Seated at a small, two person table located near a coffee cart, Dipper and Pacifica made the best of the time they had alone together. After ordering drinks and decompressing from the confrontation with Robbie at Edgy on Purpose, Dipper decided the best way to enjoy the mall would be to introduce Pacifica to one of his and Mabel's favorite public pastimes - people watching. From a distance, the pair watched the other shoppers as they milled about the mall, each taking turns providing narration for various subjects of interest.
"Ah geez," wheezed Dipper, putting on an impression of whiny time traveller Blendin Blandin to narrate a harried man standing in line for the Meet Cute cart. "H-how long can it possibly take to roast a turkey leg? Some of us have lives outside this line, you know." As the man let out a passive aggressive sigh and looked at his watch for the fourth time, Pacifica giggled.
"Let's see…" said Pacifica, scanning for a suitable subject of her own. Across the atrium, a family of tourists poured over a local area map. "Come on dad," she continued, adding a raspy husk to her voice, "hurry up and figure out how to get us out of this sad little nowhere town." When she didn't hear Dipper laughing, she turned and found him staring back at her in confusion. "Was that too judgemental? I guess I still don't really get where the line is."
"It's not that," replied Dipper, pausing as he considered his next words carefully. "I'm just surprised to hear you so dismissive of Gravity Falls. You were pretty much the face of it when we first met."
"Yeah," said Pacifica curtly. "And look how well that worked out for me."
Dipper's first instinct was to disagree, and to point out all the wonderful things about the town that he had experienced over the summer. But he bit his tongue, as he was starting to understand the difference between a problem he could listen to, versus a problem he could solve. Besides, the more he realized how much of his positive experience in Gravity Falls had been colored by his own interest in the mysterious and paranormal, it dawned on him that to someone whose passions lay elsewhere, Gravity Falls might not hold the same mystique.
Pacifica sighed, turning back to Dipper apologetically. "Sorry to be a buzzkill, I know you like this place. And there's things about Gravity Falls that I still enjoy, like Greasy's and Susan. It's just… been a hard few months of realizing every event, every tournament, literally almost every good memory I have here has been reframed into something awful. Every time I've tried to make new ones, like at the ski lodge, it feels like I'm constantly tripping over my stupid family's mistakes. I'm making amends the best I can, but…"
Over Dipper's shoulder, Pacifica noticed Tiffany and Alexis walking out of a luxury clothing store. Her eyes widened momentarily before she immediately looked in the other direction, pulling the hood of her jacket over her hair. Confused, Dipper looked over his shoulder and recognized the two girls.
"Aren't they…?" he began, turning back to Pacifica to confirm. Pacifica shrank herself down, almost as if she was trying to hide herself behind Dipper.
"Stay quiet," she ordered, cutting him off. The sight of Pacifica cowering inside her jacket was bewildering to Dipper, especially considering that moments earlier he had watched her fearlessly tear down Robbie without a second thought. While he wasn't exactly clear on what had happened between Pacifica and her former friends, suddenly her disparaging remarks about Gravity Falls made more sense in context. Turning back around, he watched from a distance as the two girls chatted amongst themselves, completely unaware of anyone else. Dipper chuckled to himself.
"Oh my God, Tiffany," he whined, adopting a stereotypical California Valley Girl accent as Alexis stopped and pointed to something on her phone. Pacifica peered out from her jacket cautiously. "Brayden texted Jamantha that wants to take her to the Country Club ball."
Tiffany stopped as well, looking back at Alexis in melodramatic surprise. "No. Freaking. Way," continued Dipper, using the exact same voice for Tiffany. "He was supposed to be going with Bellina, they've been together since the Bellingford Downs Derby." The two of them began furiously texting as they started walking again, quickly retreating from the atrium.
