"OH, I'M HERE!"
Bill's voice echoed throughout Pinetree's mindscape, bouncing off it's various walls and ceilings. Curious, Bill looked around. He recognised this place, it was the Pines twins' home back in Piedmont. Everything was black and white, as was typical for a person's mindscape. As he enter the house, an out of place splash of colour caught his eye; a bright, pink doo with stars on it marked 'Mabel.' The doors stretched out for what looked to be eternity, with doors marked as 'School Memories,' and 'General Knowledge.' That door had no handle, only a massive padlock and chains wrapped around it. Bill knew it was worthless to try enter there; he couldn't access it, as it was the bridge between the conscious and unconscious areas of the brain. He operated in the latter area, and was restricted to it.
"NOW…" Bill murmured. "IF I WAS THE EQUATION, WHERE WOULD I BE?" He quickly realised that whilst Pinetree wasn't the most clean person in the world, he was organised (it wouldn't seem like it at first glance, clothes strewn in random piles all over his room, but there was a logic to it). The doors were ordered alphabetically, with the most important ones like Mabel's door and the General Knowledge one marked with bright blue thumbtacks. Bill passed all the pinned doors and eventually found the one marked 'Journal Notes.'
"THERE YOU ARE."
If he had a mouth, (or ears) he'd be smiling from ear-to-ear, giddy with glee. This was it! Shaking from excitement, he opened the door and looked around. Pinetree's was sitting in his room in the Mystery Shack late at night. He had a checkered blue button-up on over his regular clothes (although he'd swapped his shorts out for a baggy pair of joggers), the sleeves rolled up to his elbows. His hat was hung on the bedpost, his tangled brown hair drooping over his eyes slightly. Said eyes were circled in dark black bags, clearly visible in the light of his laptop. He'd stuck a pine tree sticker onto the back of it, the light from the glowing logo shining through. He seemed to be copying notes from the journal onto it. Smart, keeping a backup.
Slowly, Pinetree's head began to fall forward ever so slightly. His eyelids shut for a split second, before e snapped back up, alert and awake. He glanced around his room, yawned, then reached over to his bedside table to take a sip of coffee from his thermos. He caught Bill's eye, shutting the laptop and subtly sliding the journal under his duvet. The laptop had been the only source of light, and now the room was plunged into darkness. Moments later, Pinetree lit a match, the warm, orange light coating his face. He reached into the lantern on his bedside table and lit it, blowing the match out and dropping it into the small bowl of water he used as a match tray. The last of it's energy fizzled and sparked out of existence just as the lantern reached full force.
"So," he said, looking Bill directly in the eye. "You here for the equation?"
Bill simply nodded in response.
Pinetree muttered something he really shouldn't be saying under his breath, then sighed.
"Why are you doing this?" he asked.
Bill blinked in confusion. "WHAT DO YOU MEAN?"
"Why end the world?" Pinetree elaborated, standing up but not walking any closer.
Bill chuckled slightly. "YOU HUMANS REALLY ARE PITIFUL. I JUST WANT TO PARTY! THERE'S NO REASON TO HOLD ONTO THINGS WHEN YOU'RE IMMORTAL. THAT'S WHY HUMANS ARE LESSER BEINGS; THEY HAVE LIMITED TIME, AND THEREFORE MAKE IRRATIONAL DECISIONS IN ORDER TO EXTEND THAT TIME. BUT IN THE END, YOU WILL GIVE UP. HUMANS ALWAYS DO."
"So that's what makes you more valuable than us?" Pinetree suggested, crossing his arms. His sleeves were rolled up to his elbows, showing the dotted puncture wound that covered them as clear as day.
"YEP. YOU'LL TRY AND TRY, BUT YOU'LL EITHER GIVE UP, OR RUN OUT OF—"
"Time. Yeah, you said that," Pinetree interjected, cutting Bill off. "I would argue that you're wrong about three things."
"NAME THEM."
"First, the difference is sacrifice."
Mabel readied the memory gun, typing only two words into it: Mason Pines. She desperately wanted to say something, anything, but the words were made unintelligible by the sound of her sobs.
"Yeah, time is limited," Pinetree continued, beginning to walk over to Bill. "Which means that sacrifice comes at a real cost."
Ford went to grab at the memory gun, but stopped at the last second. He was barely holding back tears, but bit his lip and nodded weakly.
"It's not just a setback, it costs us tears, and heart, and pain, and blood, and sweat and tears. All the good human stuff."
Stan lunged at Mabel in a vain attempt to stop her, but was held back by Ford. The two grunkles looked at each other, each wearing an expression that read, 'it should've been me.'
"And we will never give up," Pinetree stated.
"YOU SAID I WAS WRONG ABOUT THREE THINGS," Bill said. "WHAT'S THE THIRD?"
