A/N: Welcome back, ladies and gents! We're racing through the madness now, and I hope I can uphold momentum with the end of A Special Kind of Isolation and the start of a new Gravity Falls story on the way. Yes, at some point in the not-too-distant future I will be writing a new Gravity Falls story, with a fresh, happier outlook that might actually make it akin to something you might actually see in the TV series.
No, really.
Stop laughing!
Anyway, without further ado, the latest chapter - feel free to furnish me with your theories, opinions, critiques and typo alerts. Read, review and above all, enjoy!
Disclaimer: Gravity Falls, Cthulhu Mythos etc are not mine.
Also, from now on, I am including a soundtrack option or two at the end of each chapter. For added fun, I will be editing the previous chapters to include appropriate recommendations for music - one new chapter addition every day (in reverse order - 35, 34, etc).
Feel free to review or PM me on what you think of my retroactive music choices!
I can only thank Fantasy Fan 223 for inspiring me to take this step, and hope that my soundtrack choices live up to the action in each chapter.
The Cookie Jar.
The Fly In Amber.
The Waiting Room.
The Zoo.
Ever since it had been willed into existence, the place had been given so many different names by both the Henchmaniacs and the unlucky prisoners stashed there, so many that it was almost impossible to list them all. Bill's favourite was the Cookie Jar, but no matter what name you gave it, in the end, there was only one adequate description of it.
A prison.
True, all the valued playthings had cells in which they could suffer, either alone or in company, but they hardly qualified as real prisons: quite apart from the fact that many spanned entire continents, these "cells" were just playgrounds where Bill Cipher could indulge his sadistic desires. No, in all of Bill Cipher's kingdoms, there was only one place that could truly be described as a prison in the truest sense of the word, a place where no real torture took place; only endless confinement, isolation, and repression.
The truth was that even Bill's monstrous creativity had its limits: try as he might, there were some cases that beggared his imagination. No matter how many times he searched the pasts of his victims for new torture ideas and plumbed human history for inspiration, instances like these just couldn't be dealt with. Though he never would have admitted it, Bill couldn't torture literally everyone in the entire human race on a personalized basis – after all, that would have seemed too much work. He'd made a few hundred thousand exceptions and put them on display for all to see, but ultimately the vast majority of the human race was simply too dull, too inconspicuous, too beneath notice to be singled out for any specific punishment. In most cases, Bill just funnelled them into the wasteland and had a whale of a time watching them slowly being picked off in increasingly hideous ways by whatever the ruins of society could conjure up. And if they were entertaining enough (and they always were), they'd be brought back to life and allowed to do it all over again.
And yet there were some humans that were too boring for personalized torture, but still too important to simply be allowed to wander the wasteland. There was no benefit to watching them slowly starving to death, being eaten by monsters or dying of dysentery like all the other hapless refugees slowly being funnelled towards Cipheropolis. No, these captives would be more useful as a means of torturing others: after all, his favoured playthings all had families, and they could be used to sharpen every minute of their suffering to nightmare proportions.
Parents, children, family members, friends, pets – as long as they could yield an emotional response from a certain audience, Bill kept them around, just waiting for an excuse to have them brought out and tortured. Eventually, Bill realized that it was best that he had these special pawns stored together in a place where they couldn't cause trouble, and more importantly, where the Henchmaniacs wouldn't be tempted to attack them. As funny as it'd be to watch them being mulched up, he needed his store of prisoners unharmed… just so they were ripe and responsive when the pain finally began.
Thus was formed the Cookie Jar, a theoretically infinite pocket dimension built exclusively for hostages.
Of course, when the time came to explain this to the zodiac, Nyarlathotep was very careful not to mention the names of those hostages.
"And?" Robbie demanded. "Bill has a prison. Big whoop. What does that have to do with anything? What good does that do any of us?"
Mr Carter offered a wry grin. "Quite a lot, as it happens. You see, the Cookie Jar is the only place in this dimension that will always be perfectly safe. Like I said, Bill doesn't want his hostages getting hurt before it's time for them to be brought out and tortured in front of their families and friends, so every need is attended to: food, water, bedding, shelter, privacy, freedom from the Henchmaniacs, and all the comforts of home… well, give or take a few stressful deprivations just to make it clear it's a prison and not a holiday camp, but them's the breaks. Now, when I say 'perfectly safe,' I mean exactly that: not only are the Henchmaniacs forbidden from entering, but it's physically impossible for anyone to be hurt inside the Cookie Jar. Bill doesn't want anyone experiencing too much pain before it's their turn for the big family drama, so the prison makes sure that every nerve in the body remains whole and untouched, just so the torture is that much more painful when the time comes."
There was a moment's silence, as he allowed this grim little titbit of information to sink in.
"So, if you needed a place to hide the leftovers of humanity and keep them safe from any reprisals Bill might plan during your little guerrilla warfare campaign, it'd be the Cookie Jar."
"So how are we supposed to get there?"
"Easy: I supply the coordinates, and you do the rest. It shouldn't be too hard to find a way in, not when Famine here can conjure portals into other playgrounds."
"And here I was, hoping that I wouldn't have to use that power again for at least a couple of days," Pacifica muttered bemusedly.
"And the fact that this Cookie Jar is still under Bill's control doesn't change anything?" asked Wendy. "You don't think he might get suspicious when new prisoners start showing up in the Jar at random? That's not going to prompt an investigation?"
Carter just laughed. "In a word, nope. You see, Bill's shot himself in the foot on this one: in creating a world of zero suffering but total suppression, he's managed to create the one place in his entire kingdom he can't stand to be in for very long. Just being there makes him grouchy. Plus, he hasn't found a proper use for his hostages yet. He hasn't checked inside the damn Cookie Jar for years now, and now that he's busy trying to find you people, he's going to be too busy hunting to pay much attention to a prison for harmless non-combatants."
"I dunno, it still sounds like a hell of a risk."
"That's all I've got," said Mr Carter with a shrug. "You're welcome to try finding space for all those people up in the Forge if you want to take a chance of them getting caught in the crossfire. You can even try carving some dimensionally transcendent space for them in the hotel if you want to keep everyone close by. I'm just here to render some small assistance where I can." He grinned, suddenly-sharklike teeth gleaming in the dim light.
"There's one other thing we can try," said Grunkle Stan. "Ford's scythe cut through the tethers that were holding the Forge in place; what if we tried the same thing with the Cookie Jar? I mean, if we're that worried about Bill blowing the lid off this scheme, why don't we just steal the whole thing and hide it somewhere he won't think to look? If he's really that distracted, he probably won't even notice it's gone until it's too late."
"You're welcome to try that, of course. As I said, I'm just here to help."
All eyes turned in Dipper and Mabel's direction, clearly looking to them for answers. Suddenly realizing that they were back in the leadership role all of a sudden, the two of them hastily adjourned to a distance for a whispered conference – during which, Dipper got so agitated that he ended up accidentally transforming into an anteater and needed a full minute to calm down before he could return to human form again. Eventually, after much discussion, they returned to the group.
