The twins had faced life-or-death situations before; it was nothing new. They'd become veterans by the end of their 13th birthday, subject to more near-misses in one summer than most people saw in a lifetime.

But those experiences never really grizzled them, never steeled them enough to become numb to fear. And right now, that fear was very real. Dipper could feel the heat of the fire. The intense brightness of the flames, the burning yellows and oranges, hurt his eyes, and the cold humming static of Bill's stolen magic didn't budge against all his thrashing. He saw Mabel, heard her desperate groans as she struggled to escape, tried to wriggle her way out of the blue tendrils, but it was no good.

"Mabel," Dipper said, and his throat was dry. It hurt to speak over the crackling of the approaching flames, "I'm so sorry."

Mabel turned her head toward him, wild-eyed, before renewing her fight against the magic bonds.

"We're not dying today, Dipper!" she asserted, even as her frantic squirming did nothing.

Dipper just bit his lip and closed his eyes.

He should have listened to Bill in the first place. From the very first moment Bill had shown up in Dipper's dreams, he should have listened. But after what they'd been through with the demon, the tricks, the treachery, the manipulation and terror, who would? And now they were going to die, painfully, stupidly.

He screwed his eyes up tighter to block out the intense light blazing from the wall of fire, and thought of everyone he loved. Everyone he'd ever loved. His parents, Mabel, the Grunkles, Wendy, Soos – and how he wasn't ready to leave them.

And then there was a blast, like a transformer exploding; electricity crackled loudly and static buzzed through the air, standing Dipper's hair on end. The searing heat from the flames was gone in an instant. Not only that, but he felt the bonds release, Bill's cold magic falling away. He opened his eyes, and, sure enough, the blue tendrils had dissolved.

There was nothing left of the fire but blackened grass, singed trees, and ash.

There, standing in a clearing of dissipating black smoke and white sparking jolts of electricity, were Stan and Ford.

"Kids!" Ford ran toward them, pulling them both into a fierce embrace, "kids...thank goodness..."

Stan fell to his knees beside them, wrapping solid arms around all three, and Dipper could feel a wetness on his cheek that he was sure his Grunkle would try to hide.

"You stupid...stupid idiots," he grumbled softly against Dipper's shoulder, and the boy just breathed deep and wrapped his arms around them in return.

It took a while for them to part. Dipper was still dazed, still reeling from the rapid sequence of disasters he'd found himself in. He looked toward Mabel, to see how she was faring.

"I don't you we weren't dying today, Dipper..." she said, but her voice was so small and stunned that it was obvious she hadn't been very convinced of her own proclamation.

"How did you guys-" Dipper started, fumbling over his words as he looked back toward his twin Grunkles, "Bill's energy, how-?"

"You remember the quantum destabilizer, of course?" Ford held up a small device, something that looked more like a tiny steampunk water gun than anything else, "I'd been developing a new one to help with this...recent problem. This was supposed to be the prototype. Luckily, it packed enough punch to dissipate Bill's magic..."

"It was the Northwests!" Mabel blurted out suddenly, the shock of the realization catching up with her again, "they joined this crazy cult and sacrificed their own family to contain Bill!"

"It was their nephew…" Dipper murmured, still dazed, "the body Bill is in. That was their nephew…"

"Doesn't surprise me," Stan snorted, "they treated their own daughter like a dog, why not sacrifice a nephew to contain a crazy space monster?"

"The cult – you must have seen them on your way here, right?"

"We saw them," Ford nodded at Dipper, mouth set in a deep frown, "and yes, they had Bill. They used his power to open some sort of portal, disappeared into it. Dangerous stuff…"

"What the hell were you kids thinking!?" Grunkle Stan had apparently gotten over the joy of seeing his niece and nephew alive, an emotion which was now replaced with exasperated outrage, "taking off with that fucking animal?!"

"We left a note," Mabel shrugged a little helplessly as Stan threw his hands up in the air.

"'We left a n-' you kids are gonna be the death of me! You know that, right?! And here's a tip, writing 'we're not brainwashed' on a piece of Hello Kitty stationary isn't gonna convince someone that you're not fucking brainwashed!"

"We wrote more than that!" Dipper exclaimed, but backed down when met with twin scowls.

