A/N: *ahem* AAAAAARGH! I'm back - should have posted this sooner, but mild health scares got in the way. For those of you who might be under the impression that this story's been nothing but introductions so far, don't worry: we're almost out of the "introducing Bill's games" segment, and after that, we'll be dealing with the real meat and potatoes of the challenges. In the meantime, a massive thank you to everyone who reviewed, favourited and followed, and I sincerely hope I can uphold the quality over the next few chapters.

Oh, and Female Fantasy Fan? Bill's a favourite character of mine as well - but in truth, I love all the characters in Gravity Falls. I've always liked the curious blend of the eldritch and the flippant, the horrifying and the comedic: he's like a weird hybrid of AM, the Joker, and Nyarlathotep - and in this chapter, I'll definitely be demonstrating the more Jokerish aspects. Oh, and in regards to pairings... well, I'm not going to spoil the whole story, but without saying too much, Pacifica is harboring a crush on Dipper. Question is, can it be maintained, let alone reciprocated in the current situation? Find out in the next chapters!

Be warned: this chapter does get a bit talky, and I can only hope I can keep Bill in character while he's speechifying.

Anyway, with that out of the way, let's begin! Constructive criticism and long reviews are always welcome, especially when it comes to those typos that creep in at 2 in the morning. Read, review, and above all, enjoy!

Disclaimer: Gravity Falls is not mine; it floated out of my hands before I could grab it. Also, there's a Red Dwarf reference here: see if you can spot it.

To Mabel's immense surprise, it was the sun that woke her. Not the screams of terrified people, not the deafening roar of cities vanishing in nuclear fireballs, not even the nerve-shredding sound of Bill's obnoxious laughter – just the gentle warmth of the sun on her face. Nor was she in any pain: she'd been bruised quite badly when Bill had grabbed her during that last chase through the Fearamid, and she was pretty sure that that he'd had something awful waiting for her when she awoke – but no: she felt fine. In fact, the only thing out of the ordinary was the faint tickle of grass under her fingertips.

Puzzled, she yawned, stretched, and opened her eyes. To her continued surprise, she wasn't sitting in some famous park Bill had superglued to the side of the Fearamid for the hell of it; she wasn't lying in the ruins of post-presidential Washington D.C., surrounded on all sides by burning buildings and zombie hordes and partying Henchmaniacs and god only knew what else. In fact, this place didn't appear to have been touched by Weirdmageddon at all. If anything, it looked like-

Gravity Falls. Even with alarm bells sounding from one end of her brain to the next, there was no mistaking the familiar shape sprawled ahead of her. All the familiar landmarks were there, all restored to their former not-quite-glory: Main Street was clear of craters and madness bubbles, the water tower was not walking around on spider legs, the statue of Nathaniel Northwest stood proud and unmelted on its plinth, the waterfall did not appear to be flowing upwards – not a single sign of Bill's early days remained. And above her, the sun glowed almost red, casting a familiar ruby glow on the town as it drifted from afternoon to sunset.

She was back in Gravity Falls, right before Weirdmageddon.

A tiny bubble of hope drifted to the front of her mind and sat there, wobbling ever so slightly; the slightest breeze might burst it, but for the first time since Bill had won, she could hope, however hesitantly. Was it possible – just slightly possible – that she'd been dreaming all along? Could Mabel really have dreamed everything about Weirdmageddon? Maybe so… but when had she fallen asleep? It was too late for her to be out on her birthday preparations, and the only time she'd been out of the Mystery Shack after that had been-

The argument with Dipper, she realized. I ran out into the woods, I didn't stop until I was far away from the shack, I sat down… and then I must have dozed off. Probably only for a few minutes if the sun's just starting to set. Question is, where's Dipper's nerd bag? He's going to want it back, what with all his books and notes and-

One or two memories that Mabel had been doing her best to forget gave a few unpleasant rumblings. Don't go there, she told herself. Don't think about it. It didn't happen. Just walk back through the forest, find the bag, carefullycarry it back to the Mystery Shack and give it to Dipper… and then give him the biggest Sincere Sibling Hug ever and tell him that you're perfectly okay with him taking Grunkle Ford's apprenticeship, and give him another hug for good measure. And then hug Ford and tell him about the nightmare you had, because he'll understand it and the two of you haven't talked enough anyway. And hug Grunkle Stan too. And Soos. And Wendy. Come to think of it, I could probably give Pacifica a great big hug as well…

