A/N: Ladies and gentlemen, it's been a very trying start to the month; I've been ill these past few weeks, and it's been difficult to concentrate on writing. Suffice to say I've still got appointments with the doctor to get through, but in the meantime, I'm playing catch-up; thus, this somewhat belated chapter.
Brenne - I'm glad you like the story so far; not sure if we should be happy that Bill has another worthy opponent, considering that Bill seems to enjoy torturing his worthy opponents even more viciously than others - mentally or physically. Hope this chapter stays up to standards!
Kraven the Hunter: Suffice to say the original Pine Twins have got a lot of running to do before they outpace their demons, but in the meantime, I can definitely promise something Bill wasn't expecting in this chapter... and soon, some crossing paths!
Fantasy Fan 223: Yeah, Filbrick tends to inspire those kinds of nicknames! I'm sorry I couldn't update sooner, and with any luck I'll be able to get some extra chapters up before long. I hope you enjoy this latest chapter!
Northgalus2002: There will be some addressing of your last point in this very chapter, along with some intersection; I can't spoil too much at this stage, but I imagine that Robbie might be saved very easily... provided he can realize that he has a loophole of unimaginable power at his fingertips.
Guest: It's not a pleasant fact to reflect on, but consider that if the museum has wings on what might have gone right in Stan's life, there might just be a wing or two discussing how things could have been so much worse - a means for Self-Loathing to dissect every single decision Stan made and show him how they could have gone horribly wrong if not for sheer dumb luck. Or worse still, a wing showing how everyone else on the planet is faring at present. And as for a thousand more games: technically, not all the Zodiac participants are through with their current games, but once they're through, they'll be put back in the toybox (so to speak) so that Bill can expand his games to include the rest of the human race. Oh, and thanks for spotting the error; typos have a habit of creeping up on me at 2 in the morning.
Anyway, without further ado, the latest chapter: feel free to furnish me with your theories, critiques, recommendations, commendations and corrections. Read, review, and above all enjoy!
Disclaimer: Gravity Falls ain't mine. Also, there's several notable crossovers towards the end of the chapter; in the interests of avoiding spoilers, I can't reveal them here - but they're not mine either. For added fun, see if you get the references.
At some point along the road to Gravity Falls Dipper found himself huddled under a bridge, soaked to the skin and shivering pathetically as he wondered how long he'd been walking. Had it been a week? A month? Two months?
A year?
Time was almost impossible to measure out here. Much like reality itself, it moved in fits and starts, flowing like melting wax for one stretch of the journey and freezing hard as concrete the next. Sometimes, the blood-red sun remained fixed in the sky for what felt like eternity, never setting or budging; sometimes, Dipper found himself plunged into the moonless dark of perpetual midnight, immediately reducing to tripping over fallen logs and tumbling down hillsides until he finally found his way to the next region. And on some lonely stretches of wasteland, the sun rose and sank in moments, day and night blurring into an incomprehensible jumble of lights and shadows.
All Dipper knew was that he should have reached Gravity Falls by now: he'd recognized the usual landmarks he'd seen on the road leading up to the town, he'd even seen the beginnings of those distinctive woods in the distance, but somehow he never reached the town itself. Whenever he got close, the world in front of him shifted shifted, leaving him wandering across yet another collage of insane landscapes and madcap scenarios.
In the last few days, he'd travelled across spherical lakes floating a hundred feet above ground, forests of writhing tentacles sprouting from soil composed entirely of dead fish, ruined towns and cities transplanted from other countries, tremendous granite plateaus that eddied and rippled like water beneath his feet, marshlands quite literally alive with sapient mud and cloying arms of wet clay, vast bleak mountain ranges of ancient teeth that chattered and clicked with every step, rivers that flowed upwards into the sky and transformed into foul-smelling black bile that rained down upon vast living fields of conjoined human bodies that could only weep and tremble under the downpour, roads made of thousands upon thousands of parchment pages – each one inscribed with proclamation of Bill Cipher's glory, and dozens of other landscapes too complicated to describe.
And for every step of the journey, Dipper had been tired, cold, hungry, unwashed, bruised from head to toe, thoroughly lonely…
…and, of course, constantly transforming.
Every few minutes, he'd change shape, his body warping itself into a new and completely random form – sometimes useful for the job at hand, sometimes not: he'd been a lobster in the hovering lakes, he'd been a fish on dry land; he'd been a bird soaring over bottomless pits, he'd been a butterfly struggling to avoid a spider's web; he'd been a bicycle weaving down the ruined highway, he'd been a slug trying to cross a salt lake; he'd been a swirling cloud of mist pouring itself through a impassable barrier of grilles, he'd been an inflatable beach ball rolling through a pit of needles. Once, he'd even transformed into an anvil while trying to swim and sank straight to the bottom, only escaping when he'd finally shifted into the shape of an eel.
In the last few days, Dipper had been human, animal, mineral, vegetable and every little thing between, and by now, transforming didn't even hurt anymore. After his seventy-third shapeshift, Dipper's nerves just about switched off during transitions and left him almost completely numb to the sensation of skin turning inside out and bones twisting beneath his flesh. Nor did the weird business with clothes bother him all that much: once he was absolutely certain that his clothes would always reappear on him once he returned to human form, regardless of how badly they'd been damaged or how far away he'd lost them, his badly-bruised sense of dignity could finally rest easy. He didn't even mind the fact that there was nothing to eat but the bland lumps of gruel that Bill occasionally showered him with; after three days spent scavenging from garbage cans at the very beginning of Weirdmageddon, tasteless food was almost bearable – except of course for the days when Bill tried to surprise him with the starvation option.
No, what bothered him was the mental baggage.
The aftermath of his… encounter with Pyronica had been nothing short of agonizing, and even though his next transformation immediately healed the bloody tear on his forehead, it didn't numb the pain: for hours afterwards, every single nerve in his skull was on fire, every sensation in his face indicating that Pyronica somehow still there and still cutting him, to the point that Dipper couldn't sleep for the pain rippling through his bones. At times, it seemed so real that he had to run a hand along his face just make sure he wasn't bleeding. But once the physical pain had finally ebbed away, he soon found himself saddled with a fresh supply of fear, doubt and more than a little bit of frustration. Time and again, Dipper found himself lying awake at night, struggling with all the new thoughts rushing through his brain.
Why the hell did she need to take Pacifica's form? He'd wondered.
Why did she have to kiss me? It's bad enough that I still can't decide how I feel about Wendy, and now I'm confused about Pacifica as well!