Pacifica smiled thinly, putting her head on Dipper's shoulder. "The Country Club ball was a month ago, you pleb," she whispered jokingly. As the pair of teens disappeared out of sight, Pacifica pulled herself upright again and reemerged from inside of her jacket. Despite her glib response, Dipper could see genuine relief in her eyes. 'I guess if you start on the top of the social pyramid, anything lower is going to feel uncomfortable,' he reasoned.
Oddly enough, he suddenly found himself thinking back to his school in Piedmont, and how when he had overheard more popular and social students in his class complaining about their problems, he would always get especially annoying. 'Oh, you think you have problems?' he would often sarcastically narrate internally, all while assuming that if he had their social standing, he'd be far more equipped to handle their day to day problems.
But now, as he watched Pacifica slowly return to her normal self following her uncomfortable episode, it slowly dawned on him that nobody was immune to the horrors of teenage angst. Not even the rich or socially adept.
Dipper shifted his body slightly on the bench to sit more comfortably, and suddenly became aware of the gift box in his pants pocket. Instinctively, he drew his hand to it, subtle confirming the box was still in good shape after the entire day in hiding. His eyes shifted back to Pacifica, still smiling sweetly in his direction.
"You look like you've got something you want to say," said Pacifica, her smile sliding into a smirk. "Well?"
'Maybe this is a good time. After all…'
Dipper's pocket buzzed, and both their attentions were immediately captured by the vibrating sound. Digging into his jacket pocket, he pulled out the phone and opened the new message. It was a text from Wendy.
WENDY: Stan wants us at the Shack ASAP. Meet me at the truck.
"Time to go?" asked Pacifica as Dipper stood up, sliding his phone back into his jacket pocket. The feeling of the jewelry box in his pocket left him slightly remorseful, but he chose instead to focus on the relief that he had again delayed having to explain the gift and risk Pacifica rejecting it.
He nodded. "Are you ready?"
Pacifica huffed as she stood up, brushing her jacket of any imperfection, real or imaginary. "I mean, I was kind of enjoying getting a moment alone with you," she pouted. "But you've got work to do."
As Pacifica and Dipper pushed their way through the exterior doors of the mall and into the cold, they could see Wendy's truck parked straight ahead. She had pulled up to be parallel with the entrance, her hazard lights blinked ominously in the falling snow, and active windshield wipers cleared stray flakes of powder from her view. The sun had long disappeared from the sky, leaving behind a blackened sky only brightened by the halogen lamps of the parking lot. The entire scene broadcasted a vague urgency, which subconsciously pushed Dipper and Pacifica to quicken their strides, clear the remaining gap to the truck, and scramble into the cab.
"Did Stan give you any updates?" asked Dipper, buckling himself in. Wendy shook her head.
"He just said to call once we were on our way. I guess that's when he plans to fill us in." Wendy turned her key in the ignition. The engine whined a bit as it attempted to turn over, but faithfully began to rattle and purr at Wendy's insistence.
Dipper pulled out his phone and began calling Stan on speaker. A few dial tones later, and the phone connected.
"This is Dipper, right?" came Stan's gruff voice through the phone. Dipper sighed.
"Yes, it's me, Grunkle Stan," replied Dipper.
"This Mystery Twins Hotline thing is really annoying, you know," added Stan.
"Noted," Dipper said flatly. "Stan, what did you and Ford find out?"
"It's…" Stan trailed off. There was a moment of silence from the other end. "Phone call probably isn't the best place to fill you in on this one, Dipper. Things have gotten out of hand here, through the fault of nobody in particular."
Wendy turned her attention from the road to shoot Dipper a look he understood full well to mean 'It's definitely Stan's fault.'
"Stan, what are we heading into?" asked Dipper pointedly. From the other end, Stan sighed.
"You're sitting down, right?"
Over the next few minutes Stan caught the trio up to speed, explaining the significance of the carved stone in the forest, Cooper's identity as the man with the unremarkable voice ("Ohhhh," exclaimed Wendy in recognition, "That's a deep cut."), their misadventure back to the Mystery Shack, and the revelations they found within Cooper's mindscape.
