All The World's A Toybox

by Straightjacketed

The movement to take back the Falls goes horribly wrong, and everyone has to suffer for it. And as Weirdmageddon spreads beyond Gravity Falls, Dipper, Mabel and a few other unfortunates have to face up to the awful reality of spending the rest of their lives as pawns in Bill Cipher's newest games.

18. The Making Of Monsters

A/N: Good lord, where the hell did the month go? I'd hoped to upload this on the 15th, ladies and gents, but it seems like everything in the world decided to happen at once this February. Plus, it's only to get more complicated - early next month, I have to go back to the bloody hospital.

But in the meantime, my everlasting thanks to everyone who viewed, reviewed, favourited and followed: you give me strength in these mad times.

Hourglass Cipher: Oh, you have no idea... (maniacal laughter) thanks again!

Kraven The Hunter: ... I'm so sorry. I cannot emphasize how sorry I am, and I promise that next chapter will indeed be happy. Also, I love your suggestions to the characters, but I must point out that this time-related atrocity was something new and terrible - something Bill's never done before. Thanks again, and I hope you enjoy the chapter despite the content.

Guest: If it helps, there will be a brief moment of compassion in this chapter, but I should warn you it's going to be pretty depressing. Also, the Shapeshifter plays a very big role... thanks again!erlasting thanks to everyone who viewed, reviewed, favourited and followed: you give me strength in these mad times.

Northgalus2002: Time will tell! I hope you enjoy the chapter - thanks so much once again!

a very angry ravage: ...and I haven't even gotten around to brainstorming Pacifica's reaction to what's happening to Dipper! Thanks for the prompt.

LoyalTheorist: I'm glad you like the story so far, but the "underlying hope" theme might suffer a bit in this installation - and I might have compensate in the next chapter. For now, thanks again and I hope you enjoy this chapter.

Promissa Fidel: ...this is up there among the best reviews I've received in my time as a writer. Thank you so much for your lovely, lovely review, and I hope to hear from you again - and that this latest chapter lives up to the standards set. Thanks again!

Fantasy Fan 223: Don't worry, you can trust Axolotl - it was Carter smiling and not Axolotl. Also, don't worry about pondering the morality of reading this story; frankly, I do the same about writing it. And your questions will be answered in this chapter... in a very grim and depressing fashion. I hope you enjoy the codes - thanks once again!

And, now, without further ado, the EXTRA-LONG LATEST CHAPTER. Feel free to criticize and correct the inevitable typos!

Read, review, and above all, enjoy!

Disclaimer: I don't own Gravity Falls, and I really didn't mean to make this chapter so long... it just couldn't be chainsawed without ruining the flow.

Update: 18/3/18 - found some typos and layout errors, and needed to make corrections. Sorry about that.

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What's the point of being able to transform at will if I can't even be myself?

Dipper sighed, and silently willed himself to change again. For the first time in a very long while, he didn't have to watch his shadows or feel the way his muscles shifted in order to guess at what he was transforming into: even if Wendy hadn't managed to scavenge that helpful piece of mirror from the ruins in the deeper valleys, Dipper now knew exactly what he was becoming – for this time, he was in control.

All it took was the slightest effort of will, and he was something else. True, he wasn't quite able to change his entire body yet, but he could easily pattern his skin with tiger stripes or leopard spots, change his hair into crow's feathers, add the claws of a cat to his fingertips, or give himself the maw of a bear. By now, he could make such changes on the fly, shifting from one modification to another in the space of a second... and yet…

He changed again, this time reverting to his true form. A moment later, he was Dipper again… but not quite. The smooth, unblemished flesh on the fingers of his left hand was still there, still gleaming dully in the firelight like plastic, but in the days since he'd first discovered this strange affliction, it had spread.

Now, his entire left hand had been claimed by the spreading mutation: every day, it had spread by another half-inch; bit by bit, the porcelain-like shell had claimed everything from the tips of his fingers to the end of his wrist. Soon, it would claim his arm as well. Soon, it would claim all of him.

And unless his new form could find a way of breathing without a mouth or nose, it would kill him as well.

Taking a deeper breath than was strictly necessary, Dipper reached for his journal, and began hastily scribbling down the latest notes on himself: his shapeshifting, his progressive loss of features, and above all else, the details of who he used to be. By now, he didn't even care that he was playing the game exactly as Bill intended, or that the omnipotent triangle was probably laughing himself silly at Dipper's growing fear: all he cared about was making sure he left some record of what had happened to him.

That way, when he became faceless – even if it killed him – there'd be something left of his old self. And maybe, in a hundred years, someone might stumble across his journal, and allow Dipper to live on – if only in someone else's imagination.

---

The next day, the rain finally stopped.

And then it began to snow.

Outside the cave, puddles froze, flooded valleys iced over, and the mind-numbing patter of rain was swiftly replaced by the howl of the wind. Soon, the snow had piled up so deep outside that it buried the cave entrance, and even once the two of them had finally gotten around to digging their way out, the ledges and cliffs outside had been blanketed with a layer of snow twenty feet deep, forcing Wendy to regularly tunnel through that as well just to get within reach of the hunting grounds.

As if that wasn't bad enough, Bill expanded his repertoire to include every single chintzy Christmas/wintertime song on the planet.

Worse still, it wasn't long before the worsening conditions made daily hiking trips even more of a necessity than usual: by the end of the first week of snow, the temperature had dropped so low that their meagre collection of blankets couldn't keep out the cold, and the new creatures that had taken up residence on the plateau were too elusive to be skinned for pelts, forcing Wendy to seek out other options.

Fortunately, they hadn't been the first travellers who'd been trapped in the mountains: dotted across the broadest clifftops, she found the half-buried remains of campsites almost lost amidst the colossal snowdrifts, their inhabitants frozen solid inside their sleeping bags.

By now, Wendy was almost completely numb to the realities of stealing from the dead: in the last few months, she'd gotten so used to handling corpses that they barely registered as ex-people anymore, and taking what little they'd owned in life barely stirred a ripple in her conscience. By now, she could even look them in the eyes while doing so. As such, it wasn't until she found herself casually breaking a dead man's fingers just so she could prize a blanket out of his half-frozen grasp that she dimly realized that there might be something wrong with her. But even that little revelation was quickly lost in Bill's endless caterwauling of The Best Things In Life Are Free.

No, the thought of crimes like this didn't disturb her in the slightest.

Besides, there were real threats out here. The new climate had brought a whole host of deadly new winter-adapted monsters into the mountains, from polar rat swarms vast enough to bury a semitrailer, to gargantuan flesh-eating slugs shielded from the cold by ton after ton of protective blubber. But somehow, Wendy adapted to all these dangers and more… all except two.

Her family was still out there, hunting for her across the desolate mountains. The possessed Corduroys never gave up and never admitted defeat, least of all in the face of impassable terrain; no matter how far Wendy ran or how well she hid her tracks, they always seemed to pick up her trail one way or another; fortunately, she didn't see them very often – getting close enough to see the parasitized lumberjacks through the snowfall would have been a death sentence – but she could still hear them calling her name, taunting her from afar.

And where the dead Corduroys went, the Shapeshifter was never far behind. And unlike her family, Wendy could all-too-easily see the monster silently pursuing her, because the Shapeshifter wanted her to know that she was being hunted; it wanted her to be frightened, to know there was no escape.

Time and time again, Wendy had tried to confront them. After all, she'd told herself, how hard can it be? You beat the Shapeshifter before, you can do it again… and as for your family, you know their playbook inside-out by now! You can do this.

But every time she'd prepared herself to fight, she'd always talked herself out of it. In the former case, she continuously reminded herself that the Shapeshifter had the upper hand: quite apart from the fact that it could literally be anyone or anything, this time around it wasn't hampered by the few things that had prevented it from just killing them all on their last encounter; no cramped tunnels, no Journal to lure it into a trap, and nothing to trap it with. This time, there was nothing holding the Shapeshifter back.

And as for the latter… they were her family. Yes, they were possessed; yes, they were trying to kill her; yes, there was nothing left of the people they'd once been… and yes, as much as it hurt to say, there was no way of curing them. But they were still her family, and every time she looked at them, every time she tried to drive all thoughts of mercy out of her head, she couldn't see the monsters that had been hunting her down across the wilderness: she saw Dad, loud, brash, pugnacious and almost comically macho, but somehow still fundamentally caring despite all that; she saw Marcus, shy despite his brawn, awkward in any situation that took place indoors, constantly turning to Wendy for reassurance; she saw Kevin, the fiery little kid with a rebellious streak a mile wide, the kid who could be as temperamental as TNT as one minute and as loveable as a puppy the next; and Gus, the wild child, the hyperactive bullet perpetually ricocheting off the wall, always eager for family fun and always happy to be with Wendy.

How could she try to fight them, even if they were nothing more than husks of the people they'd once been? How could she face the prospect of killing them when they were all that remained of her family?

So, whenever she heard them calling her, she turned and ran – hoping against hope that they wouldn't find her again. But they always did, and though none of them ever got within walking distance of the cave, it didn't stop Wendy from worrying on a near-constant basis.

But a few days later, a new problem emerged that was to eclipse even the threat of the Shapeshifter and the possessed Corduroys – and judging by all the frozen corpses dotted across the mountains, it was a problem most of the other visitors had suffered as well.

The weather was only getting colder. For whatever reason, Bill had decided that blizzards weren't enough to make his toys suffer, and had sent the climate plunging to levels that would have made the South Pole look like the Bahamas: every day, the temperature seemed to plummet a little lower, until even the thermal jackets she'd pillaged could barely keep out the chill. Worse still, trees had been sparse around the clifftops back when the weather had been merely rainy, and now that the refugees had been through, there was almost nothing left to burn anywhere in the mountains.

