Nruter yam I taht rewop tneicna eht ekovni ot eman ruoy yas I! nrub ot emoc sah emit ym! L-T-O-L-O-X-A!
A child woke up in sweat, dreaming of staring out at the world through one eye.
I always wondered why Ford, not grunkle anymore - never again - never even tried to save Stan.
Oh, I knew what he would tell me; It was stage four, nothing could have been done to save him at that point, he would have said, crying, but it I knew it would taste like ash in his mouth, because it was so far from the thruth.
For all that he talked about family, he never cared much about saving his own. Against Bill, yes, but wasn't that just for him? For his own redemption, so he wouldn't have to look Bill in the eyes, or well, eye, again.
He was very quick to put his brother on the chopping block, in the end.
"Dipper!" A high pitched, almost whiny voice yelled, and I smiled. Mabel.
"Mabel."
"Dip-dip, you gotta relax a little, you are even less chillax then last time I saw you!" She said, almost shouted, yet I could tell she, unliked mother and father, cared about me actually relaxing, and that it wasn't just empty platitudes.
But even that sincerity didn't matter in the end. "Actually Mabel, I think I might be too 'chillax', as you say it, if I had just been a little faster I might have been able to..."
"To save Stan?" My sister, my other half, said the words I refused to say.
"Yes." My clipped, somewhat rude response almost put her off, but I could see that she wouldn't be talking about that subject. If only I had gone td to Russia first, and deciphered the portal spell I could have saved weeks in Egypt, and while it might not have saved Stan, those egyptians had some interesting about binding a mind to a dead body.
"No matter, I must get going now Mabel, I would much rather not stumble upon Ford or Father." I said, as I turned my back to my sister, the only one I would never hurt.
"Goodbye dipping Dots." I almost, almost turned back as I heard the hurt in her voice, but in the end I didn't.
"Goodbye."
I tied the rope to the hook on the ceiling, in the empty room.
A goblin. A goblin with a club and some stones to throw of all things, not even one that could cast spells or craft magical weapons, as some had learnt, was what did me in. I who had walked the thin line between the winter and summer courts and walked away greater with both of them lesser, even as their rage burned bright.
I, Dipper, the man that walked through the eternal night of the Kal'Mutash, and walked away with the secrets - and the now dead skull - of the grand lich whose name had long since faded from memory and record.
It wasn't even a hit over the back of my head that threw me to the ground, no, it was a sharp rock that I stepped on and fell to the ground, with blood gushing out of my right eye, or what was left of it anyway, as it stayed just out of reach for me to BREAK IT'S NECK AND PULL IT'S SPINE OUT OF IT'S TWITCHING BODY!
The pain, I decided, was what ended me. I could think, yes, but I couldn't even get my mouth to form the most basic of incantations.
Pain, the great equalizer. Even the greatest of mages and monster could fall to it.
It... it was fucking hilarious. The powerful who built themselves up to the peak of power would one day fall due to pain, the most mundane of things!
I cackled, a high pitched thing that echoed in the dark damp cave around me, and I saw the goblin, the spineless thing that would soon be SPINE LESS IF I HAD ANYTHING TO SAY ABOUT IT!
I cackled and laughed until I felt like my lungs would give out, until I couldn't feel my hands or feet, the gaping pit were an eye sat was the last thing on my mind, and all I felt was more and more and more and more PAIN.
It just made me laugh even more, because wasn't it fun!
Something leapt out of me as the cave drained of color until all that remained was gray, black and white.
Blue fire leapt from my fingers.
I dragged the chair that came from the void until it stood under the dangling rope.
Red blood was spilled everywhere, the only other color remaining of the once green goblin deformed by warts and ilnesses being the white of a spine and a skull.
I...I never wanted to feel like that again, no matter what it cost me, no matter what it cost. Where other's might see this as a massacre, as a crime all I could see is a pyramid that chased after us after announcing that we would be turned into corpses.
I shuddered from something that felt alien, but I knew I had felt before.
"I-I, I damned my soul to find out those things, you have to understand. Dipper, I wanted to save Stan more than anyone else but... I couldn't. Those notes were composed by a madman of the highest caliber, Bill Cipher himself gave me the 'cure to cancer' in an attempt to trick me into to activating the portal and let him in. I'm uncertain as to wether or not it would have even worked, considering it would come from him."
He looked at me as if any of the reasons had given would have been anywhere near good enough to damn his brother to death.
"Please understand, those teachings came from hell itself. I will never lower myself to use them on anyone, let alone family."
YOU SUPERSTITOUS FOOL! I wanted to scream. I wanted to burn his flesh from his bones and keep him alive like that, as a trophy. HE WAS YOUR BROTHER!
I nodded, but I could feel him wilt under my one eyed stare.
I stepped into the shadows and vanished, even as I heard his steps trying to catch up to me.
Brain cancer.
It took not just Stan, but now it was preying on my own sister, my own other half.
I would not let Ford of all people stop me from saving her, so I stalked through his dark and long corridors that were burrowed far below Gravity Falls.
The security measures, for all that they tried were subpar. If he put too much magic in it it would too simple to find and might turn an experiment voilotile, killing the entire city, so nothing strong could be used down here, but that mattered little now.
And there, at the end of the hall, it was. Like the light at the end of the tunnel, a door with a six fingered hand on it showed itself.
The door itself, locked with layers of wards and secrets did little to stop me. Ford had always prepared for someone like Bill Cipher, who tried to force his way in - and that demon would succeed - , and not someone that actually tried to work around said wards. They fell in seconds, but what I saw was not the books I was looking for, but the back of a man I might have called teacher if things had gone differently.