Still, I enjoyed it. I enjoyed seeing her again. I enjoyed the kiss. And I… well, I think I like her, but… I mean, if she'd been the real Pacifica, it would have been okay, maybe, but… oh god, that's another nightmare to look forward to when I finally see the real Pacifica again and all I'll be able to think about is Pyronica cutting my forehead off.
If I see Pacifica again.
If I see anyone ever again.
No, no, no, don't think like that! Think positively! You've got to believe in yourself, otherwise… otherwise… oh lord, why do I have to keep thinking about this? Why can't I just sleep?
Not that it was easy to sleep even without all his myriad anxieties.
Bill had been true to his word when it came to the rules of his little game: the moment Dipper stopped moving for more than a minute, the transformations stopped being random and started getting really nasty. Once, he'd made the mistake of stopping to catch his breath after a long and arduous jog down a hillside of crumbling skeletons – and Bill had made his displeasure known immediately with the next transformation: he'd kept Dipper human this time, but aged him by almost two hundred years, leaving him a withered arthritic wreck with barely enough muscle strength to hobble over to the next region. By the time Bill had decided that he'd learned his lesson and finally returned him to normal, Dipper had broken both his legs after stumbling down the next hillside and been reduced to dragging himself painfully along the rough gravel path. And that had been one of the gentler punishments: the next time, Bill had taken the reverse approach by regressing Dipper to infancy and having him crawl through a field of crystalline splinters.
As such, sleeping was something of a trial: out on the wastelands, there weren't too many comfortable places to sleep anyway, but Bill made it all the more uncomfortable by making him transform the moment he lay down for a nap. Even if Dipper simply collapsed from exhaustion and slept where he fell, he would still change – usually in a way designed to wake him up. Sometimes, he'd age once again, leaving him burdened with a thousand new aches and pains and unable to sleep. Sometimes, he'd melt into a viscous, fleshy slop and be forced to gather himself into a puddle just so he could ooze to the next step of the journey. Sometimes, he shattered into a billion jagged pieces and was swept uncomfortably down the road by a gust of wind until Bill changed him into something different. Once, he even turned into a tree, forcing him to sleep standing up on his roots – and hope that nobody was looking for firewood that evening. Whatever the case, Dipper would be left humiliated and waiting to return to normal, while Bill and the Henchmaniacs laughed at him from on high.
The one exception to the rule was the journal work: now that Dipper had a journal of his own to write in, Bill expected him to document his own transformations in exacting detail, and would allow him some time to rest his feet and write down his observations – but only if he was actually writing. As such, if he ever wanted to spare his aching feet another fifteen miles on the road, he'd have to work his fingers to the bone in scribbling down everything he'd been in the last few hours, from transformation times to species details. Plus, if Bill wasn't satisfied with his work, he'd punish him by seizing control of the transformation process and sentencing him to an especially embarrassing series of shapes and forms.
After the first three punishments, Dipper had also learned that Bill wouldn't tolerate the book being lost either, and had been forced to steal a backpack from the collapsed remains of a department store just so he wouldn't end up leaving his journal at a campsite.
Still, Dipper might have been able to deal with it all – the monsters, the dangers, the horrors, the late-night doubts, the writer's cramp, the sore feet and the many, many humiliations – if he'd seen anyone alive, sane and human at any point in the last few days (or weeks or months or years). One single, solitary glimpse of another person would have made the whole thing worthwhile: quite apart from the fact that it would have been a welcome change from the loneliness, it would have been a sign that his current mission wasn't a complete and total snipe hunt, that he might actually find the other Zodiac participants and maybe, just maybe, find some way of forming the wheel and stopping Bill once and for all. But from what he'd seen so far, the wastelands had been completely uninhabited; no fleeing refugees, no encampments, no shantytowns, no pockets of resistance, no collections of toys gathered for Bill's amusement, not even a few desperate survivors clinging to life in the ruined townships he'd blundered through.
No Zodiac participants – apart from that one encounter with Pyronica-as-Pacifica, which served only to get his hopes up and leave him all the more miserable.
No means of saving the world and stopping Bill.
No sign of Mabel, Stan, Ford, Wendy or any of the others.
And no way of knowing if he'd ever see any of them ever again.
Needless to say, after everything he'd been through in the last few days (or weeks, or months or whatever), Dipper had just about given up on seeing another living soul.
Indeed, he'd gotten so used to being alone in the wasteland that he'd gotten into the habit of talking to himself, holding long and extremely detailed conversations with imaginary people as he struggled to finish his latest journal entry. For a while, he was even able to pretend that Mabel, Soos, Grunkle Ford and Grunkle Stan were there with him – up until he lost hope of ever seeing the genuine articles ever again, of course; after that, it was back to talking to thin, anonymous air.
As such, it came as something of a surprise when he staggered out of the cave he'd been sheltering in the previous evening – only to find that the landscape had changed yet again: yesterday, there'd been nothing but billowing deserts of sulphurous dunes glowing faintly under an ink-black sky without sun or stars. Now, just downhill from the cave entrance was a dirt road leading through a heavily-cratered stretch of grassland… and at the end of the road sat a colossal span of chain-link fence, topped with razor wire and thoroughly reinforced with cinderblocks, wrecked cars, felled trees and all manner of other junk. Beyond the fence, Dipper could just make out the shapes of guard towers, tents, prefab buildings, armoured vehicles and…
People.
From his current vantage point, Dipper could clearly recognize the shapes of human beings behind the fence – hundreds of living, breathing, perfectly normal human beings: soldiers and civilians, men, women, even children, all of them somehow eking out an existence here in the wasteland with only a reinforced gate and the heavily-armed sentry towers between them and the madness outside.
And yes, this camp was almost certainly another one of Bill's sick jokes – maybe some kind of illusion, or maybe everyone behind the wall was really a monster disguised with human skin – but at that point, Dipper hadn't seen another living human being since the start of Weirdmageddon, and he was almost past caring… and even if he hadn't been almost out of his mind with loneliness, he'd seen just how many civilians were down there. He couldn't guess at where they'd all come from, but some of these people might be from Gravity Falls; it wasn't guaranteed, but perhaps they would know where the Zodiac participants were being held… or perhaps this place was actually one of the prisons that Bill had boasted of, and one of the Zodiac participants was hidden somewhere in the camp.
It was a stretch, true, but right now Dipper didn't have any other option. So, pausing only to hastily rub the sleep from his eyes, he began making his way down towards the fence – mentally babbling a litany of desperate pleas for good luck as he descended.
Please be friendly, please be friendly, please be friendly, he begged silently. Please don't mistake me for one of Bill's monsters. Please don't shoot me. And please, please please please please, don't react badly when you see me shapeshifting.
