Pacifica and Mabel had made the move outside onto the porch and were holding a conference discussing the nature of Dipper being a horse's ass. Names from which that were exchanged include, but are not limited to: 'Doctor Dork' (Mabel), 'stupid jerk with the emotional openness of a brick or something' (Pacifica), and 'definitely not our parents' favourite' (Mabel again).

Meanwhile, Bill sped off down from the attic, blowing the paper drawings clear off the walls in his wake. Dipper hastened to follow, managing to slip on some of the papers on the way. Bill arrived in the nursery first and Dipper was a few seconds behind, having had to climb down the ladder manually as opposed to Bill's simple flight. How Bill had known the layout of their house was far beyond Dipper's range of caring (not to mention it was pretty obvious). Bill pulled Dipper into the nursery where Atlantica was sleeping peacefully. He hovered over her crib with a condescending air about him.

"So... this isn't going to hurt her, is it?" Dipper mumbled.

"Not at all," Bill replied. Dipper continued to worry anyway. From the palm of Bill's hand materialized tongues of flame, swaying gently in the wind of the baby's mobile. The brightness awoke the small life below. Atlantica cooed and rubbed her eyes with a yawn, then looked up into the light squinting. She stared curiously but quietly. Bill stared back, eye wide in the haunting way he does when he's intensely focused, and reached out to take her hand. Bill's tiny hand fit perfectly in hers, somewhat unsurprisingly to Dipper. Blue flames engulfed the child, circling around her and pooling at a single point inside her puny skull. A gleaming light shone inside her; the flames dissipated and the moment Bill let go, her pupils narrowed and Atlantica began screaming bloody murder.

Dipper clamped his hands over his ears, pressing his palms as hard as possible to his head. Her wailing was deafeningly loud, though Bill didn't seem affected or surprised. He simply looked down at her and then to Dipper as if to ask 'why is it making that noise?'.

Though the screaming had not ceased, Dipper slowly peeled his hands away from his ears and shouted over her to Bill, "What did you do?! You promised you wouldn't hurt her!"

"Relax, kid," Bill dismissed, resting his hands on his 'hips', "I didn't hurt the little twerp. My gift's got nothing to do with it. Probably just my 'demonic aura' making it do that," he said with air quotes. He hovered to Dipper's side and stretched an arm around him. "I've got a bad history with babies, you know." Bill snapped his fingers and a set of earplugs materialized in Dipper's ears, shielding him from the painful screeching of his child. He stared down at his daughter with worry.

"Yeah," Dipper said after a moment of tongue-biting, "I know." The young man smiled, remembering his time with Bill before everything fell apart; sitting across the table from him with a glass of his sister's cancerous concoction and watching Bill imbibe while he rattled on about how much he loathed Time Baby.

Dipper reached over his daughter's screaming form and pulled the sea foam green, laced baby blanket up to her shoulders and patted her on the head. This did nothing to calm her. He offered her both her bottle and her pacifier and was met with an even louder outburst of crying. She threw her fists around and kicked her feet, thrashing violently. Dipper was beside himself.

Attention once again turned to Bill, he bit his lip and shook his head, mumbling, "I have to take care of this." Worry lines creased his forehead as he stroked and attempted to settle his daughter. Bill stared back at him with his arms dropped, completely silent. Dipper's eyes flicked between him and the door. Neither of them said anything. The demon continued to wait and watch. Dipper cleared his throat and tugged at the collar of his shirt. The silence continued. Bill blinked. Dipper sighed and just resigned to leave him there in the room.

He took Atlantica in his arms, walked past the demon out into the hall with his crying daughter, and headed down the stairs. A light glowed from behind. He turned around to see Bill following close behind.

"Bill," he said sternly, "I appreciate the gift but I really need to calm Atlantica down."

"Yeah," Bill replied, still staring.

"And you're not helping."

"Oh what, so now you want me to burp it and change it's crap sack?" the demon grunted, crossing his arms.

"What? No! Dude, if your aura is disturbing her, you should probably head out. No offense, man."

"Some taken." Bill pointed a finger gun at him, a tiny magic star aesthetically popping from his fingertip, "Later, kid." And with that he was gone and the world was once again polychromatic.

Dipper breathed a vexed sigh and brought Atlantica downstairs to her mother. Pacifica was still steaming from earlier and practically tore Dipper's arms off trying to take her baby from him. Mabel's eyes spelled homicide. He wasn't going to test either of their patience.

He retreated into the study, after being yelled at a second time, with a coffee and a snack. Locking the door behind him, he decided he would not come out again until dinnertime.

The following hours were spent digging through the internet for claims supporting the multiverse theory and finding sources for those claims. He shredded through encyclopedias and scoured the farthest corners of Google for anything and everything he could use.