So far, Wendy had been able to make do with the few remaining logs she'd stolen from the ruined campsites, and then with the few odds and ends that the refugees had carried with them. But sooner or later, the firewood left in the mountains would be gone, and the last real barrier between them and the freezing temperatures would vanish.

Sooner or later, Wendy and Dipper would freeze to death.

---

"Goddammit…"

Dipper looked up from his writing, peering anxiously over the edge of the journal as he belatedly assessed the situation.

Fortunately, the disturbance was only Wendy arriving back at the cave. Not-so-fortunately, she looked even gloomier than usual – quite an achievement considering it had been over a month since Dipper had last seen a smile on her face. At present, she'd shrugged out of her jacket and was now kneeling over the ashen remains of their campfire, trying desperately to rekindle it. The wood that she'd brought back today consisted of a large bundle of chair legs, scavenged from god only knew where. As far as he could tell, it looked dry enough, but for whatever reason, it just wasn't in a flammable mood. Even the classic "rubbing two sticks together" method failed miserably.

"Come on," she grumbled to herself. "Light, you… grrrrr…"

"Too damp?" Dipper asked, trying to sound more helpful than he felt.

Wendy looked up, her face instantly contorted with alarm – before once again assuming that familiar look of purest paranoia, mixed with something a little like anger. Once again, she looked at him like he was the enemy, and for the life of him, Dipper couldn't figure out why. Then, she looked away with a hiss of frustration, her attention focussed on the remains of their fireplace. "No," she said. "I kept it wrapped up and out of the snow for as long as I could; it's bone-dry right now. It just won't light."

"Well, what about gasoline-"

"We're out."

"Okay, what about extra blankets? I mean, it might not keep out the worst of the cold, but-"

"We don't have any extra blankets, Dipper. We need a fire, or we're either going to freeze to death or get sick from eating raw meat and die from that. We need a fire… and if we're ever planning on getting this junk to burn, we need kindling."

"So what can we use for kindling? Cloth, maybe?"

"I already tried that yesterday. I don't know what the hell those blankets are made of, but it's about as flammable as asbestos and probably about as safe to burn, judging by the smell. And our clothes are soaked through from sweat and snow and who knows what else, so they're just about useless right now."

"Okay, what about leaves? Bark? Pine cones, even? I hear that works well."

Wendy laughed bitterly. "There's no trees left anywhere in the mountains, Dipper!" she all but screamed. "Look at this! Look at it!" She held up a splintered length of chair leg. "Do you think I'd be using this for firewood if there were any trees? Do you think there's a pine forest just hiding under all this snow?"

In spite of himself, Dipper's temper flared. "How would I know!?" he snapped. "You haven't let me out of this cave ever since we arrived, so how could I know?"

And the reasons for doing so have changed, haven't they? When all this started, you wanted me to stay in the cave just to make sure I was safe; now, you want me to stay here because you don't trust me.

"Oh, I don't know," Wendy retorted snidely. "Maybe because I was expecting you to actually pay attention to the fact that we're running low on firewood and about to freeze to death. Sorry, I thought you'd be interested in survival. But no, you've been sitting here, doing nothing but writing in that journal of yours, instead of-"

She paused, her eyes slowly widening in realization. "The journal," she said softly.

"…What about it?"

"You said it never runs out of pages, right?"

"Only when I'm writing, but yeah."

"…then we do have kindling," said Wendy – and for a second or two, she sounded just like her old self again, exuberant and ready for action. In fact, the sense of excitement was so contagious that it took her audience a little while to realize what she'd actually said. Eventually, the word kindling finally made nerve-jangling contact with Dipper's brain.

"What?"

"Kindling! Its dry paper, and we'll never run out of it! Don't you see, Dipper? We can start the fire with this!"

Dipper blinked. Suddenly, he wasn't thinking about the cold, or hunger, or the threat of freezing to death or starving or sickness or any of the other consequences of not being able to start a fire. All he could think of was the corruption slowly making its way along his arms, turning his body into featureless non-flesh as it went. Bill's mocking prediction of the future echoed across his thoughts, and suddenly, his mind's eye was blank except for that terrible vision of what Dipper would become: eyeless, mouthless, faceless, a storefront mannequin made of flesh.

That was all he'd ever be. Without the journal, nobody would ever know that he'd ever been anything other than what Bill had turned him into. If he survived the process, he'd only be able to pretend to be human by shapeshifting… and if he didn't, he'd be nothing more than a featureless corpse lying unrecognizable and unmourned in the wasteland, just another horror in a world that was already overrun with them.

And Wendy was asking him to let it happen, to watch as the only record of who he'd once been slowly burned.

"But it's my journal," he said quietly.

"And you said it'll never run out of pages, so it's not as though you're actually going to lose it for good-"

"But you'll destroy what I've written so far!"

Wendy sighed deeply. "Dipper, do the words we're going to freeze to deathregister with you? We. Need. This. Fire."

"And I need my journal! Use something else! Use your own hair!"

There was a long pause, as Wendy bit down hard on her lower lip, visibly suppressing an angry outburst. "Look," she said icily, "I don't know what you think is so important about that old book, but it's not like it's one of Ford's journals, is it? I mean, it doesn't have any useful information about Bill or the Henchmaniacs or the wasteland in it, right?"

"…no," Dipper admitted.

"Then what's the problem? If it just creates new pages, then why are you so worried about losing a few when you can just rewrite them later?"

For a moment, Dipper almost agreed with her. He could rewrite his entries; if he had the time, he could replicate just about everything he'd produced so far… but that was the problem: he didn't know how much time he had left. For all he knew, he'd be completely faceless by next morning. He didn't have the time – and he never would.

"You don't understand, Wendy," he said, trying valiantly to keep the panic out of his voice and failing miserably. "I need that journal; it's… everything I've written about my shapeshifting abilities is in there and…" He hesitated, wondering just how much of his condition he should reveal. "It's important," he finished limply.

"There you go again," Wendy snarled. "You've been keeping a lot of secrets over the last few weeks, and they're all to do with these new powers of yours: every time I've asked you what's been happening, you've clammed up; every time I've asked about the Journal, you've tried to hide it from me – or you've lied about it. If you won't trust me, then how am I supposed to trust you?"

"I do trust you!"

"You've got a very funny way of showing it, Dipper. Well, I'm assuming you are Dipper at this point of course, and not just the Shapeshifter 2.0-"

"I'm not the Shapeshifter!" Dipper hollered.

"Then prove it to me!" Wendy screamed back. "Tell me why the Journal's really so important! What have you been keeping secret for the last few weeks?"

Dipper took a deep breath, briefly considering just lying to her again. After all, what if telling the truth only made her trust him even less? He'd already been a burden to her over the last few weeks; what if this corruption was the final straw that made her abandon him? But then reality finally set back in as he realized that, paranoid as she was, Wendy would probably see right through every single lie he could invent. So, in spite of his misgivings, Dipper explained himself as best as he could. It took about a minute of mumbling, stuttering, stammering and failure to make eye contact for him to tell his story, and by the end of it, Wendy's expression had gone from furious to utterly unreadable.

"So you're afraid that you're going to lose who you are?" she said quietly. "And you think this journal's your only way of – what? – recording who you were? Of being remembered?"

Dipper nodded.

"That's it? That's the reason you're prepared to freeze to death? You honestly think that the worst thing in the world that could possibly happen to you is being forgotten?" She was sneering now, every word dripping with contempt. "I'm supposed to sit here and slowly die just because you're afraid of going faceless?"

Dipper recoiled – actually physicallyrecoiled, as if he'd been slapped. He'd almost expected Wendy to understand, maybe even to sympathize with him, and to hear the last sentence all but spat in him hurt more than the last few weeks of illness combined.

"It's more than that," he hissed indignantly. "If I do go faceless – and it doesn't kill me – then I'm going to lose everything that makes me human! The only way I'll ever be myself again is if I shapeshift, and even then I'll have to change back sooner or later; underneath, I'll always be faceless! And what about my family? They're going to… they'll…"

The words they'll think I'm a freak echoed back and forth across Dipper's mind, too painful to be spoken out loud.

"Nobody's going to even recognize me!" he burst out. "Mom, Dad, Grunkle Stan, Grunkle Ford, Mabel – they'll think I'm something Bill created to torture them, or worse!"

"So you'd rather be dead, is that it? You're so worried about what people will think about you that you'd rather die of hypothermia? Dipper, what is wrong with you?! You don't even know if you'll ever see your family ever again! You don't even know if they're still human! I mean, if you think that going faceless is the worst thing that could happen out here, you really are Bill's favourite."

"His what?!"

"His favourite. His lapdog, his mascot – whatever you want to call it, you're his favourite and you get to enjoy special privileges while the rest of us suffer. I mean, all you had to deal with was uncontrollable transformations, a fever and now this facelessness thing; you didn't even have to deal with all the monster attacks I had to cope with! Face it, Dipper, no matter how bad you think you have it, everyone else on the planet has it a thousand times worse than you do."

"Easy for you to say!" Dipper shot back. "You got to stand on two legs and play at being an action hero while I had to crawl on my belly through a field of broken glass! You told me that other refugee groups kept turning you away? Well, they tried to kill me! A mob of them almost ripped me to bits because they mistook me for their dead relatives! And what about all those lucky escapes? Somehow you ended up getting away without a single scratch, while I had to spend the last few weeks sick with that fever! And what about all the public humiliation, the torture and party games they put me through? I mean, at least Bill let you keep your dignity! From where I'm standing, it looks like you're the favourite!"