"Okay," said Dipper, shakily. "We stick to the original plan: once we're ready to start, we split up into two squads. Squad 1 goes out and attacks one of Bill's playgrounds, someplace the Henchmaniacs like to visit… but it also has to be far away from any of the locals, so they won't get hurt if the fight gets out of control and they won't be punished if and when Bill hears of it."
"I know just the place," said Mr Carter. "There's a little hangout on the edge of the Necrotic Abyss, this divey bar called the Mortuary. It's well out of the way and staffed exclusively by zombies – it's technically built from them, if you must know. Plus, it's a favourite of Lava Lamp and Hectorgon: they like to drop in after a hard day's massacre for a few cold ones."
"Question is, how do we get there?"
"The Stanmobile II," intoned Grunkle Ford.
"Excuse me?"
"He means the chariot," said Grunkle Stan helpfully. "It can travel between playgrounds, and there's enough room for passengers."
"No need for passengers. The smaller flocks follow the great birds to battle. Follow close, and the chariot will lead us there."
"Great, great. So we either ambush the Henchmaniacs that are already at this Mortuary place, or we lure them in by blowing it up. Whatever we do, we're going to need all our best heavy hitters for this one: um… Wendy, obviously. The Society can join in as well if she's coming along. Grunkle Stan and Grunkle Ford as well. Robbie, the place is probably jam-packed with dead bodies, so you're along for the ride as well. And, uh…" He took a deep breath. "And I'll lead the squad."
He smiled, clearly trying not to look terrified and failing miserably.
"What about the rest of us, dude?" asked Soos.
"That's where squad 2 comes in," said Mabel. "The rest of us stay here in Cipheropolis and evacuate everyone to the Cookie Jar. Pacifica, you're going to be opening the portal to the Cookie Jar; Soos, you can't be hurt if anyone gets nasty, so you lead the crowds; we're also gonna need crowd control, so we're going to have to borrow the refugees for this. Gideon, if you know any tricks that can calm people down, that'll help as well. And, uh, Old Man McGucket… we're going to need some backup just in case. Is there any way you can make the rust thralls look a little less scary?"
"I think I can manage that. You'll have to give me a few ideas, though."
"No problem. And I'll lead squad 2."
Dipper cleared his throat. "Once that's done, we plan out the next phase, maybe see if we can try towing the Cookie Jar someplace safe."
"There's just one problem in all of this."
"What's that, Gideon?"
"The business of calming people down. I don't know any telepathic techniques that can calm down an entire city, and I'm pretty sure y'all don't either."
"Well, like I said, we do this when we're ready. We can always find time for training. Er, not too much time of course, just… Uh…" Dipper briefly floundered for a moment. "Mr Carter, is Bill likely to stage an attack in the next few days? I mean, on us or any human settlements."
"According to my sources, Bill is currently in the middle of one of the biggest emotional crises seen outside the boundaries of a TARDIS, and probably won't be out looking for you anytime soon. If you're planning on spending a little bit more time refining your powers, I wouldn't take too much time: this little breakdown of his won't last forever, after all. I'd give it perhaps five days before he starts putting the pieces back together again."
"Alright then!" said Mabel, briskly. "We've got five days to train up, then. Gideon, focus on using your telepathy to keep people calm, communicating with entire cities full of people. Pacifica, if you can conjure a portal away from the edge of the playground for a change. Robbie, see how many zombies you can control at once and then triple that number. Wendy, you're going to need some time to get the hang of using a sword and a horse. Soos… er…."
"Find something to do other than come back from the dead?"
"Yeah, that."
"Once again," said Mr Carter, "I stand ready to offer assistance in these matters. If anyone's having trouble thinking of ways to improve their powers, I can offer a number of suggestions. Just don't expect them to be particularly easy ideas to put into practice." Once again, his grin turned sharklike. "Enjoy your training sessions, everybody! Your very lives may depend on them!"
"Aw, dude, I gotta find some really awesome montage music for this…"
For the next five days, there was nothing for the zodiac to do but work, nothing to do but train and drill and exercise every last power they'd gained. Some of them worked out at the hotel, claiming the bigger rooms as improvised gymnasiums and gaining massive audiences in the process; some took to the streets of Cipheropolis, using the rooftops and back alleys as their training grounds; a few even exercised outside the city walls, where their powers would do the least damage; and those who felt themselves too alien or unusual to practice in the view of others sequestered themselves in the depths of the Forge.
Finding a place for himself in the deserts just beyond the reach of the city, Dipper pushed his shapeshifting to the absolute limit: he explored his potential for the elements, becoming at first a roaring inferno consuming all fuel within range, then a deluge of water shaped by his will, then an intangible vortex of gale-force winds, then a solid mass of rock and metal bearing down on his imagined opponents with tectonic inevitability. Then he was a beam of light, untouchable and moving faster than the human eye could travel; a shadow creeping up behind his target; a puff of smoke racing through its lungs; a growth of razor-sharp vines strangling it from the inside out...
At the hotel ballroom, Mabel unleashed the power of time on anything that could work as a practice dummy: she practiced stopping time by bouncing a tennis ball against the ceiling, she rewound a wilted flower back into full bloom, and at the encouragement of the onlookers she broke sheet glass and put it back together again. With some assistance from some enthusiastic archers among the refugees, she learned how to enhance the speed of projectiles in motion, something that would hopefully come in handy to the gunners in their little army. She even got the hang of stepping just outside of time, where she could move at impossible speed – or what looked like impossible speed to everyone else. For an encore, she summoned Sunshine and proved she could do all of this while on horseback.
Soos repeatedly threw himself off the hotel roof, trying to see how quickly he could respawn and where he'd eventually materialize.
In between marathon races across the rooftops of Cipheropolis, Wendy armed herself with her new flaming War Sword and her axe and set to work on an improvised test dummy made from sturdy oak beams. Then, after she'd swept up the disintegrated remains of said test dummy, she moved onto a solid granite block. By the time she'd finally gotten around to scraping off the globs of molten rock that had accumulated on her clothing, she was effective enough to use both weapons on horseback – much to the delight of Khan.
Pacifica floated high above the dunes outside of town, slowly working at her ability to open portals, gradually easing them away from the edge of the playground and into its centre. She even succeeded in reaching the Cookie Jar from time to time, not that she ever strayed inside the portals, of course: the idea a prison within a prison didn't exactly appeal to her, and besides, the place didn't look like much to write home about. When she wasn't doing this, she was seeing just how far she could push her other abilities, especially her telekinesis: by now, she was strong enough to juggle boulders that had to weigh tons at the very last, but how much could she actually do with the additional power boost her necklace gave her? How much would she be able to accomplish if she just kept pushing herself? A sandstorm? A landslide? A meteor shower? Could she uproot entire cities if she put her mind to it?