"Wait a minute," said Dipper, his hand trembling as he held the phone closer to his face, "you're telling me that Bill is inside my head right now?"
"He's in all of our heads?" Pacifica asked slowly, her face growing pale as she contemplated the horror of what she was hearing.
"I mean, yes and no," replied Stan. "I don't really get it myself. What I think I understand is, it's a memory of him. And that memory can wander around your mind, and into your dreams, but it can't take control of you or escape. Ford can explain it better than I can. Ford's working on a solution, but he needs your help. Or the dreams Bill's putting in these peoples' heads are going to make real problems for us pretty quick. So get here as fast as you can."
"Way ahead of you," replied Wendy as she stomped her foot down on the gas pedal. Without another word, Stan ended the call.
As the truck whipped through wisting snowdrifts covering the road out of town towards the Shack, the trio sat in near silence as they contemplated what they just learned to the sound of the rattling engine. 'So the dream I had…' thought Dipper, his mind trailing off as he began to remember the horrifying imagery Bill had conjured in his mind. The windswept prairie. The nightmarish crumbling world. The twisted, puppet version of Pacifica. It hadn't been random at all - it was by design.
'Is he reading my thoughts right now?'
Dipper tried clearing his mind, though he quickly realized that he was far too anxious and not nearly trained enough in meditation to know where to even begin to try and search his own mindscape. Once he stopped trying to fight it, a second wave of racing thoughts crept to the forefront of his mind. 'How much of my summer would I lose if Bill was erased from my mind? Is that even a possibility for me? What about Pacifica? How much of her growth would she lose if she forgot Weirdmageddon entirely?'
He bolted back to reality when he felt Pacifica's hand grab his own. He looked to her, expecting to see her looking back reassuringly. But her gaze was fixated forward, terrified by Wendy's driving, and Dipper realized she had clutched his hand for reasons of her own.
'Still counts,' he thought.
Stan, Mabel, Grenda, and Candy all sat in a row on a bench in the gift shop, staring forward in stunned silence. After being relayed the full story of the Disciples cult in bits and pieces through Stan's explanation to Dipper over the phone, Mabel racked her brain for ways to prepare for the coming onslaught of party crashers. She did her best to avoid thinking about the uncomfortable concept of a Bill Cipher memory plotting against her from the inside, but like an annoying ear worm, the thought repeatedly popped to the front of her mind, interrupting her brainstorming over and over.
"WE COULD BUILD FLAME THROWERS AGAIN," suggested Grenda. "THAT WORKED PRETTY WELL LAST TIME."
"Grenda, I love your enthusiasm," cautioned Mabel, "but handling a crowd of unruly people is different than a horde of evil trees. We've got to be a bit more thoughtful about it."
"But that's the thing," Candy pointed out, "they are not going to be thoughtful to us. If this group is as fanatical as Mr. Pines says, they will likely stop at nothing to get inside."
"We don't know that," replied Mabel. While she fought hard to keep her spirit up, the wavering confidence in her voice told a much different story. She turned to her Grunkle Stan, hoping to receive some sign of support, or at the very least a crooked smile of hope. But instead, he let out a heavy sigh.
"Candy's right, sweetie," he grumbled. "These people have fed themselves a diet of nonstop fear and anger for months, and they're coming to take it out on the Shack. At this point, I'm not sure what options we have left other than hope Ford technobabbles our way out of this."
Mabel frowned, trying again to focus on ideas. As much as she loved her Grunkle Ford, the idea of trying to simply mind wipe away the problem didn't sit right with her. After all, wiping Bill from Stan's mind post-Weirdmageddon clearly didn't fully exorcise his influence over Gravity Falls. 'Not to mention Grunkle Ford seems to have completely forgotten this whole thing started on the internet. What's he going to do, mind wipe a website? That's not how that works, silly!' But, she thought, that's getting ahead of the problem at hand.