"Don't you dare," Wendy snarled, face contorted with rage. "Don't you even dare put that on me, not after everything I've done for you – the only reason why you're still alive is because I risked my life to keep you fed! And another thing, if you think I got away 'without a scratch,' then take a look at this..."

She hiked up her shirt, revealing a long, barely-healed scar running across her belly from her left hip to her ribcage. "That could have spilled my guts if I'd been slower off the mark. And what about this?" She turned, lifting her hair to reveal a cluster of jagged lacerations running down the back of her neck, terminating in a craterous puncture wound sitting just above her collarbone. "I almost bled to death from this," she said. "That sound like favouritism to you, Dip? There are real threats out there, in case you hadn't noticed: the Shapeshifter is out here – he's been tracking me down for the last few days, and every time, he seems to get a little closer to reaching this cave. I've been risking death out in the mountains, and you still think the worst thing that could possibly happen is not being recognized by your family?"

Once upon a time, the mention of the Shapeshifter roaming free and hunting them down might have actually worried Dipper, but at that point he was too angry to pay any attention to it. "Oh, pardon me if I actually worry about what'll happen when we finally meet up with the others. I mean, unlike you, I haven't given up on the plan-"

Wendy's temper, which had clearly been burning pretty close to the end of its fuse over the last few minutes, suddenly exploded. "Plan?" she shouted. "PLAN?! THERE IS NO PLAN, JUST A FEW PIPE DREAMS AND THE HOPE THAT EVERYTHING WILL MAGICALLY GET BETTER ONCE WE'RE OUT OF THESE MOUNTAINS! Do you seriously believe we're going to find the others, form the Wheel again, stop Bill and save the world? All that crap about Mr Carter and Mr A and Mr Whoever-The-Hell – you were being toyed with, you moron! THIS IS HIS WORLD, DIPPER! HE MAKES THE RULES AND WE HAVE TO LIVE WITH THEM!"

"So you're just going to roll over and let him do what he likes? You've given up on fighting and gone coward, is that it?"

If Dipper's low blow had even phased her, Wendy gave no sign. "No," she said, without missing a beat. "I'm going to survive. That's the only thing left to do at this point – survival by any means necessary for as long as I can manage, because that's the only thing I can do to spite the nacho-shaped bastard. That's all we've got left in this world: survival in spite of everything Bill throws at us, and the slim chance of spoiling his fun. That's it."

"That's it? There's nothing left for you? What about the rest of the human race – isn't saving them important? What about everyone from Gravity Falls? What about your friends? What about Mabel and Grunkle Stan and Soos? Wh-"

Dipper hastily bit back the words "what about me?"

She doesn't love you back, he reminded himself. She told you as much before all this began. She just wants to be friends… but funnily enough she's not even managing that right now, is she? She can't return your feelings for her, she can't understand why the Journal's so important, and she doesn't even care about saving the world. Why are we even tolerating her, again?

In spite of himself, even with his anger and fear at full volume, Dipper just managed to keep himself from voicing his train of thought. Instead, he tried another approach: "What about your family?" he wheedled. "Don't you want to see them again-"

Before Dipper could finish his sentence, Wendy snatched up one of the larger pieces of timber from the fire and threw it at him so violently that it would have caught him square in the face if Dipper hadn't ducked at the last minute.

"MY FAMILY IS GONE!" she roared. "DAD, MY BROTHERS, EVERYONE – BILL TOOK THEM AND MADE THEM INTO MONSTERS, JUST TO MAKE ME SUFFER! THEY'RE OUT THERE RIGHT NOW WITH THE SHAPESHIFTER, AND THEY'RE HUNTING ME DOWN, AND THEY'RE GETTING CLOSER EVERY NIGHT AND I HAVE TO LISTEN TO YOU WHINING ABOUT…"

She stopped, and seemed to sag.

"About a book," she continued wearily. "A book that might just be the only thing standing between us and freezing to death – assuming the Shapeshifter doesn't find us first. Plus, I don't know if you've been paying attention to the world, Dipper, nobody is going to read your miraculous record of who you used to be."

"But-"

"Nobody gives a shit. I've met the refugees that live out there: they don't care about last accounts or apocalyptic diaries or whatever; the only thing they care about is survival. It'd be just another lump of firewood to them. And that's why you're going to give me the Journal-"

"No."

"-so we can both survive-"

"No!"

"And maybe get a chance to spit in Bill's eye before he gets bored with us-"

"NO!"

"Look," said Wendy, getting to her feet. "You might not care about survival at this point, but I'm not going to let you commit murder-suicide just because you happen to think frostbite's better than losing face. Give me the book: we only need enough to get the fire started, I'll avoid the important pages, and you can rewrite them once we're-"

Dipper saw her reaching for the Journal sitting in front of him, and in that moment, his mind went blank: lunging forward, his teeth immediately distended into a massive set of fanged mandibles, and Wendy had just enough time to snatch her hand back before the bear trap-shaped jaws slammed shut on the exact spot where her fingers had been a split second ago.

"I told you," Dipper snarled. "Nobody's touching my Journal, or else-"

And that was when Wendy kicked him in the head.

Hard.

Putting aside the fact that Wendy was already stronger and healthier than him at the best of times, she was also still wearing her hiking boots, so in that moment, Dipper practically achieved lift-off. Tumbling helplessly through the air, he landed with a crash against the cave wall. It took him a good five seconds to get to his feet, and by then, Wendy was making another grab for his Journal. This time, Dipper didn't bother with threats; he simply threw himself headlong at Wendy with a scream, transforming wildly as he charged. In turn, Wendy didn't hesitate either, putting her head down and meeting the oncoming charge with a berserker roar that would have made Manly Dan Corduroy himself weep tears of joy.

The two slammed together at high speed, Dipper's wildly-shifting mass briefly giving him just enough momentum to knock Wendy over, but as he darted in for the coup de grace, she grabbed him by the collar of his shirt and dragged him into the path of a right cross that sent him spinning helplessly away. For the next few minutes, the two were locked in a brutal melee that spanned the length of the cave, Wendy using the classic Corduroy brawling style of teeth-shattering haymakers and eye-watering kicks to the groin, Dipper using every single shape he'd been able to master since he'd learned how to control his transformations.

Back and forth, they fought, every move immediately countered, every counter immediately followed with another attack; it was possibly the only point in his entire life that Dipper had been able to even vaguely match Wendy's skill, but right then and there, he didn't care. He wasn't thinking of her hands around his neck, or the clublike fists he was hammering into her stomach, of the effort involved or the exhaustion or even the pain. His mind was officially blank except for the one thought that had hijacked his brain: he had to stop her; all that mattered was getting her away from the Journal, bringing her down before she ruined everything, shutting her up, making her hurt as much as he did-

And then, through the red murk that seemed to have enveloped his head, he head the familiar obnoxious shriek of Bill's laughter.

Dipper blinked, and as the rage left him, he belatedly realized what he was doing. At some point in the last few seconds, Wendy had managed to slam him against the cave wall and was now holding her knife to his throat – had enough to draw a slight trickle of blood. Maybe she wanted to kill him, maybe she was just threatening him; it didn't matter, because Dipper had grown another set of needle-sharp claws from his fingertips and was getting ready to plunge them into Wendy's defenceless eyes.

Somewhere in the distance, Bill was applauding.

There was a long pause, as Dipper and Wendy simultaneously realized what they had been doing – what they had almost done.

Then, Wendy let go of him and collapsed backwards into the dirt, suddenly struggling for breath so violently she was almost hyperventilating, a horror-stricken expression stamped on her face. Meanwhile, Dipper could only slide down the wall, his body slowly reverting to its natural form as he slumped into a boneless heap on the floor.

For what felt like an eternity, the two of them could only sit there, trembling helplessly as Bill's mocking laughter washed over them.

"I'm sorry," Dipper said quietly. He was crying, he realized, tears streaming down his face as the realization of what he'd tried to do hammered home: he'd thought he'd been guilty after he'd tried to erase Grunkle Ford's memories, but this was something new altogether; he'd just tried to murder Wendy. "I'm sorry, I… I'm so stupid, I shouldn't have done that, I should have just let you have the Journal, I… I'm sorry."

"No, I'm sorry, I shouldn't have said those things, I…" Wendy shook her head and covered her eyes. Perhaps she was crying too. "We're still playing his game," she said despairingly. "No matter what we do, we're just his entertainment. All he has to do is cut off our food supply or turn down the heat, and we turn on each other. What's the point in pretending we ever had a chance when we can't even trust each other?"

"But we do trust each other! Well, we do now, but-"

"All he has to do is put a little bit of pressure on us. That's all it takes. I've seen it happen before: the refugees who took me in – then turned on me when they realized Bill wanted me dead; the salvagers who offered me food then tried to put me in handcuffs; that suburban cult that offered me a bed and tried to cut my throat in my sleep… you put your trust in people, and Bill makes sure you suffer for it. I think Ford had the right idea all along, Dipper: you can't trust anyone."

"Yes you can! Just because Bill's done his best to make the situation as bad as possible and the Shapeshifter's out there doesn't mean – I mean, yes, it could be anyone or anything at all, but that doesn't mean you should stop trusting literally…" Dipper very slowly trailed off as the logical implications of his previous sentence slowly clattered into place.

"I'm an idiot," he said quietly.

Wendy gave him a bemused look.