But funnily enough, Dipper didn't shapeshift at all in the journey from the cave to the fence. At first, he couldn't guess as to why, but then he felt the distinctive spark of Weirdness in the air around him, a telltale sign of Bill working his influence in a very direct way.
Bill was suppressing Dipper's transformations.
Why?
More importantly, did Dipper really want to know?
He shook his head, and tried to put such concerns out of his head for the time being. It didn't work, but it at least calmed him down just enough to call out to the nearest sentry tower without his voice wobbling out of control.
Immediately, Dipper found himself being held at gunpoint by the sentry while three other soldiers crept outside to survey him for any sign of Weirdness. For ten heart-stopping minutes, Dipper was forced to stand perfectly still while they checked both his eyes with a flashlight, studied his fingers for claws, rolled up his sleeves to look for scales and other signs of monstrous skin, and even measured his heart rate – apparently just to make sure that he had a heart at all. Fortunately, Dipper's regenerated birthmark didn't draw too much notice: after all, the guards were clearly tired, desperate and at the end of their collective rope, but they weren't stupid.
None of the soldiers asked him any questions, nor were they interested in knowing who he was or what he was doing there – and as it eventually became clear, they didn't need to. After all, just about every single refugee that had accepted sanctuary at the camp had the same story: Weirdmageddon had ruined their lives, destroyed their homes, taken away their families, and left them fleeing aimlessly across the Wasteland of the Weird in search of safety for weeks on end before finally stumbling into the encampment. So long as they were human and unarmed, they were welcome in the camp for as long as supplies remained. Unfortunately, this meant that the soldiers were pretty vague about exactly where the refugees had come from.
Still, that didn't stop Dipper from asking questions of his own – not that he had much success.
"Gravity Falls? Oregon?" one of the men (a sergeant) grumbled wearily. "Kid, when Weirdmageddon began, we were slap-bang in the middle of Colorado, and since then we've been teleported everywhere from Texas to Dubai and picked up over two thousand new refugees along the way. So tell me, after all those places and all those people, do you really think we'd notice refugees from some podunk town in the middle of goddamn nowhere?"
"But it's important!" Dipper exploded. "I'm trying to find people who can help stop Bill-"
His response was almost immediately drowned out by an earsplitting burst of mirthless laughter of the soldiers.
"Stop Bill Cipher?" echoed the sergeant. "Oh, that's rich. That's something new right there. Guess you missed the sight of the Rift spitting back all the nukes we launched at it, huh? Or maybe you just slept through the day that giant goddamn triangle took a bite out of the planet? You remember that?"
"This is different! There's a way of stopping him – it almost worked when me and my friends tried it, and if I can just find them again-"
"Kiddo, I don't know who the hell your friends are or what you think you almost got working; I don't know and I don't care, 'cuz whatever it is, it's not gonna work. Comprende? You're – what? – twelve years old-"
"Thirteen."
"Shut up and listen!" the sergeant bellowed. "Kid, you are a fart in the wind at this point. If you think some mouthy little bastard like you's gonna win out against Bill Cipher when the best and brightest of the US army couldn't, you might as well stay outside. See, back at the start of this nightmare, we had a full complement of men, machines, supplies, a functional CO. Since then, we've lost about half our troops, our jeeps and tanks are falling apart faster than we can fix 'em, we're down to our last drops of fuel, we've had to top up the rations and ammo with what little we can steal from the ruins, and our commanding officer's barely sober long enough to issue a single order. Right now, we're barely managing to keep all these refugees fed, and with our captain bagsying all the morphine we've got left, the medics can barely keep them stable if they get sick… and right now, the officers are only just keeping the rest of the base from mutinying. You think there's hope of winning out here? Get that shit right outta your head. You wanna stay in this camp? Keep your nose clean, do as you're told, line up for rations when reveille sounds, don't start fights, and don't get anyone's hopes up with anything about Zodiac circles or six-fingered men or whatever. And while you're at it, stay clear of the mourners near the hill if you value your health. Clear?"
Dipper sighed. "Crystal."
"Fantastic. Now go on inside: look for your friends if you think it'll make your life a little easier, but if you try to get these people's hopes up and lead them on some doomed rebellion, I swear to god I'll shoot you myself."
There was a pause, as the sergeant issued a series of complicated-looking hand signals to the watching sentry tower. A moment later, the gates swung open, allowing Dipper into the encampment beyond.
"Welcome to Fort Acheron, kiddo," said the sergeant, as the gate clanged shut behind him.
As Dipper very quickly learned, Acheron was just one of the many names this place had earned in the days since Weirdmageddon had begun… and taking a good look at the cluttered grounds, it was no surprise that most of those names seemed related to Hell in some way. What had seemed to be a well-organized camp from his position at the cave entrance was now unveiled as a shambolic mess: vehicles left where they'd broke down, prefabricated buildings cratered and scarred from firefights, tents hanging in charred tatters, the ground strewn with garbage, engine parts, and "leakages" from the portable toilets. Needless to say, the place stank of raw sewage and rotten food.
And as for the people who actually lived here, it seemed that the guards he'd met at the door were the most presentable of the bunch: the soldiers on duty were on the verge of collapsing from exhaustion, most of them kept awake through instant coffee, energy drinks, and "glass," whatever that meant. Meanwhile, off-duty soldiers huddled in twitchy, paranoid mobs all over the compound, smoking hastily-rolled cigarettes and pointing loaded guns at anyone who dared approach them; many were drunk, swigging vigorously from bottles of scotch. Most of the thousand-strong civilian populace kept to themselves, never leaving their tents unless they had no other choice, often shying away from the entrances whenever a soldier walked by.
At the very heart of the camp, a massive hill towered over all the huddled masses. According to the few soldiers who were willing to answer Dipper's questions, it hadn't been there before Weirdmageddon, but had simply grown there over of the course of the camp's journey across the world. Now, every single refugee not hiding now clustered around that colossal hill in a ring, seated on the lower slopes in their hundreds – almost as if they were guarding it. None of them spoke; they just sat there, heads bowed, barely reacting to anyone or anything that approached. Every now and again, a few of them would get up and return to their tents, usually with fresh tears on their faces; every now and again, a few newcomers arrived to replace them.
And right at the top of the hill, a man sat cross-legged at the very apex of the mound, an inky-black silhouette seemingly always backdropped by the angry red sun.