Closing her eyes and trying to focus on her imagination, Mabel was once again interrupted. This time, it was someone walking into the gift shop, humming a meandering tune.
"Why, look who we have here?" came a soft, folksy voice from directly in front of Mabel. Knowing full well she would regret doing so, Mabel opened her eyes to see the smiling face of Gideon Gleeful, dressed in his usual baby blue suit decorated with a festive party bolo tie. Stan groaned aggressively in Gideon's direction, while Candy awkwardly attempted to hide herself behind Grenda.
'Blaagh! Why?! Why now?'
"Stanley, Mabel, now why do y'all look so glum? I thought we were pals now," asked Gideon, holding out his hands welcomingly. While Mabel certainly didn't hate Gideon anymore, given that he had mostly stayed true to his word about being a normal, well adjusted kid following the summer, his presence served as just one more distraction that was keeping her from coming up with a way to avoid mind wiping the town.
"Under no circumstances are we pals," replied Stan, frowning.
"It's not you, Gideon," admitted Mabel. For a moment, she pondered if it was even possible to briefly catch Gideon up on what was about to happen to the Mystery Shack, but decided against it. After all, he'd be finding out soon enough along with the rest of the party guests. Despite his lack of context, however, Gideon appeared to understand that whatever was bothering the group, it was beyond his ability to talk them out of.
"Well, you know that if I had the means, and at once point I did, I'd magically cheer all y'all up. It's the least I could do, you know."
'Aw, that's a nice thought. I wonder what our summer would have been like if Gideon had used his magic powers for good.' Mabel smiled, content for a moment with that thought, before something clicked in her brain.
"Grunkle Stan!" Mabel spun around, quickly pulling Stan to face her. While he was relatively used to Mabel's outbursts of excitement by this point, he still let out an involuntary noise of surprise and irritation in reply. "Last summer, you took Dipper's journal to fix Grunkle Ford's portal, but you gave it back right away. You made a copy, didn't you?"
"Of course," replied Stan matter of factly. "You think I would have been able to get away with all that if he was asking for the journal back every ten minutes?"
"Did you make copies of Journal 2?" asked Mabel pointedly.
"Of course, I..." Stan trailed off, looking down at Gideon. He stared back blankly in confusion for a moment, before glancing sideways and noticing Candy sitting on the bench. He smiled coyly and gave her a little wave, causing Candy to instantly recoil.
With a groan, Stan turned back to Mabel, raising an eyebrow at the implication of her question. "Please tell me you're joking, kid."
The first sign that something was very wrong was the traffic.
Wendy slammed on her brakes and swerved wildly to avoid rear-ending the car ahead of her. Losing her balance from her seatbelt-free bench seat, Pacifica screamed as she slid sideways into Dipper, who caught her in his arms before she could fling any further. Once safe, she let out an exasperated groan.
"There are literal monsters in the woods who could drive better than you," huffed Pacifica angrily.
"What was I supposed to do? I didn't expect an afternoon traffic jam in the boonies," Wendy shot back, her breathing heavy as she recovered from the shock of their near miss with the stopped cars ahead.
Dipper pushed Pacifica's hair out of his eyes and peered forward through the windshield. There was indeed a stretch of cars stopped on the road, and the red taillights made a glowing trail straight to the upcoming turnoff for the Mystery Shack. What's more, the drivers waiting in the lineup were all aggressively honking their horns and lurching forward to fill any small gap between the vehicles. It seemed that they were all incredibly impatient to reach whatever it was they were expecting to find at the end of the driveway.
"I've got a bad feeling about this," muttered Dipper. "Wendy, this thing has four-wheel drive, right?"