"I'm serious; I saw the Shapeshifter do this the last time – I was looking right at him when he tried the same trick back in the cryotube, but it just never occurred to me to try it myself!"

"Try what?"

By way of an answer, Dipper hauled himself off the cavern floor and strode over to the fireplace, where he began hastily gathering up the bits of old furniture that had been scattered by the brawl and assembling them around him into a proper campfire. Then, he began to concentrate.

This newest change was utterly unprecedented, for this time he wouldn't just be altering a part of his body, but transforming his entire physical form from the organic to the purely elemental. He knew this was possible: he'd seen it done before, and even though he'd only seen it for a split-second or two, he wasn't likely to forget the sight or the circumstances in a hurry.

So, he focussed all his attention on mimicking that one all-important form, willing his tissues to undergo the same vital alchemy they'd used in his last few transformations. With all his strength, he concentrated.

And concentrated.

And concentrated.

And-

Suddenly, Dipper was aflame, a human-shaped inferno standing amidst the timbers of the rekindled campfire.

He hadn't caught fire or spontaneously combusted or erupted or anything like that: his body had simply changed, had transmuted from flesh and blood to living fire, had lost all tangibility and become a flickering orange ghost of rippling heat. He could see his hands in front of him, recognize human fingers remade into tiny guttering tongues of flame, even see his feet billowing at the heart of the roaring campfire; in fact, if that mirror hadn't been out of view, he'd be willing to bet everything in the world that he still had a human face.

"There," he said, his voice a harsh, rustling whisper – like dry twigs burning and crackling in a fireplace. "Now we've got all the heat we need."

He stepped out of the campfire and allowed his true form to reassert himself, the flames silently coalescing back into human flesh – his clothes hastily rematerializing around his body as it took shape once more.

For a moment, Wendy could only gape at him in astonishment, completely flummoxed as she looked from him to the merrily burning campfire. Then, for the second time in what seemed like an eternity, she smiled… and hugged him – actually threw her arms around him and hugged him.

For a time, the cave was silent but for the crackling of the fire – and the distant howl of Pyronica belting out a cover of "Kiss Of Fire."

"Dipper?" Wendy murmured, her voice suddenly weary. "Do you think you're okay with keeping watch this time?"

"Sure. Why?"

"Well, I think I've been awake for about three days now and I've been eating raw coffee just to stop myself from nodding off, but we're out now, so…"

Dipper blinked. "Um, that's fine. You can sleep as long as you-"

But Wendy was already slumping forwards onto Dipper's shoulder, fast asleep long before he could lower her to the ground.

---

Wendy wasn't sure how long she was asleep for: it could have been an hour, it could have been a week – she wasn't sure, and frankly it didn't matter. All she knew was that, for the first time since Weirdmageddon had gone global, she didn't have nightmares; her sleep was deep, dreamless and untroubled.

Undisturbed – at least until Bill literally flipped the mountains upside down.

Suddenly upside down and pinned to the ceiling by a heap of rubble, suddenly aware of the screams and shouts, Wendy lurched awake just in time to see Dipper falling helplessly out of bed. Even from her position half-crushed against the roof, she could clearly see him bouncing painfully off the walls and ricocheting – slowly but surely – towards the cave's entrance… and the cliff that lay beyond it.

"WENDY, HELP!"

She saw him shifting forms, trying to find something that would allow him to escape; piton-like claws, grasping tentacles, suckered palms, anything that could give him a grip on the wall as it rocketed past him. But every time he managed to find a handhold somewhere, Bill simply shook the mountains once again and dislodged him, shaking him closer and closer to the brink.

In that moment, Wendy tore herself free of the rubble and lunged forward, trying to grab his outstretched hands, to seize him by any one of the dozens upon dozens of limbs he was randomly sprouting, but for once, Wendy was too slow off the mark. Sleep had made her slow and complacent, made her clumsy, and without the desperate of the last few days fuelling her body, she couldn't reach his hand in time.

And with that, Dipper was airborne.

For a split second, she actually saw him trying to form wings, trying to save himself from the inevitable death dive, but by then it was too late: gravity had taken hold and was already hauling him into the abyss. She saw him crash against the mountainside, bouncing off the harsh rock wall with a loud crunch and a scream of pain; and then… the last she saw of him was the sight of his body spiralling into the snowstorm that now the lowest foothills of the mountains from sight.

Then, he was gone.

And without warning, Bill was hovering behind her.

"NOW THAT'S ENTERTAINMENT!" he boomed.

In spite of herself, Wendy actually reached for a weapon. Even though she knew attacking him would be pointless, she wished she still had her crossbow by her side, if only so she could finally plant a bolt squarely in that smirking eye of his – the only logical way of shutting the megalomaniacal nacho up. But alas, all she had was her knife and maybe a torch from the fire.

"Well!" Bill cackled triumphantly. "It looks like Pine Tree's gone skydiving, Red! How does that make you feel? Angry? Relieved? Frightened? Or are you already in mourning? I mean, after all those survivalist courses, you know better than anyone else that your friend's as good as dead down there."

"You won't kill him," said Wendy, unable to hide the tremor in her voice. "He's your –"

"My favourite? Is that what you were going to call him?"

Wendy cringed, instantly overwhelmed by a wave of regret.

"Pine Tree's not my favourite, Red," Bill chuckled. "Not anymore. The last few weeks have been a blast, but he's just not as fun as he used to be: frankly, the facelessness bit and the setup to a mutual kill was just my attempt at spicing up the action, just in case I hadn't played out every possibility. But all games have to end sooner or later, and Pine Tree's long since outlived his entertainment value."

"You're just going to let him die?"

"Maybe. Right now, it's a race to see what'll kill him first: exposure, starvation, his injuries… or the monsters. I mean, your dad and brothers might only have eyes for you, but I'm pretty sure the old tagalong from the bunker might have some words to mince with Pine Tree."

Wendy's heart froze. "You mean the Shapeshifter's going after him?" she whispered.

"Why not? After all, it's got a special hate-on for Pine Tree: he actually hurt it, took back the journal when it was so close to escaping with the grand prize… and of course, it wants to make sure that he checks out wearing the expression it always wanted to see. Kinda fitting, don't you think? The kid who thought he could shapeshift his way to victory ends up getting offed by a real Shapeshifter. Aw, don't look so sad, I'm sure there'll be enough of Pine Tree left for you to remember him by: a bit of bone here, a scrap of clothing there – the Shapeshifter likes his little trophies, believe it or not."

"You bastard."

"Manners, Red. That's no way to behave in front of guests, is it, boys?"

Wendy very slowly turned towards the cavern entrance, and with a massive jolt to her heart, saw the figures standing there – blocking her exit. Even with the fire dying and the shadows deepening by the second, there was no mistaking Dad's hulking frame or the distinctive huddle of her brothers.

The possessed Corduroys had finally found her… and this time, there'd be no escape.

---

Dipper wasn't sure where he'd landed; he didn't know how far he'd fallen from the cave, if it was possible to climb back up, or even if this place had existed until he'd gone skydiving towards it; he vividly recalled the sound of shattering rock below him as he fell, so maybe Bill had literally tore the ground open just so he could throw him down here.

All he knew was that he was now lying at the bottom of a very deep hole in the ground, staring up at the crevasse through which he'd just fallen. He didn't know how he'd survived falling so far: by rights he should have ended up splattered all over the mountains. Maybe Bill really was intent on keeping him alive as a punching bag, but given that he'd just thrown him off a cliff, Dipper couldn't possibly imagine why.

Unfortunately, climbing his way out of the crevasse didn't seem possible at this point, not with walls this smooth. So unless he could learn to form proper wings, he wasn't getting out any time soon.

"What next?" he groaned.

And from somewhere not too far away, Bill began to laugh. "Check out your arm, Pine Tree," he chuckled. "You've forgotten something important."

Dipper looked, and immediately regretted it: the smooth, featureless infection that had claimed his fingers had already overtaken the rest of his left hand… and as he watched, he realized with another ice-cold jolt to his heart that it was beginning to pick up speed. Even as he watched, it colonized first his wrist, before swiftly moving on to his forearm and elbow; in seconds, it had claimed his entire arm, erasing every recognizable feature in its path, leaving only a porcelain-smooth homogenized shell in its wake. Then it was oozing along his shoulder and pouring across his torso – where it could spread all over his body.

Heart hammering, Dipper could only watch as the infection slid inexorably up his neck. He couldn't see it after that, but he could feel it bubbling and burning his flesh as it crept over the edge of his jaw, and feel the distinctive tingle of nerve endings fizzing out as the tide flowed inwards across his face.

"You were never going to let me see my friends and family again, were you?" Dipper asked quietly. He was trying not to cry, and failing miserably. "You just wanted to get my hopes up before I suffocated to death."

If anything, Bill laughed even harder. "Oh come on, Pine Tree! Do you really think I'd end the game on something so… anticlimactic? Facelessness isn't the end, but a beginning you couldn't even imagine: I've got something much more entertaining in mind for YOU."

Dipper opened his mouth to demand an answer, but then the infection swept over his mouth, sealing his lips shut and leaving him mumbling through a hardening membrane of flesh.

A moment later, a wave of liquid non-flesh descended over what was left of his features, veiling his eyes, ears and nostrils in remoulding matter – instantly plunging Dipper into stygian darkness. For almost a minute, he writhed helplessly, blind, deaf and slowly suffocating, clawing wildly at the blank expanse of his face in a desperate attempt to open an airhole for his burning lungs.

Then nothingness was all he knew.

