A/N: Latest chapter, ladies and gents!

A very angry ravage: It actually took me a while to get the reference, but now I have new reading material to get through - thanks, by the way. But no, it's not Alcor. There will be crossovers in this story, but not kind of crossover. Sorry.

Kraven the Hunter: One of the ironies here is the fact that, unlike Dipper, Mabel, Soos and Wendy, Pacifica never clashed with Bill or his forces up until the end of Weirdmageddon - making this game much less personal despite the sadism. In fact, most of the game has been set up for the Northwests as a whole, with Preston as the chief contestant: if Preston had been dissatisfied with the current arrangement and wanted another throw of the dice, Pacifica would have indeed been forced to loop the night again... but Preston committed the cardinal sin of being boring, so Bill has Pacifica prepped take his place, not suspecting that she might be more than just another selfish member of the Northwest clan.

Also, the use of the Latin is for two reasons: Mr A is technically bidding farewell to a member of Gravity Fall's nobility, hence the ave - literally translated as "hail" (plus the Northwests strike me as the kind of family who'd set themselves up with a pretentious Latin motto; they'd have probably gone with Orbis Non Sufficit if Ian Fleming hadn't bagsied it first); however, it's also a nod to the fact that this quest might very well end up with all its participants dead or worse, as the original and most famous usage of the saying is a formal farewell to the deceased.

Plus, I also added it as a shoutout to Event Horizon. Couldn't resist, sorry.

Northgalus 2002: Glad you liked the chapter! Can't make too many comments about Mr A without spoiling; however, there will be several hints scattered across the incoming chapters - you'll have to be the judge of how subtle they are.

Fantasy Fan 223: Your reviews always bring a smile to my face. Yes, Bill can be defeated, but the trick will be - as always - getting that far. Without saying too much, defeated doesn't necessarily mean "dead" or even "gone."

Anyway! Time's up, game's on, good luck, have fun! Detailed reviews are a must! Read, review and above all, enjoy!

Disclaimer: Gravity Falls doesn't belong to me. The reality warpers and time travellers tell me that this has always been the case.

19/6/17: Made corrections - massive typo close to the end finally gone; stupid of me to not notice it sooner.

The shantytown was always cold.

Built from scrap metal, cardboard boxes, plywood boards and a few hastily-scavenged tents, it was simply too rickety to keep the chill at bay, no matter how many fires the inhabitants built or how many blankets they piled on. Granted, it would have been just as hellish in the summer, but then, summer didn't exist in this strange, unnatural place.

Snow poured down on the settlement at all hours of the day; blizzards hammered it; gale-force winds sliced through it, extinguishing fires, tearing poorly-built shacks to pieces, tossing pedestrians to the ground, and sending frigid blasts of air under doors and windows from one end of the settlement to the next. The crude streets were always choked with snowdrifts, the roofs of the buildings sagging under their ponderous weight, the doorways clustered with icicles, and every single survivor who'd made this terrible place their home was cold, hungry and miserable – and always would be, for winter was here to stay.

Now that Weirdmageddon was everywhere, the usual procession of seasons had long since ceased to exist on planet Earth, replaced by demented spates of unnatural weather appearing and disappearing almost entirely at random. However, in this part of the once-United States of America, winter remained eternal for the sole purpose of making day-to-day existence a living hell for the survivors who'd made the mistake of settling here – wherever here was.

This could have once been the outskirts of New York city, or Chicago, or Los Angeles or Detroit or New Orleans or any decent-sized city in the country; it could have been a chunk of another continent transplanted onto North America; or perhaps it hadn't existed before Weirdmageddon, and all those tumbledown skyscrapers on the horizon had been created as just another one of Bill Cipher's indecipherable jokes. Nobody knew the truth: all they could tell was that this sad little Hooverville stood in the shadow of a vast ruined city half-buried in the ice, its frost-smothered streets clogged with wrecked cars, its buildings slowly collapsing under the sheer weight of the snow.

Every day, the residents of the shantytown ventured into those ruins to scavenge for necessities – food, building supplies, warm clothing, and fuel for the perpetually dwindling fires. Others decided to hunt for their food instead of foraging for it, and strode off into the frozen wastelands beyond the urban zone in search of more nourishing sustenance, armed with whatever weaponry they could find. Sometimes, hunters and foragers alike would return laden down with just enough spoils to keep the village running for another couple of days; sometimes, they returned empty-handed; sometimes, they never returned at all. More often than not, the villagers would have to go without, and be even colder and hungrier and more miserable than usual – until the next day, when they set off in search of supplies once again; fights over food were common, and it wasn't unknown for someone to end up getting killed in the ensuing brawls.