According to the soldiers, the people who sat around the hill were those refugees who'd been overwhelmed by everything they'd seen since Weirdmageddon: called "mourners" for lack of a better term, they were all but catatonic from the horror of what they'd witnessed, the hill was the only place where these unfortunates could find solace – among others of their kind. There, they sat in silence, sometimes weeping but rarely loud enough to be heard, until the time came for them to return to their tents, where they retreated back into themselves once more. But perhaps it was something worse than grief, some of the soldiers suggested: maybe it was the effects of Weirdness, some mental mutation cooked up by Bill just to make the lives of the refugees a little bit more hellish. Some weeks ago, base personnel had attempted to break up one of the gatherings, only to end up with a riot on their hands – plus three paralysed infantrymen; these days, nobody dared disturb the hillside gatherings, not even to ask how long the mourners would be there.
As for the man atop the hill, nobody knew what to make of him. He'd been there ever since the gatherings had begun, and had never once budged from his seat: he was always there, day or night, never once pausing to eat, sleep, or answer any of the instructions shouted at him via megaphone. Though curious, none of the officers had been able to question him – not without risking the wrath of the mourners sitting below him – so once they were certain that he wasn't intending to hurt anyone or spread Weirdness throughout the camp, they'd let him be.
Everyone advised that Dipper stay well away from the mourners while they were at the hill. So, with little reason to disagree, he went on asking the other refugees if they'd seen any of his friends, careful to avoid mentioning the Zodiac or any plans of stopping Bill. Unfortunately, after almost three hours of querying, he was forced to leave the tent city empty-handed: nobody had seen anything of Mabel, Grunkle Stan, Grunkle Ford or any of the others, and more depressingly, nobody had even heard of Gravity Falls. In fact, all he'd heard were the many legends of Bill Cipher being passed around the campfires – the tales of the victories he'd won over Earth, the whispered speculation on his origins, and the horror stories of what he'd done to those who dared oppose him. A few particularly crazed-looking storytellers even claimed that Bill had conquered Heaven and taken God's place; and some claimed that Bill was God and always had been, that Weirdmageddon was the righteous judgement that all sinners would have to accept for the rest of eternity.
In the end, Dipper couldn't listen to another word, and took to wandering the camp at random in the desperate hope of finding a familiar face. But after well over an hour of fruitless searching, his mind was so numb that he didn't notice the sudden absence of Weirdness in the air around him; nor did he realize that he'd begun to stray too close to the hill – and by the time he didn't notice, one of nearest mourners had already reached out and grabbed him by the sleeve.
"What are you?" hissed the mourner.
"Bwuh?"
"What are you?"
"I-I-I… what are you talking about?" Dipper stammered. "I'm human, just like you!"
"I saw your eyes change colour!"
Dipper froze. Too late, he realized that Bill was no longer suppressing his transformations; too late, he realized that the demented nacho had been biding his time for the punchline of his latest sick joke… and now, the stage was set for what only be a lynching courtesy of an angry mob.
"Look, this is a mistake," Dipper insisted desperately. "You have to believe me-"
"I saw you!" the mourner shrieked. "I saw you! You changed! You're one of his, aren't you? You belong to Bill!"
By now, several other mourners had awoken from their catatonia and were starting to take notice of the commotion; a few were already on their feet and edging closer to get a good look at Dipper's eyes, and some appeared to be reaching for what looked suspiciously like concealed weaponry.
Oh no, no, no, no, no… Dipper's mind raced wildly for a solution. Gotta keep moving: if I transform into something useful – a hare, a bird or something – I should be able to get away and after that all I need to do is get out of this camp and keep running.
Unfortunately, this proved to be easier said than done: not only had the closest mourner already shifted his vicelike grip from Dipper's sleeve to his shoulder, several others were already closing in to cut off his escape; even if he could struggle free somehow, even if he did transform into something halfway useful, he'd only end up blundering right into another wall of angry mob. And worse still, the noise was drawing more attention from the surrounding crowd as time went on: even with so many people in the way, Dipper could clearly see mourners across the hill rising from their positions to get a good look at him, crowding closer and closer to box in the threat that had appeared in their midst. And even if only a few of them weren't armed, the end result would be the same: if any of them saw Dipper transform, they'd tear him to pieces.
And just as Dipper thought the situation couldn't possibly get any worse, Bill Cipher's laughing voice echoed across reality. "It's that special time again, ladies and gentleman!" he shrieked. "It's audience participation time!"
Somewhere in the distance, a cheesy-sounding game show jingle sounded, and the Henchmaniacs went wild.
"This time, folks, we turn over control of Ol' Pine Tree's transformations to the subconscious minds of any and all human beings in the immediate vicinity. Now then, what could all these people possibly be thinking of – apart from me, of course? What could a bunch of grief-crazed delusional maniacs have on their puny little minds? What could they want more than anything else in the world? Let's find out!"
The game show jingle rang out again… and then, Dipper felt himself change, his entire body shifting and warping as a fresh burst of Weirdness swept over him like a tsunami, this time driven by the thoughts of the nearest mourner. He could tell he was transforming into another human being, but he couldn't guess precisely who, but judging by the way the world around him seemed to be getting progressively larger, his new form had to be either unusually short or just very young. Seconds later, the transformation came to an end, and the mourner holding his shoulder reared back in astonishment. "Bobby?" he whispered, eyes wide and disbelieving.
"I'm not-" Dipper clapped a hand to his mouth, realizing that he was now speaking with someone's else's voice. By the sounds of things, his new form couldn't be much older than five years old. Nonetheless, he tried again: "My name's Dipper," he lisped childishly. "I'm not-"
But the mourner hadn't heard him, or more disturbingly, he simply hadn't been interested in listening. Swatting aside the other mourners who were already reaching out for him, he seized Dipper around the middle with a shout of "Bobby!" gathering him into a bone-crushing hug as he did so.
"No, I'm-"
"Oh god, I'm so sorry, I'm sorry, Bobby, I couldn't save you, I couldn't save you," the man wept.
Dipper was getting ready to make himself heard over the clamour of the crowd, when another pair of hands seized him by the shoulders and dragged him out of the first mourner's arms. He had just enough time to recognize that his newest captor was a woman and speaking a language that he had never heard before; then, another wave of thought-driven Weirdness swept over him and set off another transformation: Dipper grew dramatically, his limbs sprouting outwards as his aging process accelerated through childhood, adolescence, and all the way into adulthood.
Halfway through the process he tumbled out of the woman's arms and landed flat on his face… and when he rose again, he did so with the body of a grown man. Immediately, the woman lunged forward with an untranslatable shriek, kissing him fiercely on mouth, weeping in mingled grief and joy as she did so. Dipper tried to wriggle away, tried to explain to the woman that he wasn't really her husband – or whoever he was supposed to be – but even if she could understand English, it was clear that she wasn't listening.
