A/N: Second chapter! Thanks to all who viewed, reviewed, favourited and followed - I'll try to be prompt in posting, especially now that I've revised the intended chapter structure a bit. I was going to have every single event from each character's game squeezed into a single chapter, but in hindsight I realized it would take up too much space. Now I'm going to see if I can give events some space to breathe. Constructive criticism is always welcome, particularly nice long reviews - good for the ego and for getting my heart started in the mornings.

Oh, and Kraven The Hunter? The line "dark as a panther eating licorice in a coal mine" might be one of the best sentences I've ever read in a review. Thanks again.

So, without further ado, the latest chapter! Read, review and above all, enjoy!

Disclaimer: Gravity Falls is not mine. It'd just float out of my hands...

"RISE AND SHINE, PINE TREE!"

Dipper sat bolt upright and immediately regretted it: the low ceiling dealt him a stunning blow to the forehead, leaving him to sink back to the mattress, groaning pathetically as fresh waves of pain rippled across his skull. But as he lay there, imagining the spectacular bruise that was already beginning to form, questions began occurring to him – the kind that only needed to be asked if he'd been woken up after less than three hours of sleep.

Where am I?

A quick glance around him revealed that he was currently lying in a narrow stone alcove just big enough to accommodate him and the withered mattress he'd been provided with. As far as he could tell, this tiny niche was completely enclosed by the surrounding walls, making it look and feel far too much like a coffin for Dipper's liking… except most coffins actually came equipped with a cushion, or so Robbie had claimed. And most coffins didn't have a tiny window sitting just behind the occupant's head, either. Rolling onto his stomach and peering out through the tiny glass slot in the wall, he could quite clearly see the outside world – a nightmarish collage of blasted hillsides, skeletal forests, and oceans of burning gasoline languishing under a sky as red as blood and a sun as black as sackcloth, a hellscape broken only by the charred remnants of cities now oozing and stretching beyond recognition as reality slowly decayed around them.

He was still in the Fearamid. Even if he hadn't seen that distinctive shadow drifting across the hills below, there was no mistaking the walls of his enclosure – those rough-hewn bricks of pitch-black stone and the unearthly crimson mortar that supported them. And then he remembered: this cramped little nook was his prison cell and had been ever since Bill's final victory.

Okay, fair enough. How long have I been here?

That was a little harder to gauge: even if time hadn't been tied in a knot and thrown in a briar patch, Dipper had long since lost his grip on what little sense of real time existed. He recalled the events that followed Bill's escape from Gravity Falls, but he couldn't tell how long it had been since the first surrender had been offered. He remembered being forced to watch the chaos that had brought human civilization to its knees – Bill had taken great delight in showing them how New York City shattered like glass, a hundred billion glittering shards floating aimlessly into the void, ten million vitrified people cracking and falling apart as they'd looked on in horror – but he could only guess at the hours, days, weeks, months or years that had passed since then.

Where are the others?

Not for the first time, Dipper wished he could forget what he'd seen: he'd have given anything in the world to have the Memory Gun in his hand right now, just so he could sweep everything he'd seen in the throne room out of his mind. But no, the memory of the family's last few moments together was still there and wasn't leaving anytime soon: Grunkle Stan slumped on the floor, covered in blood and seconds from death; Grunkle Ford sitting beside him, almost catatonic with grief, his tear-streaked expression lifeless and defeated; and Mabel, frozen in the act of reaching for Dipper's hand even as the Henchmaniacs dragged them apart. She'd been crying, too, but that look on her face hadn't been of grief or sorrow, but guilt – he'd know that expression at a glance. But he hadn't had a chance to consider why; before he'd had time to think, the four of them were being dragged away to their cells, Bill pausing only to wave a hand over Grunkle Stan's body before having him carted away on a hovering stretcher.

Is he alive? Could Bill have saved him after all? What about Grunkle Ford? What about Mabel? I have to find them, and fast, before-

"I said, WAKE UP!"