With Jheselbraum advising him from afar, Gideon cast his mind out across Cipheropolis like a net, taking in as many fevered psyches as he could hold without straining himself. Bit by bit, he expanded his reach – until by day five, he could hear the whispering thoughts of an entire city echoing inside his skull and somehow withstand it all. In his sleep, he remained in contact with the Oracle, conducting cryptic auguries of the future, trying to work out possible courses of action from the vague glimpses he could divine. And when he wasn't expanding his reach or dabbling in precognition, he was diversifying his abilities: with the help of volunteers from the refugee populace, he practiced altering emotional states in as gentle a way as possible, inducing happiness, mirth, fear, and most important of all, serenity. With a little effort and plenty of coaching from Jheselbraum, he was even able to knock them out for a while. Sometimes he pushed himself too far: sometimes, he cast his net too wide or used too much power while trying to influence emotions, and ended up blacking out. But that was okay: Jheselbraum was always there to shield his mind from the backlash, just as Amanda was always there to catch him when he fell.
Deep within the Forge, the Toymaker busied himself with the new requests from below, modifying the rust thralls until they matched Mabel's specifications. All the while, his biomechanoid servitors scoured the facility, looking for the alarms and beacons that would alert Bill to any attempts to leave the Forge – ready to dismantle anything that might keep the Toymaker indoors. Any mechanisms left over from the surgery or the search would be repurposed for use in building a signal scrambler, one that might hopefully be enough to help him remove the sensors from his body. But all that paled into insignificance into the hardest job of all: remembering who he was. Ford, Dipper, Mabel and the others had all given him anecdotes of their time together in the hopes of restoring parts of his memory, and though the stories sounded vaguely familiar, he couldn't quite imagine himself as the man they said he was. And no matter how many times he said it to himself, Fiddleford McGucket just didn't sound like his own name.
Robbie scoured the city for corpses, touring the graveyards, plague pits, disreputable butchers' shops, and Soos' practice grounds, raising the dead and gathering them into his growing zombie horde. Hour by hour, he tested the limits of how many zombies he could control at once: first five hundred, then a thousand, then two thousand, until at last he had an army of twenty-five hundred strong. Once he'd found a suitable place outside of town where none of the wall sentries could see him, he began assembling the bodies, gathering them into a giant agglomeration of rotting flesh…
In the darkened halls of the Forge, Stan and Ford practiced as best as they could. After all, where else could two demigods with the power of death exercise their powers without hurting anybody? Stan busied himself with his shadowboxing routine, throwing punches that could level skyscrapers at astronomical speeds; and Ford, his mind full of nightmares and necrotic equations and shadows of the man he once was, turned the full force of entropy on a single titanium gear and watched it slowly erode away into useless scrap metal.
Even the refugees trained, slowly mastering their stolen alien weaponry, blasting away at improvised targets in the hotel basement and charging through ersatz obstacles courses – all under the watchful eye of Amanda and Gideon.
And through it all, Mr Carter strolled from session to session, appearing just long enough to offer cryptic suggestions to the zodiac and then vanishing just as quickly.
"Abstracts, little shoggoth, always strive for abstracts! You'll need to try more esoteric shapes if you'll want to match wits with the Henchmaniacs. You've already seen them – and that's enough for a shapeshifter; you just need to learn how to use them."
"Have you ever considered that you might need to use your powers on living beings, Mabel? You'll require human test subjects to make it work… and you already have one on hand."
"Dying isn't the only thing you can do, Soos. Perhaps you've heard the saying, 'what doesn't kill me only makes me stronger?' Well, it's not strictly accurate in your case, so what you need to do is focus on rebuilding."
"Remember that telepathic radar you developed, Pacifica? You haven't made much use of it in the last few months – after all, why would you? But if you put your mind to it, you can find anything in the area. Put that together with your telekinesis, and you wouldn't even have to see something to kill…"
"Robbie, have you ever considered that you're not limited to reanimating? I mean, the corpses you first acquired from the City of the Dead weren't really dead: they were just lumps of lifeless matter, made dead from the very beginning. If you can animate them, what makes you think you can't animate… other things?"
"Don't mind if the uninitiated look at you differently, by the way; power changes everyone, and you fine folk more than most. As your abilities grow in strength, the Weirdness within you begins to express itself in the visual spectrum…"
And when he wasn't doing that, he was on the phone, always talking, always deep in conversation with one mysterious caller after another…
"Axolotl! Good to hear from you again. How's tricks?"
"Well, it so happens that I'm almost at the rendezvous point. Funny thing, though, Bill Cipher seems to have called off the search entirely by now. In fact, from what little I've been able to see of things, he seems to have left most of the Henchmaniacs to their own devices. You wouldn't know anything about that, would you?"
"Me? Not at all. Fortuitous, though, isn't it?"
"Very. Are the members of the zodiac all assembled in Cipheropolis?"
"All assembled and prepared for what must happen next. They're still a little confused and more than a bit eccentric, but they'll be ready to receive your orders the moment you arrive on the scene: whatever you want, they're gung-ho for it."
"Eccentricity's kind of expected by now. As long as the zodiac's ready, willing and able to help me stop Bill once and for all, I'm okay with it."
"Believe me, they're able."
"And they're expecting me?"
"Of course. I told them everything they needed to know – minus all those embarrassing details you wouldn't want them hearing until after Bill's gone bye-bye."
"Okay. Where am I due to meet them?"
"Just inside the gates of Cipheropolis, in just under three hours' time. I'll make sure they're ready for you."
"Alright then. Um… thank you, Nyarlathotep."
"Think nothing of it, Axolotl. Just doing my bit for the safety of the multiverse."
The morning of the mission arrived all too soon, dawning cold and swift and brutally, bringing with it a touch of frost that Cipheropolis probably hadn't seen in years. Even the desert sands seemed to glisten with tiny shards of ice. Mabel was pretty sure this qualified as a portent of doom, but then again, the apocalypse had already come and gone: portents of doom honestly didn't mean much anymore.
Neither Dipper nor Mabel had slept a wink the night before, both of them having spent the last few hours lying wide awake in their respective beds and staring at the ceiling before finally giving up and heading down to the foyer to watch Ghost Harassers on one of the battered old TV sets they'd managed to salvage. What with everything that had happened in the last few months, it seemed almost funny to be watching DVDs about ghosts, but then it wasn't as if there was anything better to do; the fact that they still hadn't found any copies of Ducktective around the bazaar didn't help.
"Look on the bright side," said Mabel. "Once we've evacuated everyone, we'll be able to help ourselves to whatever's left in the marketplace."
Now, though, it seemed really difficult to put that same self-assurance into practice. After only a few short days together, Dipper and Mabel were being separated again, and this time they were both leading missions that could turn very ugly if something went wrong. By the time the sun began creeping over the edge of the skyline, the two of them were so nervous that they couldn't even voice their own fear: they could only sit there on the couch, staring blankly at the screen, hand in hand and almost too afraid to let go.