---

"No more hiding, Wendy," Dad chortled, idly passing his axe from one colossal hand to the next. "The Maggot Hive is ready for you. Time to join the family."

"Or die," Marcus sneered. "Cutting your own throat's always an option."

He was armed with Wendy's own hand-axe, she realized, and even with such horror staring he in the face and the prospect of being forced to murder her own family looming on the horizon, Wendy actually felt the faintest spasm of anger – a relic of the anger she'd once felt when the boys had decided to "borrow" her possessions.

"She won't kill herself," said Kevin. He too was armed with another one of Wendy's belongings, her long-lost crossbow shouldered and aimed squarely at her head. "She's a Corduroy. She's one of us, whether she likes it or not. She'll either join us-"

"Or kill us," Gus finished. He was armed with a bowie knife, the oversized blade sitting in his tiny hands like a sword, but judging from the clattering and clunking from his belt, he was probably armed with at least a dozen other blades.

For her part, Wendy said nothing. After all, she already knew they couldn't be negotiated with: god only knew she'd tried on her first run-in and all the other traumatizing run-ins that had followed in the days before she'd found Dipper again. There was no bribing them, no tricking them, no appealing to their better natures (because they didn't have any) – only running, fighting, surrendering… or dying. What would be the point in saying anything?

"So what'll be, Wendy?" Dad asked, unable to keep the laughter from his voice. "Do you give in, or do you fight?"

She had to run.

Running was the only option she had.

Running was the only sane reaction.

Running was her only means of saving herself and her family.

Running was…

Impossible.

She was dimly aware of the dwindling campfire behind her as she slowly backed away, and as its heat washed over her, memory belatedly dredged up a choice sentence: burn the bodies, Dad had said, back when this nightmare had begun. Split the skulls, scatter the worms and burn the bodies.

And as the parasite-Corduroys slowly closed in, Wendy acted instinctively. Diving in the direction of the campfire, she snatched up a burning chair-leg from the remains of the campfire and flung it at the advancing gang as hard as she possibly good. Dad sidestepped the oncoming torch with startling ease, once again a thousand times more agile than his massive frame implied; Kevin ducked and Gus simply let the missile soar harmlessly over his head… but Marcus was every bit as clumsy as he had been in the days before Weirdmageddon, and his one attempt to dodge only resulted in the torch catching him square in the chest.

His shirt ablaze and swiftly spreading to the rest of his clothes, Marcus immediately began blundering helplessly around, trying to put himself out. Meanwhile, the rest of the family charged Wendy en mass, the worms in their eyes glowing possessively as they closed in on her. But without Marcus lining up on the left, they'd left a gap in their approach – tiny, but just enough for Wendy to make a dash for the exit. Ducking a crossbow bolt from Kevin and side-stepping a wild swing of Gus's knife, she dived for the gap in their defences, leaping past the oncoming gang.

And then, just as the mouth of the cavern loomed ahead of her, something brought her shuddering to a halt, sending a fresh surge of pain rushing into her scalp: as always quicker than his size implied, Dad had grabbed her by the hair as she'd dashed past him, ham-sized fists instantly fastening around her vivid red tresses – and was now dragging her back into the cave.

Yowling in pain, Wendy tried to struggle free, to kick Dad's hands away, to slash at him, anything that would free herself from the vicelike grip on her hair, but nothing could dislodge him – and the rest of the family was slowly closing in. In the end, there was only one option: drawing her knife once more, she sliced clean through her outstretched locks, leaving Dad to crash helplessly to the ground, still clutching the shredded remains of Wendy's hair.

Now free, she dived for the exit – only for a freshly-extinguished Marcus to crash into her at high speed, hatchet at the ready. Caught off-guard, she only just managed to catch the axe by the shaft at the last minute, stopping the blade less than an inch from her face; undeterred, her brother leaned in, forcing the hatchet closer and closer, trying to drive it into her unprotected eyes. Had it been anyone else, Wendy might have been able to disarm them with ease, but for all his clumsiness, Marcus had the classic Corduroy muscle on his side; plus, after all the bouts of arm-wrestling they'd suffered through as children, he knew Wendy's playbook off by heart just as she knew his.

For twelve heart-stopping seconds, Wendy and Marcus wrestled for the hatchet, a life-or-death struggle briefly reduced to another sibling argument over a stolen toy. The other Corduroys didn't interfere, but merely gathered around to watch the spectacle, their pallid faces twisted into excited grins. Marcus grinned as well, the worms and maggots in his eyes glowing brightly as he leaned forward, putting all his weight on the axe.

Wendy bit back a scream as she felt the axe very slowly dig into her face, carving a bloody line through her left eyebrow and across her forehead. For the briefest of instants, she almost considered just letting him do his worst, but just as quickly, she put aside the idea as futile; she'd promised herself to survive even in the face of impossible odds, to spite Bill for as long as she was able, and she wasn't prepared to break the promise now.

So, she kicked out at Marcus's knee as hard as she could, toppling him backwards, allowing Wendy to lunge forward and send the axe springing back towards her brother's face, this with all her muscle behind it. With a loud, wet crunch, the two combatants hit the ground; a moment later, Wendy was on her feet again, knife in hand and ready for the inevitable counterattack.

But the counterattack never came.

Marcus didn't budge.

Too late, Wendy realized exactly why: in the final pushback, the axe had been embedded in her brother's face, and the fall to the ground had driven it through his skull. Marcus was now lying prone on the cavern floor, his head cleaved open and a pool of blood slowly gathering under the ruin of his cranium. Already, the glowing worms within were scattering in all directions, fleeing the shattered skull as fast as they could, most of them making a break for the safety of the other parasitized Corduroys.

And in their wake, they left Marcus Corduroy lying cold on the floor, a look of last-minute surprise forever stamped on his dead features.

Then, as the first horrified inklings of what she had just done began creeping into Wendy's mind, Gus made his move: once again the hyperactive human bullet, he broke into a run and made a break for Wendy, too fast to be intercepted, too agile to be blocked. With one tremendous leap, he catapulted himself through the air, latching onto Wendy's back and clawing his way up to her shoulders.

"My turn, big sis!" he shrieked. "Let's see if you're any quicker than you used to be!"

Next second, Gus's bowie knife sank into Wendy's left arm just below the shoulder, eliciting a howl of agony. Acting instinctively, Wendy flung herself backwards as hard as she could, pummelling herself against the cave wall in a desperate attempt to dislodge him, but Gus had a grip almost as vicelike as his father's and couldn't be budged, not even after his knife went flying out of his hand on the second collision. On the third impact, he simply leaned forward and bit down hard on Wendy's right ear – then with one violent twist of his jaws, tore it away.

Wendy staggered helplessly away, blood pouring merrily from the stump where her ear had once been. Dizzy, disoriented and quivering from the pain, she recovered just in time to see Dad readying his axe for a killing blow, while Kevin lined up on the opposite flank, taking careful aim with the crossbow.

"Think fast, Wendy!" he cackled.

Acting instinctively, she turned away; it turned out to be the one thing that saved her life, for Kevin's bolt caught Gus square in the back, right where her head had been just seconds ago. As Gus's scream rang out across the cave, her little brother's grip loosened just enough for Wendy to fling him aside, before making a grab for the axe still embedded in Marcus's skull. With one almighty wrench, she tore it free and brought it crashing down on Gus's defenceless body: she wasn't thinking about fleeing anymore, nor was she thinking about sparing her family; in that single furious instant, all she cared about was the searing pain in her face and the desperate need to make sure her attackers never had a chance to hurt her again.

Her first swing caught Gus square in the shoulder, knocking his newest blade from his hands; the next crashed into his chest, tearing open his ribcage; the third sliced aside his hands even as he tried to shield himself and landed squarely in his skull. After that, Wendy just kept hitting him, cleaving wildly at his body with wild berserk abandon, giving full vent to her spleen as she tore into him – only stopping once she realized that her little brother had finally stopped moving and the maggots were once again making their escape.

Then, she rounded on Kevin, who still struggling to reload his crossbow. He had just enough time to fire again, barely grazing her shoulder as she charged towards him, before her axe cleaved through his throat. Immediately, he fell to his knees, blood gushing from the enormous wound in his neck; then, as he sagged to the ground, Wendy planted her boot in his back and brought the axe down on his throat once more, sending his head tumbling away.

Finally, Dad went charging in, threshing the air with his axe with swift, deadly swings that once again belied his gigantic physique. But Wendy, flooded with adrenaline and long since having given up on holding back, was even quicker: ducking his first swing and leaping over his second, she brought her own axe down hard on his right arm, cleaving through his elbow. Bellowing like a wounded bear, Dad dropped the axe and lashed out at her with his left fist, sending an arm the size and thickness of a redwood tree-trunk hurtling in her direction, but once again, Wendy simply wasn't there.

Her next blow caught him in the ankle just above the Achilles tendon, sending him crashing to his knees. Now forced to rely on his left hand, he clumsily groped for the axe, but Wendy hit him hard in the jaw with the flat of her hatchet, disorienting him just long enough to bring the blade swishing down – first on the left hand, then on the right.

For what seemed like days, Manly Dad Corduroy knelt there, staring in bemusement at the ragged stumps of his arms. Then, he began to laugh.

"Good," he chuckled. "Good." He was smiling in spite of his injuries, his grin a mass of oily blood and broken teeth. "Exactly as he wanted. I'm proud of you, Wendy."

Then her axe split his skull open, and he said no more.