"What you did was incredibly foolish," Ford heaved a rasping sigh as he stuffed the tiny quantum destabilizer back into his leather satchel, "dangerously foolish. And, as you saw, it nearly resulted in your deaths."

"Okay, but that wasn't Bill's fault!"

"I don't care whose fault it was, Dipper!" Ford roared back, a tone they usually only heard when the man was addressing Bill himself. He took a hold of Dipper's shoulders, "do you understand? We could have lost you!"

There was an uneasiness between them, all four Pines standing still and quiet. Nothing but blackened grass swaying in the breeze and the smell of ash on the wind.

Dipper kept his mouth shut for a moment longer before steeling himself, squaring his shoulders, and looking back into Ford's eyes.

"We knew we had to help Bill. I knew we had to. Not just for him, but for everyone. And you two weren't going to listen."

"Dipper-" Stan growled from over Ford's shoulder.

"No! Listen to me!" Dipper asserted, and it seemed to take the two men aback, "I know all this stuff with Bill is iffy! I know it's suspicious, and I know he's probably just using me to get free. And I also know that...that setting Bill free is possibly setting him up to return one day, ruin some more lives, spread more madness or whatever the hell he likes to do. But…helping him...? ...right now? That's the right course of action. I know it is, I can feel it, and I'm not backing down from that," and, when the silence continued, he added, earnest, "you trust me...don't you?"

"...of course we trust you, Dipper," Ford answered slowly, "but Bill-"

"Is not in control," Dipper said firmly, "not in control of this, not in control of me, not even in control of himself. You have to believe me. And you have to help me. Because we...me and Mabel...we can't do this by ourselves."

He felt his sister's gentle hand at his back, and watched as Stan and Ford exchanged a long look.

Finally, it was Stan that spoke. He pinched the bridge of his nose, as if bracing himself for an oncoming headache, and sighed.

"Ford...this goes against every brain cell that I own, but I think we should do what the kid says. We should help. Their way. Even if that means it's Cipher's way, too."

Ford didn't look pleased behind his crossed arms and sullen glower. But after a moment...he dropped his arms to his sides, let out a huff, and nodded.

"You may be right. This has gone on long enough. It must end here," he looked at Dipper, "your way."

Dipper felt as if a thousand pound weight had been removed from his shoulders and, with a relieved sigh, he fell forward against his Grunkles, wrapping his arms around them both and murmuring.

"Thank you…"

Ford held the boy close, and Stan ruffled his hair gently, while Mabel searched wildly for her phone so she could snap a Scrapbookortunity photo. By the time they let go, she had found it, burnt, cracked and useless among the ashes. She made a face at it, tossed it aside and looked toward the men.

"Those secret society jerks really did a number on our stuff. I don't know how much of it is even usable anymore."

"Let's see what we can salvage, hm?" Ford recommended, and they all four set to the task of gathering Dipper and Mabel's supplies, sorting through the burnt and broken wreckage. The shrunken golf cart seemed unharmed, but with the size-changing flashlight smashed, it was more or less useless. The shrunken Desk of Gaap was missing too, and Ford wondered aloud what good it would be to the cultists without a way to size it back up.

Not much had survived the fire. All they were left with was the tiny golf cart, Mabel's grappling hook, a lunch bag full of unicorn hair, and the unused shoes Dipper had packed for Bill, which had been left on a boulder as the demon had slept.

"What have you guys got?" Mabel asked as she stuffed everything back into Dipper's backpack, the least burnt of the two.

"The quantum destabilizer prototype, binoculars, laser gun. First aid kit," Ford shrugged, "we were in a hurry once we realized you two were gone, so we didn't have time to grab much."

"So, I don't wanna be a downer here," Stan grunted gruffly, "but do we even have a plan? Actually, forget a plan, do we even know where these kooks are? 'Cuz it ain't gonna do us much good if we can't even find 'em."

"That way," Dipper said automatically, with a gesture of his lightning-burned arm. The others looked at him silently, and he, confused, looked back at them, "what? What is it? You guys are freaking me out."

"We're freaking you out?" Mabel asked with an uneasy laugh, "bro-bro, you're the one who just randomly knows where the cult is!"

"It's not random, Bill told me last night! They're in that direction. And…" he paused, glancing down at his burned arm. It tingled in a strange way, reminding him of Bill's refrigerator static hum, "I can...feel it."