Dipper had barely enough time to register the sound of Bill's voice before the ground beneath him gave a tremendous lurch, jolting him off the bed and into another collision course with the ceiling as the entire cell tilted upwards. As the floor became a wall and the window became a skylight, Dipper slid helplessly down the length of the now-vertical prison cell, crashing through a suddenly-open hatchway and tumbling out onto the glacial flagstones of the Fearamid proper. He landed heavily, head smarting from the impact with the roof, all the breath knocked out of him; for a moment he could only lie there, shivering, as the all-pervasive chill of the floor wrapped itself around him and refused to let go.

Then, an all-too-familiar shadow fell over him, and the bottom dropped out of Dipper's stomach.

"Wakey-wakey, Pine Tree!" Bill thundered from on high. "On your feet, now, up and at 'em! Don't wanna miss the start of your first day, do ya, kiddo?"

"First day of what?" groaned Dipper, once he'd managed to claw his way upright.

"Your first day as part of a brand-new reality, of course! You've been cooped up in your cell for far too long, kid: it's time you stretched those noodly little limbs of yours and had a look around the block, checked out the new neighbourhood. Besides, I don't think you've gotten to know the Henchmaniacs yet, not with all the time you wasted on worrying about people you'll never see again. So, whaddaya say, Pine Tree? Up for a chinwag with the lesser powers-that-be in the throne room?"

Dipper sighed wearily, grappling with the urge to scream obscenities and throw a defiant punch at the crazed nacho's eyeball. He'd made the mistake of getting snippy with Bill a few hours after Weirdmageddon had gone global, and the punishment had left him a convulsing wreck for the rest of the day – even if only half the spiders had bitten him. But in spite of everything he'd already endured, he couldn't just roll over and let Bill do whatever he liked.

So he instead opted for sarcasm, at last remarking, "Do I have a choice?" in the driest, most exasperated tone of voice he could possibly manage.

Bill flung a faux-comradely arm around Dipper's shoulders, daggerlike fingers immediately digging painfully into his forearm. "Of course you have a choice," he said cheerily. "You've got a choice of how to say yes. My advice – let me do it for you!"

Without warning, Bill's hand shot out and fastened over Dipper's lower jaw – and abruptly yanked something away. Dipper instinctively reached up to inspect his face for wounds, only to find bare skin where his lips had once been. Bill was holding Dipper's mouth in one hand like a glove puppet, flapping the lips and pumping the vocal cords in a ghastly parody of human speech.

"Yes, Bill!" said the disembodied mouth. "You know I'd do anything in the world to make you happy! You can do anything you like with me, because I'm your plaything now and forever!"

"Oh, I like the way you think, Pine Tree! And just because you've been such a good sport, I think I might just give you your present right now!"

Suddenly, Dipper's mouth was back on his face, his vocal cords aching from the puppetry Bill had subjected them to. "Present?" he echoed suspiciously.

Bill laughed even harder than usual, his nasally borderline-hysterical laughter echoing up and down the misshapen cell block. "It's your birthday, kid!" he cackled. "Lucky number thirteen, remember? There's a party for you in the throne room, and all the Henchmaniacs are invited!"

Then it's only been a few days, Dipper realized. All this time, I thought it had to be at least a month or two, and it's only been a few days since Bill won? And… it's my birthday? Mabel and I are thirteen now? And here I was thinking there'd never be birthdays for anyone ever again. Knowing Bill, he's only throwing this particular party just to make me suffer… but what about Mabel? Is she going to be there? If this birthday bash is going to be as bad as I think it will be, then what's Bill going to do to her? Do I even want to know? Oh god, this is so much worse than I thought it could ever be, and after everything I did to screw up Mabel's birthday preparations…

"Where's Mabel?" he asked, suddenly frantic. "Is she-"

"Not attending the party," Bill snapped, his eye narrowing in sudden anger. "She's got her own birthday party to attend. Besides," he continued, suddenly bright and obnoxiously cheerful again, "I don't think she'd have much fun at this particular shindig. After all, this one's all for you: the games, the food, the fun and the presents – all arranged just for you, Pine Tree."

There was an ominous pause.

"You ready to open your present, then?"

Dipper sighed. "What is it?" he asked wearily, dreading the inevitable answer. "Another round of possession?"