For the next few minutes, Wendy fell into a deep, chilly silence as she went about the grim process of bandaging her wounds and clearing away the refuse of the battle. Thankfully, the medical kit she'd scavenged from the snowfields still had enough bandages and antiseptic to clear up the worst of her injuries, though of course there was no repairing the damage to her ear beyond staunching the bleeding. Far more arduous was the work of disposing of the bodies of her family: even once she'd been able to rekindle the fire, it took a long time for the corpses to fully ignite without any decent accelerant on hand, and they didn't burn easily once they finally did.

Eventually, however, the last vestiges of the possessed Corduroys was reduced to ashes, and the maggots that had been controlling them were burned away as well.

Then – and only then – did Wendy finally sink to her knees and begin to sob.

---

Dipper's eyes shot open, immediately taking in the near-lightless gloom of the cave around him.

Air – cold, clammy and malodorous – filled his lungs.

I'm alive.

Gasping for breath, he frantically ran his hands across his face; he could already tell that he could see and breathe again, but he needed to know that he actually had features – that he wasn't completely faceless. To his immense relief, he just recognized the shapes of a mouth and eyes… a mouth that seemed far too wide to be human and a pair of eyes that felt as large as tennis balls.

Whatever had happened, it had once again changed him on what seemed to be a permanent basis: his hair was gone, leaving him completely bald; his nose had vanished as well; even the shape of his head felt unmistakeably different... and looking down at his hands, he could tell at once that appeared to be missing several fingers – though the ones that remained seemed far longer than usual.

What did Bill do to me?

With a low groan, he got to his feet, knees bending in unnatural directions as he did so. Bit by bit, he reassembled the tattered remains of his clothing: it seemed at last that he'd found a situation that his clothes couldn't regenerate through, because his shirt had been ripped almost in half, his pants were barely held on by the tattered remains of his belt, and his shoes appeared to have exploded.

His cap seemed to be the only concrete survivor, and even that was still torn in places – not to mention splattered with blood from all the cuts that Dipper has sustained in the fall from the cliff. More to the point, the cap itself didn't seem to fit his head too well anymore: it kept chafing his bare scalp or falling off at odd interval – but that wasn't a problem with the cap, was it?

It was a problem with him.

Everything's changed, Dipper realized. My body's been altered permanently, that's for sure, but it's definitely not faceless. Question is, why did Bill lie to me about staying faceless, not being recognized by my family and all that?

Well, fairly obvious answer there, Dipper: he did it because he liked watching you panic.

Alright then, better question: why did Bill set this up?

Being faceless eventually made me into something new, but what, and why?

Sighing, he decided to put off any further questions until he was back at the cave with Wendy. However, as he strode over to the nearest wall, he once again realized that there was no way out of this crevasse: the walls were too smooth to grip without proper mountaineering equipment, and there were no passageways or tunnels leading out of the pit.

Unless…

Concentrating with all his might, Dipper forced his body to change in unprecedented ways – once again adopting a new form entirely… and to his delight, he found himself warping, shrinking, shifting into a new form altogether: his head narrowed and tapered into a beak, feathers erupted from beneath his skin, his arms expanded and reshaped themselves into wings – and within a matter of seconds, Dipper had become an arctic tern.

Whatever Bill had done to him, it had made shapeshifting easier than ever before. And with it, it had given him a route back to the Wendy, and maybe – just maybe – it could give him an edge against Bill himself.

Spreading his wings and flapping as hard as his newfound body could manage, Dipper took flight, and – after a few false starts – began rising slowly but surely towards the sky.

Question is, can I find my way back to the cave?

---

Outside the crevasse, the snowstorm had eased and the temperature had risen slightly, so if nothing else Dipper didn't have to worry about freezing to death on the way up. Plus, with the sky clear for a change, it allowed him an unimpeded view of the cliffs as he ascended, so if nothing else he'd be able to find the cave again very quickly.

But as he rose steadily higher, he spotted something glinting on one of the lower ledges. Thinking he might have caught a glimpse of a campfire, he swooped in to investigate, hoping that he'd finally made it back to the cave.

Unfortunately, it wasn't the cave.

It wasn't even a campfire.

The Shapeshifter was sitting on the ledge ahead, baleful red eyes fixed on him, mismatched arms raised to attack.

Panicking, Dipper veered away in mid-flight, swerving wildly across the sky as he grappled with the complicated process of avoiding the monster's reach and flying off in the opposite direction entirely. Unfortunately, he still hadn't completely mastered his newfound musculature, and his attempts only resulted in him crashing headlong into the ledge, landing in a heap of wildly-flapping wings at the Shapeshifter's feet.

Transforming on instinct, he sprouted as many fangs, claws, quills, stingers, poison glands, tentacles and other unpleasant appendages as he could possibly imagine, layered his body with scales, bony plates and leathery hides, and braced himself for the worst. For almost half a minute he sat there, waiting for the inevitable assault on his makeshift defences – until he finally realized that it didn't appear to be inbound.

For some reason, the Shapeshifter wasn't attacking.

It hadn't taken on some new and unpleasant shape, it hadn't raised its asymmetrical limbs to fight, it hadn't readied its jaws to take a bite out of him, and in point of fact, it hadn't even moved. And as Dipper tentatively crept closer, he realized it wasn't even looking at him. It was still looking up at the sky, its gaze fixed on the point on the horizon where it'd first seen him.

Trembling, Dipper reached out with one freshly-formed limb, distending it further and further until his now-tentacular arm was sitting just below the Shapeshifter's bulbous red eyes. Then, he tentatively waved his hand back and forth in a way that it couldn't possibly fail to notice.

No response.

Feeling a bit devil-may-care by that point, Dipper then extended a finger and poked the Shapeshifter as hard as he could in the left eye.

Not only did the Shapeshifter fail to respond to the middle finger that had just been rammed into its left eyeball, but Dipper's hand passed right through the monster's head as if it were no more tangible than smoke. Stunned, Dipper waved his hand back and forth through the Shapeshifter's head, watching in astonishment as his fingers phased cleanly through the skull of the creature. It didn't move, not even when Dipper plucked up his courage and stepped right through it.

And as he watched, the insubstantial Shapeshifter began to fade, twitching and shuddering until it disappeared entirely, its body harmlessly dissipating into meaningless static.

Whatever had been hunting Wendy for the last few days hadn't been real, Dipper realized. The real Shapeshifter was still in the bunker where they'd left it, presumably still frozen (or so he hoped); maybe Bill hadn't been able to track down the genuine article, maybe he'd just preferred to frighten the two of them with fakeries. Whatever the case, one indisputable fact remained:

This Shapeshifter was just an illusion.

---

Two days later, Dipper finally found his way back to the cave, if only because he'd recognized the tunnels that Wendy had dug in the snow surrounding it, collapsed though they were by now.

By that point, however, he was on the verge of collapse after close to five hours of uninterrupted flight, and even after Dipper transformed back, the pain and fatigue in his arms still lingered for a time – even though the muscles that had actually been used in his ascent technically didn't exist anymore.

In fact, he was so exhausted that a strong breeze nearly sent him toppling backwards off the edge of the cliff, and he only just managed to save his hat from spiralling off into the abyss. Alas, the cap still didn't fit on his head, and his fingers were too numb from exertion to do anything but burrow through the snow, so he just bit down hard on the brim and went on tunnelling towards the cave with the cap held safely in his jaws.

It wasn't the most flattering look on the planet, but then again it wasn't as if he had any concrete idea of what he looked like anyway. Besides, if nothing else, the snow helped salve the phantom pain in his muscles and the chill in the air gave him just enough incentive to keep moving: thus, after several minutes of digging, the mouth of the cave appeared ahead and Dipper staggered inside, too tired to even take the hat out of his mouth.

Immediately, four things became apparent to Dipper: first of all, the cave appeared to be unoccupied. Secondly, though the campfire was almost dead by now, the cave smelled very strongly of burnt flesh, a smell that he'd become worryingly familiar with in the days before he'd met up with Wendy again. Secondly, four charred corpses had been stacked next to the entrance, their skulls reduced to pulped bone; judging by the blackened marks on the floor of the cave, someone had been trying to drag them outside, but had either given up or simply run out of energy – no surprise, given the size of the first two bodies. Thirdly, someone had been gathering stones from around the cave and assembling them into piles – perhaps burial mounds; crudely scratched into the topmost stone of each pile was a name: "Dad," "Marcus," "Kevin," "Gus," and…

Somewhere in the distance, Bill began softly crooning out a cover of "One More Kiss, Dear."

And as the music washed over him, a muffled hiss of breath drew Dipper's attention away from the last burial mound. A quick glance in the direction of the noise revealed that the campsite wasn't deserted after all, for there was a human shape lying at the far end of the cave, almost completely hidden by the shadows beyond the fire. Dipper could already tell who it was going to be, but even he couldn't quite suppress a gasp of shock at the sight of the figure huddled under the blanket.

The last few days hadn't been kind to Wendy.

Her right ear was missing, little more than a bandaged crater in the side of her head; a long scar had torn across her left eyebrow and carved a trench through her forehead, stopping just above her hairline; her long crimson tress had been roughly sliced away, leaving only a ragged mass of hair barely long enough to reach her shoulders; and even with her polar gear still on and a blanket tossed over her, she was still shivering, still curled into a trembling, foetal ball – but whether it was due to the sheer cold or due to whatever trauma she'd endured in the days since Dipper had last seen her was impossible to guess.

Dipper would have gladly woken her up at that point, but one look at the space around her quickly put an end to that particular notion. Scattered around Wendy's sleeping form was a small arsenal of weaponry: an oversized wood axe, a crossbow and a quiver of bolts, at least a dozen knives… and of course, Wendy's own trusty hatchet. For some reason, Dipper's own Journal appeared to be hidden among the armoury as well.