But no matter how many people were killed in bawls, how many were mauled to death on hunting expeditions, how many were buried in avalanches, how many died of starvation or exposure or sickness, there were always more people. Somehow, even in the face of raging blizzards and ten-foot-deep snowdrifts, fresh refugees always found their way to the shantytown; typically, there wasn't enough space to accommodate them and a new shack would have to be built just to keep them from freezing to death in the streets overnight.

Some refugees attempted to be accommodating and move on after a few days, but the weather was always against them – quite literally: storms and blizzards actively sought out anyone attempting to leave the settlement for any reason except to hunt, howling gales sweeping the would-be escapees back down the hill all the way to the gates. Sooner or later, the refugees would be forced to accept that the once-inviting sanctuary had become their prison, and settle in forever – or die in continued escape attempt, either from exposure to torturous weather continues or from whatever hungry monsters haunted the snowfields at night.

Slowly but surely, the shantytown was growing, always in size and never in prosperity, always growing hungrier and angrier and more and more desperate as the days went by and the population ballooned.

And that was what bothered Gideon Gleeful more than anything else: not the cold, not the hunger, not the smell of the overflowing latrine pit, not even the fear of discovery, but the people. The chill in the air only became noticeable on the rare occasions when he wasn't feverish, and he was usually too sick to even think about food, let alone keep it down. There were far too many things to distract him from less-than-pleasant smells, and the shantytown's residents were too busy struggling to stay alive to care about his past; besides, most of them obeyed Bill's occasional commands the moment they were issued, so they probably wouldn't give a damn even if they did find out.

But people?

People had thoughts.

HungryhungryhungryohgodImhungrynobodybroughtbackanythingshestolemyshareImsohungry

Thefiresareouttheresnothingtoburnwerealloutofblanketsitssocoldwereallgoingtofreezesoon

DaddysgonehewentouttohuntandidntcomebackImsoalonepleasesdontleavemeherepleaseplease

Gideon closed his eyes, bracing himself against the oncoming rush of thoughts; the hunters and foragers were back from their daily outing, and the calm that their absence had offered was immediately shattered now that the village was once again full-populated by hungry, frozen, desperate minds.

Despite his best efforts, he couldn't stop himself from whimpering as the pain rippled across his skull, prompting immediate reassurance from his current minder – a kindly, middle-aged woman by the name of Amanda. For the next few minutes, he could only lie there and cling to the pillow, quivering in agony whilst the psychic storm rained down upon him, trying in vain to filter out the worst of it until he could acclimatize to the sudden rise in village-wide mental activity.

Amanda was holding his hand and gently mopping his fevered brow with a sponge, but Gideon scarcely noticed through the haze of chaotic thoughts swirling around him. Right then and there, he was no longer lying on a bed in a semi-frozen shack, shrouded in blankets and waited on by conscientious attendants; right then and there, he was trapped inside his own head, alone except for over two hundred whispering, murmuring, yelling, shouting, screaming voices echoing across his cranium.

WhostolemyblanketsomeonestolemyblanketIllsmashhisheadinwithacardoorthesonofabitch

Notenoughantibioticsnotenoughmedicinethefeversaregettingworsethepatientsaredyingandwerenext

Ohgodpleasehavemercyonusforgiveusoursinspleasedeliverusfromthisnightmarepleasegodgodgodgod

How long had he been here?

Two days? A week? A month? It couldn't have been any longer than six months, but with Gideon's brain in its current condition, the passage of time was almost impossible to gauge: hours felt like days and days blurred past like minutes, and in the very worst telepathic influxes, it was almost impossible to remember how he'd gotten as far as the shantytown. But he had to remember; losing his grip on the memory meant losing another piece of his sanity and he'd already lost far too much of it already to sickness and telepathy and all the indignities this hellhole could possibly throw at him.

So, he braced himself against the onslaught, and forced himself to recall how this had all began.

He remembered waking up in the Fearamid, human again after god only knew how many days spent as a tapestry. Bill had been hovering over him, laughing about new forms of entertainment he wanted to try: most of this "entertainment" had involved Gideon dancing barefoot on a floor of bullet ants, screaming himself hoarse as the vicious little insects stung him from heel to toe; after a while, his throat couldn't manage another sound, and he'd been forced to continue dancing in agonized silence until the paralytic venom kicked in, leaving him to slump to the floor – facefirst into the ants. The whole thing had ended with Gideon as a moaning, whimpering, twitching, incontinent heap that Bill had cheerfully shovelled into a cell for the rest of the day, set to do the whole grisly dance the next morning. Of course, once Bill realized that Gideon had lost all sensation in his feet, he lost interest in this particular show and decided to try something new.

Gideon's last clear memory – before his brain began turning itself inside out – was the sight of Bill Cipher floating towards him, his arms outstretched and fingers ablaze with electric-blue flames. "Don't struggle, Li'l Gideon," he'd purred. "I'm not going to hurt ya. I'm just helping you live up to your reputation… and while I'm about it, I'm giving you EVERYTHING YOU'VE EVER WANTED."