"Eh, technically it's more like three-wheel drive given some mechanical issues I can never seem to fix," rambled Wendy, "but I'm picking up what you're laying down." She pressed a button on the dashboard, which glowed faintly after a moment of hesitation. Putting the truck into overdrive, she whipped around the car ahead of her and into the snowy shoulder of the road, blowing past car after car at breakneck speed. Dipper attempted to look out Wendy's window to steal a glimpse at the drivers heading towards the Shack, but it was too dark for him to make out any details.
Ultimately it didn't matter, as the turn for the Shack came up quickly. With the truck forced to the side of the wooded driveway to avoid the line of cars, Wendy struggled to keep control of the wheel, as every fallen branch and snow-covered pile of leaves tested the aging suspension of her truck.
But finally, the form of the Mystery Shack came into full view as the forest cleared, and Wendy was able to pull off to the side and roll to a stop. Dipper let out a relieved sigh. He patted Pacifica on the arm to gently prod her into moving off of his lap, and once he was free, he jumped from the truck to take in the situation.
Surrounding the Mystery Shack was a large crowd, lit by the party lights flashing on the side of the Shack. Most of the members were bundled up for the winter, but many wore apparel featuring the image of Bill Cipher, further adorned with slogans from the various Disciples memes. Some carried hand-drawn signs. Others waved flags. Alarmingly, some brandished baseball bats, hockey sticks, and pitchforks.
Nearby Wendy's truck, local reporter Shandra Jimenez stood in front of a camera operator, covering the scene live for television viewers.
"Good evening, Gravity Falls," began Shandra, "I'm coming to you live from outside of the Mystery Shack, local tourist attraction best known for the Rock that Looks Like a Face, where there appears to be a mass demonstration underway. Excuse me," Shandra addressed a passing man with a mullet wearing an American flag shirt, who turned to join her on camera, "can you tell us why you're all here tonight?"
"It's the Reckoning!" blurted the man excitedly, "The Herald foretold that C would give us a sign and it came today! USA! USA!"
The man ran off to join the mob, leaving Shandra to turn back to the camera awkwardly. "It certainly sounds like the people of this town have fallen victim to yet another cult of personality. We'll have more news as it happens."
As Shandra made a quick 'cut' motion with her hand and retreated with her camera operator to another vantage point, Dipper turned his attention to the swarming mass of people outside the Shack. The group was rowdy, and from the safe distance away that Wendy had parked her truck, Dipper wasn't able to make out any particular faces in the group. However, from the immediate change in her demeanor, the same could not be said for Wendy.
"Dad!" she shouted, storming towards the crowd towards the hulking figure of Dan Corduroy. He didn't respond at first, but with repeated shouts from Wendy, he turned and began to wade through the crowd in her direction, breaking through and meeting her face to face.
"Wendy? What are you doing here?" Dan asked angrily. Dipper and Pacifica caught up to Wendy, watching cautiously as she stared up at her father. She scoffed, offended that he had the audacity to be angry at her while taking part in a literal mob.
"Me? What are you doing here? Don't tell me you believe this C nonsense!"
"I'm not arguing with you about it," dismissed Dan, shouting to be heard over the dull roar of the crowd. "Things aren't adding up in Gravity Falls anymore, and this group is the only one asking questions."
"Just because nothing makes sense anymore doesn't mean these lunatics have the answers!" pleaded Wendy.
"You'll see," replied Dan, shaking his head and turning to rejoin the crowd. Wendy shouted in protest, but whether he couldn't hear or intentionally ignored her cries, Manly Dan disappeared into the mob. Wendy let out a scream in anguish and frustration, prompting Pacifica to step towards her, putting a gloved hand on Wendy's back comfortingly. Wendy flinched and recoiled from the touch, but Pacifica didn't back down.
"We'll figure it out," she said reassuringly. Wendy seethed as she tried and failed to regain her composure, prompting Pacifica to wrap an arm around her in a hug. For a moment, Dipper watched as Pacifica made an earnest attempt to calm Wendy down. 'The universe seems to really enjoy sticking the Northwest and Corduroy families into weird, parallel situations,' thought Dipper. 'And now they've finally got something in common - fanatical fathers.'