"Jeez, kid, you act as if I don't have anything fresh up my sleeve. Possession and puppetry were all good fun back when I was still trapped in the Nightmare Realm with nothing to do but tool around the Mindscape looking for suckers like you, but now that I've gotten a physical form and an entire physical world to play with, I've moved on to sculpting. I mean, there's only so much fun you can have with a puppet before it breaks under the strain. But clay? You can twist it in any direction you like, rip it to pieces in any way you please, and you can still smoosh it back together and start sculpting all over again!"

For the second time in as many minutes, the bottom dropped out of Dipper's stomach. "Oh no," he whispered. "Oh no…"

Bill's eyelids curled into a hideous approximation of a smile. "Oh YES," he boomed triumphantly, and without another word, snapped his fingers.

The pain was nothing short of incredible, a scream of mingled fear and agony escaping Dipper's throat before he could stop himself; he'd promised himself a thousand times that he wouldn't give Bill the satisfaction of hearing him scream, no matter what the demented triangle did to him, but here he was nonetheless, wailing and sobbing for mercy.

He didn't have to guess what Bill was doing to him either: he'd encountered too many weird and impossible things over the course of the summer not to identify the supernatural by presence, and after casting a spell or two of his own, magic was all too easy to recognize. Bill was pouring magic directly into his heart, flooding every artery and valve and ventricle in his body with purest Weirdness, until Dipper could actually see his veins glowing luminous blue beneath his skin as the energy pulsed towards his extremities.

And as he lay there, writhing and twitching in agony, he felt his body suddenly begin to change: his skeleton warped and shrivelled, every bone in his body shrinking and twisting in unnatural directions; his legs bent backwards, knees reversing direction with an audible crack; his feet narrowed and withered away, a hard black exoskeleton forming over his swiftly-merging toes; even his ears shifted to the top of his head, while his eyes bulged and oozed in their relocated sockets as Bill's magic altered them in a dozen unseeable ways. Finally, his hair turned white and grew explosively across his body, forming a thick, woolly fleece that left only his face exposed; in the end, Dipper could only look down at his woolly arms and scream "What did you do to me?!"

"Happy Birthday, Pine Tree!" Bill cackled. "You wanted a chance to study the mysteries of Gravity Falls, so now you get to study the greatest of them all: Dipper Pines, the human ball of clay!"

"But what did you turn me into? Why this form?" Dipper bleated pathetically.

"Isn't it obvious? I said there'd be entertainment, kiddo, and you're it! I hope you remember how the Lamby Lamby Dance goes, because there's a whole roomful of Henchmaniacs just waiting for a command performance, and I gave you the perfect shape to match…"

Dipper had thought he'd gotten over his dislike for the Lamby Lamby Dance; after all, as embarrassing as his childhood party favour was, his previous command performance had managed to save the lives of Wendy and the others – and earn him a little bit of gratitude from Wendy in the process.

Evidently, he'd thought wrong, for now he hated it worse than ever.

The audience was bad enough: when they weren't laughing at him, the Henchmaniacs insisted on singing along, repeating every single stanza of that awful, awful tune as loudly and clumsily as possible, making an already painful set of lyrics all the more excruciating through sheer force of tone-deafness. If any of them thought that Dipper was growing numb to the embarrassment, they were given free rein to spice up the show, usually by throwing chairs at him or bombarding the stage with champagne flutes. As if humiliating the "birthday boy" wasn't bad enough, Bill would occasionally shanghai some horribly unlucky musicians from the ruined world below and have them provide musical accompaniment: fully-orchestrated editions of the Lamby Lamby Dance didn't amuse for long, however, and these particular performances usually ended with Xanthar dive-bombing the orchestra pit.

But unbelievably enough, the audience wasn't the worst part.

No, the single worst part of the whole ghastly party was the plainly obvious fact that Dipper's new body just wasn't suited to any of it: sheep could not, in fact, stand up on their hind legs and dance – lambs least of all – and while Dipper's "Lamby" form was human enough to allow him at least some semblance of bipedal movement, it simply wasn't meant for dancing, no matter how basic. His hooves had almost no traction on the smooth floorboards, so he spent most of his time clattering wildly across the stage like a dog in socks; attempting the "don't-don't-don't" march was just about impossible given that Dipper's legs didn't bend that way anymore and leaning over for the "Mammy-mammy-mammy" pointing was an invitation to lose all balance. Jumping or kneeling usually ended with him toppling over and landing flat on his face, which was invariably rewarded with thunderous laughter from the audience.