And then, just as she getting to her feet and starting to imagine the massive hug she was going to give her parents when she returned home, she happened to notice something unusual about the hill she'd awoken on. She didn't know what it was at first, but she could tell that something was off: she didn't have Dipper's obsessive eye for details, but there was something about this place that seemed wrong. It wasn't until she heard the echo of her footsteps that she realized that it was the sound that was disturbing her – or more accurately, the complete lack of it.

The hill and most of the surrounding landscape was completely silent. No birdsong, no wind whistling through the trees, no traffic on the roads, no angry gnomes swearing eternal vengeance, no giant prehistoric monsters trudging aimlessly through the forest, not even the faintest whisper. Mabel hadn't been paying that much attention to little things like ambient sound following the argument with Dipper, but she knew for a fact that it was impossible for Gravity Falls to get this quiet. Something was very, very wrong.

That tiny bubble of hope was starting to wobble precariously, and somewhere in the pit of her stomach, dread was already starting to broil and steam. Mabel tried to convince herself that she'd just blundered into another one of Gravity Falls' random oddities, that sound would return soon, but the dread just went on simmering, even as she made her way down the hill towards the waiting streets. She must have been walking faster than she thought, for the sun was still well above the horizon by the time she reached Main Street, so at least she didn't have to worry about having to investigate the situation by moonlight just yet.

Unfortunately, as she stepped off the grass and onto the sidewalk, several extremely troubling realizations hit her at once: first, the reason why Dipper's bag was nowhere in sight was because she'd awoken several hundred yards from where she'd actually set it down. Secondly, she hadn't wandered into a random pocket of noiselessness or anything like that, and sound wasn't likely to return. Thirdly, the reason why she wasn't hearing the sound of traffic was immediately obvious: nothing was moving.

Directly ahead of her, a car stood deathly still, not parked or broken down, but frozen. A closer look revealed that its driver was staring straight ahead, hand paused in mid-air directly above the horn; the car itself was surrounded by a tiny hailstorm of gravel kicked up from the road, and a small cloud of exhaust hung in the air just behind the tailpipe, as motionless as the rest of the vehicle. A little way down the street, a few pedestrians were frozen in the act of crossing the road, several of them flipping the bird at the oncoming car. Not too far away from that, more familiar-looking faces had been frozen converging on the town square: Grenda and Candy, Pacifica and her parents, Toby Determined, Manly Dan Corduroy and his sons – all of them unmoving, with no sign that they would ever move again.

Somehow, time had stopped in Gravity Falls.

Heart hammering, Mabel turned away from the town square and made her way down Main Street at a brisk walk, hoping against hope that the situation wasn't as bad as it looked. But unfortunately, it was: less than thirty feet down the road, she'd already seen a flock of birds frozen in mid-flight, an avalanche of stolen groceries cascading out of a shoplifter's coat, and a tiny little man in a miner's helmet hovering motionlessly in the open doors of Skull Fracture, less than three feet from the bouncer who'd thrown him. Everywhere she went, the townsfolk of Gravity Falls stood, silent and still as statues, and there was nothing Mabel could do to rouse them.

By the time she'd gone two blocks, she'd broken into a run and was sprinting frantically down the road, propelling herself towards the distant woods through sheer unadulterated fear. She knew that running wasn't going to make much difference if time really had stopped, but she was beyond caring by then. Besides, it wasn't as if there was any point in waiting at the bus stop. She had to see just how far this went, to see if the situation really was as bad as she thought it was – and that meant making her way to the Mystery Shack. Hopefully, the unicorn hair shielding the building would have been enough to protect it from whatever had stopped time, and maybe Dipper and Ford were already trying to solve the problem.

Question is, why haven't I been frozen as well?

Naturally, this joined the long list of questions she had no answers to, and even if there was some clever way of learning the what and the why, she couldn't afford to waste time on it now; she had to make sure that Dipper was okay, that everyone was okay and that they'd be able to figure out a solution together.