And in the next instant, Bill's daggerlike fingertips phased through his skull and sunk deep into his brain, and Gideon had been all but consumed by a searing, boiling agony that started somewhere in the very centre of his head and rippled down his nerves to every corner of his body. In hindsight, he realized that Bill had been directly altering the structure of his brain, prompting the growth of new lobes under a concentrated bombardment of Weirdness energy, developing new sensory horizons throughout his body while deliberately ensuring immediate trauma to his nervous system. The process of alteration lasted less than a minute, but it felt like eons to him, hundreds upon thousands of years spent burning alive in the depths of his own psyche.

Then, just as quickly as it had arrived, the pain had simply faded away, leaving Gideon slumped on the throne room floor, debilitated but alive.

"I GIVE YOU TRUE POWER," Bill had proclaimed triumphantly.

Gideon had opened his mouth to ask what the hell he was talking about – but before the first word could leave his mouth, the voices had descended upon him from all corners of the room, deafening him with their intensity and leaving him gripped by a new kind of pain entirely, a pain that transcended physical sensation and assaulted him in the depths of his own mind. Suddenly, the minds of everyone in the Fearamid were open to him, from the lowliest of the prisoners all the way up to Bill Cipher himself: their hopes and dreams, their hidden appetites and secret lusts, their ambitions and aspirations, their plans for revenge and screeds of self-loathing, every single thought – no matter how banal – was there for him to read in exacting detail.

For the first time in his entire life, Gideon really was a psychic, just as he'd pretended for so many years.

Bill had gifted him with the awful power of telepathy.

And it couldn't be switched off.

He couldn't even slow it down; it was always on, no matter how hard Gideon tried to focus his energies on silencing the deafening chorus of voices that assaulted him. With an effort of will, he could refrain from reading memories and deeper trains of cognition, but the surface thoughts of others could not be denied: as soon as a mind entered his presence, he would have no choice but to let its thoughts crash down upon him like a tsunami and try not to get washed away.

Those first few minutes almost killed him: reading the minds of slaves and prisoners and all manner of other human victims was torturous enough; reading the minds of the Henchmaniacs left him a drooling, sobbing mess; reading the mind of Bill Cipher almost killed him. The omnipotent triangle's merest thoughts had been too vast, too violent, too corrosive for him to bear, and had left Gideon crumpled on the floor, teetering on the brink of total psychic meltdown.

In probability, that was why Bill had exiled him to this frozen hellhole: he didn't want Gideon to die before the fun could really begin. Or at least, he had to assume so; he lost consciousness shortly after that first mind-reading had concluded, and his fledgling ESP had left him with a very shaky grasp on what was actually happening.

All he knew was that he awoke to the sound of howling wind and the first inklings of winter chill in the air, and opened his eyes just in time to see the Fearamid floating away – leaving him stranded in the middle of a vast snowfield, hemmed in on one side by immensely steep hills and on the other side by the ruins of a once-prosperous city. Or at least, he had to assume it had once been prosperous: it was almost too dark to tell at that point. In other regions of the conquered planet, the sky was red as blood and the sun glared down with all the intensity of Bill's own baleful gaze; here, night bloomed deeper and darker than ever before. And of course, he'd arrived right in the middle of a blizzard. Back then, Gideon had still noticed the cold, especially given that he wasn't dressed for the weather: in all his years, he'd never experienced a winter this cold, not even on the rare occasions when the central heating had failed; this was a frost that tore into him like a thousand tiny needles; this was so cold, it burned.

So, with only his tattered suit to protect him from the cold, he'd sought out shelter – and found it the form of the shantytown, by that stage little more than a tiny cluster of ramshackle buildings sitting right in the middle of the snowfield, its scrap-metal walls almost buried by the blizzard. Cold, hungry and disoriented, he'd made a beeline for the encampment as fast as his feet could carry him, not realizing his mistake until the first miserable thoughts of the inhabitants began echoing towards him. And by then, it was already too late to turn back, too late to go looking for another shelter amidst the hills or the ruins: turning back would mean freezing to death, alone and unmourned and likely never found until the thaw finally set in. So, Gideon had marched up to the shantytown gates, and despite the clamour of voices roaring from within, knocked on the door – and awoke the sleeping villagers. Though there'd only been about forty or fifty people living in the shantytown at the time, the sheer volume of wide-awake thoughts flooding in on him had been enough to leave him quivering in the snow, paralysed as the curious refugees hauled him inside.