He tried to resist – lord only knew he tried: more than once, he refused to perform at all; more than once, he tried to flee the stage as fast as his malformed hooves could carry him. And when that didn't work, he resorted to sabotaging the show by any means available to him: he changed the lyrics to include subliminal insults, he made obscene gestures with his hooves, he threw the chairs right back at the audience, and in general, he did everything he could to make the whole experience as miserable for the Henchmaniacs as it was for him. But Bill was unfortunately still paying attention, and every attempt at insurrection – no matter how minor – was immediately rewarded with a short but agonizing electric shock to Dipper's soft tissues. For good measure, he had to apologise for spoiling the fun, or risk another cattle prod to the armpit.

Fortunately, after two long hours and god only knew how many performances, Bill and the Henchmaniacs finally lost interest in the Lamby Lamby Dance. Maybe the spectacle of watching Dipper falling over and breaking his teeth just didn't thrill the way it used to, maybe they'd realized that it was too similar to Gideon's old punishment; Dipper didn't know and didn't care.

Unfortunately, Bill chose that moment to unveil the second act of the show: Dipper's body was still saturated in transmuting magic, and a single command from Bill or the Henchmaniacs was enough to kick off another painful transformation. From then on, the rest of the party was an all-out freakshow with Dipper the Human Ball of Clay as both the star and the butt of the jokes, and with every single member of the audience continuously bellowing suggestions for new shapes.

"A dog! Make it look rabid!"

"A swarm of mosquitoes! Make it at least two hundred!"

"Turn into Pyronica! I wanna see what happens if you try and kiss her!"

"A rat! A plague rat! No, with bigger fangs! You haven't got enough mange – try again!"

And with every suggestion, Dipper could only kneel on the floor, shivering and whimpering in pain as his body changed entirely of its own accord: his flesh oozed and ran like molten wax as it shifted between reptilian scales, leathery pachyderm hide, bug-infested fur, porcupine quills, feathers from a thousand different species of bird, glistening insectoid carapace, and – in one particularly bizarre case – coral. One minute he was the size of a humpback whale, the next he was no bigger than a mouse; one minute, his bones expanded so rapidly that his skeleton almost burst through his skin, the next he shrank so suddenly and so unevenly that he almost collapsed under the weight of his oversized head. In one performance, his clothes tore open as he took the shape of an elephant seal; the next, they billowed down on him like a collapsing circus tent as he took the form of a chinchilla – and no matter how much damage they sustained, they always reappeared once he returned to human form, fresh clothes moulding themselves out of his bare skin (except for his cap, oddly enough).

In one transformation, a beard erupted from his chin as he dwindled to the size of a gnome – a little pointed hat moulding itself from his skull for good measure. In another, his flesh dissolved into unwanted candy as his body ballooned into the nightmarish form of the Summerween Trickster. There were no limits to the transformations he was subjected to: he went from mundane to magical, from young to old, from short to tall, from humanoid to decidedly not; he became a miniature dustbowl, an anthropomorphic mass of flame, a walking ocean complete with tiny fish, a colossal humanoid quagmire of cloying mud.

And all of it – every torturous second of it – hurt.

After about five and a half hours of continuous transformation, Dipper found himself once again slumping to the floor in an agonized heap as his latest metamorphosis came to a close. This time, he didn't bother getting up: he just curled into a ball and lay there, eyes shut tight, hoping against hope that he'd find himself in the Mystery Shack when he finally opened his eyes.

Needless to say, it didn't work.

"Come on, Pine Tree!" Bill shouted. "On your feet! We've still got a show to put on!"

Dipper ignored him.

"You really are determined to be a spoilsport, aren't ya? Come on, give me a scream or two, just to let me know you've still got a few neurons firing in there."

Once again, Dipper refused to answer.

"Fine," sighed Bill. "If you want to give me the silent treatment, that's fine by me. I don't need you to play along, really… but if you don't want to exercise your right to coherent speech, then I suppose you don't need it at all."