The forest loomed ahead of her, somehow a thousand times more ominous than ever before: where once the sunset had made Gravity Falls look so inviting, now seemed to have drained the life out of the familiar woodland, leaving everything dyed crimson and withering under the merciless glare of the sun; past the mouth of the forest, the woods were crowded with shadows, every tree casting another menacing-looking shape across the ground, all of them frozen in the act of reaching out towards the road. Mabel tried not to look at them as she sprinted past: she couldn't start worrying about anything else, not now. All she had to do was ignore the shadows, the trees blurring into unrecognizable shapes, her aching feet, her oxygen-starved lungs, the fear, the anxiety, the guilt and everything else under the sun. All she had to do was ignore that until-

Up ahead, the Mystery Shack drifted into view. The sight alone was enough to make Mabel stagger to a halt: it couldn't have been much more than a week since she'd seen the dreary old tourist trap in its original condition, but it felt like years. Since that awful day when she'd fled the building in tears, she'd only had a chance to see the Shack as a gloomy shelter for the few desperate survivors of Weirdmageddon, and then as the Shacktron, and now the place was standing in the road ahead in its original condition: the chipped plastic totem pole, the massive sign with the perpetually-missing "S", the infamously chintzy outdoor exhibits, the corroding golf carts, that triangular attic window, the potholed carpark – all restored to normal at long last. And then, just as Mabel was starting to reflect on how much she'd missed the place, her eyes happened to stray to the Shack's door – and she noticed the familiar figure on the porch.

Dipper was frozen, paused in the act of sprinting out of the shack, his face a mask of fear and concern. Inside the Shack, Ford was hurrying after him, his glasses almost opaque in the glare of the sun, a worried frown stamped on his worn features. For a moment, Mabel could only stare in horror at the motionless figures; then the realization finally caught up with her: whatever had happened to Gravity Falls, unicorn hair hadn't been enough to stop it from affecting people inside the Mystery Shack.

So, once again, what had happened? And why wasn't she affected too?

But Mabel already knew the answer: she clearly remembered the direction she'd taken on that terrible day, and knew for a fact that Dipper had been frozen in the act of pursuing her. All she had to do was follow the trail back across the car park and back into the woods – this time off the path and into the bleakest, densest depths. Less than five minutes from the Mystery Shack, she found two familiar figures sprawled in the undergrowth: the first was obviously Blendin Blandin, easily recognized by his signature grey uniform and handlebar moustache hairdo; the second was-

Her.

Same face, same hair, same sweater, same everything… except this version of her was frozen in time just like everyone else in Gravity Falls, paused at the very moment she'd lost consciousness. Of course, the lack of passing time made it impossible to tell if she was breathing or not, and Mabel was left with the disturbing impression that she was actually looking down at her own dead body.

Shuddering, she looked away, and finally saw the smashed remains of Grunkle Ford's snow-globe lying in the grass between the two figures. Among the chunks of shattered glass and ruined machinery, tiny motes of lights glowed ominously, some of them already paused in the act of flaring to life: if time ever restarted, the Rift would burst free of the snow-globe and expand across the sky, and Weirdmageddon would begin again.

Inside Mabel's head, the tiny bubble of hope burst.

Now there was no denying that everything that had happened over the last few days had been real... and now she knew for a fact that it was all her fault. During her stay in the Bubble, she'd been able to fool herself into thinking that her hazy memories of the event were just dreams, and even once Dipper had explained the truth behind the Rift to her, she'd never dared to imagine that what she'd seen in those vague recollections had actually happened. But now the repressed memories were free, and now that Mabel understood the significance of that odd-looking snow-globe lying in pieces at her feet, she knew that Bill's victory had been her doing all along.

Trembling (possibly in fear, possibly in grief), Mabel found herself reaching out to the erupting Rift, desperately wishing that she could somehow restart time and stop those tiny sparks from unleashing Weirdmageddon. But as her fingers brushed the first of the embers, the light from the snow-globe flared vividly, sending a ten-foot column of eye-searing energies into the air; the world itself shifted and parted like a curtain, and before Mabel could react, the light had enveloped her.