Eventually, the sounds of people beginning to stir in the rooms above them drove the two out of the foyer and back to their room to prepare for the day ahead. Dipper donned his battered cap once again, securing it to his head by a dozen hooked tendrils conjured from his scalp, and hastily put himself through a few last-minute warmups – shifting from osprey to vampire bat and back again.
Mabel, on the other hand, dressed to impress and tried to look brimful of confidence. In the end, she stood before her dressing table in a gleaming white sweater adorned with a golden shooting star, a pristine white skirt, a pair of white leather shoes, her grappling hook holster, and her crown. Maybe it was just the tiara glittering on her forehead, but the whole ensemble seemed a lot more impressive than it had looked sitting in the drawers; looking at herself in the mirror, she actually thought she looked… almost regal.
Well, Waddles certainly seemed impressed, even if he was still a bit gloomy over being left in the hotel for this mission.
Dipper gave her a funny look as Mabel finished tying her shoelaces. "Where did you get all those white clothes from?" he asked suspiciously.
"I… I don't remember. I think I might have picked them up at the markets the other day."
Either that or being a Horseperson of the Apocalypse is having a weird effect on my wardrobe. Jeez, I hope it's only when we're heading into battle: I'd hate to spend the rest of my life wearing white.
Once they were done with preparations, they headed downstairs to the foyer once again to meet with the rest of the zodiac, all of whom were dressed and ready for battle… or as near to properly dressed as they could be, under the circumstances. Needless to say, for an army of liberators, they did not look the part: Soos wore only his work clothes and cap; Robbie had shelled out a few tokens for some better-fitting gear, but he was still clearly just a blind kid in street clothes; Gideon was still dressed in the same tattered wasteland rags he'd worn for the last few months, and the same went for most of the refugees and the Society; Dipper hadn't bothered to take on any of his more fearsome shapes yet; and even Grunkle Stan – the second half of the Death Duo – was still dressed in his Mr Mystery outfit.
"What can I say?" he'd said with a laugh. "Black goes well with the job and the mission. Your friend up there knows what I'm talking about, am I right?"
Pacifica smiled in spite of herself. "Believe it or not, I honestly don't know how I got this dress in my wardrobe… but after months of wearing nothing but dirty doll's clothes, I'm honestly not complaining."
Right now, the rebellious Northwest was clad in a magnificent black silk dress brocaded with arcane designs in gleaming silver thread, along with a pair of opera gloves tipped with gauntlets of solid platinum, and even a pair of fashionable black high heels adorned with tiny silver wings. It looked about as practical as jumping off a cliff, but then again, Pacifica was a doll armed with telekinetic magic, a power-enhancing talisman, and one of the Horses of the Apocalypse; practicality didn't really apply to her ensemble anymore.
All in all, it looked as though the Horsemen/Horsepeople/Perfect Idiots were the only members of the team who looked as though they were dressing to impress: Grunkle Ford was still dressed in his ominous black robe, his arms and legs seeming to vanish beneath its ethereal drapery; Mabel had her crown and white clothes; even Wendy, who wasn't exactly a fashionista at the best of times, had somehow managed to acquire a set of cured leather armour from one of the local markets – and as simple as it was, there was no denying it was an impressive sight, especially since the material itself was tinted a deep, almost earthy shade of crimson.
As soon as they'd all gathered, Dipper took centre stage once again. "Alright everyone," he said, clearly trying to sound more confident than he felt. "I think we're about as ready as we ever will be. You know the mission, and you know the plans. Does anyone have anything they want to say about this before we get moving?"
Gideon held up a hand. "I've actually been making some predictions for the future and… well, they're still a little hazy, but-"
"We're all gonna die," finished Stan, grinning wickedly.
A ripple of nervous laughter echoed through the crowd, neatly breaking the tension that had been building up for the last five days.
"Uh, no. I can actually confirm that you won't be attacking an empty building: there definitely will be at least one Henchmaniac there, maybe two if Bill's mood is as bad as I think it is. They'll have their own retinue of guards – Eyebats and a few other creepy-crawly types – so it'll be a pretty crowded bar. And there's also the local staff to think about, so…" He swallowed nervously. "Just a heads up for y'all."
"Thanks for the heads up; we'll be ready for them. Um, anyone else?"
Silence. After all, they were headed into uncharted waters: nobody had any pithy lines at hand, not when everyone was busy worrying about what might happen next.
"Alright then, let's get going: attackers, you're with me; evacuators, you're with Mabel. We'll see you all again soon. Um, good luck."
As the attackers began slowly filing out of the entrance hall, Mabel grabbed Dipper by the shoulder; suddenly, seeing him leave was too much for her to bear, and from the look of dawning anxiety on his face, she could tell he felt the same way.
"Stay safe, okay?" she whispered.
"Well, safe might be asking a bit much," Dipper squeaked.
"Same goes for me, really. You nervous?"
"It's taking everything in me not to transform into a cast-iron safe right now. How about you?"
"I'm just about to go into orbit over here. One loud noise, and I'll have booster rockets on my feet."
"Well… I mean, hopefully it won't be too bad. It's only people, right?"
"It's not the people I'm worrying about," said Mabel, only half-joking. "I've already taken on a Henchmaniac and an entire army. It's working with Gideon that's got me worried."
"Truth be told, I'm in the same boat: I've taken on giant bloodsucking blob, but now I've gotta team up with Wendy again." A rather large bead of sweat rolled past Dipper's left eye. "I mean, we haven't even spoken to each other since I remembered who I was, and… things are still a little tense."
"You'll be fine, Dipper. Believe me, she still likes you."
"How can you tell?"
"She isn't giving you the 'Gideon-I'm-gonna-kill-you' look anymore."
"Oh."
There was a pause, as they realized that the attacker team was waiting for Dipper.
"Good luck, Mabel."
"You too, bro-bro."
At last, they parted, and Dipper began the long slow march towards the open doors of the hotel, into the street. There, in the gaping space that only the earliest hours of the morning could provide, the team readied themselves for departure: Grunkle Stan summoned up the Stanmobile Chariot, and made space for Robbie in the backseat; Grunkle Ford hovered into the air, propelled by the power of his own will; Wendy clambered onto Khan's back, the fiery horse's hoofs already beginning to ascend as she settled into the saddle; and Dipper grew, his body erupting outward into a colossal set of wings and a gargantuan body large enough for the Society to clamber aboard. In that moment, he was a dragon, a Roc, a monster that had only been seen in the deepest caverns beneath Gravity Falls up until now – and it was with this body that he would lead the charge.
With an almighty roar, Dipper took to the air with one great flap of his enormous wings, and the rest of the team followed, galloping and floating and rolling into the sky – soon vanishing behind the buildings as they sped away from Cipheropolis.