But his focus was quickly redirected as Soos stepped out onto the patio with a megaphone. Dressed in full Mr. Mystery regalia, he looked out onto the mob gathered before him with excitement and joy.
'Oh no,' thought Dipper.
"Welcome, one and all, to the Mystery Shack Winterween party!" announced Soos to the crowd, throwing open his arms in expectation of raucous cheers. However, his greeting mostly prompted confused murmuring and a spattering of mocking laughs. Dipper's first instinct was to run up and try to disarm the situation, but with everything he had learned by now about the C devotees, he knew there was no way he could end this standoff diplomatically.
"Huh," Soos continued awkwardly, chuckling to himself, "not exactly the reaction I was expecting."
"Where's the Herald?" shouted a voice from the crowd, prompting others around them to shout and chant in agreement. Soos squinted in confusion.
"Uh, I don't know Harold, dude," he replied with an apologetic shrug. The crowd began to push their way closer to the porch of the Mystery Shack, jeering and shouting at Soos. Just inside the doorway, Melody and several party guests looked outside curiously. Their eyes widened in terror as it slowly dawned on them what they were seeing.
"He's in the way of the Reckoning!" shouted someone else, which lead to more of the mob joining in with angry shouting.
Pacifica suddenly noticed a buzzing sensation next to her face, and she pulled back from her consoling embrace enough to allow Wendy access to her jacket pocket. After pulling out her phone and tapping on the screen for a few seconds, Wendy's eyes widened and she began to silently gesture for Dipper and Pacifica to retreat back to her truck. Dipper in turn gestured up towards Soos, who continued to try and entertain the unamused mob. But Wendy responded by aggressively shaking her head and gesturing towards her truck again, this time with more urgency. Without any context to argue, Dipper and Pacifica followed suit, retreating from the edge of the mob.
Wendy led the group to the rear side of her truck, blocking them from the view of the mob. Once she had stopped moving and began to steady herself, Dipper took the opportunity to try and figure out what was wrong. "What is it?" he asked.
"Tambry just texted," Wendy replied solemnly, crouching down to hide. "She shut down the Disciples group."
"But that's good, isn't it?" asked Pacifica, just as the crowd began to erupt in loud boos and shrieks of anger. Quickly, she joined Wendy nearer to the ground. Dipper peered up over the truck bed to continue observing the scene. As different members of the crowd checked their phones, the waves of anger and agitation continued to ripple through the group.
"You don't grow up with a dad like mine without learning a thing or two about how this works," replied Wendy darkly. "When you're wrapped up in something like this, you don't believe anything is a coincidence. Everything is a conspiracy, man."
As if on cue, someone in the crowd shouted "Snapagram shut down the Disciples group!", prompting more outbursts and shouting.
"They're trying to censor the truth!"
"The truth can't be shut down!"
"Never Mind This! Never Mind This!" began a chant, and like a wave of infectious disease, it quickly overtook the crowd until everyone was chanting along. All at once, the front rows of the mob began to push their way onto the porch, slowed only by the lack of space on the entry stairway.
As this escalation unfolded, Melody had finally seen enough. She launched forward, grabbed Soos by the collar of his jacket, and pulled him back towards the safety of the Shack's interior. Dipper watched as Soos took a final look out towards mob, his expression crestfallen, before he disappeared past the threshold and the door slammed shut behind him. Moments later, the mob had fully stormed the porch and had begun banging on the door to be let in.
The scene struck a horrific chord for Dipper in a way he found hard to put to words. Objectively, it was bewildering to see an ocean of angry townsfolk storming an old tourist trap in the middle of the words. But the Mystery Shack was his home, it meant the world to him in terms of his identity, who he was, and the future he had envisioned for himself over the course of the previous summer. It was far more to him than just a decrepit tourist trap, it was a waystation on his path to adulthood. And here that symbol stood, under siege in the name of something that he and his friends had been willing to sacrifice everything to defeat.
