Dipper pressed the thin strand against the siding of the shack. Worry pressed at his mind. It didn't look like they'd be able to cover the entire perimeter, and something told him they didn't have time to parade around for another lock of hair. "Are you sure this is enough?" he called behind him, backing up to judge the distance.

"It has to be," Ford said, passing him another slop of sticky paste. "We have enough to keep the barrier up forat leasta week. That'll give us some time to prepare."

Dipper fought shaking hands and a knot in his gut as he ran the wiry rainbow along the next section. The wood was dented and filled with cracks – the pulled strands slotted in easily. His mind ran back through earlier events, namely how distraught Mabel had been. He'd never seen her so worried. He and Ford had come home to rough tugs on the sleeves, whisked past a sleeping Stan up to the attic where she told them what she'd seen. Ford had went pale. Dipper had wanted to throw up.

The barrier trilled to life when the long line of hair closed up. It wasn't like the first time Dipper had seen it; the blue wasn't as mighty and the symbols weren't as pronounced. It flickered, temperamental, then it settled and hid itself from the naked eye. Ford ushered them both back to the front door. His paranoid eyes swept their blind spots as they went through.

"I want you kids to stay inside for the rest of the day," he said, a stern brow swiftly asserting that it wasn't a suggestion. "I need to figure some things out." He made a break for the vending machine, pausing to add, "And don't tell Stanley, alright? It's… It's not your conversation to have."

Dipper gave a vigilant nod. Mabel's eyes were to the floor, no mind paid to her as Ford disappeared from view. Dipper couldn't believe the irony. Not even half the day had gone by since they'd discussed the prospect of Bill being alive, and what did they come home to? A blather of fearful words that informed them he was, subsequently forcing them into lockdown as they had been in once before. There went the summer fun everyone had been hoping for.

It was just them. Wendy and Soos had been urged to return to their homes – it was less dangerous. Bill was a mastermind who utilised every toy he could, but when there was a target on his mind, there were few things that would get in his way unharmed. Distance between the Pines and everyone else was the safest option, Ford had assured them. They trusted his judgement; always.

Dipper faced Mabel, who'd picked her eyes up from the ground and shifted to a forlorn stare at the door. "Hey, you doing okay?"

She thought, then smiled. Though she and Ford didn't tend to see eye to eye, he was as much a source of comfort to her as Stan was, amplified when it came to the unnatural. "Yeah. Hard to believe Grunkle Stan slept through all that."

The cited snores edged Dipper into a smile of his own, more tight-lipped than his sister's. Ford's words played back to him and only prickled him further; if Bill were to come back a second time, could he even be stopped? Like walking into a bear trap, they were asking for it the second time around. He was sure to have sharpened his teeth in the two years they'd spent apart.

Mabel was perceptive to his brooding. Her arm delicately linked under his, pulling them closer together. "Let's not worry about the triangle guy right now. We've locked him out." For a moment, she mulled over her next words, deciding on, "Wanna come see what I drew?"

He wasn't sure he'd be able to focus, but he forced a nod regardless, letting her yank him up the stairs and to her bed, where the book was laid open on the bedside cabinet. The drop in his stomach was immediate, powerful, almost enough to elicit a gag once he saw what it was. The cat that'd approached them – innocuous enough to begin with, then sinister with memories of perfectly terrifying slits backed by a suffocated gold. It had to have been a hallucination, but it didn't make the imagery any less scary.

"Geez, Dipper, it's not that bad!"

"No, I –" The words flew out without a brake point. He combed through his hair for a sense of grounding and said, "It's been a crazy day. Sorry. The drawing's good."

She flipped the page, and as it were, a lightbulb pinged off in his head.

He cut off any further remarks with a firm "Mabel," and thumped a finger on the page. The far-too-sparkly tree branch was nothing unusual, and the contents of it not unfamiliar; no, the opposite, familiar in a way that made every hair on Dipper's neck stand on end. The black creature, snaked around the tree, stagnant on paper but evermoving with time, held a different meaning.

He pried the book from her hands – "Hey!" – and leaned in to get a closer look. "Do you think this has to do with Bill? It can't be a coincidence, right?"

Mabel's incredulous look did nothing to sway his anxieties. "Um, last time I checked, he was more of a show-and-tell kinda guy." She regarded the page with a fresher pair of eyes and said, "What would it even mean? That he's killing trees for fun?"