A moment later, there was a deafening rumble from just outside the city walls, as Robbie summoned up the corpses that had been waiting for him and settled in behind the canopy of his new war body. From here, the journey would be slightly slower in order to accommodate the lumbering giant, but not by much – for Robbie's creations grew faster every day.
For a few minutes afterwards, the air was filled with the thud of titanic footsteps shaking the ground and unearthly howls rending the sky… but as the team reached the edge of the playground, the sounds faded away, until Mabel could hear them no longer.
And in the terrible silence that followed, she turned to her own team and said, "Alright guys. Let's get going. We've got a city to evacuate…"
"Nyarlathotep? Nyarlathotep, why aren't you answering?! You said that the members of the zodiac were going to meet me inside the gates, but about half of them just flew past me! What the hell is going on in there, and why haven't the others shown up yet? For the love of Shub-Niggurath, pick up the phone!
And what is all that noise going on back there? I swear, it sounds like you've got the whole town in uprising!
Nyalathotep, are you even checking your inbox anymore?
…Nyarlathotep?
…oh shit…"
It all began with a message.
The denizens of Cipheropolis were only just emerging from their beds when they heard the words echoing across the city, though in truth they didn't hear them at all: the message simply inserted itself into their minds, editing itself into one skull after another as it rippled out across the homes and flophouses of the desert slums. Beggars lying slumped in alleyways looked up as it rolled across them; gangsters in the great stalagmite-shaped towers on the horizon looked up from their ludicrously expensive meals in sudden anger at the non-existent sound; street thugs turned away from the bloody remains of their last victims to hear it; even the lowliest of mutants scraping out a living in the sewers gurgled in confusion as the ethereal words made themselves known inside their heads.
All citizens must depart for the city gates immediately. Salvation is at hand: you no longer have to live in Bill Cipher's kingdom. Heed our call and we can guarantee your safety. Head to the gates, and we can show you the way…
Five minutes later, the message repeated itself, this time more insistently.
By now, the citizens of Cipheropolis were a cynical bunch: even the most pampered of all the gangland aristocracy wouldn't have hesitated to look gift horses in the mouth, especially given that the Henchmaniacs were known to occasionally visit the town and prank the inhabitants. And there was still that ugly metal shape in the sky to worry about: for all they knew, this was some terrible new joke of Bill's, and the entire thing would drop on them like a comet the moment they opened their doors.
But in the end, the people found themselves filing out anyway: many were so downtrodden that the possibility of escape was tantalizing enough to outweigh the risk of danger. In the case of those who weren't so easily convinced, something in the message made it impossible to resist, imbued them with so much curiosity that many left their homes just to see what all the fuss was really about. Whatever the case, people departed en mass: families travelled together, babies in arms; soldiers left their posts without even bothering to holster their guns; nightshift workers enjoying a morning sleep headed out in their pyjamas. In the end, only a few remained behind: those who couldn't walk on their own and couldn't be assisted, and those who were too stubborn or too well-indoctrinated to accept the message.
Since nobody was stopping to pack their belongings or lock their doors, it didn't take long for the first few thousand citizens to begin assembling in Bleak Plaza, just a mile from the gates. Driven by the message and the inexplicable impulses that had followed with it, many would have carried straight on to the gates themselves – except for the fact that they'd seen the figures watching them from nearby.
Hovering directly over their heads were two impossible figures: the first, mounted on the back of a horse with coat so bright it seemed to outshine the sun itself, looked almost uncannily like a human child of about thirteen: dressed all in white, every movement she made left a trail of flickering afterimages in the air; at times, her face seemed multifaceted, as if seen through a crystal – and onlookers swore that each facet seemed to show her at a different age; and when she looked at the crowd with those strange luminous blue eyes, pocked watches began running in reverse, accelerated ahead of real time or broke down altogether. Most disturbing of all was her crown, for as magnificent as it was, people couldn't help feel as though, for every second they looked at it, thousands of tiny biting insects were crawling across their skin.
The second, this one riding a midnight-black horse with eyes that gleamed like polished gemstones, was no bigger than a doll – and indeed, as eagle-eyed watchers noted, she actually seemed to have the porcelain skin, toylike clothing and delicately sculpted features of a doll as well. And as she stared down at them, the silver pendant at her neck seemed to glow in the morning sun, filling the crowd with the strangest feeling that they had nothing of worth in all the world, that they were alone and due to starve at any minute.
As for the two figures lurking below them, they didn't look any better. Even if the kid dressed all in rags hadn't been emaciated to the brink of starvation, there was something clearly wrong with him: his balding head seemed too big for his body, and the air around him seemed to shimmer with intangible waves of energy – some among the crowd whispering they could feel cold hands creeping across their thoughts. And the fat man in the greasy question mark t-shirt smelled like death, his body surrounded by a thick, oozing miasma of freshly-turned earth and rotting flesh, and as he stepped closer, a few onlookers swore that the shadow he cast seemed to belong to over a hundred people – each of them identical to him.
There was a pause, as the growing crowd took in the four horrifying figures and the army slowly gathering on the walls nearby.
Then, the first of the two riders spoke. "Um, okay everyone," she said loudly. "There's no need to stand around all distracted: we're opening a portal right at the city gates. So, just walk straight through it, and everything'll be okay."
Several extremely confused seconds went by in silence.
"Do you think they can hear me, or should I get a little closer?"
"They can hear you just fine, Mabel," said the doll on horseback.
"Then why aren't they moving?"
"Well, I could be wrong, but I think they're scared of us."
"…why? Aside from the horses, we're perfectly normal!"
There was a rumble of confusion from below; a moment later, someone in the crowd threw a rock at the first rider, and though it missed her by a good five feet, it definitely surprised her.
"What was that for?! Didn't you hear me? We are going to be opening a portal just inside the city gates! This is your chance to get out of here! Why are you passing this up now?"
"Uh, Mabel?" the skinny kid called out. "Just thought you ought to know: I've taken a peek through their senses, and I think the Weirdness we've absorbed is starting to mess with their perceptions of reality – kind of an automatic defence mechanism, I think."
"In other words, we look like Henchmaniacs," the second rider sighed. "And we've scared the crap out of them."
Another missile shot from the crowd – this time a hatchet. This time, however, the first rider's eyes glowed, and suddenly the hatchet seemed to change shape in mid-air: one minute it was a throwing axe; then it was a large wooden log and a steel ingot; then it was a tree limb and a lump of unrefined rock soaring through the sky… and then both items stopped in mid-air.
"Do you think they can even understand us, or is this Weirdness field screwing that up as well?"
The second rider shook her head irritably, and sent the frozen components clattering to the ground with a wave of her hand. "I'm pretty sure they can understand everything we say. It's just that they don't trust us."
"Oh, dude, let me try getting through to them; I've kinda got a way with people, y'know?" The fat man stepped forward, a huge smile on his face. "Now, guys, I know everyone's a little bit weirded out, but-"
An earsplitting rattle of gunfire tore through the air. In the chaos that followed, the AK-47 was hastily wrestled out of the assailant's hands by a gaggle of terrified citizens who'd rather not imagine what the strangers would do to them if they continued resisting, but by then, the fat man was already slumped to the ground in a spreading pool of blood.