And his paper was coming along well. Sure it was mostly flimsy hypotheses and a lot of opinionated debate, but he almost had a half a page! ...In the eight hours of work he'd done.

He'd barely eaten dinner, merely slinking into the kitchen after it had gone pretty cold to avoid the fiery wrath of the girls and grabbing a small plate before retreating back into his hobbit hole.

He was relentless. The sun had long since gone down and his back was starting to ache. He resolved to take a short break so that his eyes wouldn't wither up and his back wouldn't freeze that way. With a long moan, he stretched back in his chair. A chorus of cracks and pops sent relief through him. Glancing at the clock, he pinched the bridge of his nose seeing it was past one in the morning. Eight hours straight he'd been working on this and had almost nothing to show for it. It was exhausting and there was no wonder the prize was so extravagant. But he was determined. Tomorrow was his day off from both work and school, so he could afford to pull and all-nighter on this.

He went to retrieve a snack and another coffee from the kitchen, then set back to work.

There was a page on potential bubble universes and the sciences on them that gave Dipper a base for more of his essay. He paraphrased and rewrote and sourced. Scrolling down the page, there depicted an image of a wave composed of shimmery bubbles. He studied it for a few moments when suddenly a voice rang out from behind him.

"I've been there!" Bill exclaimed, reaching out to point at one of the many bubbles on Dipper's computer screen.

Dipper yelped in surprise. Startled completely out of his chair, he crashed to the floor, banging his head on an end table in the process.

"Ow..." he groaned, rubbing the throbbing soon-to-be-knot on his head. He pulled his hand back to check for blood and frowned.

"It was great," Bill continued heedlessly, "there were lakes of spinal fluid, which I personally think is ironic because humans - and this is the great part - don't exist! Well, I guess technically they don't exist, but I suppose if you replaced that brain bubble of yours," he gestured to Dipper's head, "with a salmon then it could be human-like. Although, on other worlds there, things are a bit different. It depends where you make your stops really, and I was just dropping by to visit a Bill I knew there." Bill put a hand to one side of his face as though he had a mouth to even block, "moron goes by 'Llib', what a stupid name."

In the midst of Bill's unsolicited rambling, Dipper had gotten to his feet, dug through the desk drawers for a bandage, and wrapped it around his head to stop the bleeding.

Bill paused abruptly to admire Dipper's handiwork. His eye crinkled as he pinched the other's cheek. "You look adorable like that, Pine Tree." He ruffled a hand through Dipper's hair which was met with a pained grunt.

"What do you want now?" the young man groaned, straightening out his hair again.

"It's pretty late, kid, you know how I feel about insomniacs."

"So you came to force me into sleep." Dipper rolled his eyes.

"Actually, you did that yourself. Knocked yourself out pretty good on that end table." Bill checked his pocket watch. "You'll bleed out in a few hours if you don't wake up and actually put on those bandages soon."

"What? Dude, are you serious?" Dipper quickly reached to pinch his arm. Bill laughed hard and grabbed his torso.

"Fun fact, kid: that doesn't work," he said in a bright tone. "The idea is that if you feel no pain, you're asleep. It doesn't wake you up."

"But-"

"Anyway, you're gullible, Pine Tree! You're not gonna bleed out, but it will probably dry up in your hair so watch out for that."

"God, it really hap- what do you want, Bill?" Dipper snapped, forehead in hand.

"If you're gonna lose sleep over this dumb essay, you might as well do it right. I'm here to help!" Bill held himself proudly, looking very satisfied with himself. Dipper wasn't impressed. He sat back down in his chair and continued scrolling through the internet.

"Thanks but no thanks."

"Say what?"

"I appreciate the offer but I can do this on my own. I'm not a kid anymore, Bill. I don't have time to go on wild, life-risking adventures with you anymore. Besides, why do you want to help me anyway? I betrayed you. Shouldn't you be trying to get back at me?"

Bill crossed his arms, glaring at Dipper with disapproval. "I guess that scholarship doesn't really matter enough to you, does it? If you think you're gonna pass this on your own, you're wrong. Just ask your offspring if you don't believe me - it can see the future just as clearly as I can." Dipper stopped scrolling and leaned back in his chair with a dissatisfied groan. "I mean, if she's not as important as your pride I totally get it, kid, but I just figured-"

"Alright, alright, I get it." Dipper pushed back from his desk with a sigh and resigned. "What crazy thing are you gonna show me that's magically gonna get me an A on my report?"

"Good choice, Pine Tree!" Bill grabbed Dipper's hand, causing the young man's heart to skip a beat. He swallowed hard. "I knew you couldn't possibly be stupid enough to pass this up. We're going someplace humans were never meant to go - the inter-dimensional void."