"Doesn't that sound like a Bill thing to do?"

She opened her mouth, but there was no rebuttal to be made. "I guess that's true."

The cogs in his mind were turning. More and more pieces fell into place.

"But… Mabel. Mabel. When Great Uncle Ford and I went back to that place, it wasn't there. Then we come home and Bill's been in your head?" He snapped the book shut, a little more forcefully than he'd meant to, and tucked it under his armpit. "We have to show him when he gets back. I don't know what it means, but it's something new, and –" A sweaty hand clamped over his mouth.

"You're totally right, but you're about to drill a hole through the floor and I don't think that's gonna help anyone."

That was an understatement. If she was sweating, how much of a mess did he look? Dipper pushed her off and sighed, shoulders sagging with the tension released.

Mabel pat him on the shoulder. "I know you wanna figure this out but you have to be sane to do it. We're free from him for a while, so let's enjoy that. When Grunkle Ford gets back, then we'll worry about all the creepy stuff."

It was beyond him how, even when the threat of imminent doom lingered, Mabel could manage to be the more composed of the two. She was able to cast away worries for moments at a time and focus on the smaller things, the happier things; an ability he'd come to envy. But this time, he was indebted. No one knew how to sway a room quite like his sister.

"Aren't you worried?" he asked, calmer.

"No duh, but… When I spoke to Bill, there was something different. Not like, good different, but he wasn't as..." Her eyes flicked over the sketchbook. "You remember before, right? He was terrifying. He was stopping at nothing to kill us, but when we first met him, he was different. It's that kinda different."

The first time they'd met Bill he was rambunctious and playful, a devil in its best dress. Nothing was serious and he'd laugh at every turn – he'd laugh because he knew he had the upper hand, because things were leaning into his favour…

"Because he has a plan."

Stan was a hefty sleeper. Years of travelling did that to a man; never knowing the circumstances where you'd have to take a nap meant noise passed as easily over you as a thin sheet of air. He could snore away a tornado and rest on the back of a freight train, but when something was awry in the air, he'd come to his senses. As long as family was concerned, he always knew the right time to wake up. Mabel's frightened voice and Ford's hushed words were no exception. He was protective of the little squirts, begrudgingly so of his brother, and the notes of panic stirred him from the deepest of dreams. However, he kept on snoring.

Ford was as shady as a demon, only from a different angle. He thought he was doing right – he was the hero of the story – but it tended to be what was right by him, not for others, whether he realised the fact or not. Stan kept a facade of fatigue but an alert ear, letting the contents of their conversation sink in.

Bill.

Now, where had he heard that name before?

The tension aligned with such a simple name was something he'd normally laugh at, had it not been for the circumstances. That name, four letters strong, riled up a feeling of remembrance he'd been grasping for the entire two years he'd been at sea. Something so far was now bordering the horizon of the shore, the brightest star; the last to implode.

"Are you sure it wasn't a nightmare?"

"I'm sure! He was there!"

"This – alright, alright. Don't panic. I need to grab something from my workshop."

Boots scuffled around him. Ford couldn't play the sneak quite like him; he was blunderous when he was frightened. He'd wipe things off of desks, scatter paper and pen alike, frantically searching for what he needed. Stan paid careful attention to where the footfalls led, and where they returned from, along with the mutters of unicorn hair and the fretting of quantity. For an hour Stan embodied a tired old man, sinking deeper and deeper into the couch, all while his ears lent themselves to the outdoor commotion, commotion that was brought back inside with a sentence that hurt more than he wanted to admit.

Don't tell Stanley.

Stan was a simple man at heart. He loved his family, more than he loved the dollars in his pockets, but he was a conman through and through. Nothing tickled him more than a challenge – to weasel into places he didn't belong, to find information others fought to hide from him. Ford kept many secrets – too many – and they'd been locked away in the journals for years, unknown to Stan until he'd uncovered them and fought to revive one of his biggest mysteries. What Ford didn't want Stan to know, he had to.

The kids had taken off to the attic, leaving behind nothing but stale air for Stan to ruminate in. He ceased his false snoring and sat up. His bones pushed against his will to stand, and as he rose a single slip glided out of his pocket and onto the carpet, jaded green and dark printing. He didn't pay attention to the details of the dollar; after all, he would be giving it away soon enough. But as he bent to pick it up, something caught his eye, a depiction too small and too simple to stand out amongst the detailed artwork of the President's head.