Another mourner dragged him away, and this time the transformation was even quicker: in the space of a second, Dipper had become a woman, perhaps Wendy's age – and judging by those anguished shouts, he was now identical to this newest mourner's dead sister. Once again, he tried to explain himself, but another mourner lunged towards him, kicking off another transformation… and all of a sudden, the entire crowd was reaching out for him, their thoughts raining down on him so violently that Dipper found himself lurching from one transformation to the next, one form melting into the other so rapidly that it was a marvel that any of the mob could get a grip on him. And all the while, Dipper was trying desperately to raise his voice over the roar of the crowd even as his vocal cords twisted his voice out of shape.
"Don't bother trying to explain things to them, Pine Tree," Bill cackled, his voice echoing inaudibly across Dipper's mind. "They'll never hear a word you say, not with the way they've been broken. See, I've made sure they completely disengaged from reality – they don't even recognize the fact that you're a shapeshifter. All they know is that their friends and loved ones are gone, and every time they close their eyes, they see those deaths happen again. See, you're not a shapeshifter to these people: you're the only way they'll ever get their nearest and dearest back in their lives… and all of them want you. What do you suppose they'll do? Oh, I know…"
Bill laughed again, demented giggling forcing its way across Dipper's nerves like fingernails on a chalkboard. "TUG-OF-WAR TIME!"
Hands reached out from the crowd, fastening on Dipper's shoulders, clamping down on his arms and legs, grabbing him by the hair, seizing him with every handhold they could find. Frenzied voices cried out the names of lost friends and families, growing ever-more deranged with every passing second; maddened, bloodshot eyes covetously scrutinized his rapidly-shifting features from every angle, searching frantically for dead faces; hands clamped down tighter and tighter, fingernails gripping tight enough to puncture skin and draw blood. More and more greedy hands seized him, one half of the crowd trying to drag Dipper in one direction even as the other half dried to drag him in another – and an ice-cold droplet of terror landed in the pit of Dipper's stomach as he realized that this could only end with the mob literally tearing him apart.
I'm gonna die, he thought. Oh god, I'm gonna die, I'm gonna die, I'm gonna die, I'm gonna die…
Worse still, unless this constant shapeshifting made him literally invincible, it was going to take a very long time to expire.
Now in a blind panic, Dipper started to scream, hoping against hope that someone sane might be able to hear him and come to the rescue. But even if the roar of the crowd wasn't drowning him out, the first thing his rescuers saw would be him, still transforming: he'd be stumbling from one lynch mob to the other.
One way or the other, he was dead.
Dipper closed his eyes and waited for the end, hoping against hope that he wouldn't notice the pain. He hadn't entertained too many thoughts about death in his lifetime, even during the mecha-fight with Gideon or the droid-flight over Gravity Falls, but he'd hoped that he'd be able to go out bravely, or at the very least that he'd die doing something important and meaningful. But here he was, about to be ripped to pieces by an angry mob of mind-warped unfortunate, screaming futilely for help and trying not to hate himself for how little he'd accomplished since Weirdmageddon. He hadn't even gotten as far as finding his friends, let alone rescuing any of them, and all his hopes of remaking the wheel had come to nothing. And now more than anything else, he wished that he'd said goodbye to his friends when he'd had the chance.
I'm sorry, Mabel, he thought.
And then, just as he thought his limbs were about to start snapping off, the air was split by an ear-shredding burst of sound, louder than an air-raid siren and twice as high-pitched. And in its wake, the entire hillside was plunged into deathly, impenetrable silence.
Bill Cipher blinked in astonishment, not entirely comprehending what he'd just witnessed. Gradually, he realized that whatever had just happened to his vision of Fort Acheron, he was now missing a plaything.
"What the hell?" he muttered.
This wasn't possible. He knew for a fact that nothing should have gone wrong: he'd set the stage perfectly, tweaked the minds of the participants gently enough to turn them obsessive – he'd even ensured a surge of near-constant transformation just so Pine Tree wouldn't actually suffer any lasting harm. It should have been logically and illogically impossible for the little bastard to have gone anywhere, not with Bill's power so thoroughly focussed on the area.
He looked again, focussing his all-seeing eye on the hill at the centre of the fort, waiting for his plaything to reappear amidst the mourners. But no matter how many times he scrutinized the camp's layout, no matter how many layers of existence he examined one after the other, Pine Tree remained completely invisible. More than a little peeved at the disruption, he tested local reality for any signs of teleportation or open portals; still nothing. Now downright infuriated, he reached with his senses for any sign of his own handiwork, looking for the telltale weirdness that defined Pine Tree's shapeshifting abilities; finding none in the area, he expanded his search to the entire planet, sure that he'd find something if he drew back his focus – but once again, he turned up nothing.
Dipper was gone.
For a full thirty seconds, Dipper could only lie where the mob had dropped him, trembling and marvelling deliriously at his sudden good luck. He wasn't even shapeshifting anymore: the moment the noise had rung out across the hill, he'd returned to his own shape and stopped transforming… but this time, Bill wasn't in control; he could tell as much by the lack of Weirdness in the air. Something else was at work.
He looked expectantly up at the mob, and saw that they were all falling to their knees, pressing their faces into the dirt in what could only be purest fear – or reverence... and all of them were now facing the hilltop. A swift glance in the direction of the peak revealed that the mystery man sitting atop it was gone.
"What's this?" said a pleasant voice. "A lost little lamb, I take it?" A ripple of otherworldly laughter split the air. "This is not the way back to your flock, little one."
A hand glided down from above and seized Dipper by the right arm, hauling him upright with an eerie, almost arachnid grace. As he was on his feet, Dipper looked up to thank his rescuer, and immediately himself staring in bewilderment at the figure that now towered over him: at first, he seemed to be nothing more than a shadow painted on the air, a pitch-black shape cut into the fabric of reality just in front of him. But then he blinked, and suddenly he realized that he was looking at what appeared to be a relatively ordinary human being… but perhaps "ordinary" wasn't the right word to apply for the man standing before him.
Whoever he was, he was very tall: Manly Dan Corduroy himself would have barely been at eye-level with the stranger's collarbone, and the man's unusually spindly build made him seem taller still; an almost tentacular set of legs supported an improbably narrow torso, augmented by long, willowy arms tipped with hands like giant spiders. Of course, skinny frames and wasted bodies weren't unusual around here what with all the food shortages, but this man didn't look starved or even vaguely weak; if anything, he looked as though he'd wandered through Weirdmageddon completely unscathed: his tailored black suit and crimson overcoat were immaculate, untouched by the ravages of the wastelands, and his shoes looked as though they'd been freshly polished. His swarthy, handsome face was clean-shaven, painstakingly-groomed, almost regal in bearing, and graced with an effortless smile – complete with perfect phosphorescent white teeth.