"Dipper." The words were solemn, almost sad.
"Ford." My retort was nowhere near as sad, and I could only hope I succeeded in hiding the rage I felt.
"I knew you would come here, and I know nothing I say will dissuade you from trying to save her, so for what it is worth: I am sorry. Umlanius."
A fire burst fourth from his fingers, and I knew it was fire even though I could only see the glow, and I covered the distance between me and Ford faster than I ever had before, and I pushed him out of the way with strenght I never even knew I had.
The books, burning merrily as they were, lay before me, yet so far away.
I could grab them but it would do nothing. No water would stop that fire, for it was magical and I never cared for magical water.
I felt a hand on my shoulder at the same time as I heard a voice begginning to speak. "Dipper, to save her you would have to sacrifice lives, human lives. I don't want to make you pick." Because you knew who I would pick.
Armonala.
It was but a thought, but fire burst over Ford's hand, and started climbing up his arm.
Armonala, a once great fire serpent that was now subdued and turned into little more than a fire with no mind of it's own.
My hand, still burning with fire that wouldn't hurt me, gripped the head of my uncle and I smiled.
"I am not sorry."
I stood up on the chair.
Sacrifices huh? Surely, Bill wasn't the only one with this knowledge, surely there must be someone else that knew.
And if no one else knew? I would just have to innovate.
I was quite good at that.
Woman, children and men lay arranged in shapes that no one but me could know what they meant.
Some alive, some dead, but it was all for nothing.
Nothing, not even a single step closer to finding the cure, even with cities dead and forgotten due to me it was still not even close.
My phone rang, and that could only be one person. Mabel.
"Dipper," she asked, her voice weak, "I want to talk to you."
The hospital she lived it was better than money itself could afford.
"Dipper," she said, sad, and I knew what she would say next, but I didn't want to hear it, didn't want to understand that I was running out of time, "I am sorry."
Huh?
The door was kicked in, wooden shards spraying on me and flames came when I orded them to.
"I am sorry," she said again, as if she hadn't just betrayed me and doomed herself, "but I didn't want to think it was you. Something you didn't make easy."
Damn it. I should have lied better, I should have gotten an alibi, if only so she would belive me.
"I-I gave... I GAVE YOU TIME MABEL! TIME SO I COULD FIX THIS! FOR YOU! WHO PUT YOU IN THIS ROOM INSTEAD OF IN A BED AT HOME, HUH!? WHATEVER YOU ARE DOING TO STOP ME, IF YOU JUST STOP IT I WILL FORGIVE YOU!"
There was something in her eyes that broke as I screamed, and I knew I said the wrong thing.
"I wanted to belive you didn't kill grunkle, that you didn't kill all of those people, but I don't think I can."
I had no reply. I knew when I had lost.
Damn it. Damn it all.
I tied the rope that dangled infront of my face into a noose.
Working at Greenwall Max Sec was tiring. That was the thruth for Jacob atleast, and the only happiness he got out of life was mocking the prisoners that could kill him with but a thought.
The one he liked mocking more than anyone else was the new monster, and not just because Jacob was loving the novelty of the reactions, although it was also that.
The newest locked up monster, Mason Pines himself, was the man that put more than half of the monsters in here in these cells. The Butcher of the north he was called, as he had killed his way across the US from Canada down to mexico.
And today, Jacob was excited to give Mason some fun news. You see, much of the money that Mason had accrued was now something that his family refused to touch and Mabel quickly left that fancy hospital bed to sleep in a family house.
"Hey One eye," The guard almost screamed at the sleeping man in the cell that, "did you know that fancy hospital bed you got your sister? I might get it now, considering that I knew some victim of yours. Heard they were sharing all the fortune you accrued on your journeys."
Jacob laughed inside, because no such thing was true, but what would the man on the other side of the bars do?
Nothing.
The prisoners eye, the one that remain and wasn't just a gored pit of scars, wavered for just a second as yellow filled it up with the last of the power of a demon god.
Jacob noticed nothing as his laughter was no longer internal, until he looked down at his grey uniform.
It was meant to be blue.
That was... something.
What was that? I knew it was the last time that power would fill my veins (atleast while I still had veins), but I didn't know where it came from.
But that didn't matter now, as I knocked on a familiar door, and it was opened by a familiar person.
"Hello Father," I said to the man in the door way, as I burnt him to ashes in an instant.
I slipped the rope around my neck.
"Mother," I said, as I stepped into the kitchen and left behind a pile of ashes.
I contined in, stepping into my fathers old room, filled with suits, ties and bowties.
A yellow shirt slipped on, and it fit like a glove, same with the black pants and jacket, with the prison jumpsuit laying forgotten on the ground.
And then...
A black tie hung on the wall next to a...black bowtie.
I tightened the rope around my neck.
It fit like noose.
Finally, I walked up the stairs and into the room Mabel was staying in, and I saw her sleeping peacefully in a bed.
She had betrayed me but... I would make her end F U N.
My hand clasped over her eyes and I dragged up spells from half forgotten recesses of my mind, because why would I ever use such cruel spells?
She screamed and screamed and all I could do was laugh.
"It's so fun, isn't it?"
I kicked the chair away from my feet, and I was free.
And I will free you all.
The world was falling apart, and nothing I could do was stopping it.
It fell into a boiling, shifting intergalactil foam between worlds, and that would be mine one day.
But for this world I would need a new crown, a new name.
Bill Cipher.
And so, I lived forever.