"What do we do?" Dipper asks, pacing back and forth in front of Ford. "What do we do?" he repeats, and rubs his hand through his hair. "What do we d-" he starts, but then Ford places a hand on Dipper's shoulder gently, causing him to pause in his sentence.
"We have to stop Bill."
"But how? He's indestructible!"
"I'm not sure. But I have an idea. Follow me" Ford says, and stands up and heads towards the house. Dipper stays where he is, unable to take his eyes off of Bill high above him.
"Dipper. Come on, boy." Ford says sternly, and Dipper looks back towards the shack where Ford is waiting for him and follows him inside.
Once inside, Ford enters the code into the vending machine and heads to the elevator without saying a word. Once inside, he presses the button for the second floor.
Dipper opens his mouth to speak, but Ford raises his hand to silence him, so he closes it.
"I was thinking about what you said the other day, Dipper. When you and I were down here before" he says as he passes the smashed mind reading machine. "About how you were going to 'shoot me right out of my head' if I were Bill and that got me thinking" He pauses when he hears something sliding across the room, and looks down to see the memory gun Dipper had used against him. He picks it up. "If shooting Bill while he's possessing somebody with this gun erases him out of their mind, then I'm sure shooting Bill with one of these directly will erase him out of existence". He walks back towards the elevator and gets in, this time pushing the button for the third floor.
"But how? Don't those things have a really short range? Wouldn't he have to be right in front of you in order for it to work?" Dipper asks, following him out of the elevator. When Ford opens the door to the portal room, Dipper sits down on the swivel chair in front of the viewing glass. Ford comes back out a minute later holding a second one.
"Yes, if you only have it set that way. Fiddleford told me before we lost contact with each other that you can change the settings and number of people these guns can affect". Ford messes with the switch on the back of the gun and tosses it to Dipper, who took the intention wrong and flinches before he catches it. Ford then adjusts the settings on his own gun and heads up the elevator to the main floor. Once outside, Dipper makes a reloading motion on his gun even though it is not needed and points it at the ground before looking back at Ford.
"So. What's the plan?" he tries to ask in a cool sounding voice, but it cracks and he clears his throat, feeling embarrassed.
"This is the part where we split up"
"WHAT?" Dipper squeaks, and almost drops his gun on the floor. "But what if Bill finds me? I can't fight him off all by myself!"
Ford gets down on his knee again. "That's what the gun is for. Besides, just today you fought off a giant UFO with a gun almost four times the size of your entire body. Bill is nothing compared to those things. You should be fine." He says, and stands up. "Now. You go into town and make sure everyone else is okay. I'll head into the woods and look for Bill". Dipper thinks for a minute, and then shakes his head.
"No, I better head into the woods. The last time I saw Mabel she was running away from the shack towards the woods and I want to make sure she's okay"
"Good for you, sacrificing yourself to go after Bill for the safety of the townsfolk. I'm proud of you". He says, completely ignoring the comment Dipper had made about Mabel. Ford ruffles Dipper's hair before making the same reloading motion Dipper had done a few minutes prior. "Now" He says, handing Dipper a walkie-talkie. "Call me if you get into trouble. But do me a favor and try not to get into any trouble" he says. "Now. Are you ready?" he asks, stepping out of the Shack's barrier. Dipper does the same.
"I'm ready"
"Then split!" Ford yells, and runs towards the town. Dipper watches him go, and once he's completely out of sight he sighs before he attempts to copy the path Mabel took when she ran away mere seconds before the disaster happened. As he ran further and further away from the shack, and further into the forest, he notices that the bright light identical to the one in the sky keeps getting brighter and brighter and he begins to have second thoughts about volunteering to run blindly into the forest rather than to check on the town itself. At one point, the light becomes so bright that Dipper has to close his eyes to continue into the forest. Thinking Bill is just messing with his eyes because he knows what Dipper's planning to do, Dipper holds his gun out in front of him as he continues on.
When the light becomes almost blinding, even with his eyes squeezed shut as tight as he possibly can squeeze them, he trips over something very hard and lumpy. It's so far above the ground that he falls forward onto his head.
Taking only a second to rub the throbbing pain in his head to check for blood, he scurries around blindly to look for his memory gun. When he finds it he scampers to pick it up and then jumps up quickly, prying his eyes open as slowly as his body will allow and aims it towards where he had tripped.
"I know you're there, Bill!" he shouts. "Show yourself!" he shots, aiming his gun at thin air. "I'm not afraid of you! I can take anything you throw at m-" Suddenly, the entire sky flashes like lightning, and it gives him just enough time to notice that the thing he had just tripped over was his own sister, and sitting less than a foot away from her is the smashed rift.
"Mabel!" he shouts, tossing his gun in a random direction as he kneels down next to her. "Mabel, are you okay?" He asks, shaking her violently. Another flash in the sky reveals that her eyes appear to be closed gently. "Mabel please, wake up!" He says, his hands beginning to tremble. He shakes her one more time, more slowly than before, but to no avail. His hands begin to tremble. "Mabel, please" he pauses. "I can't do this without you. Not now" he begins to choke up. "Not a week before our 13th birthday. Not the day you've been looking forward to since the first day of kindergarten". He reaches carefully under her body, and picks her up carefully when his hand reaches her shoulder. He tries to help her walk back to the shack, but all her legs do is drag weakly behind her. He doesn't make it far, however, because all of a sudden he hears someone calling his name.