Immediately, Dipper's mind veered into well-justified paranoia: maybe Bill had conjured up this apparition just to add an extra layer of confusion to this latest game. Maybe this was another one of the Henchmaniacs disguised as a human being. Or maybe this was Bill himself, having conned some unfortunate human into surrendering his body for possession.
But if that's the case, then why do his eyes look so… normal?
"Well now!" said the mystery man. "You're a little worse for the wear, aren't you? Tell me, have you eaten today?"
Dipper could only gawp in confusion. "I… what?" he gibbered.
"Didn't think so." With another ripple of unearthly laughter, the man turned back towards the hilltop. "Come along," he said, as he strode away. "You're welcome to lunch on the hilltop – my treat!"
"B-b-but… but what did you do? Why aren't I transforming anymore? A-and what about all these people?" Dipper indicated the mourners around him, all of whom were still silently kneeling before the man in obeisance. "What did you do to them?"
"Nothing. People always do that around me, and they always walk away wondering why. Just part of my nature, I suppose. As for your… polymorphic tendencies, I suppose you could say I have a gift for the old works: I know my shapeshifters, and I know a few tricks for settling them down – in flesh and spirit. Now come along, young man: I've a feast waiting on the hilltop, and after all those weeks spent eating nothing but gruel, I think you'll appreciate a picnic!"
And in spite of himself, Dipper found himself following the man up the hill: though still immensely suspicious of this stranger, the promise of food had caught his attention, and more to the point he didn't much fancy waiting around for the mob to stop genuflecting – or for the guards to take an interest. So he hurried after the man with great difficulty, tripping over potholes and stumbling into kneeling mourners as he sprinted; already advantaged by a headstart, the man's long-legged stride allowed him to easily outpace any pursuers, and by the time Dipper had reached the summit of the hill, the stranger was already sitting crosslegged atop it.
Moments later, the food appeared on the hilltop in front of him: an entire platter of sandwiches, a bowl of potato salad, a roast chicken, a freshly-baked pie, a massive bowl of fruit, and enough bottles and cans to sink a ship.
"What are you waiting for?" the man laughed. "The next apocalypse? Dig in!"
Tentatively, Dipper reached for the nearest sandwich and took a less-than-microscopic bite, readying himself for something unpleasant – rotten meat, mouldy bread, poison, rusty nails, or anything else that would readily identify this sudden reprieve as another one of Bill's sick jokes. But instead, all he encountered was a thick filling of what appeared to be tuna, or something similar; it was definitely fish and it was definitely appetising, that much was clear. Dipper took another bite… and another… and another. Before he knew it, he'd finished the sandwich and was mowing hungrily through the next.
"You like it?" said the man. "You should: it's the best in the multiverse. Fresh from Innsmouth."
Dipper paused in mid-bite, and realized that he'd been delayed from asking a rather important question – several, in fact. "Who are you?" he asked.
The mystery man shrugged. "A strange man sitting on a hilltop," he said laconically. "What's wrong? Don't you trust your senses?"
Oh brilliant. A comedian. Just what I needed.
Dipper sighed. "What's your name?" he asked, wearily.
"Do you have a few spare hours? Names are a resource I possess in abundance."
"Look, what name do you happen to be using right now?"
"Ooh, even trickier when you get down to the subject of avatars; I've lost track of them, and every single one has its own collection of names and titles – not all of them safe for human ears. Still, I suppose I might as well settle for one as long as we're still chatting: you can call me Randolph Carter."
"…but that's not your real name, though, is it?"
"Nope," said Mr Carter. "As a matter of fact, it's the name of a dear friend of mine. Still, I doubt he'll mind if I borrow it: he's been dead for more than half a century by now, and he's well past objecting to anything I do with his mortal remains, be it name or essential salts."
Dipper considered this for a moment. Then, as he idly helped himself to a slice of pie, he belatedly remembered his manners: "My name's Dipper-"
"-Pines," Mr Carter finished smoothly. "I know. Cute nickname by the way, Mason."
Dipper almost choked on his pie. "How did you know that?" he said, once he had finished coughing.
"Let's just say that I've been keeping an eye or fifteen on you since I arrived here; I admit, I'm a little new to the neighbourhood, but I try to learn a little bit about the most important figures in town before I start settling in. Now, I assume you want to know why I rescued you, yes?"
Dipper paused, once again toying with the idea that this strange man might just be another one of the Henchmaniacs sent to mess with him, before finally helping himself to a piece of chicken, followed up with a healthy swig of Pitt Cola. "That'd be pretty helpful, yeah," he muttered, trying not to feel any more ridiculous than he already did.
"I don't normally do favours for anyone other than the members of my immediate family, and sometimes not even for them, but it so happens that you have friends in high places, Dipper Pines. A certain entity offered a substantial boon in return for giving you a brief respite from Bill's games, just long enough to let you catch your breath and have a halfway decent meal. Oh, and our mutual friend also wanted you to have this..."
He held out a plain white envelope. Puzzled, Dipper opened it, and was immediately greeted by an official-looking letter – smudged, blurred and badly-photocopied by the looks of things, but while the official insignia and letterheads were incomprehensible, the text was still perfectly readable.
Dear Dipper
I know you've little reason to trust me or the man who delivered this message, but please read carefully. I'm trying to engineer a jailbreak for you and your friend, but Bill's security measures are a little too effective at keeping me out… and Bill's selected you for something awful. He hasn't been too specific in his ranting, but I can already tell it's going to be uniquely sadistic.
All I can do is beg you to stay strong: Mabel, Soos, Wendy Stan, Ford and the others are still alive, and a few are even on the brink of freedom – though they don't know it yet. Someone will be coming to rescue you from Bill's newest game, but until then you must endure the torment. Do not despair: hope still remains for your world and your people; Bill might seem invincible, but his own games conceal the seeds of his undoing. He'll try to turn you against your friends, one way or another: keep that in mind when the next stage of his game begins, and try to avoid mentioning me or the messenger if you can help it.
Oh, and never forget your curiosity. It might very well save you in the long run.
Good luck
Mr A
"Who's Mr A?" Dipper asked, as he reached for another chicken leg.
"Don't you remember? You've met him before."
"I have?"
"Well, you may have," admitted Mr Carter. "Timelines are a little bit on the uncertain side at present: I suspect Mr A had that incident excised before Weirdmageddon began, just in case Bill started sniffing around the timestream. I doubt you'd forget the whole 'sixty degrees that come in threes' business otherwise."
"Sixty degrees that come in threes…?" echoed Dipper. The words sounded uncannily familiar, but he couldn't work out where he'd heard them before; try as he might, he couldn't match the words to any specific memory, and all he ended up with was a strange and unshakeable sense of déjà vu.