"Me." Pinetree was standing right in front of Bill, looking him dead in the eye. Had the dream demon been thinking of anything other than his burning desire to escape Gravity Falls, he might have realised the significance of this. "You see, I do fear death. But when it comes to saving the people I love, I'm ready to put aside that fear and make the sacrifice play."
"YEAH, RIGHT," Bill snarked, ignoring his internal monologue. "THAT'S GREAT, NOW GIMME."
Pinetree pointed to his bed, where the journal was safely stowed under the duvet. Bill walked over and flung it open, searching through the pages like a rabid dog.
They were blank.
All the pages were blank except the last one, which read 'The equation that Bill's looking for.'
Bill turned to Pinetree, shaking with rage. But before he could give him a piece of it, before he could start roaring and yelling, he noticed a small, blue spark at the bottom of the door he'd came from.
And that's when Pinetree's mindscape burst into flames.
"What!?" Bill yelled. "THE DEAL'S OFF, YOU TRICKED ME!"
"Bit rich coming from you," Pinetree sneered, his eyes glazing over as he was reminded of the most traumatic event of his life – the sock opera. He snapped back to reality a second later before saying, "You're going down Bill. You're getting erased."
"Y-YOU IDIOT!" Bill spluttered. "YOU'RE SUPPOSED TO BE THE SMART ONE, DON'T YOU REALISE THAT YOU'RE DESTROYING YOUR OWN MIND TOO?"
Pinetree shrugged nonchalantly, waving it off as if it was no big deal. "Sure. But it's like I said Bill: the difference is sacrifice. Giving up something for the people you love, but you wouldn't know anything about that, would you? And besides, if this really is the end, I could ask for a better send off than saving my family. And the multiverse too, I guess."
Bill turned away and desperately tried to make a portal to escape, but as his flames flickered, he knew it was pointless.
"Look at me," Pinetree spat, his shadow towering over a cowering Bill. "Turn around and look at me you one-eyed bastard!"
Bill turned around slowly, his hands trembling from fear.
Pinetree's face conveyed nothing but rage, a silent fire burning behind his eyes. "You're a smart guy Bill, but you made one fatal mistake: you tried to hurt my sister. Funny that, how my 'pitiful human connections' are the only thing letting me win this."
"NO!" The fires began to close in on on the two, their mental avatars beginning to shatter and flicker. "YOU'RE MAKING A MISTAKE!" Bill shouted in desperation. "I'LL GIVE YOU ANYTHING! MONEY, FAME RICHES, INFINITE POWER, YOUR OWN GALAXY – PLEASE!" The dream demon's body began to change, morphing into all the various forms he had taken over his lifetime. "!NRUTER YAM TAHT REWOP TNEICNA EHT EKOVNI I NRUB OT EMOC SAH EMIT YM L-T-O—"
And right before Bill finished the incantation, Dipper wound his arm back and slammed it into his eye. He let out a scream of agony, before dissipating before Dipper's very eyes.
Bill was gone. Reduced to atoms.
Unfortunately, so were Dipper's legs. The flames creeped up his body like snakes, too fast to stop. He breathed heavily; it was done. He gently picked up Mabel's scrapbook from the bedside table and looked at the photos in it; mainly, one of them, Stan, Ford, Wendy, Soos and Waddles standing outside of the Mystery Shack. Next to it was a picture of the two of them posing with their parents at Disneyland, about a year earlier.
The flames were past his chest, tickling his face.
"Goodbye Mabel," he said as his mental form dissolved into particles of dust, just like Bill's.
"I love you."
Weirdmageddon was over. Bill was dead, and along with him, so were all the memories that made Dipper Pines who he was. The boy that knelt on the ground was merely a shell of his former self. The wind whistled past him, his eyes clamped firmly shut. His head was tilted upwards, his tangled brown hair hanging over his face. Slowly, he opened his eyes and got his first glimpse of the world in his new life.
He looked around, going to brush his hair out of his eyes. His hands were shaking violently, not responding to his commands quick enough, almost as if his control over them had been diminished. Instead, he stood up weakly, his legs threatening to fall out from under him. His breathed was heavy and laboured; he didn't know why he was here, or who he was. He staggered over to a nearby pond, looking at himself for the first time. He wore a red t-shirt with navy vest and grey shorts, all of which were covered in tears, stains and burn marks. There was a gash on his forehead, and his shirt was soaked with the blood of a cut on his abdomen. He held his exposed arms up to the water, examining the dotted puncture wounds littering them (along with a multitude of other cuts, scrapes and bruises). Suddenly, he heard a rustling in the bushes behind him. He whipped around, a ringing beginning to build in his ears.
Out of the bush came two identical old men, one in a burgundy sweater and tan lab coat, the other in a black suit with a maroon fez. They were crying as they ran towards him. The man with the Fez plonked some kind of baseball cap onto the boy's head, trapping him in a bear hug.
