Author's note: It's time for an epic dreamscape battle, boys and girls! I had a total BLAST writing this chapter because my portions of the dreamscape battle gave me the chance to just let my imagination run wild! And my bestie Kaylee came up with some awesome battle tactics as well! :D
Chapter 5, the climax of the story, is on its way, but in the meantime, thank you so much for reading, and as always, feel free to leave feedback. c:
- Danni
Bill suddenly appeared above the puppet arachnid, looking very pleased with himself. "Well! What do we have here? I see you've met my friend!" he said gleefully, petting the horrid creature as if it were a dog.
Mabel continued to cling onto Dipper, unsure of what to say or do, but silently attempting to come up with a plan. Dipper, terrified as he was, mustered up the courage to say something.
"A-alright, Bill…this is getting old. Just get out of my head! There's no way I'm giving you whatever it is you want! I'll…I'll…"
His voice trailed off as he tried his best to come up with a plan of his own. A million thoughts were running through his head, but nothing was coherent. Though he didn't feel sick inside his dreamscape, the sickness coursing through him was corrupting and scrambling his thought process.
The woods continued to grow darker. The flashlights no longer seemed to be doing any good. Even Bill's eerie golden glow seemed to have dimmed, but Bill paid no mind. He was too busy enjoying himself.
"Not so easy facing me when your own body temperature is betraying you, huh, Pine Tree? Whaddya got? I DARE you to try something," Bill taunted, sounding awfully smug.
"Aw, shut up and leave Dipper alone! YOU…dare YOURSELF to do something!" Mabel shot back. She wasn't particularly good at crafting insults, but she had at least tried. Her own mind had gone blank, and she, too, was starting to panic. She worriedly looked over at Dipper and whispered to him. "Any ideas? There has to be something we can use against him…"
"Nnngh, I'm trying…I know there's something we've never tried, but…I don't remember…" He silently tried to get his thoughts in order, but of course, every anxious musing was echoed back to him by the environment he stood in, and Bill heard it all.
What the heck? Since when can't I think of a plan?! What are we gonna do, THINK, you've got to think of SOMETHING before-
Bill was thoroughly enjoying every second. "You know, Pine Tree, you've made ME realize something. NOW I remember why you were the first body I'd invaded in 30 years…because immortals HAVE no weaknesses!" he said, laughing evilly to himself.
Even though she knew it wouldn't do any good, the normally pacifistic Mabel was ready to punch Bill's lights out.
Just as she raised her little fists and prepared to try, Dipper reached his limit.
"Aaaaah…get OUT of my THOUGHTS!" he cried out.
The shout echoed through the nightmarish woods, bringing everything to a halt and clearing the encroaching black mist from the area. At the same time, a golden cage appeared around Bill, trapping him inside. The hideous puppet creature grew apprehensive and darted off to parts unknown.
"WHAT the-? Are you KIDDING me?! THIS again?" Bill cried out angrily.
Dipper stood staring at the demon in shock. "Wha…what did I just do? All I did was think of-"
"Wait…Dipper, that's it!" A huge smile returned to Mabel's face. "Just think of anything and it'll happen! Just like we did in Grunkle Stan's head!"
Dipper gasped. "YES! We'll have more time to formulate a plan that way! How…how did I forget that?" he said, pretty annoyed with himself. The fight to save Stan's mind from Bill's clutches had been one of the most memorable experiences of the whole summer. Mabel patted his shoulder.
"LOOK. AT. THAT…"
Before either twin could do anything else, Bill shapeshifted into a stick and floated right between the bars.
"The mortal children still think they can beat me with kitten fists and laser eyes!" Bill said. "Look, if it's a fight you want, by all means - step up and fight! That way, I'll just get to DESTROY YOU FASTER!"
"You'll never destroy us, you weirdo!" As Mabel spoke, she thought up paper lanterns in a variety of colors, and they appeared in the air all around the three of them, illuminating the gloomy area with a soft, almost angelic glow. "Not when we've got MINDSCAPE MAGIC!"
"Awwwww, isn't that cute!" Bill retorted in the most condescending tone possible. "Thanks for making things easier on ME, Shooting Star!" He snapped his fingers, and hundreds of knives and blades materialized. With a flick of his wrist, they went hurtling toward the twins.
The twins both dodged in unison, and custom shields decorated to each twin's liking appeared in their hands simultaneously, affectively deflecting the spears. They popped up from behind their shields and looked at each other in amazement, then gave each other finger guns and said, "NICE!"
Suddenly, forks, of all things - selected as a weapon by Bill because of their significance during the Bipper incident - came shooting at the young twins like bullets, and they had just a second to dodge them.
"Forks? REALLY?" Dipper said in frustration. Bill cackled in response.
Dipper emerged from behind his shield. A proton pack, not unlike the ones he'd seen in ghost-hunting flicks he'd loved since he was a small fry, materialized in his hand, and the laser beams that he shot from it not only disintegrated the fork missiles, but also punched holes directly through Bill's body, leaving him looking more like a piece of Swiss cheese than the evil nacho he usually was.
