I do not own the show GRAVITY FALLS or any of the characters; both are the property of the Walt Disney Company and of Alex Hirsch. I make no money from these stories but write just for fun and in the hope that other fans enjoy reading them. I will ask, please, do not copy my stories elsewhere on the Internet. I work hard on these, and they mean a lot to me. Thank you.

Best Be Prepared

(June 4, 2017)

The fourth was a Sunday, an off-day for the Shack, and about the last thing Dipper wanted to do was to go out into the woods to the spot where the Cipher effigy, now contained in a steel and wire-mesh cage, stood with its hand extended, almost exactly the way it had been from that moment during Weirdmageddon when Bill had shaken Stanley's hand, thinking he was about to enter Stanford's mind.

However, Bill had asked him to come, and Dipper didn't see how he could refuse him after Bill had helped rescue them from their abduction by Omnis aboard the UFO. He had agreed. Wendy was no longer living at the Corduroy cabin—her brother Junior had returned home for good and was a partner in the lumber business, but like his dad, Junior was lazy about building things like a bedroom addition for himself, and he now had her old room. Wendy had moved everything to the Shack, where she now slept in what once had been Ford's room.

However, she had definitely not cut family ties, and that morning she'd asked Dipper to attend services at her church (she said it would please Dan) and so he had already laid out nice clothes to wear. Not a suit, because the congregation tended toward shirt-and-tie casual dressy, but, well, a good pair of shined black shoes, black pants, a light-blue shirt, and a dark-blue tie. And he would leave the pine-tree cap in his room. He and Wendy had done their ritual cap exchange after the Shack had closed the day before.

Wendy would dress up for church, too. However, at the moment—seven in the morning—they were wearing the same clothes they had driven up in: flannel shirt over tank top and jeans for Wendy, red tee and cargo jeans for Dipper. They'd change into their church clothes after the trek out to see Bill.

Dipper and Wendy walked down the Mystery Trail and to the overgrown path to the spot, carrying a blanket, and not for the reason anyone seeing them might expect. To communicate with Bill, Dipper had to induce an autohypnotic trance—a light one, but he would fall if he tried it standing. So he had to sit, and even in his everyday britches (as Dan called them), he needed something to sit on besides a mossy old fallen beam.

"You sure you want to do this?" Wendy asked.

"It might be important," Dipper said. "And as irritating as Bill can be, he's helped us out. A lot." He didn't have to remind her of the number of times that had happened. He understood that Bill had also helped Ford and Stan—though Stan was reluctant even to admit that and Ford still distrusted the interdimensional demon.

Wendy didn't say anything. They didn't hurry. It was a pleasant morning, cool, fresh, and bright, with dew bezazzling the brush and the tall grass. "Reminds me of the time Mabel stuck glittering rhinestones all over her face," Dipper murmured as he held up a drooping pine branch for Wendy to duck under.

The forest was musical with bird songs—a quail announcing "Chicago, Chicago, Chicago," sparrows gossiping in twitters, mourning doves sounding like regretful small owls, all around, to the backbeat of woodpeckers. Now and then some small animal rustled in the brush, a rabbit startled by their passage, a family of field mice on a field trip.

Then the taller trees became sparse as a clearing opened. "Here we are," Wendy said. When it seemed as though Bill—or something, anyway—was trying to reanimate the Cipher statue, Ford and Fiddleford had welded a domed metal cage around the effigy. What Ford most worried about was someone shaking the statue's stone hand—though he couldn't say what might happen. "Anything from mild corruption to full-body possession," was his best guess. During a tense moment, and using a special axe, Wendy had chopped off the arm—but weirdly, it had begun to grow back, thanks to some industrious, possibly alien, insects that deposited flecks of gold on the stone.

Over the fall, some vines had twined up the metal struts, making the cage look more like a green hill, and it was hard even to make out the shape inside the heavy metal screen welded to the struts, but Dipper pulled a few tendrils loose and gazed inside. "Huh. Ford said the gold bugs were rebuilding the arm, but they stopped just past the elbow. I don't think anything's been added to it since they built the cage."

"Gives me the creeps," Wendy admitted, standing with her arms crossed. She had spread the blanket on the fallen beam. "Want to do this and get out of here?"

"Yeah," Dipper said. They sat on the blanket side by side, Wendy holding his left hand with her right. He squeezed. "If anything weird happens, you know—protect yourself."

"You know something weird's gonna happen," Wendy said with a wry grin. "And Cipher knows I'll kick his little equilateral butt if he tries anything funny."

"Well, he can't help it, because his sense of humor—"

You know I mean funny-eerie, not funny-ha-ha. Go on, Dip. I got your back.

—Thanks, Wen. Here goes.

Dipper took slow, deep breaths and told himself he was relaxing, sinking into sleep. He'd practiced so much that he went under within a minute. He had closed his eyes, but now his dream self opened mental eyelids in the Mindscape. As usual, it looked distorted, off, strange angles on the trees, everything gray, black, or less gray. Even the bright morning sky looked light gray, not white.

"Bill? You wanted me to come and see you. Here I am."

Ah. There the small triangle was. Sizes were impossible to gauge in the Mindscape, but normally, if Dipper didn't will himself smaller, Bill appeared a little larger than a playing card. Alone of everything in the Mindscape, Bill showed his usual yellow-and-black color scheme. He drifted down like an autumn leaf, saying, "Hi, Pine Tree. I see Red came with you."

"I wanted her to. Is that a problem?"

"No, no. Comfy?"

"I'm OK. What is it, Bill? Are you depressed or something?"