Dipper suddenly felt himself rising into the air and opened his eyes to see that Bill was now telekinetically hauling him upright… and at the same time, whispering something under his breath. He couldn't hear a word of what Bill had said, but something had clearly recognized it, because he could already feel his body starting to change again.

"Bill, what are you dooooiiiinnnnNNNNNYANG NYANG NYANG NYANG NYANG YAAAAAAA KHHHHHH AAAAAARGH!"

If the last few transformations had been unpleasant, this was a whole new level of discomfort: even after all he'd learned about the paper clones, he'd never realized just how much pain Paper Jam Dipper had been in throughout his short and unhappy life. Hopelessly mangled in the process of transitioning from paper to animate object, his crumpled throat and flattened lungs made breathing almost impossible, and the creases over his eyeballs left his vision a hopelessly distorted mess; even the use of his arms and legs was a trial, in no small part due to the fact that his bones and muscles were still partially 2-D. And since his vocal cords and jaw were still crumpled up like Toby Determined's old Pinto, communication was effectively out of the question until he learned sign language.

"Isn't this better, Pine Tree?" Bill sneered. "Now you don't have to speak to me ever again!"

"KKKKKKKKHHHRRHGHG," said Dipper, who was still struggling to breathe.

"Does anyone in the audience have a water pistol on hand?"

"YAAAAAAAAARGH KH KH KH KHHHH!"

"You see? It's a terrible thing not having the right to coherent speech anymore, isn't it?"

"NYANG NYANG NYANG FUUUUUUUUUUHHH!"

"Oooh, don't need subtitles for that one, do we?"

Teeth yawned loudly. "I think we should change him back, boss," he said. "It was much more fun when we could understand him begging for mercy."

The other Henchmaniacs muttered in agreement, but far from being dismayed by the sudden drop in audience approval, Bill looked happier than ever. "Then it's time for Act Three!" he cried, rubbing his hands with undisguised delight.

Suddenly, Dipper was human again, slumped on the floor and struggling to get his breath back. "Act Three?" he panted. "Does it involve me being sent back to my cell in a wheelchair? Or were you just going to pack me into a giant kiln and watch me shatter into a million pieces?"

Bill laughed raucously. "I think you might be taking the human ball of clay thing a bit literally, kid. Besides, I've got something much more exciting than that: I promised you games, and I've got one cooked up just for you. You'll like it, I promise…"

Yeah, and after you conned just about everyone in the family except for Grunkle Stan, I'm really going to take a promise from you at face value.

"…And it'll mean getting to see your sister again!"

In spite of himself, Dipper's heart gave the tiniest of leaps.

The hope must have shown on his face, because Bill cackled louder than ever. "I thought that would get your attention!" he shrieked triumphantly. "That's right, Pine Tree. You'll get to see all your old friends again: Shooting Star, Question Mark, Fez, Sixer, Red and the rest of the gang. In fact, you'll have to find them if you want to win my little game."

Dipper took his deepest breath yet. This couldn't end well: Bill was almost certainly lying, and even if he wasn't, the game would probably be rigged in his favour. But he couldn't afford to pass up this opportunity: he needed to know they were all still safe.

"Okay," he sighed. "I'm listening. What's the game?"

"Think of it as a scavenger hunt, a quest for the only thing that could possibly matter to you now: the components of the Zodiac Wheel – the originals, not substitutes."

"What?"

"You and your friends got a little too lucky that day, Pine Tree. I mean, you try to form the one thing that can possibly stop me, and you just happen to have all the people you need to make it work – all in the same room? I mean, what are the odds? Hardly entertaining, if you ask me. So, I'm going to make it a challenge this time: I've scattered your friends across the world and given them their own separate games to play. You, out of all my toys, will have the chance to find them and unite them once again. If you win, you get to put me down once and for all."

Once again, Dipper's heart gave a leap. "Really?" he asked, not daring to believe it. Somewhere in the back of his mind, doubt hammered an override switch, and he added, "You've lied to me before, Bill. How can I be sure the Wheel will work at all? What's to stop you from sabotaging the whole ritual? How do I know you haven't made this game unbeatable?"

