"You all need to get out of here. Now." Ford said, firmly, rifling through his trenchcoat for any kind of weaponry.

"Not a chance." Stan replied. "We're in this damned well together."

The old men were a lot more experienced in the act of swallowing the crazy, out of this world nonsense they had seen over the years. For Dipper Pines, who still suffered more than a little bit of anxiety about what had happened last summer, it was much more difficult. This was the reason he barely ever slept. This was the reason he remembered all manner of graphic monstrosities and his family almost falling victim to the hell of Weirdmageddon.

It was his turn to freeze, to feel like crying, to go as stiff as a board. The other stuff, he could more or less handle. Coming face to face with the biggest known threat to his world? That was more than sufficient to raise nothing more than visceral, pure fear in his veins. He felt freezing cold and feverishly warm at once. His organs were churning. His head was pounding.

Was… was he having a panic attack?!

I'mgonnathrowupI'mgonnathrowupohnononothiscan'tbehappening-

This was the sort of thing that really, really made him wish he had Mabel alongside him, no matter how much he adored Pacifica.

It was just what he was used to. What he expected. The person who had fought with him against Bill the first time. Pacifica was tough, but there was nobody he trusted more than his twin sister.

"Y'KNOW GUYS, I WAS REALLY WORRIED YOU'D FORGOTTEN ME, BUT IT'S NICE TO KNOW YOU'RE EVERY BIT AS TERRIFIED AS THE DAY I RUINED YOUR LIVES. HOW'S THE TRAUMA, DIPPER?"

This was it. He was shaking. He was frozen in pure terror. It was the thing he had dreaded from day one, and this time, he was in a stone Cathedral with Bill's face everywhere. He was immediately desperate to jump into protecting his girlfriend, doing everything he could to keep Pacifica safe, but with what?!

A stupid dynamo that's meant to make Curzon kick the bucket? Some wreckage from a train crash that was allowed to happen in Bill Cipher's name?! This entire building was a tribute to him, it was all a huge ego trip for the universe's most bizarre malevolent force. It was, above all else, a terrifying, twisted message of just how much Bill had corrupted the world around him.

And all for his own entertainment. Nothing else. He had done the entire thing, twisted the Northwests and tortured the town for fun. It was a joke.

It was all a joke.

All of this was funny to him.

Dipper Pines was an anxiety-ridden, nervous, partially traumatised wreck. But as those thoughts rumbled around in his head, most of all, he was angry. By and large, it was Bill Cipher who had caused the Northwest Family to become monsters. They were corrupt before, but it was Bill who had made them insanely awful.

Ergo, it was Bill who had made Pacifica's life so hellish for so long.

It was Bill who had made Pacifica cry tonight.

It was Bill who had brought them all to the brink last summer.

And now, it was Bill who was making Dipper angry enough to do something that he really wasn't used to doing. Forget about his stress and anxiety, swallow it down, and try to talk the talk - even if he had literally no confidence in his words.

"I'm not afraid of you, Bill! He shouted. "You're a joke! We beat you before and-"

Bill's eyes flashed red briefly at the insult. Not that he was particularly difficult to aggravate. Of course, his natural superiority and natural grandiose self-impressions ruled over any natural weakness Bill might suffer. Nothing was going to ruin his fun or natural love of being better than them.

Hell, they were in a literal cathedral that proved his superiority. A bona-fide temple to his own brand of sin and misanthropy. Bill Cipher was more of the sort to find challenges against him amusing. It came as little shock to see him so unaffected by Dipper's sudden burst of authority.

"SURE, PINE TREE. IN CASE YOU HAVEN'T NOTICED, ALL OF THIS IS PROOF ENOUGH THAT I CAN'T LOSE. YOU'RE ALL NOTHING MORE THAN TINY, FLESHY LITTLE BUGS FOR ME TO TOY WITH!"

Ford raised his fist and snarled. "You won't toy with us, you little-"

"LITTLE? LITTLE?! BOY, FORD, THAT'S A GOOD POINT! GIVE ME A MOMENT, HERE!"

It was here that Bill used one of his favourite party tricks. With his eyelid - to be fair, the closest he had to eyebrows - lowered, he focused his energies on growing as intimidating and outsized as his personality implied.

Before their eyes, he became ten, twenty, thirty times the size he had first appeared. He towered over them through that thin membrane of a barrier, his hands now large enough to crush the four of them at once, his shrill voice now loud enough to cause mortar to crumble above them.

Ford and Stanley both snapped back to reality for a moment and wondered just how much punishment the 150+ year old subterranean chapel could take. While they had no wishes to die tonight at the hands of Cipher, they were also increasingly conscious of the prospect they'd be crushed by the manor falling on top of them.

Especially considering they were visitors.

"HOW'S THIS, KIDS? FITTING OF A GRAND RETURN?! I'D THINK SO! THIS IS IT! WEIRDMAGEDDON TWO! AND ALL I'VE GOTTA DO IS SPLIT THROUGH MY SHADOWY CENTIPEDE FRIEND!"

"I thought you two worked together?!" Pacifica stammered, hiding behind Ford with Dipper firmly gripped in his arms.

"Bill doesn't do alliances." Ford growled. "He'd rip open his own mother if it meant a reward."

"IT'S ALL FOR THE GREATER GOOD, ISN'T IT CURZY?!"