"Dipper!" he yelled.
Dipper. So that was his name.
As his survival instincts kicked in, he wriggled out of the hug and took a few steps back, just in time to see another figure appear from out of the brush. This one had long brown hair and wore a pinkish-red sweater with a shooting star on it. Like the old men, she looked like she'd been to hell and back, but there was something different about her. The old men looked to be on death's door, both physically and mentally. The girl was another story. Nothing but bitterness and depression filled her eyes as she walked towards them. No tears, no hugs. She was just… despondent.
"W-Who ar-re y-y-you t-talk-king t-to?" Dipper stammered.
"Kid," Fez said, laughing slightly. "I know you don't remember much, but you've gotta remember us, right? We're your family."
"I-I-I d-don't k-k-k-k-k-know you-ou." Dipper wasn't sure why his hands were shaking, or why he couldn't speak without stuttering more than a broken record, but that wasn't his concern right now. He was more worried about theses strangers crowding him.
Sideburns seemed to go through the five stages of grief in a matter of seconds, first muttering 'No, no, no' under his breath. Then he clenched his fist and grimaced, turning to Fez and saying something along the lines of, 'There's a way to fix this, I'm sure of it.' Then he bit his lip, a stray tear falling down his face, followed by a simple mutter of, 'Things are now in motion that cannot be undone.'
"Dipper has no idea," the girl said, walking over to him and and placing a hand on his shoulder. "But he saved us. He saved me." She began to cry, before burying her head into Dipper's neck. "You're my hero, Dipper."
Once the old men had pulled the girl off of him, they began to lead him away. Eventually, they encountered another individual, a fatter man in a green shirt who cried upon Sideburns whispering into his ear. As they rounded a corner, Dipper took in the view; a ruined house in the middle of a beautiful forest.
Fez walked on ahead as Sideburns, the girl and the fat man stayed with him. The girl didn't let go of his hand the whole time. He didn't know who he was, or who these people were to him, but they seemed to care about him. They said they were family; if that was true, surely he would remember them. In the depths of his mind, a tiny voice echoed, Ever get that feeling of déjà vu?
He could see Fez knocking down the door to the ruined house, the strangers giving saddened glances as they walked in.
"N-Nice place," Dipper lied. As if the universe wanted to spite him, a ceiling beam fell down, clattering to the floor with a loud 'thunk.'
He was only trying to be polite.
"It's our place, kid," Fez said.
His legs felt like jelly. The ringing in his ear was intensifying, getting louder and louder every second. He wobbled over to a dusty old recliner in the middle of the room, wiping sweat off his brow.
Suspiciously red sweat.
"Don't you remember?" the fat man asked. "Even a little?"
His head hurt like hell.
All this time, the girl in the sweater stood in the doorway, twiddling her fingers and chewing her hair.
His vision was going blurry.
He opened his mouth to speak, but the words got caught in his throat. Breathing was getting harder and harder as time went on, as if his throat was being crushed by some invisible force (why did that ring a bell?).
The girl finally looked up, rushing over to him as he slid off the cushion and onto the soft rug underneath.
Black spots began to appear in his vision. He could barely make out the girl in the sweater pressing on his chest, over and over again until it felt like his ribcage was going to crack open. His eyes shut, and the only thing he could hear over the ringing was the girl desperately yelling 'Dipper!' over and over and over again.
His entire body felt like it was on fire, blood from his forehead leaking through his hair and onto the dirty shag carpeting.
He was almost glad when he blacked out.
So, I've listened to some constructive criticism form Chapter One (Specifically Theory of Weirdness's comment. Go to the comments of chapter one if you want to see it), and decided to write Bill's death as part of this chapter. I started it off with a more intellectual discussion about the nature of humanity because I thought it would be interesting and because I wanted Dipper to name-drop the chapter title. This will obviously be the last time our Dipper will appear with all his memories (barring a flashback), and also the last time he'll be displaying any kind of confidence whatsoever. Losing his memory isn't the only thing he's going to have to deal with, there's going to be many side-effects that will last long after he remembers. Anyway, hope you enjoyed!
Thank you to Theory of Weirdness for helping me out with some ideas on this chapter and the next one, your help is greatly appreciated (I would link it, but I can't do that here, so just search for him).
Also, a guide to some of the pop-culture references made in this chapter:
"Things are now in motion that cannot be undone," is a line from Gandalf the White in Return of the King. Ford definitely likes Lord of the Rings.
"Ever get that feeling of déjà vu?" is a voice line said by Tracer in the first-person shooter Overwatch.
'Breathing was getting harder and harder as time went on, as if his throat was being crushed by some invisible force (why did that ring a bell?)' is a reference to Darth Vader's iconic force choke from A New Hope, as I headcanon that Dipper is a huge Star Wars nerd.