Bill rolled his eye. "You don't. Simple as that. If you ever want to see your friends again, you'll just to take this on faith."

"So you expect me to believe that you'd risk losing everything just for a bit of entertainment?"

"Why not? Have you ever known me to be serious about taking risks?"

In spite of himself, Dipper's optimism kicked up a few memories by way of evidence: Bipper slapping himself across the face with an exhilarated shriek of "pain is hilarious!" Bill, now in reality, casually shrugging off Grunkle Ford's misaimed shot without a flicker of anxiety. Bill leering down at Dipper, smugly daring to find some way of stopping him once and for all.

But no sooner had he considered the facts, his doubt dredged up a few memories as well: the end of their first encounter, with Bill shocked and enraged by the simple fact that Dipper and the others had managed to best him, if only for a few seconds; the puppet show, with Bipper disoriented from sleep deprivation and unable to believe that he'd been caught wrong-footed; even the fight with the Shacktron, and Bill's pain and anger over the loss of his eye.

All evidence suggested that Bill was almost certainly setting him up for another con. But what choice did he have? If there was even the tiniest chance of seeing the others and ending Bill's reign of terror, it had to be worth a try.

"You'd really give me the chance to defeat you?" he asked hesitantly.

"Don't get too excited, kiddo: this isn't going to be the cakewalk it was on your last try. This round, you've got to deal with an entire planet worth of Weirdmageddon, not just some hick town in the middle of nowhere; on top of that, you've got to rescue your friends from prisons as good as Mabel's bubble – if not better. Oh, and you're going to spend the journey transforming, too."

"Transforming?! How am I supposed to finish this scavenger hunt in time if you're constantly turning me into new things? How is that fair?"

"Aw, look on the bright side, will ya? While you're moving, I won't be in control of your transformations. In point of fact, nobody will. Your body will be on shuffle for every step of your journey, random shapes at random moments, some of them suitable, some of them not. Once you stop moving, you're off shuffle and you're back on my playlist – my little incentive to keep you moving."

"Is there a time limit on this game?"

"Kid, you've got an entire planet to search! Believe me, I'm not going to give you a ticking clock on this. Take as long as you like. Of course, you've still got to break your friends out of their prisons and keep them alive in the meantime: if you fail – or if you don't feel like playing at all…" Bill chuckled, his voice dropping to a low, menacing purr. "You might think Earth's hellish now, but you'd be amazed at just bad things can get with a little help from yours truly. I mean, I haven't even gotten your parents involved yet!"

Dipper's heart skipped a beat. "You mean they're okay?" he blurted. "Mom and Dad are still alive?"

"I made sure of it, Pine Tree. While their friends and neighbours drowned in their own blood, I made sure that your dear Mommy and Daddy rode out the worst of Weirdmageddon in safety and… well, something like comfort at any rate. Of course, that can change in a hurry if you don't feel like playing along, and I'll be more than happy to add a few other beloved relatives to the torture schedule if you're still not feeling motivated enough: your grunkles, your sister-"

"Okay, okay! I'll do it. I'll do it, just… just don't hurt them."

"You have my word. As long as you keep playing, they'll be safe. Just remember: this isn't just a precious second chance for you; this is still a game played on my terms, by my rules, and for my entertainment. Take as long as you like, search wherever you please, but whatever you do…"

Suddenly, Bill was hovering right in front of Dipper, his body now a hundred feet tall and coloured vivid crimson, his massive eye cobwebbed with ugly black veins. "DON'T BORE ME," he thundered.

"Clear?" he asked, now back to normal.

"Crystal. When do I start?"

Bill paused, stroking his non-existent chin in contemplation. "Hmmmmmmm…" he mused. "How about right now?"

And with that, he snapped his fingers with another telltale spark of magic. A moment later, the stage abruptly flickered out of reality, leaving Dipper standing on empty air: he had just enough time to notice the gaping hole cut in the floor of the throne room, before gravity finally caught up and sent him plummeting towards the ground.