Dipper's phone rang, pulling him out of his stunned, terrified paralysis. Forcing himself to look away from the unfolding disaster towards the screen, he could see the incoming call was Ford. As he answered, he too crouched down with Wendy and Pacifica to ensure he remained hidden during the call.
"Dipper? Are you alright?" came his voice through the speaker. While speaker phone was necessary for the full party to be able to hear Ford's voice, Dipper desperately hoped that the general calamity around was loud enough to prevent any of the mob from overhearing their phone call.
"For right now, at least," replied Dipper. "The Disciples of C are trying to storm the Shack."
"I was afraid of that," sighed Ford. "How many?"
"Hundreds."
"I'm sorry, did you say hundreds?" came Ford's incredulous reply. "We knew the group was large, but the idea that they all mobilized into action… incredibly disturbing."
"Stan said you're working on a plan, how can we help?"
"Yes, I've got a prototype in my lab for a valley-wide mind wipe device, and it's nearly ready to deploy. But first things first, you're going to have to get down here. There's an escape hatch in the woods behind the Shack, it's inside a big smooth stone just past the bottomless pit. It's hollowed out, you just lift it up and climb down the stairs. Once you're safe inside, we'll talk through the next steps."
"Roger that, Great Uncle Ford. See you soon." Dipper hung up the phone and slid it back into his pocket. "Everyone ready?"
"You two go," replied Wendy. "If we have to get out of here in a hurry, I want to be sure nobody messed with my truck while you're inside."
Dipper shook his head to argue, but Pacifica reached out to grab his shoulder, stopping him momentarily from speaking. "Wendy, you're sure you'll be fine?" she asked pointedly, filling the silence. The role reversal caught Wendy off guard, and for a moment, her anger broke. With a smirk, she glanced back and forth between Dipper and Pacifica.
"I've got this. Take care of Dipper, Paz."
Pacifica turned to Dipper, her face daring him to argue her authority. Even if it wasn't the right move, there wasn't time to argue about it. He took a deep breath and nodded. Grabbing Pacifica's hand, the pair silently retreated into the brush away from the Shack.
Dipper, remembering his way through the woods, led Pacifica into the dark on a roundabout path as far from the chaos as he could get without losing sight of the bright party lighting, which he was relying on to guide them around the backyard of the Shack. All the while, the sounds of cracking wood, blunt objects pounding against walls, and the loud jeering of the mob played on behind them, providing an unnerving soundtrack to their anxiety.
But the further they retreated into the woods, the quieter the noises became. Once they were a safe distance from the fray, and the roaring of the crowd had become background to the sound of leaves and snowbanks, Pacifica finally let out an exhausted sigh.
"My work flats are soaked," she pouted, looking down as she crunched into the latest in a series of wet, snowy leaf piles. She pulled one of her feet up to show Dipper, revealing she had been wearing canvas shoes the entire time. Dipper winced, thinking back to the warning about frostbite Wendy had angrily given him at the start of the break. "I was barely dressed for a party, let alone a winter hike." Dipper felt terrible as he looked at the state of Pacifica's footwear, but he couldn't think of anything that could be done while they were still fleeing towards the escape hatch.
"We're almost to the bottomless pit, once we're in Ford's lab I'm sure we can find you some boots," he replied. For a moment, Pacifica said nothing, but Dipper could tell that while uncomfortable, the wet shoes were only a contributing part of her frustration. "Pacifica?" he asked softly, offering her an opportunity to voice her frustration.
"I'm trying not to be a primadonna about it, but it really feels like the winter break I envisioned for us keeps getting worse," Pacifica eventually admitted, her speech stilted as she continued to trudge and soldier through the uneven snowbanks. "The ski lodge, my work schedule, and now this."