With all these armaments within reach, disturbing her would have been a very bad idea indeed; even if Wendy didn't immediately go on the attack, the last thing she needed was another unpleasant shock. Instead, Dipper decided to wait for her to wake up on her own: so, pausing only to edge carefully around the needle-sharp tip of the nearest knife, he began slowly backing away from the weaponry-

-and promptly stumbled into one of the burial mounds, knocking it over with a loud crash of falling rocks.

Wendy's eyes snapped open.

For a moment, she could only lie there, staring up at Dipper with a look of horrified disbelief etched upon her face.

Then without warning, she was on her feet and in motion, hatchet in hand, screaming at the top of her voice.

Dipper barely had enough to realize that Wendy was actually aiming for him before the first swing of the axe caught him square in the chest, forcing him to his knees (and sending his cap fluttering to the cave floor for good measure).

The pain was nothing short of incredible, an eruption of shock rippling out across his middle, a searing, white-hot fire igniting every nerve-ending as the axe-blade buried itself in his flesh. For a moment, it felt as though he could only scream; but then the axe was wrenched free, and he frantically held out a hand in an attempt to shield himself – only for Wendy to bring her axe swinging down on that too. Thankfully, the blade was at the wrong angle for it to sever his hand (small mercies and little else), so instead it buried itself in his shoulder, sending a fresh wave of pain crackling down his spine.

"YOU KILLED HIM!" Wendy screamed. "YOU KILLED HIM YOU KILLED HIM YOU KILLED HIM!"

In spite of himself, Dipper actually tried to ask what the hell she was talking about, to placate her, to beg for mercy – to say anything that might put the brakes on the ongoing assault. Nothing worked: Wendy couldn't hear him over the sound of her own screams, and every single wrench of the axe elicited a fresh howl of pain from Dipper, interrupting him right when he might have been able to communicate something.

So instead, he forced himself upright and tried to grab the axe out of Wendy's hand, hoping against hope that he'd be able to talk her down once she was disarmed. However, whatever Bill had done to him seemed to have made Dipper much stronger than before, and the charge ended up knocking Wendy off her feet; rolling away, she snatched up the crossbow as she tumbled past, and as she ground to halt, shouldered the weapon and took careful aim.

Too late, Dipper realized the crossbow was already loaded.

"Wait-!"

This time, pain didn't quite describe the experience: this was agony, excruciating in its intensity, every movement sending another jagged lance of pain into his body. At least pain of the axe had ended when the damn thing had finally been ripped free; the crossbow bolt couldn't be removed: it had lodged deep in the flesh of his belly and every time Dipper tried to get a grip on it, it only seemed to sink deeper. The arrowhead was barbed and hooked, he realized, and he was only doing himself more damage by trying to force it out. But somehow, with another surge of the same unnatural strength, he was eventually able to get a good grip on the bolt and tear it loose. Panting, he looked up-

-just in time to get the butt of an axe-handle square in the face. Senses reeling, Dipper crashed to the dirt and lay there like an upturned turtle, writhing impotently as he struggled to upright himself.

"Murderer!" Wendy screamed. "You killed Dipper! You killed my friend!"

Wait, what?

But Wendy wasn't interested in explaining herself: by the time Dipper had recovered and gotten back on his feet, she was already gone, sprinting for the cave entrance and pausing only to bring down a thick parcel of snow in front of it – just to make sure he couldn't follow her.

"You won't get me that easily!" she screamed over her shoulder. "You'll have to take me when I'm wide awake if you want to kill me!"

And then, she was gone.

A quick glance around the cavern revealed that, she'd also taken the time to gather as much of her equipment as possible, presumably while he'd been trying to rip the bolt out of his guts: along with her hatchet, crossbow and quiver, she'd also taken three of the knives, and Dipper's Journal.

Also, for some reason, she'd also taken his hat from where it had fallen during the initial attack.

Groaning, Dipper leaned against the cave wall and assessed his injuries. Why had she attacked him? What had she meant by "you killed Dipper?" Couldn't she tell that Dipper had been standing right in front of her? Had Bill really made him that unrecognizable? But even if he had made him look like a monster, that still didn't explain everything.

And then, it hit him: the cap. He'd been holding his hat in his mouth when she'd first seen him… and it had been covered in bloodstains.

Bloodstained hat + monstrous-looking critter showing up at the cave + hat in monster's mouth = Dipper's dead?

No, no, no, that still doesn't answer everything. For one thing, what did Bill do to my face? What is it about me that made her instantly think "murderer?" And more to the point, why am I still alive? I'd have thought I'd have passed out by now, what with all this blood and-

Dipper froze as his swept across his wounds, wounds that even now were beginning to heal.

Blood still coated his chest, however.

Green blood.

Heart racing, he hurried over his old seat at the back of the cave, frantically scanning the area for the chunk of mirror that he'd been guiding his earliest transformations by. At last, he found it half-buried under a pile of dirt kicked up during the fight, and after dusting it off, he at long last realized just what Bill had done to him.

His legs were still human for the most part.

His frame was taller and more muscular than before – to the point that he'd been at least a head taller than Wendy – but otherwise there was nothing abnormal about it.

His arms, his chest, his shoulders were distended almost beyond recognition and layered with clammy white grub-skin – yet for all that, still partly human.

But it was the face that finally clued him in – the bulbous red eyes, the elongated face, the mandible-ringed jaws, the tiny nub-like antennae.

Staring back him from the mirror was the face of the Shapeshifter.

---

For what felt like hours, Dipper tried to shapeshift the new face away: he took the form of a crow, an eagle, a tiger, a poodle, an anaconda, a donkey, but as with the facelessness that had so threatened him a few days ago, mere transformation couldn't erase it. Every time he returned to his natural form, he still bore the face and developing body of the Shapeshifter.

He even tried shapeshifting into his old form – his real form – hoping that he could just wear the face of Dipper Pines forever… but he couldn't hold onto different bodies indefinitely, and sooner or later he reverted to the face of the Shapeshifter.

In the end, he couldn't carry on: he gave up, collapsing to the floor in a defeated slump. And in that moment, Bill Cipher appeared, smugger than ever.

"So we've finally accepted the inevitable, have we?" he cackled. "Finally come to terms with what you're going to be from now on?"

"Drop dead."

"Almost did. Didn't much care for it, and that's why I'm having such fun now!"

Dipper let out a low groan. "Why couldn't you have just done something simple? Why couldn't you have just tortured me with shapeshifting until I went completely nuts? I mean, why did you decide to turn me into the Shapeshifter of all things? Was it really just so you could make Wendy attack me?"

"Aw, if it was as simple as that, Pine Tree, I woulda done it right away. No, as far as Red goes, I've been trying to break her brain for a little while now, and I've been having a whale of a time getting it to work just right: putting her through one hell after another? That was fun and effective. Setting her own family against her? Oh, you shoulda seen her losing her marbles over that one. Trapping her in a cave with you and watching the paranoia wear her down? With a little bit of encouragement, the show just about ran itself."

Dipper's brown furrowed as the realizations began to stack up. "And that was why you created that… illusion out on the mountains?" he asked. "You wanted to drive her crazy without using the real Shapeshifter, is that it?"

"Exactamundo, and don't think I'll ever use that term again. I'm not ready to bring the "real" Shapeshifter out of prison just yet, Pine Tree, but I will… once the stage is set. And the little tiff between you and Red was all part of that – and a fine chunk of comedy gold, too."

"Then… you made sure we didn't end up killing each other!" Dipper realized aloud. "You wanted us to patch up our friendship, all so you could ruin it all over again by making it look like the Shapeshifter had killed me!"

"And it's worked out spectacularly, don't ya think?" Bill gloated. "As of this morning, Wendy's out of allies, out of family, out of friends, and most importantly, out of hope. With you gone, there's nothing to stop her from embracing her true potential: MADNESS. She'll be spectacular out there, because as long as she wants to keep on surviving, there's nothing she won't do to stay alive – just for the sake of "spiting" me. But she doesn't get it: I don't care if Red survives or not. I only care how many people she kills before the inevitable finally happens, and I'm betting it's going to be one hell of a body count! Carnage on that scale is going to keep me and the Henchmaniacs entertained for a very, very long time, and if Red's as ruthless as I think she can be… well, who says it ever has to end?"

He spread his arms wide, as if presenting a banner. "Wendy Corduroy the Immortal, Slayer of Innocents and Scion of Destruction!" he proclaimed dramatically. "Bringer of War, first among Bill Cipher's Horsemen of the Apocalypse! Can you imagine it? I mean, we've already got Famine in the works!"

"You monster," Dipper spat.

"Aw, feeling jealous? Don't be. I didn't arrange all this just to make your girlfriend suffer. I did it for you, too, Pine Tree."

"What, by transforming me into the Shapeshifter? Great plan, Bill, real first-class thinking there. You don't think making me better at shapeshifting might backfire on you at some point?"

"What I can give I can just as easily take away, Pine Tree," Bill sneered. "Besides, I didn't just transform you into the Shapeshifter. You know me better than that: a prank like this was never going to be that simple. I mean, I've still got to bring the "real" Shapeshifter back into play, and I don't think he'd like having an identical twin running around, spoiling his reputation. No, I'm doing something much more important: I'm making you and the Shapeshifter one and the same. I'm making… HISTORY."

Dipper winced as the echoes died away. "What are you talking about?"