The Mystery Twins stifled their laughter. "Huh…what do you know? Works on demons just as well as it does on ghosts," Dipper cracked.
Bill shrieked with anger as the gaping holes in his form filled back in. Then, his ribbon-like arm morphed into a lasso, and he hurled it straight at Dipper.
"AAH!" the twins yelped in unison. Within a split second, Mabel pushed Dipper behind her, rolled them both out of the reach of the arm rope, and jumped to her feet in order to shield him. "Oh, NO, you don't!" she cried as she thought up a stuffed animal cannon and started rapid-firing teddy bear bombs at the demon.
Bill didn't even have a chance to resist before he was buried underneath an explosion of pastel-colored fluff. "UGH! The POLYESTER CUTENESS! How don't humans consider this TORTURE?!" was the muffled cry that rose up from underneath the pile.
Mabel's only response was a raspberry.
Meanwhile, as Bill struggled to escape from the plush bullets being fired at him, Dipper conjured up his most prized 'Dungeons, Dungeons, and More Dungeons' creation - a weapon that had the powers of a standard sword, a mace, and a lightsaber combined. While Bill's back was turned, he went in for what he was sure would be the perfect sneak attack.
At that moment, the plushies surrounding Bill turned to ash, and he rose from the pile to deflect Dipper's sword with his own arm just as it was about to strike him.
The two engaged in a brief sword fight. On and on it seemed to go, the clanking of metal ringing through the forest like a school bell. Dipper lasted a lot longer than Bill had expected him to, but soon, Dipper found himself struggling to keep up with Bill. It was strange; he'd never felt so drained inside of his dreamscape before…
It was clear to Mabel that Dipper was beginning to lose, and so she quickly came up with a plan. She ditched the plushie cannon and conjured up a small, crystalline, star-shaped compact. It was fortunate that she did, for just as it appeared in her hand, she saw Bill knock Dipper's prized sword out of his hand.
Dipper ran to retrieve it, but quick as lightning, Bill snatched it up and held it to Dipper's throat, to Mabel's horror.
"NO!"
In an instant, Mabel clapped the center button twice as if the compact were a castanet, placed it around her neck, and let the device do its work. This caught Bill's attention before he could harm the boy in his grasp, and so he and Dipper both watched as Mabel was instantly consumed by clouds of galaxy-print magic. In just a second, her clothes transformed into the fluffy, lace-trimmed, multicolored uniform of a witch apprentice straight out of a Saturday morning magical-girl anime.
"Alright, Bill…no more games!" she cried out as she stood bravely before the deranged demon. She summoned her wand, a handle resembling a pink-and-white peppermint stick with a rainbow-beaded star topper that matched her compact. "In the name of the stars above…prepare to be punished!" she cried out in true magical-girl fashion. Then, she couldn't help but grin. "YES! I've ALWAYS WANTED to say that!"
Bill dropped Dipper and laughed in response. "What is this, Halloween?! What's that eyestrain-inducing piece of plastic going to do?"
"Ohhh, just…THIS." Mabel twirled around and thrust her arms into the air as she cried out, "Valentine Conversation Heart…ATTACK!"
Her magic wand produced a pink stream of glitter and light, filled with tiny pastel candy hearts, that smacked Bill right in the face.
"Whoa!" Dipper stood watching in awe, laughing a bit, as he pulled himself to his feet. There was Bill, being beaten up by what looked like a giant stream of cotton candy.
But it didn't last long.
Bill soon retaliated with a stream of hellish-red liquid fire.
Mabel stood her ground and pushed back against the dark magic for as long as she could, but to her dismay, her magical beam of candy hearts began to melt under the heat of Bill's lava blast. She struggled to keep the magic from fizzling out, but Bill's blast was starting to push her backward, and she was beginning to lose her footing.
"MABEL!" Dipper cried out in fear.
"DIPPER! How are we gonna lose him?!" Mabel responded, sounding rather frightened herself.
Dipper thought for a second. Then…lightbulb!
(No, a lightbulb actually appeared.)
He couldn't help but laugh. "I always thought that only happened in cartoons. Cool!" Then he yelled to Bill in order to get his attention. "Hey, Bill! Try this on for size!" He pulled what appeared to be a simple red and white ball out of his pocket.
"HA! If your SISTER'S toys aren't stopping me, what makes you think an oversized fishing bobber is gonna help?" Bill scoffed as he effortlessly continued blasting at Mabel's wand without even looking.
"Well… I think the friend in this oversized fishing bobber juuust might…"
Suddenly, Dipper's normal hat and vest transformed into that of a decorated Monstermon master. He held the shiny little plastic capsule out in front of him…and…
"Torkomon, I choose you!"
He tossed the ball out in front of him as far as he could. As it hit the ground, out of the strange ball came a shiny turtle creature whose shell seemed to be made out of volcanic rock.
"Torkomon…use Smoke and Mirrors!"
Suddenly, Bill was blindsided - literally - by a giant cloud of thick white smoke.
Bill instantly ceased fire and screamed. "AAAAAAH! COME ON! I JUST got laser correction done on this eye!"