For a minute and a half, Dipper plunged through the bowels of the Fearamid, past the cellblock, past the art gallery, past the torture chamber, past a thousand national monuments sandwiched tastelessly together in homage to Bill's victory, and finally through a garbage chute carved in the bottom of the shaft that sent him tumbling out of the Fearamid once and for all. Unfortunately, this left him about thirty thousand feet in the air, with no clear way of escaping the death dive that was soon to follow.

And then, just as he was wondering if he was going to lose the game before he even began, he changed.

His arms shrank back into his body, his legs fused together, his head narrowed into a shark-like prow, and his skin hardened into a smooth metallic carapace. But it wasn't until fire suddenly erupted from where his feet had been that he realized that he was now a missile – aimed directly at the ground. He was no longer falling but accelerating faster and faster towards the distant target: the sky blurred around him, the clouds suddenly reduced to faint smudges on the horizon, and the ground itself grew until it blotted out all competing thoughts in the armed warhead that had replaced Dipper's brain.

A split-second later, he hit the ground and exploded in a massive fireball that immediately engulfed two abandoned houses, seventeen wrecked cars, a fifty-foot stretch of the neighbouring road, and a billboard advertising the Just Call Us Siffy Channel ("Giant monsters, wrestling, and rip-off artists!").

And right at the heart of the explosion, Dipper found himself unexpectedly alive, transformed into a figure composed entirely of flame: striding out of the inferno, leaving footprint-shaped patches of scorched asphalt in his wake, he made his way down the road for perhaps a hundred yard before the starved flames extinguished themselves, leaving him human once again.

Okay, he thought. I'm still alive. So far so good. Question is, where do I go from here?

He looked around for any discernible landmarks – no easy task, considering that Bill had spent most of the last few days burning them down to make way for his own hideous-looking monuments.

However, judging from the charred roadsigns, he'd had the good fortune to land somewhere in the vicinity of Roadkill County, and though most of the trees in the area were either petrified or on fire, he could still recognize the outskirts of the all-too-distinctive forest that bordered Gravity Falls. Maybe – with a little luck – he might make some headway on his search for the others there.

So, finally allowing himself a hint of optimism at long last, Dipper set off at a brisk march with a new and purposeful stride.

Or least, he would have if his feet hadn't literally turned to rubber in that moment. And he probably would have made more progress down the highway if he hadn't sprung a leak and started losing air. Eventually, he managed to awkwardly roll his deflated body a few yards down the median strip, just long enough for the next transformation to kick in: now a human again, he set off down the road at a brisk jog.

And then, just as he was expecting the next transformation to kick in, something crashed into the back of his head.

Once he'd picked himself off the asphalt and gotten a sense of the spectacular lump on his skull, he found the offending object sitting directly in front of him none the worse for wear.

It was a gaudily-wrapped present complete with a red satin ribbon, a smattering of smiley-face stickers, and a novelty birthday card – a garish cartoon depiction of Dipper himself, mouth agape in terror. Unsurprisingly, opening the card revealed a hideous pop-up version of Bill exploding out of the cartoon Dipper's brain, sending blood and eyeballs everywhere.

A ghastly scrawl inside the card proclaimed Happy Birthday, Pine Tree! I told you you'd have a chance to study the greatest mystery of Gravity Falls, and I meant it: you're going to have to study this one in detail. After all, even I'm not sure how you'll change in the long run, so be sure to take plenty of notes for future reference – when you're not playing my game, of course. Have fun! Love, Bill.

PS: try not to leave your hat behind again, scatterbrain.

Inside the package was a solemn-looking leather-bound journal, almost identical to Grunkle Ford's journals – with two major exceptions: firstly, every page of the book was blank; secondly, the familiar six-fingered hand insignia on the cover had been replaced with the shape of an ordinary hand, its middle finger raised in mocking salute.

Fitting, Dipper thought.

A moment later, his cap landed on his head – Bill's way of proving that Dipper had nothing to complain about.

So, he once again set off down the road, trying to ignore the sensation of his flesh beginning to warp once again – trying not to listen to the faint echo of Bill's obnoxious laughter, and failing with every step…

A/N: The soundtrack choice for this chapter is Carnival Of Souls by Verne Langdon

Coming up next, Mabel's game. Can you guess how deep the rabbit hole goes? Feel free to review and furnish me with your theories and opinions!