Suddenly, she was no longer standing in the middle of the woods, doing god-only-knew-what. Instead, she found herself sitting on a beanbag chair in the middle of-

"Oh no," Mabel groaned. "Not again…"

Mabel's royal bedchamber hadn't changed much since her last visit: every element of the décor remained intact, from the knee-deep carpets to the massive bed; even the ornaments on the desk remained unchanged. Outside, the cloudless sky was a lush, inviting blue, a honeyed promise of days spent enjoying everything this tailor-made paradise had to offer; and while she couldn't see any further out the window from her current position, everything she'd seen so far told her that Mabeland had been recreated in perfect detail, every captivating fantasy made flesh – all the better to discourage the prison's only inmate from leaving.

She knew there was no point in looking outside: after all, she'd seen enough of this place the last time and facing the world she'd done her best to abandon on her previous visit could only end badly. In fact, Mabel would have been glad to just sit there, quietly banging her head against the cushions, had she not happened to notice something different about the world beyond her window – something almost beyond description but too blatant to go unnoticed. So, Mabel tentatively rose from the beanbag and shuffled through the hedge-like carpet to the nearest window – and immediately she realized that world she'd been imprisoned in had changed significantly since her last visit.

Back when she'd first been caged here, Mabeland had been a loveably anarchic mess, a chaotic jumble of her fantasies and desires made real and smooshed together into one brightly-coloured sugary-sweet storybook landscape; the only time when it had even vaguely seemed orderly had been in the courtroom, and even then the whimsy had been almost impossible to keep at bay – just the way Mabel liked it. And looking down upon her prison, Mabel found herself struck by a distinct sense of sadness as she realized that she'd never see the old Mabeland ever again, not even in her dreams – not without remembering the world that had replaced it.

This new Mabeland was very different: there was still some whimsy to be found here, maybe even a tiny bit of joyful anarchy, but that was all that remained of her old utopia. The background music had gone from a jaunty synth beat to a stirring, patriotic-sounding anthem played by a fully-fledged symphony orchestra, with blaring brass, thunderous percussion, and – here and there – remnants of the original synth music. The roller-coaster hills and soft, plush ground had been replaced with wide, straight boulevards and gleaming, polished marble. The garish bouncy-castle buildings had solidified into heavily-fortified complexes encrusted with battlements and studded with watchtowers; true, they were still just as colourful and handsome as they had been in the old days, but now all that beauty seemed designed to oppress rather than entertain.

The monuments built in Mabel's honour were still here, but they'd been drastically redesigned to erase any sign of joyfulness or benevolence from her portrayals: the statues now had her dressed in some kind of military dress uniform, complete with epaulettes, gold braiding, a sash, and enough medals to sink an entire fleet of warships; the murals depicted her as an angry god raining fire upon a defenceless city from on high, a congregation of cowering subjects futilely begging for mercy among the doomed streets. Everywhere Mabel looked, her own face stared back at her, cold-eyed, unsmiling and entirely without mercy.

On every street corner, a colossal watchtower loomed over the roaming citizenry, constantly scrutinizing every inch of its territory with a luminous pyramid-shaped eye hovering just above its uppermost spire. Along the stately boulevards, cuddly kitten soldiers in gleaming white uniforms marched in lockstep formation, with every platoon lead by a massive waffle guard and every unit armed to the teeth with a nightmarish assortment of weapons; not far behind them, massive silver-hulled tanks and war machines followed, their colossal flanks decorated with gold leaf and silver unicorn emblems. And far above the busy streets, great hovering billboards proclaimed an endless series of soul-crushing messages to all present:

"HAPPINESS CANNOT BE SHARED."

"HURT THEM BEFORE THEY HURT YOU."

"EMPATHY IS DEATH."

"THEY'LL ONLY HOLD YOU BACK."

"SELFISHNESS IS A VIRTUE."

"BETRAY YOUR FRIENDS AND FAMILY! FABULOUS PRIZES TO BE WON!"

Mabel would have probably spent hours staring out the window at the madness on display, had she not heard the sound of muffled guffawing from somewhere behind her; startled, she spun around, hand immediately straying to a grappling hook that wasn't there anymore, and found herself staring into a massive slit-pupiled eyeball.

