hell or high water.
She slowed down as she tapped away at her phone. It was getting close now. She dug around in her over-sized messenger bag before retrieving a flashlight as the sun began to sink below the horizon.
The search was on.
She overturned rocks, rattled branches, even knocked on the trunk of a few trees, rushing here and there as she frantically tried to fill in the blanks, to match the location to the clue-
The woman's brown boot caught on a tree root, and her body abruptly slammed into the ground. Mud and pine needles clung to her skin as she gingerly pushed herself up, scooping up first her phone, then the flashlight-
But as she grabbed the flashlight, its light briefly illuminated the silhouette of what she so desired.
The woman ran over to her prize, not caring about the mud or the needles or how her knee ached with every step.
There it was.
She'd seen the statue in pictures, so she could identify it easily on sight.
She did it. She'd really done it. She had found it. The rest of the world never stood a chance.
The woman burst into laughter as she crouched down and examined the triangular figure. She took pictures on her phone- one, two, a dozen, a dozen dozen- and her jittery fingers released those pictures onto the Internet for all to see.
She kept her caption simple; eloquence could wait.
_AlexHirsch Found the Bill statue! Details to follow.
She laughed more. She took more pictures. She threw the pictures on every website she could think of. And then she bent down and did the one other thing that everybody who'd sought out the statue had mentioned, the one that so many said must be done.
She shook the statue's outstretched hand.
The stone hand was cold to the touch and firm despite its slenderness, showing no signs of giving way as she intertwined her tan fingers with the dull gray fingers of the statue, five fingers tightly gripping three.
She stood in place for a moment. And then another.
When nothing happened, she just laughed again, shaking her head as she broke her grip with the statue.
This was it: no more clues to be found, no more hunting to be had. Of course nothing would happen. All jokes aside, the statue was just a statue.
A statue that was suddenly beginning to shake.
The woman decided that she would need to amend her previous statement.
After several long seconds, the statue ceased to shake. But before the woman could begin scrambling around to see what new clue the shaking had unearthed, she found that a yellow triangle had taken the place of the statue, its form identical to that of the statue, but made of color and not of stone. The triangle rushed upwards, rising well above her head, before stopping and simply floating mid-air.
She extended her arms towards the triangle, though she couldn't tell where exactly it was, or how it was being suspended in mid-air like that-
"Whoa there!" The triangle raised its palms in the air, as if to shoo her away. She obligingly dropped her arms back to her side as she stared at the triangle, having to crane her neck slightly to look at it properly. "Take it easy."
The woman took a deep breath, standing up straight as she considered her words. "Where is the next clue in the Cipher Hunt?" Under her breath, she added, "He really did go all out for this..."
"The next clue in the-" The triangle slapped his hand against his leg as words were interspersed with laughter. "The Cipher Hunt's over, kid! You found me! Gold star for you!"
He clapped, and a glowing golden ball resembling the sun popped up right in front of the woman's face.
She hadn't meant to shriek like that.
He clapped again, and the glowing orb grew larger and redder until it brushed against the tip of her nose (all she could feel from it was heat, an immense, unbearable heat) then abruptly collapsed into a black dot and faded away.
"I... I don't understand."
"Of course not. All you did was follow a few clues, right?" The triangle chuckled softly. "I should've done this sooner, if I'd known how easy it was to string you humans along-"
She took a step closer to the triangle, hoping to see the source of the image (it had to be a hologram, but what was projecting it?), with no success. "Stop playing games with me and tell me what's going on!"
"You're the one playing games! But hey, thanks for getting me out of there. I'll be sure to re҉m͠emb͢e͏r̵ t͜h̛at when it's your dimension's turn to party."
The woman sighed. "You- look, Bill is a cartoon character. Bill Cipher doesn't exist."
The triangle rolled its eye. "Maybe not in this universe!"
The woman threw her hands in the air. "In this universe?"
The triangle... Bill flew into the air, cackling loudly, as a glowing red X appeared in the night sky.
"See you at the aftermath!"
Bill reached the glowing X, and in a flash of light, both disappeared, leaving the night sky as dark and tranquil as ever.
The woman stared up at the sky, then back at the now-empty space where the statue had stood, a sinking feeling in her stomach.
The Internet was never going to believe this.