Mabel, too, ceased fire and cheered. "Alright, Dipper! Let's get out of here while he's distracted!" She took Dipper's hand, and with Bill caught in smoke, the two of them made their escape. As they ran, Dipper scooped up the little tortoise creature and perched it atop his shoulder as if it were a parrot.
As the twins exited the forest, they gasped at the sight that laid before them. The overgrown nightmare roots were completely out of control. There were at least 50 of them now, and several had inched so far out that they were merely 20 or so feet from the mind library.
"Ohhhh, jeez…now I see what you were talking about…" Dipper said, shuddering at the sight. "This…can't be good…Bill must be trying to make my own nightmares consume my mind!"
"Then there's definitely no time to waste. Come on!" Mabel used her wand and summoned a 'rainbow sugar bomb' to clear a path before them as they ran.
"That…is pretty awesome," Dipper admitted with a laugh. "I underestimated those weird anime things Candy got you into."
"Toldja they were just as good as comic book superheroes!" Mabel teased, just slightly. Then it was her turn to admit something. "Guess I underestimated Monstermon, too! You are one crazy powerful little cutie!" she cooed as she cupped the turtle's little head in her hands. "You ready to come up with a plan, bro-bro?"
"Oh, yeah, I-" Dipper pulled her to a stop, just briefly. "Wait. That smoke's…probably not gonna last long enough for us to get back and…put a plan into motion. Maybe I should-"
"Nah, nah, it's okay! Leave it to Mabel," Mabel responded, taking notice of how oddly out-of-breath Dipper seemed to be. (She had to wonder how it was even possible to BE out of breath in a dream.) She quickly thought up another diversion. "Done!"
"What'd you do?" Dipper questioned. He hadn't seen anything appear.
"Ohhhh, let's just say Bill's gonna find himself in a pretty…sticky situation!" Mabel joked, giggling afterward.
"Pffff, you're such a dork…" Dipper said, playfully punching her in the arm as they picked up their pace.
The twins hastily made it back to the now-well-illuminated mind library and headed to the top floor as quickly as they could. They soon arrived in front of the top-secret Journal 3 section of the library - a small room with an ornate door covered in encrypted messages and adorned with one giant combination lock.
"Okay…this one I keep under lock and key…for obvious reasons." He spun the letter slots to the correct combination - S-U-R-W-R-Q-S-D-F-N - and the twins worked together to push the door open before quickly relocking it behind them. Inside the tiny room was a set of file cabinets containing all of the journal pages Dipper had managed to memorize - archives.
"Alright…now let's see…there's a spell I happened to see in the journal once, but it was only visible under a blacklight. A crystal demon trap that'll incapacitate and banish an evil entity for an extended period of time. It's a quick fix, but at least it's something, and we won't have to worry about him for a while…hopefully…" He sighed. "Hoping I even have the whole thing in here…I don't have the whole journal memorized verbatim. Yet." He cleared his throat nervously. "One of my, uh…summer goals."
Mabel couldn't help but giggle, just a little, at how nerdy that sounded, but she shut up when Dipper shot her a tired look that seemed to say, "Really?"
"Right. Well, if it's in here somewhere, we should probably start looking for it," Mabel said with a smile. "Let's get searching!"
The twins conjured up blacklights and began rummaging through the archives, trying to find it. At first, neither of them have much luck, but soon…
"Oh, oh, look! I think I found it!" Mabel skipped back over to Dipper, a frayed journal entry in her hand containing text written in a strange symbol cipher. "When you put the light on it, the top of the page says it's about a demon trap, but almost the whole rest looks kinda…Latin-ish…I think…?"
Dipper clicked his blacklight on over it and grinned. "Haha, yes! This is it! And from the looks of it, it's all here!" he whisper-yelled. He highfived her. "Nice!"
Wasting no time, they sneakily left and relocked the journal room, then hid themselves behind a bookcase in the "creature encounters" section of the next floor down so they could read over the spell and plan their attack.
Dipper was relieved to be able to sit down. "Okay…so…according to this…in order to create the trap, we first need…crystals. Three of them. Like the ones drawn here."
"Got it!" Mabel thought them up, and they manifested in her hands. "Daaaang…if we didn't need these, they would so be perfect for earrings…" she said dreamily.
Dipper just shook his head and tried not to laugh. "Only you. Now…we need to arrange them in a…triangular trinity pattern. Huh, that's…actually a pretty fitting design for a Bill trap. So then if we could just find something to attach them-"
Before he could finish his sentence…two arms phased through the wall behind them without them knowing, and one hand was clapped over each twin's eyes.
Mabel giggled. "Nice try, Dipper, but…" Her smile faded once she realized it was most definitely not Dipper.
"M-Mabel?" he stammered, not knowing she'd already figured out that something wasn't right. "That's not-"
"Who's up for a game of GUESS WHO?" boomed a third voice, the last two words being spoken in a sinister bass tone.
The sound of despicably evil laughter soon filled the small chambers as the twins found themselves being pulled through the wall and into the main hall of the mind library.