Bill Cipher let out a piercing shriek of laughter, his detestable giggling immediately worming its way into her ears and doing unpleasant things to her skull. "Welcome back to Mabeland, Shooting Star!" he cackled hatefully. "The place just hasn't been the same without you!"

"No, no, no!" Mabel snarled. "I've been through this once already, and I made it pretty clear that I wasn't interested in staying; I want out, now!"

"Yeah right," Bill chortled. "You made it pretty clear. Wasn't your brother doing most of the talking on the day? As far as I can tell, he was doing most of the thinking as well. In fact, you barely had to make a decision at all, Shooting Star: all you had to do was hug ol' Pine Tree and let everything you really wanted just slip through your fingers! Hardly the biggest statement of independence you've ever made in your life, kiddo."

"It doesn't matter how it happened, Bill: I said no to this place before, and I don't want to waste any more time repeating myself. Now, I want out, and I want to know what you did to Dipper."

"Ah, forget him. He's busy with a game of his own, and I guarantee you he won't be heading in this direction anytime soon. The same goes for the rest of your friends: they're all off in their own walled-off playgrounds, scattered from one end of my world to the next, all of them obediently playing the games I've set them."

"In other words, they're not all frozen? So what I saw back there wasn't real?"

"Real? Real?!" Bill howled with laughter. "Reality is what I say it is, Shooting Star! I've split this planet into so many different realities you could meet your brother five times in a row and never know which one of them was the real deal. The world as you now know it is a layer cake of interlocking pocket dimensions and sideways existences: a place for everything and everything in its place, including layer cakes."

Mabel sighed, desperately trying not to think about cake – or anything else that might make a change from the stockpiles of brown meat in the Shack. "Is there another reality you can send me to?" she asked, wearily. "Because, like I said, I'm not interested in this place and never will be. So, you can just take me back to the Fearamid and leave me in a cell, because I'm not interested in playing whatever weird game you've arranged-"

"What makes you think I've arranged a game for you at all?"

"Alright then, I'm not interested in staying in the same old prison no matter how many times you've redecorated it, and you shouldn't bother keeping me in a place I've already broken out of-"

Bill's eye narrowed sharply. "It's not a prison either, Shooting Star," he said icily, all the shrill jollity gone from his voice. "Never was and never will be. It's a gift."

"It's what?"

"Did you ever wonder why I set you up in the Bubble when I could have easily just killed you? I didn't do that just to keep my enemies divided, you know; I wasn't just trying to keep you and the other components of the Wheel from joining forces. I was rewarding you. I gave you everything you could possibly want: happiness, luxury, power, isolation from the world you despised, your every wish granted, your every fantasy indulged. You didn't ask what had happened to the world outside, how you'd ended up in the Bubble or why you were given my gift: you embraced it, you accepted it, you treasured it…"

With a flicker of weirdness, Bill suddenly grew tall enough to fill the entire chamber, his top hat carving divots in the ceiling. "AND THEN YOU THREW IT BACK IN MY FACE!" he roared.

Then, just as quickly as it had appeared, the rage was gone and Bill was back to normal. "But I wasn't angry," he continued. "I was just… disappointed. I've met a lot of failures in my long life, Mabel, but you were the greatest of them all: you came so close to realizing your true potential, closer than any of the others, but in the end you let me down and sank to the bottom with the rest of the losers."

Mabel blinked. "Others?" she echoed. "What others?"

"I've been keeping an eye on humanity for a very long time, Shooting Star: you're a funny little species when you get right down to it, always coming up with new ways to make me laugh, butso frustrating! I mean, you have all these rules and codes and commandments, all these laws made up just to smother your happiness and hold you back: you people spend every day of your miserable little lives hiding behind one rule or another, too scared to do anything in case you break a law – until one day, you're old and worn-out, and you realize that you've wasted your entire life doing nothing but toeing the line, and then you have the nerve to get all upset and say "How the hell did that happen?" Even your criminals have codes of conduct! The few people who understand the worthlessness of laws only went and made up new laws the moment they had a little power!"