"Dipper! Where are you? I heard you shouting about Bill and thought I'd run back to check on you"
Ford. He reaches into his vest pocket and notices, once again that he left his walkie-talkie on.
"Dipper! There you are" Ford's voice says suddenly, and when Dipper looks up he sees Ford running towards him from the entrance closest to the Shack.
"Oh, hello Mabel" he says when he catches up to them, not taking the time to notice the state she's in. When he doesn't get a response from her, he turns his attention back to Dipper. "Did you find him? Did he try to attack you? Did you defend yourself?"
Dipper doesn't respond. He wipes a single tear falling from his eyes that would indicate it would become heavy sobbing later on.
"Well, did you?"
"No, but I did find Mabel" he says quietly, and then even more so, "and the smashed rift"
"Really? That's great! Well, not the part that it was smashed, but it was still great that you found it. This is exactly what I've been talking about, Dipper. Where was it?"
Dipper hesitates, glancing over at Mabel flopped sloppily onto his shoulder, and sighs. "With Mabel"
"WHAT?" The intensity of his question startles Dipper enough to drop Mabel. "SHE did this? Dipper, this is EXACTLY what I was talking about. Your sister is suffocating you! If it weren't for her, none of this would have ever happened"
Dipper, who had bent over to help Mabel back up off the floor carefully places her back down. "What." He says darkly, and Ford shook his head.
"This is why you should stay here and become my apprentice. We can fix this together. Without your sister holding you back"
Dipper wiped two more tears from his eyes. "Holding me back? Are you kidding me? No! If you think that siblings are only here to hold you back, then I don't want any of this! Look at her!" Heavier tears began to fall down his cheeks, and he didn't bother trying to wipe them away. He knelt beside Mabel. "She could be dead! My sister could be dead!" he shouts, and begins to sob. "And I couldn't even be there for her when it happened" He stands up. "Because of you"
"Yes, but Dipper…"
"No! I don't want to listen to any 'but's! I've made up my mind. I'm going home at the end of the summer."
"Dipper, please!"
"No!" he yells, closing his eyes again and shakes his head back and forth. "I want to go home!" he begins to sob. "I don't care about what happens with, or to Bill anymore! I just want to go home" he says, looking down at Mabel. Suddenly, the back door from the shack swings open, and when Stanley notices Ford and Dipper standing together, he runs over to them.
"Hey kid, what's wrong with you? I could hear you screaming from the-" He pauses when he sees Dipper hovering over Mabel. He too begins to cry, and pokes Ford really hard in the chest.
"ONE THING, sixer. I ask you to do ONE THING for me and you refuse!"
"That makes two of us then!"
Stanley begins to laugh. "Are you kidding me? You're bringing this up now?" He gestures to Mabel. "You think this can be related in any way to that dumb college of yours? I asked you to stay away from the kids and now look what happened. I've never seen this kid cry this much the entire summer he's been here. You're his hero, sixer, and now look what you've done."
"What I've done, Stanley? It's her fault!"
"Really?" Stanley gestures to the sky. "You think Mabel had anything to do with this? You wrote three journals full of this stuff and yet when something like THIS happens, you're going to blame Mabel?"
"It's her fault!"
"No it's not!" Dipper suddenly yells, and the older twins both look over at him at the same time. "If we're going to blame ANYONE other than Bill, then it's my fault."
"What?" Ford asks, and Dipper has to look away from the way Ford is looking at him.
"I never picked up when she tried to call me on her walkie-talkie. She heard me accept Ford's proposal over the walkie-talkie when I left it on. I didn't run after her right away like I should have. It's not her fault she grabbed the wrong bag. It's not like she was the one who smashed it either. It's all me. If I had just followed her into the woods and calmed her down before I came back into the Shack and talk to Great Uncle Ford about it…" Dipper's voice fades away, and he flinches away from the hand that touches his shoulder. He calms down once he hears Stanley's voice come from the same source.
"Hey, kiddo. Don't blame yourself if it's not all entirely your fault. Trust me, it'll all go to your head and soon you'll be blaming yourself for everything that goes wrong around you." He looks at Mabel. "It's okay. She doesn't look injured. Maybe if we bring her inside we'll be able to see what's wrong with her there." Stanley slowly picks up Mabel, careful to support her head in his right arm. "In fact, let's get her into bed. Maybe she'll wake up in the morning and not remember what happened to her and feel all better. Is that what you want to do?"
Dipper nods, wiping a tear from his eye.
"Okay. Then let's do that". Stanley and Dipper walk back into the shack through the back entrance and the door closes softly behind them. Ford is about to follow them inside when he notices a bright flash in the sky. He stops to look at whatever it is, and sees a bright ball of light, somewhat resembling a shooting star, shoot across the sky and crash hard into the ground.
And it's not until in this moment that Ford realizes why Mabel's favorite sweater looked uncomfortably familiar.