They'd taken him in quite readily, apparently having never heard of Sheriff Gideon or anything that had happened in Gravity Falls; all they knew was that he was a child in need of help. True, they'd asked questions, but Gideon's telepathy had left him almost incapable of forming sentences and his throat hadn't quite recovered from his last screaming ordeal anyway; as such, the most he'd been able to provide them with was his own name and a few hoarse whispers before he'd lost consciousness again.

So, having no reason to suspect him, they'd given him a bed, some hot soup, and some reasonably qualified carers to look after him – "reasonably qualified" meaning that they'd once been parents and were desperate to ease the sense of loss, as Gideon soon learned firsthand. After a grand total of five minutes spent being incessantly mothered by the team of cheek-pinching babysitters assigned to him, he'd been about ready to lose his mind, but thanks to his throat, he couldn't tell them to leave him alone.

In between hugs and kisses, he'd tried to tell the villagers he couldn't stay with them: their thoughts were constant and merciless and tore into his head with all the ferocity of a vulture tearing into a carcass; just being around people hurt. But even once he was able to get around his throat problems by finding a notepad and pen, none of the refugees were willing to let a ten-year-old child out into the wilderness, so they ignored him, or told him he could "find your mommy and daddy later," completely overlooking the fact that he couldn't have given a damn about either of his parents. And when he tried to explain his newfound telepathy to them, they'd dismissed it as the symptoms of some kind of illness, telling him "you're just feverish, dear."

Two days later, he really was feverish. Not so surprising, considering that people spent most of their days huddled together for warmth and rarely had enough water to spare for showers or a decent waste disposal method. And because medical supplies were scarce and medical professionals even fewer, the most the refugees could do for him was to keep him rested and attended to at all times. So, Gideon had been left to suffer through his illness and his own telepathy, carefully secluded from all but the closest of his carers to prevent the disease from spreading.

For god only knew how long, he'd lain there, sweating, whimpering and sobbing as the illness raged over him and the thoughts of others rained down on him like hailstones. And all the while, everyone treated him with an almost sickening degree of care: on the rare occasions when foragers located medicine, he got the first dose, being easily the sickest of all the shantytown's residents. When the hunters found food, he had the lion's share – not that it mattered much. Most of his meals were puked up before the day was through. And yet, in spite of everything that this place threw at him – the ever-present starvation, the fights that sometimes broke out between the residents, the monsters that occasionally preyed on sleeping villagers, the diseases that had claimed so many lives among his fellow refugees, the all-consuming cold, and the influx of crushing thoughts – somehow, Gideon survived.

But was that any surprise?

After all the trouble Bill had gone to keep him here in the shantytown, he wasn't going to let him die – not when there was so much more suffering for him to endure.

Morepeoplealwaysmorenotenoughspacetoomanymouthtofeedtheyllbedeadsoonwiththerestofus

TheysayBillCiphersbeenseenintheareaohgoddoesthatmeanhesgoingtoputustoworkortortureusor

Gideonsstillsickpoorkidhemustbesoscaredofdyingwherearehisparentswishwecouldhelphimsomehow

WhatsinthiscrateantibioticsitsmarkedwiththeredcrossbutitcouldbeanythingreallybutIcanhopeforusall

After what felt like hours, the torrent of thoughts receded, as the hunters settled back into their huts and Gideon slowly acclimatized to the level of mental activity.

Bit by bit, he found himself gently drifting back towards reality – or what passed for reality these days. One way or another, he was out of his skull and back in the ramshackle little den that had been his home for however long it had been since he'd ended up here, surrounded on all sides by the all-encompassing aromas of chilled sweat, body odour, dried blood, fresh vomit, and backed-up toilets. Most of it had been produced entirely by him, but the clogged WC smell was from outside, the results of the latrine pits overflowing for the third day in a row. Gideon would have covered his nose if he'd had the strength to move his arms, but the latest bout of illness and telepathic trauma had left his muscles so rubbery from strain that he couldn't do much more than writhe and groan loudly.

Immediately, Amanda slid into view and began mopping Gideon's fevered with a damp cloth. "It's okay, sweetie," she soothed. "It's all going to be okay. You just lie back and relax: there'll be some medicine here for you soon, and you'll be up and about before you know it. Everything's going to be okay."

She smiled, obviously doing her best to reassure him. But Gideon could tell she could tell she was lying: even with so many trains of thought echoing in from outside the shack, he could clearly hear Amanda's mind whispering thefeversworsetodayhesevensickerthaneverbeforepoorchild.

Gideon let out an involuntary whimper of pain as the thoughts sliced deep into his brain, obviously loud enough for Amanda to hear, because she immediately leaned over and enveloped him in a hug.

"It's okay, Gideon," she whispered gently. "Mandy's here for you. You're gonna be just fine."