A moment later, a completely-identical fat man sprinted out from the nearest alleyway and skidded to a halt next to the body. "Dude," he sighed. "That really hurt."
"Okay, Gideon," the second rider called out. "Let's have some nice calm impulses down there, okay? We've got a lot of very panicky people piling up and we need to get them to cool down ASAP, so nice, calming impulses, please?"
Please proceed to the gates, everyone. You will not be harmed. I repeat, you will not be harmed…
And then, just as people were beginning to continue down the street towards the gates, there was another spate of gunfire – this one fired straight up into the air. Suddenly, the calming flow of thoughts pouring across the cobblestones stopped, and all eyes were focussed on the source of the noise.
Advancing down the street towards the waiting quartet and their ragged army was a vast mob of yellow-robed figures, each of them cowled and dressed in triangle-shaped masks of burnished brass… and all of them were armed. From the looks of things, about half the city's guns had ended up in their possession, and even those who weren't equipped an assault rifle or a shotgun had a sidearm at hand alongside their machetes or cudgels. Even the members of the audience who hadn't been brave or foolhardy enough to get within reach of the great pyramid at the heart of the city couldn't fail to recognize the new arrivals: this was the Cult of Cipher, the priests, acolytes and most fervent worshippers at the pyramid shrine built in the rotten heart of the city, those who had broken after years of torment and accepted Bill Cipher as the one true god.
These were the Cipherites.
They'd even brought their high priest with them, a crooked figure almost bent double under the weight of the gold jewellery draped around his neck and the pyramid-shaped mitre crowning his skull.
"These people aren't going anywhere," the high priest thundered. "These are the chattel of the great Bill Cipher! Only he can decide where his flock goes! Only he allows them slavery or liberation! Only he gives command to the people of this city! You will allow these people to turn back, or be annihilated in the wrathful fire of the faithful!"
"Is this guy serious?" the first rider demanded. "A girl who can stop time, a telekinetic doll, a psychic, and a guy who literally just came back from the dead, a couple of hundred armed refugees, and he thinks he can just wipe us out?"
"Crazy, I know," said the second. "How many people do you think are in this gang of lunatics anyway?"
"I'm not reading more than a hundred and eighty," said the skinny kid.
"A hundred and eighty of these people versus us – plus everyone in this city who's on our side so far? Are they trying to get themselves killed?"
"I think they might have reinforcements on the way."
"Yeah, well we can deal with them any day of the- wait, what's that sound?"
Marching down another street towards the plaza was another heavily-armed gang; unlike the cultists, this gang looked to be made up almost entirely of civilians armed with pitchforks and Kalashnikovs – except for the first rank, who were equipped with nothing but gleaming silver staves terminating in double-pronged heads like the tines of a tuning fork. And standing at the head of the mob was a strange figure dressed in a monkish grey habit; bald, with skin as pale as marble and eyes a clouded, opaque grey, he held aloft a staff of his own – this one tipped with a massive transparent gemstone.
"Oh damn," muttered the skinny kid. "I forgot about them."
"Dude, who are they?"
"Well, they're worshippers of the feller at the front is a Prior, a telekinetic missionary; he was giving sermons down at Preacher's Pass when I got here. I hoped he'd been killed in that big riot me and Wendy set off a few days ago, and when the sermons closed down after that, I thought we didn't have anything to worry about… but I guess he'd just gone underground."
"But who are the Ori, dude?"
"Hallowed are the Ori!" boomed the Prior.
"HALLOWED ARE THE ORI," echoed the mob behind him.
"Hallowed are their servants! Blessed be those who accept the truth of Origin! Cursed be those who would obscure the truth of the universe from us! The Ori will not allow those who hunger for justice and enlightenment to be separated from them, nor will they permit them to suffer under the yoke of the false god Bill Cipher!"
"Seriously," said the Cipherite high priest, "who the fuck are the Ori?"
By way of explanation, the Prior slammed his staff down on the ground, sending a telekinetic shockwave roaring across the plaza and toppling most of the first three ranks of Cipherites to the ground.
As soon as the Cipherites clambered to their feet, they took aim and opened fire on anything that remotely looked like an enemy, without much success; bullets simply ricocheted off the Prior and bypassed the doll on horseback entirely; anything that got close to the first rider seemed to unmake itself in mid-air, dissembling itself into nothingness; the skinny kid just took cover.
However, the fat man intercepted every single shot aimed in his direction, his body rocking back on his heels as bullets hammered into his arms, legs, belly and face. And yet this time, he didn't fall: every single bullet that struck him sank partway into his flesh, then clattered out in a hail of flattened shells.
"Aw, dude, Mr Carter was right!" the fat man whooped. He winced, gingerly massaging his battered face. "Still hurts though."
At this point, someone among the Cipherites lobbed a grenade across the plaza, and though the Prior soaked up the explosion with a wave of his hand, the onlookers were instantly whipped into a panic – a panic that only grew as reinforcements began lining up: four hundred fresh Cipherites, and almost twice as many Ori worshippers, this time accompanied by at least three more Priors.
"Okay," said the first rider. "No more playing around! Old Man McGucket, it's time you sent in the troops. Gideon, you're up: get rid of these maniacs before they hurt someone!"
Without a moment's hesitation, the skinny kid shouted an order to the gunmen on the walls; a moment later, the entire platoon erupted into a dazzling haze of light and colour, peppering the Cipherites and the Ori worshippers alike with a hail of devastating energy blasts, slicing through their ranks like a blowtorch through butter. However, nothing could penetrate the Priors' telekinetic shields, and their psychic blasts sent the ragged army crashing to the ground in droves.
Just as it looked as though the two factions were about to press their advantage, there was a series of bright flashes from the ugly metal shape in the sky; moments later, three huge pods slammed into the street like meteorites, each one instantly disgorging a small army of…
"RUST THRALLS!" someone screamed.
Panic set in: suddenly, everyone was fleeing in all directions, the terror spreading across the plaza until it consumed just about everyone not already embroiled in the fighting, to the point that even the new arrivals streaming in from the other parts of the city started running. Meanwhile, the three-cornered carnage was still unfolding, with the Cipherites pounding both sides with automatic gunfire, the Ori followers swamping their foes with wave after wave of badly-armed citizens while the Priors bombarded the enemy from afar, and the combined forces of the gunmen, the rust thralls and the four weirdos attacking with every single strategy and power at hand.
Eventually, the first rider yelled, "Okay, this isn't working out. Gideon, we're going to need more calming impulses before someone gets trampled! Pacifica, is the portal open?"
"It is now."
"Great! Soos, Gideon, lead the way for them: make sure they get to the portal and make sure they're safe. Lots and lots of calm now!"
"What about you and Pacifica?"