Bill didn't hover, as he normally did, but came to rest on the beam on Dipper's right. Odd, but Dipper couldn't see Wendy, though he could feel her hand clasping his. The little triangle said, much more softly than Bill usually spoke, "Feeling off."

Dipper looked down at him. "Yeah, no jokes or anything? OK, tell me what's wrong. Is it something bad? Some threat to the Falls?"

"Not exactly, kid. OK. I told myself I'd just flat come out and say this—but I'm always flat, ha. See? No spirit to joke just now. Pine Tree—Dipper—I've been hanging with humans too long. This is hard. But it's best to be prepared, so . . . OK. First, straight up, I apologize for all the rotten things I did to you and Shooting Star, all right? And I'm not just saying that. I mean it. Your insignificant little human emotions have rubbed off, and then there's the other part of me, Billy Sheaffer. I get vibes from him all the time now. And—he's a good kid."

"I like Billy," Dipper said. "So does Mabel. We try to help him along. He's—"

"Lonely," Bill said so forlornly that Dipper's dream self blinked. "Yeah, yeah. I know. Thing is, before, when I was in my own dimension and then later, I was so full of myself that I didn't know what lonely meant. Now—it hurts. And you and Mabel make it easier. Thanks for that. I . . . got news, Pine Tree. I think it's gonna please you, but I hope it hurts you a little, too. And I don't mean that in a bad way, believe it or not."

"What is it, Bill?" Dipper asked. "You can tell me."

"Pine—I mean Dipper, I've gotta leave you."

"Leave me?" Dipper asked. "But some of your molecules—"

"Yeah, yeah, they're still inside your heart," Bill said. "I thought nothing could take them out without killing you, but—there's a way. I'll lay it out for you. Just before you guys came back to the Falls, I got called on the carpet by Old Frilly—"

"The Axolotl," Dipper said. "Right?"

"Yeah, him, and here's what's gonna go down: The nanosecond you turn eighteen, those molecules are gonna leave you. Don't ask me how, the Ax is taking care of that. I hope there's no surgery involved. Best not to do delicate surgery with an ax, ha. Geeze, I can't make a joke to save my apex today."

"If the molecules go, will I—"

"No, you won't die. You'll be OK. Frilly tells me that during all the time those molecules were in place, I was influencing you and you were influencing me. Thing is, the ways we've affected each other aren't gonna change. I mean, partly because of me, you're more self-confident, more focused, you got more moxie, et cetera et cetera et cetera. And I kinda know what it is to have human feelings now. But this—this kind of chat we're having now—not gonna be possible after you're officially eighteen. Don't ask me why Frilly chose that moment, except I think he didn't want me in bed with you and Red."

Hey, Cipher, I'm holding Dip's hand! I can hear this, you know!

Sorry, Re—Wendy. OK, I'm sorry for that trick of turning you into a living banner, too. For everything. Before, I really didn't know how much I was hurting others. Now, I'm starting to see a real downside to being evil."

"I'd say more chaotic than plain evil," Dipper told him. "So—if I'll be all right, what will happen to you?"

"This part of me, the Mindscape part, goes bye-bye."

Dude, you're gonna die?

"Not . . . exactly," Bill said. "This part of my consciousness is going to merge with Billy Sheaffer. And he'll know everything. Not all at once, that'd be too much for a twelve-year-old human kid. Frilly says it'll come to him gradually as he grows up. I'll be aware and stuck in his subconscious, though, probably periscope depth. He'll gradually get my memories, and I'll be part of him—even more than I've been doing a ride-along with Dip these past years. It'd mean a lot to me if even after you go off to college, you made some room for talks with Billy. He'll have questions. Fordsy wouldn't want to answer them, but you could."

"I'll do it," Dipper said. "Of course I will. But—what's the whole end game?"

"Ask the Axolotl," Bill said. "All I know is, I have to live a whole human life, all the way through beginning to end, and then, you know, leave it—OK, die—and if I've become a kinder gentler et cetera et cetera et cetera—"

"Chaotic good instead of chaotic evil," Dipper suggested.

"Yeah. I guess. If I manage that, then the Ax will turn back time for me, I'll be put back into my own dimension at the very beginning of it all, the time I cracked and turned against my family, and this time I'll get the chance to be a good interdimensional demon instead of an evil one."

Wait, won't that wipe out Weirdmageddon and all that?

Cipher shrugged, as much as a triangle could. "I don't think so, Red. It sets you guys on one time line, my universe on another one, that's all. What's done is done and what will be, will be. Your history and your memories won't change. Anyway. Me and Dip, we got a couple months ahead. Then it's time for us to part."

"I'll miss you," Dipper admitted.

Bill gave a weak version of his normal laugh. "But your aim is getting better?"

"No," Dipper said, his throat feeling a little tight. "I'll miss you, period. You drive me nuts sometimes, but—when a friend does that, you forgive him, because between friends, it's OK."

Bill's tone changed and became hopeful: "Am I a friend?"

"I don't know how to answer that. Wendy?"

I still got a grudge, man, but I have to say—yeah, you been there when we most needed you. That's what a friend does. So—yeah, we're friends.

"OK," Cipher said. "Thanks for making this talk easier than I thought it would be. I have to say—Dipper, I'll hate to see this summer end."

"Come on," Dipper said. "It's not like it's forever. We'll meet again."

Don't know how, Wendy put in.

Cipher added, "Don't know when."

They didn't finish the verse, but they all knew. Somehow, some way, even if the Axolotl did separate Dipper and Bill, one day and in some way, Wendy and Dipper, and Mabel too would—well, you know the tune. Some sunny day, man. Might even be a long time off, but—

Yeah.

Some sunny day.

The End