And after god only knew how many months of this treatment, Gideon wanted nothing more than to scream I don't care if you're are here for me, you condescending bitch! I'm not helpless, you silly cow: I've wielded powers beyond your wildest imaginings, I've summoned dream demons, I've piloted giant robots, I've been to prison and won over the inmates, I've decided the course of elections, and I've led an entire gang of Discount Auto Warriors to battle against Bill Cipher himself! At ten years old, I'm more of an adult than you'll ever be! I don't want people hovering over me every minute of the day, treating me like I'm a baby – I WANT SOME GODDAMN PEACE AND QUIET! For the love of Christ, just leave me alone! Go out and find some meds for my fever, go look for your missing kids, go find a comb for that godawful perm, just get the hell out of my life and while you're about it, tell all those mouthbreathing morons outside to drown themselves in the latrine!

But of course, he couldn't. He could only groan incoherently, and wince as his throat – rasped red-raw by screaming and infection – clenched in pain.

"I know, honey, I know – it hurts."

Not as much as you'd hurt if I could punch you in the face, he snarled silently.

There was a yell from somewhere outside, and Amanda glanced over at the door, eyes lighting up. "You hear that, Gideon?" she cooed. "They found something! The scavengers found some medicine! You're gonna be okay!"

Gideon, who'd heard people thinking about the medicine as soon as it arrived at the camp, rolled his eyes. In all honesty, Amanda's constant mother hen-clucking would have been more bearable if the woman had been lying through her teeth with every word, but telepathy put that perception to rest right away: she really did care, and the saccharine-sweet parental doting grated on nerves already scraped bloody by months of compressed torture.

"I'm just gonna go out and check to see if there's anything for the fever there," Amanda said hurriedly. "I'll be back in just a second, okay?"

And with that, she hurried away, leaving Gideon alone in the shack for the first time in hours; from outside, a commotion arose as the refugees began fussing over the contents of the newly-arrived medicine crates, most of the discussion almost indecipherable to the human ear. Gideon, however, could trace the path of every single conversation through the thoughts of the participants – whether he wanted to or not, as it happened.

So, desperate for something, anything to take his mind off the brain-pummelling onslaught of psychic noise, he did the least-advisable thing he could have possibly done under the circumstances: he pushed aside his blankets and got out of bed. It took ten whole minutes of marshalling his strength, but eventually he was able to force himself upright and off the mattress, tottering to his feet on legs that felt as limp and useless as deflated old tyres, and made a beeline for the basin and the mirror standing in the corner.

He knew he shouldn't be up and about in his current condition, but at this point, he hadn't gotten a good look at himself in days; true, narcissism should have been the furthest thing from his mind at that point, what with agonizing telepathy and crippling fevers bearing down on him, but he had to know just how badly the last few days had affected him – if he looked as bad as he felt, in other words.

Unsurprisingly, he looked like hell: staring back at him from the mirror was a withered ghost of his former self, a diseased pile of human wreckage haphazardly assembled into a rough approximation of a living being. His clothes – the once-immaculate baby-blue suit that he'd adored ever since he'd first set eyes on it – were ruined, hanging off his frame in tatters, the jacket torn down the back, his shirt befouled with puke and blood and god only knew what else, the trousers gone at the knees and shredded at the calves, his shoes ripped open (hence why they were currently sitting under the bed). In fact, the only reason why nobody had replaced them was because there simply weren't any remaining clothes to replace them with.

But as bad as the clothes looked, they were just intact enough for Gideon to realize that they no longer fitted him: he'd lost weight – a lot of it.

Low food supplies and the rigors of the fever had left him terrifyingly emaciated: his formerly plump frame had shrivelled away, leaving his limbs stick-thin mockeries of their former selves, his once-chubby neck a shrunken stalk surmounted by a jutting chin and a daggerlike set of cheekbones, his ample gut gone. Opening his shirt, he found that he could actually see his ribs standing out like grasping claws in the ruin of his chest, the skin of his torso drawn so tightly across them that it looked as though they might tear through his paper-thin flesh at the slightest touch. And where once his upturned nose had led some uncharitable mouth-breathers to compare him to a pig, now it seemed more like the nasal cavity of a skull; fitting really, given just how deathly the rest of him looked.

And his hair… he was going bald! His pompadour was gone! The elegantly-sculpted quiff that had won him the adoration of Gravity Falls was reduced to a series of greasy whips layered sparsely across his bare scalp! For several minutes, Gideon could only gape in horror at the ruins of his beautiful hair, frantically running his skeletal fingers through the wispy strands that were now all that separated him from total baldness. He'd had a feeling something was wrong when he'd noticed the clumps of hair he'd shed on the pillow, but he'd no idea it was this bad.

In the end, he was so shell-shocked that he almost didn't notice the words scrawled in yellow paint on the wall of the shack just above the mirror.