By way of an answer, the doll on horseback waved a hand and sent a parked carriage rocketing down the street to land with a bone-splintering crunch in the middle of the Ori ranks, flatting one of the Priors.
"We'll handle this," said the first rider, grimly.
"The power of the Ori cannot be denied!" the nearest Prior thundered. "Enlightenment shall burn away all impurity, until only their wisdom remains! Hallowed are the Ori! Hallowed are their followers-"
There was a muffled phut from somewhere nearby. A split-second later, a double-headed grapnel on the end of an improbably lengthy cable shot through the air, clawed hooks wrapping themselves around the Prior at a speed too great for even his powers to stop; to the eyes of onlookers, it almost seemed as if something was actually accelerating it through time. Whatever the case, it wound itself across the Prior from head to toe… and then, as the cable abruptly cut short, a flicker of enchantment built into the hook sent the captured Prior soaring across the horizon, to land with a loud, wet thud some distance away.
"GRAPPLING HOOK!" said the first rider triumphantly.
And the rest, thanks to the sudden influx of calming impulses, was all a blur.
To Axolotl, the next fifteen minutes were nothing short of bewildering. One minute he was standing alone by the city gate, wondering what the hell was going on; the next thing he knew, a portal opened right behind him and a solid wall of people came marching down the road towards it. Surprised as he was, he didn't move until it was almost too late; he only narrowly avoided being swept up in the crowd as it thundered into the portal.
There had to be over a hundred thousand people in this one queue alone, and thousand more flocking into line behind them, and all of them were headed straight for the portal and whatever lay beyond. Axolotl tried to ask them where they thought they were going and what had inspired them to do so, but none of them seemed in the mood to listen; they seemed to be under the influence of some immensely powerful psychic field. Had he possessed the full scope of his powers, the Axolotl would have been able to easily dispel such influence even in Tyler Cutebiker's spindly form, but with Bill Cipher still repressing his magic in this world, all he could do was look on helplessly.
Even more befuddling was the sight of the two harried looking figures hurrying alongside the crowd: despite the distance, there was no mistaking Soos Ramirez and Gideon Gleeful, both of them clearly empowered by the Weirdness of the playgrounds they'd been imprisoned in. Every now and again, one of the Cipherites following them would try and get a bead on them – or else close quarters and attack head on – only to be brought up short by the duo's new powers: either Soos would soak up every single bullet and plough into his assailants at high speed, or Gideon would wave a hand and knock the offending Cipherite unconscious with a jolt of psychic energy.
Once he was certain that the field was relatively clear of opponents, Axolotl hurried over to them. "What's happening?" he asked. "I thought we were-"
"Mayor Cutebiker, is that you?" Soos hollered. "Wow, dude, I didn't think you'd make it this far! Great to see you again!"
"What?"
"No time to talk, dude! You need to get into the portal, Mr Mayor, you'll be safer in there!"
"But-"
Gideon let out a snarl of exasperation. "Soos, he isn't listening! Just carry him if you have to!"
And then to Axolotl's shock, Soos ducked down and scooped up his borrowed form in a fireman's lift, hoisting Tyler's body high over his head like a wrestler. Not accustomed to being manhandled like this even while inhabiting a mortal vessel, Axolotl could only let out an undignified squeak of surprise as Soos carried him down the street towards the vast glowing portal covering the gates.
It wasn't until he was less than a few dozen yards from the portal that he managed to recover enough to shout, "Wait, why are you doing this? Where are we going? I thought we were going to be discussing-"
"Dude, just relax! You'll be safe in the Cookie Jar with everyone else."
"The Cookie Jar?! Why the hell are you taking me there?"
"Well, it's safe, dude."
"I… I suppose it is, but you need to listen to me – you can't just throw me in there! I've got important business with y-"
"Sorry," said Gideon, "But that can wait 'til later! Soos, any chance of hurrying this up?"
"We'll never get through this crowd, dude, not without getting caught up in it!"
"Then just throw him in!"
"Wait, WHAT?"
And before the Axolotl could so much as raise another word, Soos flung him through the air straight into the depths of the oncoming crowd; pacified by Gideon's mental power, they caught him by the arms and dragged him along in a humiliating frog-march down the street. Ahead, the portal loomed over him, growing steadily closer with every passing second.
In the end, all he could do was scream desperately at Soos and Gideon, trying vainly to make himself heard over the thunder of distant explosions – without much success. "Please!" he shouted. "I'm here to help you! I was supposed to help you stop Bill Cipher! For god's sakes, why won't you listen to me?!"
And then the portal swallowed him, and his screams were lost in a mad, kaleidoscopic tumble through reality.
A moment later, he was in the Cookie Jar.
Landing with a soft thud upon a lush green lawn, he looked around to find himself surrounded on all sides by rank after rank of near-identical suburban houses, their gleaming whitewashed walls aglow in the unearthly midday sun. Roads and pathways stretched outwards unto infinity from a central crossroads, every thoroughfare flanked by more and more houses, each one a cell for the unfortunate few incarcerated here – and the fortunate many who were being sent here. Signposts provided helpful guidelines for the residents: mealtimes, possible sources of entertainment, reassurances, maps, and reminders that violence was impossible here. Under other circumstances, this might have looked like someone's idea of paradise, but even Bill couldn't quite bring himself to build something so orderly without adding a few tiny notes of dysfunction into the mix: the sky was always grey here, grey and swirling with clouds that shifted into unnatural shapes; the roadways seemed perfectly solid from a distance, but seemed to shift and crack underfoot like the ice of a frozen lake; the houses always seemed ever-so-slightly asymmetrical, the shapes conforming to versions of geometry that didn't quite mesh with the human brain – each one a tiny signal informing the populace of the Cookie Jar that something was ever-so-slightly wrong.
This masterpiece of subtle parody, this mocking portrait of order and perfection, was already being occupied by several hundred thousand bewildered-looking civilians, many of them frantically seeking out answers from the residents – most of whom were already creeping out of their houses to investigate the commotion. A few of the new arrivals were even looking curiously optimistic at their surroundings, totally unaware that this vision of suburban tranquillity was Bill Cipher's personal pet hate made flesh, to be inflicted on those too boring to deserve immediate torture.
They would be safe here, yes. All their needs would be provided for, and all their injuries would be negated long before they happened; they might even be comfortable from time to time… but they would never be at home here.
Meanwhile, Axolotl came to two very important realizations at once: first, his powers seemed much less restricted here, his true nature a little freer than it ever had been in any other region of Bill's kingdom. True, he wasn't capable of the true, reality-spanning scope of his usual power, but he was much stronger than ever before.
Secondly, even with his newfound strength, there was no way in hell he'd be able to get out of here: the portal was still crowded with a vast stream of new arrivals, and a good fifty feet off the ground for good measure. Even if Axolotl had been able to levitate under the current circumstances, he'd never be able to get past that crowd.