He sighed. "I had to live through that crap once already, back when I was just a native of the Second Dimension – before I freed it from all those annoying little laws set by reality. I didn't want to sit back and watch you end up flatter than the Second Dimension: you guys needed my help. But while I was figuring out ways to break in, I looked for people like me, people who'd understand how easy their lives would be if they just took what they wanted. Most of them I left to their own devices, but a few I made deals with… and in the end, both types ended up disappointing me. If they weren't stupid, they were unimaginative; if they weren't unimaginative, they were unambitious; and even if they were smart enough and driven enough, they just didn't have the guts to take their ambitions all the way to the end. No matter how far they took things, they always found some line in the sand they couldn't cross. Yeah, that was the one thing about your family that really got on my nerves."

"My family?"

"That's right, Shooting Star, your family. There's an awful lot of selfishness among the Pines – but I'll be damned if I know why, I'm pretty sure it's not genetic. But look at all the members of your family who'd had the chance to be great if only they'd put aside all those pointless little principles. Just look at your Great-Grandfather Filbrick, the man who wanted his kids to make him a fortune: he had the guts to dump Stan when he became a nuisance, but he didn't have the chutzpah to force his Golden Boy to study something really lucrative. Locksmith-Mitchell's R&D department could make a millionaire out of any kid bright enough to make nerve gas out of expired coffee, but Ol' Filbrick didn't have the spine to make his fortune with blood money. And what about Stan? He could have made it big in the criminal underworld! With his adaptability, he could have taken over half the rackets in prison before his first month on the inside was over, made enough money on the outside to satisfy dear old dad and still have enough left over to set himself up for life. But no! Stanley Pines didn't want to deal drugs, didn't want to kill anyone; he was content to wallow in the mediocrity of his usual pathetic cons and watch his life fall to bits.

"And Fordsie – he was close. Brilliant, innovative, ambitious, brave enough to take unimaginable risks in pursuit of his dreams, and just isolated enough to take my advice. If he'd just accepted my final offer, he could have been like me! Can you imagine that? A human with the power of a god at his fingertips! But in the end, he got cold feet: you'd think a freak like Ford would have been happy to see the world vanish after all the insults it threw at him, but he just couldn't bear to see the whole thing spiral down the plughole. Even your brother could have gotten a lot more out of life if he'd had the courage to be really, really selfish. I mean, you know Pine Tree would have been happier if he'd just stopped tolerating you and all your little self-imposed missions: if he'd let that silly little piglet of yours slip away and allowed you to spend the next month tenderizing your skull against a totem pole, he would've had all summer to get to know Wendy better. But no: he couldn't bear to see you weeping.

"You had a spark of potential, Shooting Star. You had creativity, you had guts, and you had some pretty powerful drives at work under that mop of yours – short term ambitions but ambitions nonetheless. You even had a bit of the old Gordian intelligence when push came to shove. Just look at that puppet show of yours: can you imagine anyone your age putting that much effort and talent into impressing a crush? True, you stopped short of achieving your best, but you caught my eye, kiddo. So I said to myself, 'here's a girl that knows what she wants and knows how to get it – just what I've been looking for. She just needs an opportunity, a little boost in the right direction.'" His voice rose to another ear-shredding yawp of laughter. "And girl, you saw that opportunity and you grabbed it with both hands! You gave me the Rift, you threw away the lives of everyone in Gravity Falls and the world beyond, and you didn't even think of what was happening outside the Bubble until Pine Tree came along and rubbed your nose in it!"

"But I didn't know what I was doing!" Mabel exploded. "I didn't know what giving you the Rift would mean – I didn't even know I was giving it to you! You tricked me, just like you tricked Dipper!"

Bill rolled his eye. "There's always some excuse, isn't there? With every member of the Pines family, there's always some reason why it wasn't their fault: "But I was afraid I was going to lose Ford!" "But I couldn't get any further in my research!" "But I was sleep deprived!" "But I just wanted a little more summer!" Wah-wah, cry me a river, kiddo. The sooner you throw away outdated human morality, the happier you'll be, and the sooner you can stop making excuses for who and what you are-"

"I'm not selfish!" screamed Mabel. "And I don't want to be selfish!"

"Hey, no need to get all upset, Shooting Star. I'm here to help you."

"And how are you gonna do that, huh? What are you gonna do to me? Torture me? Lock me up in this tower until I agree with you? Make me listen to background music here until my brain just shuts down?"