HERE'S A RIDDLE FOR YOU, GIDEON, the graffiti blared. HOW CAN SOMETHING SO POWERFUL BE SO HELPLESS? HOW CAN SOMEONE SO IMPRESSIVE BE SO IMPOTENT? HOW CAN YOU RISE SO HIGH AND FALL SO LOW? HERE'S A HINT: LOOK IN THE MIRROR.

There was no sign of who'd written this little message, but Gideon didn't need answers at that point: the yellow paint and the slight glow to the letters were all the confirmation he needed. Bill Cipher was having fun with this game, alright. But why suggest he was powerful when he quite clearly wasn't? What kind of power was this when he-

His eyes widened.

Bill, you brilliant, hateful, magnificent bastard.

This was the punchline to Bill's horrific joke: just as he'd mockingly promised, he'd given Gideon the means of living up to his reputation, and he'd given Gideon true power, just as he'd said he would. Here in the camp, he had an entire community of people who knew nothing of what had happened in Gravity Falls and were willing to accept him without question, an army of fawning cretins waiting on him hand and foot. With telepathy, an entire universe of empowering information lay at his fingertips, just waiting to be exploited: names, addresses, phone numbers, credit card details, bank accounts, tax returns, resumes, therapy sessions, criminal records, past infidelities and plans for the future, hidden fears and secret lusts, childhood dreams and desperate hopes, and so, so many scandalous double lives – everything from affairs to thievery, from fraud to murder. Here in this very shantytown were no than fifteen car thieves, three burglars, ten unpunished murderers, twelve tax cheats, nine adulterers, and a serial killer. Everyone in the camp had secrets, and they were all Gideon's for the taking.

And none of it – absolutely none of it – was worth a damn.

He couldn't profit from any of these details: he couldn't prove that he wasn't just delirious and hallucinating, he couldn't confirm any of his allegations without stand-up-in-court proof, and besides, what the hell could any of these people give him in return for his silence? He was already being given everything he could possibly need, and thanks to the shortages, there wasn't much to give anyway. More to the point, who in their right mind would care about things like tax fraud and bribery now? What pull did facts like credit card numbers have after the apocalypse? Even the army of adoring adults only cared about him because he was a sick child; none of them would actually take orders from him, even if he had the voice to give orders, and trying to blackmail any of them could only end with him getting kicked out – or killed.

Here he was, blessed with the kind of power he'd always wanted, gifted with abilities that could have made him a god among men before Weirdmageddon had dawned, but now the only thing they bought him was crippling headaches, hair loss, helplessness, and mind-numbing futility.

Just as well he didn't decide to give you Mabel, a smartassed voice at the back of Gideon's head remarked. You'd have probably ended up with her corpse.

Come to think of it, where was Mabel? Where was Dipper and Stan Pines and Ford and all the other participants of that failed assault on the Fearamid? Where were Ghost Eyes and the rest of his convict friends? Were they all being subjected to more of Bill's ghastly practical jokes?

And, now that Bill had delivered the punchline to his latest gag, what was in store for Gideon next?

As if in answer, there was a distant hubbub of activity from somewhere outside the shack, and the thoughts of the shantytown immediately erupted into motion once more, forcing Gideon to his knees as the blizzard of buzzing minds raged overhead.

Someonenewforchriststakeanothermouthtofeedanotherloseronagoddamnmountainoflosers

OhdammitandtheyvegotWOUNDEDtoowereallscrewedwoundedandUNCONSCIOUShowarewesupposedtodealwiththiscrap

Thefatonesstillgothiswallettooforsomereasonletstakealookhhmmbudgleeful

Caught in the act of bracing himself against the foot of the bed, Gideon paused in mid-cringe, hastily re-reading the last few seconds of mental outflow.

budgleeful

Bud Gleeful?

Father was here?

In spite of himself, Gideon staggered to his feet and shambled out through the shack door, into the snow-smothered morass of wrecked cars and abandoned luggage that composed the settlement's "town square." The force of the wind and the chill in the air almost sent him crashing to the ground again, but through an effort of purest will, Gideon forced himself to carry on; he had to investigate, to see what was happening for his own eyes – if only to assuage his curiosity, if only to convince himself that he was still capable of independent movement.

Just inside the crude scrap-metal gates, a gaggle of residents had gathered around a newly-arrived party of refugees, most of whom were almost unrecognizable as human beings under the heavy layers of furs and baggage they wore. However, perhaps five of their number were currently laid out on stretchers, having collapsed at some point over the course of their journey, and even at a distance, there was no mistaking Bud Gleeful's still-imposing bulk.

From what little he could tell, his father wasn't hurt or sick, though he'd clearly lost a few pounds after spending a few months roaming the wilderness – nowhere near as much as Gideon, lucky bastard. According to the other refugees, he'd just collapsed from exhaustion like the rest of the stretcher-bound, and a quick look at father's mind revealed thoughts pretty consistent with dreaming.