A small, goofy-looking triangle with stick arms and a large eye.

Time was unfortunately still a concept when he was ported back to Gravity Falls. His convoy of eyes made it a simple task for higher hands to slip him through the barrier, granted there was cooperation on his part. The world wasn't painted red, orange and yellow, rather a pale grey with the faintest hints of blue at the edges. His visage resumed a vibrant gold and he gave his top-hat a shake to check for any residue flames. He was the single artefact of colour in an otherwise dull world.

We shall meet again in Gravity Falls. What a riot! There was no addressing of his arrival, none to inaugurate him to the genius plan they'd cooked up for his atonement. No, he'd been thrown back into Gravity Falls, and he was trapped, nothing more than a mouse caught in a maze.

Sending him back was their biggest mistake. The barrier prevented any outside eyes; other than his, of course. They had little in the ways of monitoring him and, despite their uninspired nature, he assumed they would've known better. He sent a mutinous glare to the skies. He would do no one's dirty work, not for scraps like they wished him to. He wasn't a dog.

His death must've lasted a month at least, he thought, passing along the trail and spotting the telltale signs of gradual regrowth on his journey through the forest. There were few burnt blades; they were replaced with lighter, sharper counterparts that covered what would've been an otherwise perfect terrain. Grass was never as soft as it looked; charred soil, on the other hand… It was a delight to allow to slip between the fingers.

"There you are!"

The view of scratched stone and a trademark slit was pristine. His eye was a little larger than he would've liked, but he couldn't deny his own handiwork. Bill circled the statue, taking in all its glory. Well, half of its glory. "Hey there handsome!" he cooed. "Hard to believe those idiots just threw me back down here, huh?"

He cracked each knuckle in his hand and reached to place it against the petrified skeleton. That was when he noticed it – a second too late – and a jolt of energy zipped up his arm, coursing through his body. He threw himself back, spinning through the air, and held his wrist, staring at it with a contracted pupil. It was a bracelet. The metal was perfectly polished with an opalescent texture, patterns whirling through it.

He tried four more times after that. Each attempt was met with the same result. When he did manage to touch the stone, nothing came of it; he was gifted with a pain more debilitating than the last five times, and relinquished his pride in favour of sulking by a black tree stump. That was, until a shadow darted into the bounds his peripheral.

A small, grey cat. Dismissed at first but something he would see for the next two years – curious of his nature, and enough of a curiosity itself that Bill felt obliged to interact with it as the months rolled by. The first time he'd possessed it, an occasion that surprised them both, he assumed that would be the last time he'd see it. Then it followed him like an angry driver after a spiteful overtake; he couldn't get rid of it.

One frigid night, it approached him directly, seeing him clearer than anyone had before. For the third dimension's creatures he had little care – for all creatures – but it imitated his zestful movements and regarded him with an intelligence had yet to see in any human, enough so that endearment was impossible to avoid.

"Are you gonna keep following me around?" he asked.

It took a keen eye to catch the slight inclination of its chin.

"Well then." He rubbed his hands together. "Let's start with a nickname."

Cat was the only being in the entire world he'd known to be able to see between two worlds. His presence in the mindscape had its physical limits, but for Cat there was nothing to hinder it visually. It knew where he was at all times. Unspoken, compliant and innocent by nature, with an eerie sense of perception behind its unassuming form. It was the perfect vessel, and on the torrid summer of 2014, it proved its worth.

In the mindscape the barrier was as clear and as vibrant as the sky above, a visual he lost once he'd inlaid himself into Cat's mind. Where two black feet had been, two grey paws stood, green eyes overlaid with his own to see the Mystery Shack exposed. Risky? Yes, his energy was dwindling and he couldn't accommodate for a long trip, but Bill liked risky. Thrived from it. For without the demand of a consequence, there was no pride to feel when he got away unscathed. Whatever it was about Cat, a difference in species or a more refined complexity than humans, it had worked out in just the right ways.

The porch was empty, as was the shop of scams. He held his breath – pitifully short – and glided through the would-be barrier walls. Cat's body carried him up the steps, around the sides and in through the crack of a window. That fear he'd felt, gone, replaced with the much preferred rush of having plans fall into place. Now, he just needed to find that vending machine and wait, as a predator, patient and watchful…