"YoU tRaItOr!" Curzon screamed. "YoU CaN't Do ThIs tOoo Me! I hElpEd YoOouU!"

"SURE, BUT NOW I'M AFTER A NEW DEAL, IT'S NOTHING PERSONAL."

One of his enormous, jet black, rubbery hands grabbed the edge of the portal as he began to try and force his way through the stretchy, elasticated membrane ahead of him.

The scream from Curzon was terrifying. It was eldritch in nature, a cross between the scream of an elephant being slaughtered, the roar of a jet engine and a broken fax machine.

The family almost felt sorry for him. It sounded pretty damned painful.

"JUST KIDDING. IT'S ENTIRELY PERSONAL. I NEVER LIKED YOU OR YOUR DUMB ACCENT, CURZON. YOU'RE WORTHLESS."

"Get back, kids. Get back." Stanley murmured as Bill began dragging himself out of the darkness. "This is- this is gonna get hairy."

"What are we going to do?!" Pacifica tried to speak as quietly as she could, but it was proving increasingly difficult in the situation at hand. It sort of came out a lot more gibbered and frantic than she had hoped for.

"Throw the dynamo!" Ford barked. "To hell with scientifi-"

CRAK!

"HEY- WHAT THE-"

THWACK!

"WHAT IS THIS?!"

CRACK!

"M- MY ARMS?! WHAT HAVE YOU MISERABLE FLESHBAGS DONE TO MY-"

The family stared, lost for words as, before their eyes, Bill's arms began to fracture and crumble. To his horror, his two foremost limbs suddenly cracked and broke off of his steep-sided body, flying outwards with thin streaks of thick, black liquid and crumbling shrapnel flowing from behind.

Bill screamed - not roared, not bellowed, but screamed in his shrill, furious manner as his two upper limbs flew from him. He was genuinely shocked. Perhaps even, deep in his psychopathic, twisted mind, he was scared.

He had never had his arms ripped off before, especially not while trapped in a transdimensional limbo he was so close to escaping from. He fell, rather comically, onto his back - and uselessly kicked and flailed in a desperation to upright himself.

The disembodied limbs fell to the floor with hollow thuds, and began to break up before their eyes - crumbling to dust as if they were being struck with an invisible sledgehammer.

"I DON'T KNOW WHAT THE HELL YOU'VE JUST DONE, PINES, BUT IF YOU THINK IT'S GOING TO STOP ME, YOU'VE ANOTHER THING COMING! YOU NEED TO ACCEPT THAT YOUR WORLD IS MINE!"

The family was baffled by the sudden dismemberment of Bill Cipher, to say the least - but none were more bewildered than Dipper. He was still beyond shaken up, and was not quite prepared by the sight of Bill's limbs flying off of him like paper aeroplanes that spewed tar and crude oil behind them.

His self doubt had never plagued him more. He wasn't an action hero. He couldn't do this.

He knew he had to do something. Everything in his brain was shouting at him to snap out of it and take action. Everything was telling him to move. Everything was telling him to get to it. Every sinus and subconscious thought was screaming at him.

But he couldn't.

He was out of it.

"Dipper, you need to get that dynamo out there!" Pacifica shouted.

He looked at her fearfully, his eyes wide, his pupils like pindots. He desperately wanted to respond. But he was scared. He felt useless. He couldn't beat Bill. He'd failed before. Who was he even kidding? What if something else happened?!

He thought they'd won last time, and the top hat donning triangle still managed to make the past couple of days hell. To what end could they keep taking him on? To what end could they expect it to actually work when this supremacy was everywhere to be seen?

"Dipper, look at me! " She shouted, grabbing him by the shoulders and looking into his eyes. "You can do this! This is it! Be the hero!"

Dipper's mind went into a momentary solace as he gazed back at his girlfriend. For at least a moment, the answer was clear. He moistened his lips as he finally spoke.

"Then do it with me." He replied, simply.

Pacifica paused. And smiled. "Sure."

She was quietly thrilled. This was it. No secrets. No boundaries. They were doing it together, much as she had wanted from day one. Together, they took hold of the Dynamo, activated it, and aimed.

"Are you ready?" She winked.

"A-as long as I'm with you, I'm ready for anything." Dipper smiled, awkwardly. "Welcome to my life."

"Feels great to be here, Dippingsauce. Now, on 3…"

"2…"

"We don't have time for this, kids!" Stan snapped. Perhaps understandably, with the urgency at hand, he wrenched the dynamo from their hands and gave it a baseball throw towards the stranded Bill Cipher.

Pacifica and Dipper felt like they should have protested but uh… possibly better to focus on saving the world rather than recompensing their relationship. It was probably one of the most sensible things Grunkle Stan had done all day.

It whistled through the air, rapidly growing louder and louder as it flew through the air.

"NO! NO! YOU WON'T BEAT ME THAT EASILY! MARK MY WORDS, PINE TREE AND LLAMA, THE PAIR OF YOU WILL SUFFER! I'LL SEE TO IT-"

Bill did not have the chance to finish his sentence as the Dynamo ripped through the thin mucus and struck him directly in the eye with a crunch.

The Pines barely had a chance to scream. Curzon barely had a chance to protest. Things went dark, then horrendously bright, then all colours of the rainbow...