And yet, something was quite clearly wrong: his mind was… damaged, somehow.

The thought constructs that composed ordinary human personalities were hopelessly scarred and bruised, as if someone had taken a pair of ice cleats and gone tap-dancing all over those fragile blocks of psyche; true, there were signs that the wounds were starting to heal, but the damage was still nothing short of horrific. And his memories! The memory centres of his brain were riddled with hundreds of ragged holes, pockmarked with infected-looking craters disturbingly reminiscent of mouldering Swiss cheese. Anyone with this kind of psychic scarring had to be permanently brain damaged, if not harbouring a case of early-onset psychosis... and most bewildering of all, from what little Gideon could sense, this wasn't a new problem: father had been suffering from this condition for years.

Nothing could directly explain this condition: there was no memory of what had bored these holes in father's psyche. Indirectly however, Gideon found himself tracing the path of memories leading up to those gaping craters, and finding faint recollections of…

Himself.

In the lead-up to each psychic injury, father always had at least one negative memory of Gideon somewhere in the last twenty-four hours. Most were badly warped from the psychic scarring, and though there were recent signs of healing in process, they hadn't healed enough for father to properly remember. However, telepathy allowed Gideon to piece together these mangled bits of memories and bring them rippling into sharp relief: Gideon screaming at him, Gideon smacking him in the face, Gideon throwing something at the wall, Gideon threatening him – an endless collage of snapshots of Gideon's tantrums held together with diseased psychic tissue.

I did that to him, Gideon realized, with a thrill of horror. No, worse than that, I made him do it to himself.

Bill Cipher had talked a great deal about the Memory Gun in the days following his conquest of Earth, ranting and raving about how Stan and Ford had tried to use it over the course of a botched assassination attempt – even remarking on the brain damage it had done to Old Man McGucket over the years. Had father used the gun on himself, all to wipe his memories of Gideon's tantrums?

In the past, Gideon had been able to ignore the suffering of others with ease, even when it was paraded before him in detail that other people might find excruciating, but now that it was inside his own head and impossible to shut out, even he couldn't help but feel something almost akin to guilt. Was it guilt? It'd been so long since he'd last felt real remorse – he couldn't even remember when or even recognize it when he felt it, but…

Justkeepvacuumingjustkeepvacuumingjustkeepvacuumingjustkeepvacuumingjustkeepvacuuming

Gideon's eyes very slowly strayed to the crumpled figure lying prone in the next stretcher; drawing back the blanket, he caught a glimpse of prematurely-greying hair, and knew at once that this had to be his mother. From the looks of things, she was only just beginning to regain consciousness, hence the sudden noticeable rise in mental activity.

Justkeepvacuumingjustkeepvacuumingjustkeepvacuumingjustkeepvacuumingjustkeepvacuuming

Gideon shuddered. Why was she thinking like this? It didn't seem connected with reality in any way, unless-

Justkeepvacuumingjustkeepvacuumingjustkeepwaitwhereamiwhereisthis

Mother's eyes flickered open, and she very slowly sat up in the stretcher – and noticed Gideon.

Her eyes widened in horror.

OH MY GOD IT'S HIM NO NO NO OH GOD SOMEONE PLEASE HELP HE'LL HURT ME HE'LL HURT ME HE'LL HURT ME JUST KEEP VACUUMING JUST KEEP VACUUMING JUST KEEP VACUUMING!

Gideon lurched away from the stretcher, mind reeling from the psychic backlash. Outwardly, mother was still sitting perfectly still on the stretcher, her face a blank mask of fear; inwardly, her mind was howling in terror, flailing blindly as she struggled to get to grips with where she was and what she was seeing.

PLEASE LEAVE ME ALONE I'M SORRY I DIDN'T MEAN IT DON'T HIT ME I'M SORRY GIDEON I'M SORRY I'LL SHUT UP NOW I'LL JUST KEEP VACUUMING I WASN'T TOO LOUD WAS I JUST KEEP VACUUMING!

"There you are!" said Amanda's voice, somewhere back in the real world. "You're not supposed to be outside, Gideon, you're not even meant to be out of bed…"

But Gideon barely heard her; mother's telepathic screaming drew him in, a maelstrom of mental activity dragging him closer to its demented epicentre, shutting out all external stimuli along the way. He knew he should look away; he should leave and let mother's panic fade away before the pain in his head got any worse, but he couldn't bring himself to ignore the chaos unfolding before his mind's eye. He could see mother's memories, the same collection of abusive encounters that dad had exhibited, but far uglier and far more disturbing… and something was emerging from them, a single image getting clearer and clearer as mother's terror grew.

NO NO NO GET AWAY FROM ME I'M SCARED DON'T DO IT TO ME AGAIN PLEASE I'LL DO ANYTHING JUST KEEP VACUUMING!