"Yeesh, you and your brother, I swear, always expecting the worst from people who only want to help." Suddenly, Bill was hovering right next to her, a companionable arm around her shoulder. "What I realized," he continued, "Is that I gave you everything you wanted, but I didn't give you exactly what you asked for, and I didn't give you what you needed either. So, I've brought you a gift… and a lesson as well. I've given you two different worlds to live in: one of them is the reality I offered you before all this went down, with Gravity Falls frozen in time for all eternity, trapped in a summer that will never end; the other is Mabeland, now refined to suit your personality a little better. You can travel between them as often as you like, but there's a few new rules to abide by…"

Mabel's brow wrinkled. "I thought you said you hated rules," she remarked.

"Hey, the place was modelled on your mind: it's not my fault if you like rules so much."

"Way to weasel out of the blame, Bill."

Bill just rolled his eye again, and idly waved a hand in the direction of the opposite wall: in response, the fabric of reality parted like a curtain, revealing a glowing portal hovering just above the thickly-carpeted floor: plainly visible through the flickering light of the doorway was the forest that Mabel had just left behind, complete with the smashed remains of the snow-globe.

"Long story short," Bill continued, "you can travel freely between the two worlds via this portal, but each world has its drawbacks. In the world of Endless Summer, time will never pass for anyone except you, and objects stay paused until you interact with them. From now on, you'll have to take care of yourself: you'll have to find food, water, medicine, deal with all the little things the people of Gravity Falls will never have to deal with again. If you catch a cold, you'll have to look for the medicine yourself; you break an arm, there'll be nobody to treat it but you; if you end up trapped, there'll be no chance of rescue. Also, as per our original deal, the time bubble extends only as far as Gravity Falls; so long as time can't enter or escape the bubble, neither can you." Bill's eyelids curled upwards in a twisted approximation of a smirk. "Best get used to stealing, unless you want to starve to death."

"What about Mabeland?"

"Thought you'd never ask, Shooting Star. Like I said, this place is a lesson, and as long as you stay here, it's your job to learn from it: if you want to be happy – honestly and truly happy – then you've got to put aside empathy. You'll have to witness blood, torture and death without batting an eyelid – and when the time comes, you'll have to inflict it, too. And in the end, you'll need to give up any hope of ever seeing your family and friends ever again, and you'll have to do so without the tiniest bit of sadness. In the meantime, you'll have all the old power you had over Mabeland, but this time you won't be allowed to leave or rebel against the status quo: if anyone sees you stepping out of the line, your powers will be revoked and you'll receive as vicious a punishment as they can deliver without killing you. If at any point you feel sadness, loneliness or pain, you'll be made to regret it. And if you actually make the mistake of shedding a tear…" Bill's eyelids curled into a smirk again. "I'll give you something to really cry about."

"You're not doing a very good job of selling the product, Bill."

"Did I mention you might stand a chance of leaving if you learn your lesson?"

Mabel's heart leapt. "What?"

"I thought that'd get your attention. As long as you stay in Mabeland, you'll be periodically tested on how good you are at abandoning empathy: win enough of those tests, and I might consider granting you permission to leave this place for a few days – just to see what'll happen when you finally run into your brother!" Bill laughed uproariously. "But that's a matter for another day! For now, let's just see which of your presents you want to play with first!"

Then, with an eye-searing flash of light, Bill was hovering in the very centre of the room, his arms spread wide – his left pointing towards the portal back into the frozen realm of Gravity Falls, his right pointing out the window, where Mabeland lay in all its twisted glory.

"Game's on, Shooting Star," he purred smugly. "It's time to decide what sounds better to you: you can start out in Gravity Falls, frozen forever in its glory days! A place where you can take what you want and do as you please, a place where you can be with your friends for as long as you like and never have to worry about them leaving you… or you can begin in the Utopia I built for you, a place where the laws of reality bend to your will – so long as you toe the line. No pouting, no sighs, no frowning, and above all, no tears. Stay here long enough, and one day, you'll wonder why you ever left!"

"So tell me, Mabel… WHAT'LL IT BE?"

A/N:

This chapter's soundtrack choice is In Paradisum by Gabriel Faure.

Up next - Soos's game!