"How?" Grunkle Stan asked incredulously.

Ford answered for him.

"That's where Bill is. So that's where they are."

Dipper shrugged, then gave a helpless nod. That's what it was. He could feel Bill, even now, feel the pull of the creature with whom he shared such a strange connection. It was almost like there was something invisible tugging on his arm, trying to guide him, lead him toward the abducted entity.

"How far, Dip?" Mabel asked, "do you know?"

"A few miles out, maybe?"

"Then they're really deep in the boonies," Stan grunted, "nothin' out that way for miles, it's the middle of freaking nowhere."

"That's where I would be if I was trying to harness the power of an interdimensional demon," Ford said matter-of-factly, "the good news is, they'll think you two are dead, so any attack on them now would be a surprise."

"And just how the hell are we going to attack them? Did you forget they got Cipher's powers at their beck and call? I don't wanna be vaporized, Stanford, I wanna die in my easy chair, clutching a half-empty can of Pitt Cola, like God intended."

"Lofty goals," Ford said with a roll of his eyes while fishing the journal from his satchel, "surely you haven't forgotten the incantation we can use. We'll activate Bill's power ourselves, lock him up with his own power. The cult won't be able to access it."

Dipper shook his head violently.

"What?! No! We agreed that we wouldn't do that, remember?"

"We agreed we would try other things," Stan countered, "but we don't have time to try anything else. We gotta end this. Now."

"Okay, but...but there's got to be another way. I know you don't like Bill, I mean, understandable, who does, really, but-"

"Dipper-" Ford started.

"I've seen what that spell does to him! It's cruel. It's cruel and you know that."

"Dipper," Ford sighed, exasperated, "this isn't about my feelings toward Bill or any kind of personal vendetta against him. Honestly. This is about our safety. Your safety! If we go in swinging and they still have access to Bill's power, there's no telling what they could do. The safest thing for all of us, including Bill himself, is to use this incantation."

But Dipper remained firm, shaking his head again, resolute.

"No. We can't do it. Grunkle Ford, please...please. There's got to be another way. We'll find another way."

Ford stared at him, eyes tired but appraising, his many years and his many trials evident on each deep line of his fatigued face. He didn't blink, and so Dipper didn't either, fists clenched, willing as best he could for his great-uncle to understand. To please understand.

So, with a tired sigh, Ford closed his eyes, swallowed audibly, and nodded.

"All right, Dipper. We'll find another way."

Tromping through the thick, unkempt Gravity Falls backcountry wasn't an easy task. The golf cart probably wouldn't have been of use to them even if it were full sized. The fields were too wild with summer foliage, rocky and rough. The terrain in the direction they headed sloped up more than it did down, and it was slow going, even for Mabel, who was currently the most able-bodied of the four Pines.

"Having a portal would be nice right now," she gave a grunt while freeing the bottom of her sweater from the grasp of a prickly bush.

"It concerns me that they're able to access such portals," Ford mused, using his laser gun to clear a path through a particularly rough swath of vegetation, "they don't know what they're doing. Imagine if they opened a portal to another realm, either accidentally or on purpose. There's no telling what could come out! For a group who managed to trap a creature like Bill, they seem incredibly ignorant."

"Or they just don't care," Stan grumbled, swatting midges away from his head.

Dipper had been mostly silent during their trek.

He felt a huge relief, they were doing this on his terms, and Ford had (surprisingly, really) agreed not to use the power-locking spell on Bill. He felt a renewed admiration for the man; Ford had reason to not care about Bill's pain, after all, how much had he suffered because of Bill? But whatever love, whatever trust he had for his nephew must have outweighed the hate, and that gave Dipper a renewed surge of energy and determination.

Now, he was thinking.

A plan.

Honestly, he didn't have one.

At all.

The cult had Bill, they had his power, and that put he and his family in a dangerous position. The best he could hope was that Bill was so drained that they couldn't take much more from him at the moment.

Dipper could sense they were growing closer...it was undeniable; he'd forged some sort of link with Bill. Whether it was during the ritual in the museum or some more innocuous occurrence, he wasn't sure, but he was sure that his lightning-scarred arm grew warmer, his heart fuller, with each mile.