And then the image popped into view: it was Gideon himself – as mother saw him.

Feelings surged from mother's brain into his, overwhelming the emotional centres of his brain and flooding his head with wild, unreasoning panic. All of a sudden, Gideon was screaming out loud, hollering as loudly as his tortured throat could handle.

"Gideon!" Amanda cried. "What's wrong? What happened?"

"Jesus Christ, he's bleeding!" someone shouted. "He must have bust his nose open-"

"Oh screw his nose, look at his eyes! He's bleeding from the eyes!"

"God, it's everywhere! It's coming out of his ears now!"

"Someone get a medic!"

"Gideon, talk to me – tell me what's the matter –"

He took a deep breath, finally managing to stop himself from screaming. He wanted to tell Amanda everything he'd just seen and heard; he wanted to tell her that it was his fault that they were trapped here; he wanted to tell her he'd never felt so guilty in his entire life and he desperately wanted to stop before his head exploded; he wanted to tell her that he wanted to be treated like an adult, just for a little while, just so he could feel as though he had a little power of his own; he wanted to tell her that he was tired and sick and miserable and missed everyone from Gravity Falls (hateful mouth-breathers that they were); he wanted to confess every confused, muddled thought in his head… and he wanted to tell everyone to stop thinking for just a minute because all the thoughts outside his head were now almost too much to bear.

But all that emerged was a hoarse croak of "Just keep vacuuming," before Gideon finally toppled over in a dead faint, landing bonelessly in Amanda's arms.

Sometime later, Gideon awoke to find himself back in his hovel, firmly tucked into bed and battered on all sides by the thoughts of the newly-settled arrivals. Little had changed since his last visit, except for the fact that his bedsheets were significantly bloodier than before, and Amanda had fallen asleep in a chair next to him – Gideon's right hand still reassuringly clasped in her hands.

Well, he thought, that was the next phase of Bill's joke, I suppose. Now I'm imprisoned alongside people whose thoughts are even more painful than most. What's next? A monster attack? A sudden change in climate? Capture by brain-eating aliens from the Inner Outer Reaches who want to make me their slave? Please don't answer this question.

Sitting up in bed, he immediately found himself struggling with the urge to cry; suddenly, everything he'd just experienced seemed too much for him, and he desperately wanted (A hug? Power? To pretend everything was normal? WHAT?!)

And then, just as he was trying to think of what he wanted, something directly beneath him crinkled loudly, and he shifted his seating to discover a rumpled paper hidden just under his pillow. It was in a sorry state after being creased and crushed under him, but it had clearly once been a piece of official-looking correspondence, complete with impressive letterheads and emblems. Most of these insignia were almost illegible, as if poorly photocopied or ruined by rain, and yet they seemed curiously familiar to Gideon. With his head in its current condition, he couldn't quite place it, but the emblems seemed to bring back vague memories of his time in prison… or was it the time of the election? He couldn't be sure.

Dear Gideon, it read.

Read this quickly. Bill's attention's been diverted while he plans out the next stage of your torture, but he won't be long; you'd best brace yourself for the worst – it's going to be nastier than usual this time, and you're still only at the threshold.

My point is this – try looking at your condition another way. Muscles tear when exerted, but eventually heal, stronger and better than ever before. The mind is a muscle as well. Bill doesn't think you can ever develop the psychic fortitude to withstand the thoughts of others, nor does he think the powers he forced on you could develop in unforeseen directions: he is wrong.

He wants you to succumb to despair, to wallow in self-pity. You must resist. Plunge yourself into the thoughts of others, endure the pain, and you will find greater vistas of control than he ever thought you could achieve… and perhaps much more than that.

Remember, Bill isn't totally omniscient anymore. Now that he's out of the nightmare realm and distanced from the Mindscape, he can only see in one direction at a time; remember how surprised he was by the Shacktron, and use that to your advantage.

Also, you mightn't be able to blackmail others, but you can certainly inspire them. Stop thinking of them as marks, and start thinking of them as people: you know their hopes and dreams, and you know how to motivate them. In time, you might have the makings of an army… but first you have to help them survive long enough to be armed, and find a way out of the snowfields. Here's a hint: you'll find it in the ruins of the city, where nobody would think to look for it.

Oh, and destroy this message once you've finished reading it.

From your friend and former opponent

Mr A

From somewhere outside, there was a scream and a deafening spate of gunfire – bringing with it a fresh surge of thoughts. And yet, even with the onslaught of mental activity, Gideon could only sigh deeply, quietly tearing up the letter as he did so.

"Here we go again," he grumbled. "The mind is a muscle, huh? Let's hope so, Mr A..."

A/N: This chapter's soundtrack choice is Tunguska Disguised by Garry Schyman.

Coming up next, Fiddleford's game!