"I guess you could look at it that way," replied Dipper, before immediately regretting it. 'This is a listen problem, not a solve problem.'
"Don't do that," she warned. "Don't try to spin this into some perseverance thing. I'm upset, Dipper. Just let me be upset."
This time, Dipper said nothing. It was a fair criticism, Pacifica had every right to be unhappy with the way she had repeatedly found herself standing in the ruins of her plans, literally and figuratively. And, being truly honest with himself, he knew he would have felt exactly the same way if their roles had been reversed.
"And I'm just stuck on what Stan said over the phone," she continued. "About how for everything to go back to normal, everyone will need everything relating to Bill wiped from their mind," Pacifica continued. Dipper felt a shiver of anxiety travel through him, suddenly recalling his own thoughts on the subject. "I mean, if you think about it, I could wake up and forget why I live in a half-burnt ski lodge now. It might erase some of who I've grown into. And part of our time together this winter."
Dipper didn't need to remind himself to stay silent this time, as he already knew there was no consolation for the kinds of existential fears Pacifica was expressing to him. Beyond that, something about the speed that Ford reached the conclusion that mind wipes were the solution just irked Dipper. When Fiddleford had come to the same conclusion, Ford had been quick to judgement, writing in his journal about how disappointed he had been in his former colleague. If nothing else, it showed a surprising lack of conviction to suddenly prescribe mind wipes for all of Gravity Falls. Whatever the case, Dipper anticipated an uncomfortable conversation as soon as they reached Ford's lab.
Despite his desire to get Pacifica inside and into warmer footwear as soon as he could, he stopped and turned around to face her in the hopes of providing some comfort and support. At least, as best as he could in the faint glow of what little moonlight filtered through the towering pine forest surrounding them. But instead of meeting his gaze, Pacifica looked off into the distance.
"I… I don't know if I could go through with that," stammered Pacifica. "But you went through a lot worse than I did this summer, and… I guess I'm saying if wiping Bill from your mind is something you need to do, even if it means losing some things, I'd understand."
"Not going to happen," replied Dipper instantly. Pacifica turned, her eyes wide as she tried to process the immediacy of his reaction. While there were times Dipper ended up questioning and overthinking every word that came out of his mouth, for once he found the confidence in his words unshakable. And clearly, that confidence showed externally as well.
"Wait, how can you be that sure?" she questioned. "I mean, we're talking about a literal demon living rent-free in your head."
"I made a lot of memories in Gravity Falls," began Dipper, "some of them are depressing, some are disgusting, and some are so bad it ruins my day to even think about them. But I've got to take the good with the bad, because otherwise how would I know the difference?"
A smile spread across Pacifica's face, and Dipper returned it. Out of the corner of his eye, he noticed the sign for the bottomless pit, posted next to a large, new cover for the pit constructed from wood. He scanned the woods next to the sign, squinting to try and make out shapes in the limited light. It took him longer than he expected to find what he was looking for, and he started to feel a bit self-conscious, but finally his focus landed on an impossibly smooth boulder. 'That's got to be it.'
"Over there," said Dipper, pointing out the escape hatch. Within moments, the pair had trudged over to the spot where the boulder rested, surrounded by earth and snow. Dipper stared at the stone for a moment before pushing gently against the top of it, finding that it began to tilt up at the slightest touch.
"It's like a giant hide-a-key," observed Pacifica as the boulder fully flipped onto its side to reveal both a hollow interior and the hidden escape hatch.
Dipper turned the round latch and pushed, quickly discovering that the metal doorway was much heavier than the fake boulder. With Pacifica's help, the two of them wrenched open the hatch, and Dipper found himself staring down a tunnel into the darkness. After a steadying breath, he dutifully climbed inside and began to descend the staircase. Pacifica followed closely behind him, but not before pulling the hollow rock back over her head to its original position, once again concealing one of Gravity Falls' many secret passageways from the unsuspecting world.