"As for who Mr A is… well, our mutual friend wants to stay under the radar at present, hence why he's only been able to communicate by letters – and only while the Big Bad Triangle's got his eye pointed elsewhere. See, Mr A doesn't have the advantage of stealth, not like me: Bill's seen him before, and he's gotten very paranoid about what our mutual friend might do to him, so he altered the substance of this reality to lock out most of Mr A's power. As of right now, our mutual friend can only draw on a fraction of his true omnipotence, and he can only act when Bill's not paying too much attention to a game in progress; unfortunately, you're one of his favourites, and you've had an eye on you almost every hour of the day for the last few weeks. So, Mr A asked me to act in his stead."
"What do you mean 'the advantage of stealth'? No offence, but I don't think anyone would have missed all the kneeling and praying back there, not if Bill's watching me as closely as you say."
Mr Carter chuckled. "You really don't think much of me, do you? You're still wondering if I'm one of the Henchmaniacs, or perhaps even Bill himself. Well, that's fair enough. Allow me to clear things up for you…"
Suddenly, Dipper was no longer looking at Mr Carter, tall and eerily thin but by all other appearances human: suddenly, he found himself once again face to face with a living shadow, a pitch-black agglomeration of void in the shape of a human being sitting on goatlike hooves. A moment later, there was a flickering in the air and suddenly the shadow was now a monstrous winged creature, dominated by a single burning, three-lobed eye; then a mass of writhing serpents, each one tipped with a mass of jagged fangs; then a cackling reptilian beast with a tentacle sprouting where a head should have been; then a billowing putrescent fog.
A thousand forms passed in seconds, and at the end of it all, Dipper could only cover his eyes and try to ignore the shrieking pain now rippling across his skull.
"Satisfied?" Mr Carter asked expectantly. He was human again – or at least, he appeared to be at present.
"What…" Dipper swallowed hard, trying to steady his pounding heart. "What just happened?"
"You saw a few of my other corporeal forms – a few split-second glimpses, just to make sure you didn't go completely mad at the sight of them. Still, you did well: others would have soiled themselves in terror, but you seem to have gotten away relatively clean. Well, that's to be expected given just how much you've changed over the last few weeks."
"But what are you? If you're not with Bill, then where did you come from?"
"Another world. Another Earth. Another reality. You see, Bill's not as careful as he thinks: he locked out Mr A easily enough, but he never imagined that other entities might take an interest in this dimension. You see, Dipper, the Rift was originally meant to be a straightforward bridge between the Nightmare Realm and yours, but as reality weakens and Weirdness blossoms, things develop beyond even the great Bill Cipher's control – and as the dimensional barriers grow increasingly porous, entities from realities beyond the Nightmare Realm start to sneak in. All of a sudden, the Henchmaniacs aren't the only kids on the playground; Bill's private party's been gatecrashed and he doesn't even know it."
"And you're one of the gatecrashers, then?"
"Exactly. And as being outside of our dear old Bill's sphere of knowledge, I can put my not-inconsiderable skills to work in keeping the two of us hidden from his all-seeing eye."
"But if that's true, then you could stop all this! You could do everything Mr A can't! You could stop Bill!"
"I could, were I so inclined," said Mr Carter. "But where would be the fun in that? I'm a god in my own right, Dipper: If Bill and I were to battle it out, it'd be a pretty balanced duel… and in all honesty, balanced fights have never held my interest. They often lead to boring, seventy-round matches that can only end in TKOs and ring-outs. I'm not here for a fair fight, Dipper: I'm here for entertainment, and if the price I have to pay for my amusement is lending a hand here and there, so be it – but don't expect me to play deus ex machina."
Dipper thought for a moment. "You might not be Bill," he said quietly, "But you're a lot more like him than I thought."
"Does it surprise you? Every dimension has a few tricksters worthy of the name: Mad Jim Jaspers, Loki, Tzeentch, the Outsider, Q, Lady Malice, the Wandering Piper, and yes, even Bill – all of us playing our games across the multiverse at the expense of mortals and immortals alike. I'm just one of the few who's realized that there's no point in setting fire to the gameboard and killing all your opponents... well, except in emergencies," he added with a wink. "Ultimate victory gets very boring after a while, apocalypses doubly so. I mean, once everyone's dead or permanently under your dominion, there's precious little to do, other than torture them; and even if you do that, you're only delaying the inevitable realization that the true fun ended ages ago. Real entertainment requires a subtle touch and careful preparation: far better to nudge the pawns in just the right way so as to engineer a gripping storyline, brief by immortal standards but undeniably entertaining… or better still, just wait to see what the mortals will do next, and see how much anguish you can milk out of it. I should know: I worked on the Manhattan Project, and I got four decades of fear and political turmoil out of that. Tricksters like me struggle to learn this lesson all their lives. Bill hasn't yet… and that's why he'll lose. Even if he wins every single game with you and your friends, even if he breaks your spirits and renders you down into mindless husks, even if Mr A fails to stop him, he'll still lose to the one opponent he can't defeat: boredom."
Mr Carter paused for a moment. "Speaking of anguish," he eventually continued, "you might want to take a good look over there."
Dipper followed the trickster's outstretched hand to a distant spot on the horizon, just above Fort Acheron's northern border: there, a flickering light was being cast upon the dilapidated chain-link fence, illuminating a subtle-but-noticeable rippling in the air just above the razor wire; the more Dipper looked at it, the more it seemed as though something was battering at the fabric of reality from the other side, like someone trying to claw their way into a tent. Then, as he watched, the well-worn substance of the world split open, tearing a thirty-foot gash in reality and exposing the endless lightless void beyond... and from this colossal shadowy wound, something began pouring out of it
At first, it appeared to be little more than a torrent of pitch-black fluid, thick and cloying as tar. However, as it spilled out of the wound and pooled upon the ground below, Dipper realized that whatever this stuff was, it didn't seem to react to light: no reflections could be seen in its inky black depths, nor did it glisten even with the rays of the sun glaring down on it. By now, the tear in reality above it had shut, but the pond below it was still growing, and it didn't appear to be showing any signs of stopping. It was starting to bubble quite a bit, too, and unless Dipper was mistaken, he could just about recognize the beginnings of tentacles starting to sprout from the puddle.
"What is that?" he whispered.
"It's another gatecrasher," said Mr Carter. "Courtesy of an ancillary rift in reality. Unfortunately, it's not as friendly as Mr A and not as amiable as me, so it's also your cue to start moving again."
"Why? What's so dangerous about it?"
"Take a good look."