Sighing furiously, he reached for his phone, fully intent on giving Nyarlathotep a piece of his mind… but when he looked up, he found the man himself standing before him, grinning wider than ever. And as much as he'd have liked to unleash his fury on him right then and there, his powers were still chained; he'd have been no match for the son of Azathoth.
"Something wrong?" said the trickster.
"Just what the hell are you doing?" Axolotl demanded. "What happened to the plan for a rendezvous? We're supposed to be giving the zodiac a pep-talk on their next plan of attack!"
"Oh, the pep-talk happened days ago. The work has been done for you, and the zodiac know what they have to do if they want to free their world from Cipher's reign: a comprehensive campaign of whittling away at Bill's forces and eroding his defences until they can at last stage a glorious raid on the Fearamid itself, where they can at last destroy the runes keeping you at bay, and allow you to bring down divine justice on the head of Bill! Axolotl victorious, with the help of the zodiac, exactly as you wanted."
"Then what am I doing here?"
"Well, I hate to say it, Axolotl, but if you're going to be bringing any divine justice on Bill's head, you're going to have to play it a lot safer than you have been. I mean, you and Tyler here have had some really rough days since you began this little mission of yours… and this is, after all, the safest place in the world right now."
"You're locking me up for my own protection?"
"Only for a little while. Believe me, with the way I'm guiding the zodiac, they'll have you out again in a jiffy."
Axolotl groaned, massaging Tyler's temples in irritation. "So now you've taken over the entire plan. Brilliant, Nyarlathotep, simply brilliant. How could we have ever survived without you? Have you gone completely mad?!"
"Come now, Axolotl. You know that conventional notions of sanity matter little to Outer Gods such as myself."
"Stop being so flippant! You spent the last few months – or years, or centuries or millennia or however long it's been in objective time – gathering up an entire auxiliary army of gods and devils. You told me that they're up there right now, watching us: do you really think the likes of the Doctor, the Ellimist, the Luteces, Elizabeth, and the redemptionverse folk are going to just let you take over the entire plan?"
"Of course not," said Nyarlathotep smugly. "In fact, I'd expect they'd be quite upset… if only they could see what's going on. Unfortunately, our little backup team is a little bit preoccupied by a new arrival in their midst. I admit, this one took a bit of careful timing, but at last I have the perfect distraction."
"A distraction?" Axolotl echoed.
The grin on his the Outer God's slowly refined itself to a malicious smirk. "One that goes by the name of Rick Sanchez…"
"Oh damn."
"Oh damn indeed, Axolotl. Eris and the Golden Apples have nothing on the living force of bitterness and alcoholic discontent that is Rick Sanchez. Suffice to say, everyone will still be alive by the time the brawl comes to an end, but by the time they take a good look at what's been happening down here, you'll be mysteriously absent. All the more incentive for them to follow my lead, I think."
Axolotl very gently sank to the ground and put his head in his hands. "Why?" he groaned wearily. "Why in the name of sanity would this even occur to you?"
"What, the Rick Sanchez business?"
"No, you idiot! I mean this entire debacle! What prompted you to have me sealed in here when the zodiac need my guidance? Why would you imagine that locking me up in here would be a good idea?"
Nyarlathotep gave Axolotl a look of almost paternal condescension. "Well, I hate to say it, my dear Axolotl, but… I just don't trust you."
"WHAT?!"
"You heard me: I don't trust you. You've made too many mistakes, allowed Bill to get away with too much for far too long. Believe me, when this is all over and done with, you're going to have a lot of trouble explaining your failures to the zodiac. I mean, I can almost excuse the first time: Bill was young and you didn't know him too well, so nobody would blame you for failing to catch him, especially after he escaped back into the Nightmare Realm. Beyond your reach. Nobody would blame you for that slip-up… but the second, Axolotl, the second is where the zodiac would lynch you if they ever knew the truth."
"That wasn't my fault!" Axolotl roared. "I'm bound by rules, remember? They are part of my body, part of my brain, and I am magically forced to follow them: I have no choice in the matter. I can't ignore these directives any more than you can ignore a command from Azathoth. If the condemned invokes my name, I am compelled to grant him the conditions of mercy. I didn't know Bill wasn't planning on abiding by the terms of our contract, and I definitely didn't know he was going to use my power to leapfrog backwards in time."
"And yet, he did. Again, your first time was a mistake, but your second time looks uncannily like incompetence."
"Look, the deal worked perfectly well in every other dimension it occurred in! Other iterations of Bill Cipher are in the process of being reformed – have reformed! They have changed for the better!"
"Yes, yes," sneered Nyarlathotep. "I know all about the heartwarming new lives you and your counterparts have given Bill's iterations across the multiverse… but the fact is, you screwed up this time around. Simple as that."
"But that's no reason to-"
"It's not just your judgement I find questionable either, Axolotl. It's your approach to this venture in its entirety. You see, you take too many risks, endanger yourself on a near-constant basis, and all too often, you end up either facing down an enemy you cannot defeat alone or slumped in the gutter with your life's blood slowly draining away before your eyes. I can't in good conscience allow you to roam free, not when you owe me several very important favours."
"In other words, Charlie Bucket, you're having me locked away for my own protection so you won't lose your golden ticket."
"Of course. You're the goose that lays the golden eggs, Axolotl. I'm not going to let the cooks turn you into foie gras, not when you've got plenty of golden eggs yet to provide."
"Yeah. Goose would be about right at this point."
"Aw, don't be so hard on yourself, Axolotl. You have a very important role to play here in the Cookie Jar. Why do you think I led you to a safehouse where your powers are far more effective than any other location in Bill's kingdom? Why do you think you're sharing this space with so many thousands of people?"
Tyler Cutebiker's brow wrinkled. "You're making me a defender of these people?" said Axolotl.
"Quite so. After all, Bill might not visit… but I can't say the same for the Henchmaniacs. The refugees settling need defending, especially the original prisoners: there's people here that could destroy the zodiac's resolve if they were ever captured or killed. Here, you have the power to protect them. Here, they will benefit from the loosening of your metaphysical shackles."
"Nice. The only way you could loosen my shackles was by sending me to prison. Very, very cute."
Nyarlathotep chuckled indulgently, and checked his watch. "Great Azathoth, is that the time already? I'm needed elsewhere. You should be settled in pretty shortly, although I wouldn't recommend staying out on the streets – the zodiac have several billion people to rescue and store here, and they're going to take up a lot of space on the street. Rest assured, we'll see each other again very soon when the zodiac finally free you! Bye for now!"
He turned to leave, but at the last minute, he paused and added, "Oh, and do say hello to Dipper and Mabel's parents for me will you? They're living just down the street."
And then he was gone…
…leaving Axolotl well and truly trapped in the Cookie Jar.
A/N: This chapter's soundtrack choice is Shimmy She Wobble, by Othar Turner and the Rising Star Fife. Well, I thought it'd be an appropriate choice for this Misfit Mobilization Moment...
Up next…
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