'The middle of nowhere' might have been generous, even for Gravity Falls. Wherever they were, it was remote, nearly inaccessible, a wild country of fields and hills and spruces, the call of birds loud and numerous in the trees. He was beginning to second guess himself—after all, he doubted power-hungry cultists would be roughing it. That is, until they crested a hill and spotted a structure in the distance.

"A church," Grunkle Ford said, taking the opportunity to recheck the settings on his laser gun, "from back when Oregon was settled by pioneers, I'd wager. They built many structures out here...most of them are just crumbled old foundations now."

"They'll be sayin' that about us soon enough," Grunkle Stan winced and rubbed the small of his back. Mabel held Ford's binoculars up to her eyes, squinting through them.

"It looks like it's in pretty good shape to me," she said after a beat, passing the binoculars to Dipper.

She wasn't wrong. Maybe the church had been crumbled down to its foundations once; its mossy lower half and some of the outlying structures certainly seemed to point to that fact. But it looked like it had recently been rebuilt. Though the cornerstones were composed of old rock, the rest of the structure was wood, rough and unpainted, sturdy and culminating in a sharp pinnacle at the very top. There was no way it wasn't at least relatively new; the wooden boards would have decayed long ago if it weren't.

The structure sat in a serene meadow by a large pond choked with water chestnut pads. Old gravestones reached out of the ground beside the church, so overgrown and mossy that they nearly disappeared into the grass. There was even a stone mausoleum, small but mostly intact, whatever door it once had long rotted off its hinges.

"What's the plan?" Mabel whispered, though they were more than far enough away where they didn't exactly have to worry about being overheard.

"I've been thinking," Dipper started.

"No, really? You?" Stan snorted. Dipper gave him a disgruntled glance before continuing.

"They need to recite a spell to access Bill's power, right? What are the chances they've memorized it? Could we like...steal their spellbook?"

"We can't operate off of the hope that they need a book," Ford said, shaking his head, "we'll need to incapacitate them before any of them can recite the incantation. You two wouldn't happen to have any more of those Somnus Shrooms you used on us, would you?"

"Burned up in the fire," Mabel shook her head, her mouth a lopsided frown.

"Then we'll have to wait until they're asleep," was Ford's answer, "they may rest in rotation, have a guard or two active, but taking them out covertly shouldn't be too difficult."

"Creepy. You're creepy, Stanford," Stan grunted.

"We also have the destabilizer," Ford continued, ignoring his brother, "we know now that it can dissipate Bill's magic. But I'm not sure how much more juice the thing has got in it...it's not something we should depend on, if we can help it."

"So...now we just wait…?" Dipper asked, feeling helpless. He must have looked it too, because Ford's expression as he looked back at him was soft, empathetic.

"Now we just wait."

Nightfall found them camped behind the crest of the hill, jittery with worried anticipation. Stan watched intently through Ford's binoculars, eyes trained firmly on Mabel, who was yards away, down by the mausoleum.

Ford had suggested they use the unicorn hair on the mausoleum's entrance, a preemptive move that might provide them security if they ended up needing refuge from Bill's magic. He had made a paste from the sap of native plants, and Mabel, the smallest and lightest of the lot, had volunteered to sneak down by the church to apply it. With the last glistening strand in place, she flashed a thumbs-up toward the hill and silently made her way back to her family.

Dipper, earlier in the afternoon, had tried to take a nap, to use his connection to speak to Bill, see if the demon had any idea what could be done...but sleep refused to come to him. He was too anxious, it seemed as if every cell in his body was on high alert. And it wasn't just worry over what would become of him, his family.

It was Bill.

If Dipper was being honest with himself, he wasn't ready. Wasn't ready to lose Bill, probably never would be. Maybe it had to be now, or else it would be never.

He sat, arms wrapped around his knees, contemplating. How had it come to this? He'd started out the summer as afraid and despising of Bill as anyone could be, and after such a short time, he'd come to...what?

Love him?

Dipper tilted his head up, toward the sky, staring at the North Star, the brightest light above them.

That's what it was, then. He searched his mind, his feelings, wondering if there was something about Bill, if it was just some kind of supernatural charm the entity had, that made him fall so fast and so deep.

Or maybe Dipper truly was just that fucked up.

The stars, appearing one after another against a slowly darkening sky, offered no answers.