By now, several soldiers had arrived at the edge of the puddle to investigate, and as Dipper watched, one of the tentacles sprouting from the pond reached out and wrapped itself around the nearest gunman. Immediately, the entire squad opened fire, hammering the viscous black lake with all the firepower they could muster. After about seven seconds of this, the tentacle relinquished its hold on the soldier and allowed him to collapse to the dirt, soaked from head to toe in black gunk; slowly, the unfortunate victim got to his feet and opened his eyes, and even from here Dipper couldn't fail to recognize the unearthly red light shining from the man's hollow eyesockets.
Before the rest of the squad could react, the afflicted soldier had lunged forward, spewing a thick plume of oily black vomit across the nearest of his comrades and tackling the next of them to the ground. The remaining soldiers opened fire once again, but with even less success than the last time: the slime-coated man didn't even react to the bullets tearing through his chest and face, and rose from his newest victim with renewed vigour. Worse still, the other two soldiers – the one who'd been puked on and the one who'd been throttled half to death – now rose in tandem, soaked and dripping with foul black ooze, their eyes aglow with a sickening garnet light.
Within a matter of seconds, the entire squad was dead or infected; seemingly oblivious to the alarm bells resounding across the camp, the slime-coated survivors gathered their weapons and began a slow, methodical march towards the barracks, clearly on the lookout for more victims to infect. Behind them, the puddle of black gunk expanded further, spitting out longer tentacles as it did so… and somewhere in the heart of that sickening mire, other things began to take shape.
"You see?" said Mr Carter. "If you want my advice, you'd best stay away from this camp from now on: I think our newest gatecrasher's already picked a beachhead from which to plot out an invasion."
"An invasion?! But what-"
"You'll see soon enough. Now, part of my bargain with Mr A was that you weren't to be harmed, and that includes finding you a safe escape route, so if you'll just bear with me a moment…"
Without warning, Mr Carter reached out and pressed two long, spindly index fingers to Dipper's temples.
"What are you doing?"
"Just seeing how you're progressing. As Mr A said, Bill's got something interesting cooked up for you, and I'd like to see how it plays out if I can."
There was a pause, and then Mr Carter smiled wider than ever before. "You really are a budding little shoggoth, aren't you?" he chuckled. "You're going to be spectacular."
And with that, he gave Dipper a push just hard enough send him sliding off the hilltop and into a tumbling death-dive down the slopes of the hill.
Before Dipper could even open his mouth to scream, however, he was transforming again: the shove had budged him out of Mr Carter's sphere of influence, and now he was back in Bill's vision - and his "power" was active once more. By the time Dipper hit the ground, he was a large inflatable beach ball, and the impact sent him bouncing merrily out of the fort.
Then he was a paper plane soaring out over the wasteland, hoping against hope that he'd find an updraft before he hit the ground. Then he was a helium balloon borne upon the wind, travelling wherever it would take him. Then at last he was a bird, flying wherever he pleased.
For ten long minutes, Dipper's luck held out; then, his shape erupted into a giant flannel picnic blanket and he plummeted from the sky with all the aerodynamic grace of a basket of wet laundry.
He landed heavily, fortunately still in his blanket form. Unfortunately, he soon realized that he'd been unlucky enough to land on top of someone, because hands were already flinging him to the ground and a pair of heavy-booted feet were kicking him viciously in the stitching.
And then, just when he thought his day couldn't get any worse, he changed shape again, and once again he was a human being.
At first, all Dipper could notice was the knife being pressed to his throat, and the eyes staring back at him, wide and frenzied from paranoia and lack of sleep and god only knew how much adrenaline. Then the blade gently drew away from his neck, and he finally noticed the familiar locks of red hair that framed those eyes.
From above him, a voice murmured "Dipper?"
In spite of himself, Dipper's face split into an elated smile.
"Wendy!"
Some distance away, the man who was not Mr Randolph Carter smiled contentedly to himself as the figure before him took a seat on the hilltop. For twelve seconds, there was silence between the two of them, broken only by the sounds of carnage from the slime-deluged Fort below them.
'Mr Carter' was the first to break the silence.
"Axolotl," he said quietly, favouring his guest with a nod.
The man with the sash returned the nod. "Nyarlathotep."
"That borrowed form ill-becomes you, 'Mr A.' I know you didn't have the luxury of choice, but you really could have made do with something a little less flimsy."
"He was the only volunteer," Mr A admitted.
"And that should stop you? Find a new shell, hollow out his brainpan and sit inside his skull. Problem solved, as far as I'm concerned."
"Some of us live by a code, Nyarlathotep. I can't just possess anyone without their consent: my work requires free will. And I'm hardly the only entity of my stature to abide by these strictures."
"Except you lack a sense of humour: I've seen Jyggalag laugh more than you. Seriously, was this etiolated streak of piss the best body you could find to house your consciousness?"
"I will admit he's not exactly the most imposing specimen, but he genuinely wants to help end Bill's reign on earth; in fact, he won't stop encouraging me… but I gather he was pretty big on encouragements before Weirdmaggedon. And incidentally, criticisms about disguises are the last thing I would expect from you, 'Mr Carter.' Could you have been any more obvious?"
"As a matter of fact, I could: I could have called myself Howard Phillip or Phillip Lovecraft or Whipple Phillips or-"
"I get the picture, thanks very much. So, you gave Dipper my message."
"That I did."
"And you're sure Bill couldn't see what was happening?"
"Positive. I guarantee he'll be very annoyed with Dipper over today's blackout, though. In fact, I imagine he'll question him about it at length, or at the very least make him suffer for it; for your sake, I hope our young friend has enough iron in the blood to withstand extended interrogation."
"He does; his sister, too. As for whether they'll be able to withstand what Bill has in store for Dipper… I'm not sure."
"And what about the Filth? We've already seen plenty of uninvited guests in this dimension, but the Dreamers' Dream is something quite different."
"I know. Up until today, I would have thought that you or Shub-Niggurath would have been the worst possible visitors to this realm of existence-"
"I'll take that as a compliment-"
"-but if the Filth is loose in this reality, then the normal dimensional barriers that would have prevented such hostile incursions have worn down to nothing. Bill's shot himself in the foot and he doesn't even realize it."
"Maybe so… but you realize what it means for this reality, don't you?"
"I do." Axolotl sighed. "It means that this dimension has already passed the Weirdness Event Horizon: it's gone the way of the Jaspers Warp. Even if we stop Bill, even if we can contain the Filth, this world will never be the same again."
A/N: This chapter's soundtrack choice is Ruby Slippers Colloquy by David Shire.
Up next... a plaything struggles against the restraints! Care to speculate? Feel free to theorize and review!