"Oh, only my greatest accomplishment. See, my powers have extended into every single facet of reality, Pine Tree: space, matter, interdimensional fields, intrinsic forces, and even time itself – especially now that I've got Time Baby's disintegrated molecules sitting on a shelf in my trophy room. And with those powers, I have everything I need to continue the spread of Weirdmageddon to every corner of the Universe: even as we speak, cultures who've never even heard of Earth are being incorporated into my new empire, and all of them worship me as the ever-living all-powerful deity that I am. But a little while ago, I realized that I'm still not putting my powers to the fullest possible use. See, I've toyed around with time: I've aged children a thousand years, I've made senior citizens into babies, I've trapped entire cities in everlasting entropy like flies in amber, I've made time run at different speeds across my playgrounds, and I've even turned back the clock on death itself. But even with all that, I still haven't embraced the true power of time control: I have it in my power to change the past at will, to alter history-"

"And you weren't worried that you might cause a paradox and destroy your empire before you ever created it?"

"What, as if I was some reality-loving slave-to-temporal-causality loser like you?" Bill cackled derisively. "No, Pine Tree, paradox doesn't dare touch me: I destroy paradox just by thinking about it. The laws of all reality are mine to break, bend and melt as I please. And you know how I know this? BECAUSE I KILLED HITLER. Seven times. Nothing changed, because I willed it that way. Yeah, don't thank me for it; I had to shoot Abe Lincoln from behind the grassy knoll and take a flamethrower to Quentin Trembley just to even out my record."

"From the grassy… hang on just one minute-"

"So, my experiment went a little bit like this: what if I could make someone from the present into someone from the past? What if I could temporally connect the existence of one being in the present with another being in the past?"

"You mean-"

"Funny how Ford never found out exactly what laid that egg, huh? Even after all the research he did, he never truly learned what really created the Shapeshifter… but then again, maybe he did – before I changed things."

One again, Bill's eyelid curled upwards into the ocular equivalent of a smirk.

"See, you're not just being made into the Shapeshifter – not just genetically. You're being made so that you always were the Shapeshifter. Always will be, always have been. Under my guidance, your timelines have been permanently connected: your future is his past! His beginning… IS YOUR END!"

"So… so all that facelessness business, this partial transformation I've undergone, all that was-"

"Just the first side-effects of your assimilation into the Shapeshifter's timeline, aspects of his physical form rippling back into yours!"

"So you lied to me about going faceless."

"That wasn't a line, Pine Tree: you did go faceless, just not when you were expecting it. Remember, I said you probably wouldn't have a face by the time you saw the rest of your family again, not that you wouldn't. Sheesh, kid, if you're dumb enough not to notice the specifics, you deserve to get screwed over in these kinds of deals. Besides, I can guarantee your family won't recognize you if you see them again… and believe me, you will: I've got some very juicy appointments lined up for you once I bring you out of cryostasis; I mean, your sister's been making a nuisance of herself in her games, so I had the idea – why don't you show up one chilly evening and eat her parents while I make Shooting Star watch? What if I just have you tear her to pieces and then bring her back to life so you could do it again? Oh, all the punishments for difficult Pines family members I could think of – it's gonna be a hell of a time, Pine Tree!"

In spite of himself, Dipper felt his blood beginning to boil once again. "If you think I'm going to hurt my family just because you tell me to," he began, "You're even crazier than y-"

"Not just because I tell you to," Bill interjected smoothly. "Because you'll want to. You'll be the Shapeshifter in every possible way, right down to personality: everything that was you will be broken down and incorporated into the newborn Shapeshifter... so in a very real sense, Pine Tree, I'm going to kill you.

"But don't worry," he added. "I'll be sure to add just a tiny sprinkle of your mind to the mix. Just imagine it: a teensy-weensy bit of your personality stuck to the Shapeshifter's brain like a barnacle, unable to act, unable to really think for itself, unable to fully remember what it was, but completely aware of everything the Shapeshifter does! Imagine that tiny little atom of your old self hiding at the back of your new self's mind, screaming in despair and not knowing why! Oh, that'll be my mood music, Pine Tree!

"And guess what? THIS IS ONLY THE BEGINNING! The things I can do with time travel, the tortures I can inflict – I mean, you think that turning you into the Shapeshifter is the worst thing I can do? Oh, just imagine what your Grunkles would be like if I extended my rule back into Glass Shard Beach, if they had conflicting memories of a happy childhood in the normal world and memories of growing up in the kingdom of Hell on Earth! You think Pacifica's a mess now, just think of how she'd end up if I'd been reigning on Earth since before she was born – or better still, if I just had her parents carve the empathy centres out of her cute little brains! Even dumb ol' Question Mark could do with a little screwing with: think he'd be as stable as he is today if I made him an orphan? I don't think so! Oh, and your sister… the things I could do to her – the things I could make her parents do to her! Just imagine, a parasitic worm here, a strategic possession there, and I could make that happy childhood just VANISH! Tell me, Pine Tree, do you think Shooting Star would be a bit more cooperative if she remembered the abuses she'd endured, or do you think I'd have to get really sadistic? Just how much broken glass do you think would be too sadistic?"

Dipper didn't answer – indeed, he couldn't answer.

"Aw, what's wrong?" Bill teased. "Is it the Shapeshifting thing? I thought this is what you wanted, Pine Tree: you've always wanted to get a chance to explore the deepest mysteries of Gravity Falls, and now you have the answer to a mystery that even your Grunkle Ford couldn't solve! Now, you are that mystery!"

For almost a full minute, silence reigned in the cavern, broken only by the muffled hiss of the fire burning down to its last embers.

"Why?" said Dipper. He was crying, now, tears streaming down his face. "Why did you even bother with all this? Why did you tell me I'd get a chance to meet up with the rest of the Zodiac? Why did you set me free at all? Why didn't you just remake me into the Shapeshifter right away?"

"Because you still had hope," Bill replied. "Snuffing out your consciousness wouldn't have been as much fun if I'd done it while you still clung to the tiniest atom of hope for the future. You and your family are stubborn types, Pine Tree: simple torture can't break you, and even emotional manipulation has its limits. So I gave you a chance. I gave you a wild-goose-style-chance that nobody in the world could achieve with… and I made sure your hopes shattered as soon as they hit my reality head-on. And now…"

Bill began to laugh. "It's time! Time to say goodbye to Dipper Pines, and say hello to our new friend and playmate… THE SHAPESHIFTER! Any last words, Pine Tree?"

Dipper sighed. "Can I at least say goodbye to Mabel?" he asked dully.

"Nope. But thanks for playing. Besides, you'll get to see Shooting Star again… if she ever outlives her entertainment value… but that's a story for another day. WELL, HENCHMANIACS, IT'S TIME TO BID OL' PINE TREE A FOND FAREWELL! LET'S GIVE HIM A COUNTDOWN, SHALL WE? ALTOGETHER, NOW!"

"10…" chorused the Henchmaniacs, invisible but somehow omnipresent.

So this is it, Dipper thought. This is how I die.

"9…"

No blaze of glory, no goodbyes, no deathbed, no funeral.

"8…"

Just… this. Just me becoming someone else and losing everything I used to be.

"7…"

I… I want to be brave. I've faced down worse things than this! Why can't I be brave! Why can't I stop crying? Oh god, I must look pathetic…

"6…"

This isn't fair! It can't end like this, not after everything I've survived! I… I never got to see my parents again! I never got to see Grunkle Stan and Grunkle Ford again! I never got to see Mabel… and now I never will – not as I am now, anyway.

"5…"

I thought… for the longest time, I thought we had a chance. I really thought we could have stopped Bill. But we couldn't. Wendy was right: this is his world, and we're all just his playthings.

"4…"

Was there something I could have done? If I hadn't accepted the apprenticeship, could I have stopped this? If I'd told Mabel, would it have made a difference? Oh, Mabel…

"3…"

… I'm sorry for everything, Mabel…

"2…"

You were the best sister I could possibly have hoped for. I wish could have told you that when I had the chance, but…

"1…"

…but it's too late, now. Always has been, always will be… too late. I'm so sorry…

And then, as the grim countdown came to a close, blazing azure light suddenly blossomed from the darkened cave around him, scything through the shadows and embracing Dipper's body with luminescent tendrils of energy – the purest and most unrestrained expression of Bill Cipher's reality-warping power. Dipper cried out in pain as the power enfolded him, searing through every fibre of his being and concluding the metamorphosis that Bill had begun so many months ago. Beams of light erupted from his eyes and poured out of his mouth as the energy saturated his body, pouring through his veins in such quantities that his entire circulatory system glowed in the darkness of the cave.

Dipper was now permeated by raw undiluted time magic, his body flooded with a living mass of time portals opening to let his substance flow backwards. The link had been made, and now the transfer was ready to begin.

A moment later, the light erupted into electric-blue fire that spread across his body, wreathing Dipper from head to toe in luminous flames. And as they spread, they converted…

…and they consumed.

Dipper looked down in terror, realizing that his hands were almost completely transparent. His body was fading away, his physical presence slowly evaporating into nothingness as Bill's power converted the substance of his being into something new and time portals siphoned it away. Even his mind was being swept away, thoughts and dreams and memories and closest friends and dearest relatives vanishing as the flames devoured him alive.

He opened his mouth to scream, but by then, there was nothing left of his voice, so he could only silently howl his fear and pain as the flames swept the last of his being from reality, erasing mind, body and soul all in one final blossoming of flame.

In that moment, Dipper Pines ceased to exist.

Everything about him – in one instant – was reduced to a single pulsating chain of information spiralling backwards through time.

And with that, he was gone.

---

Zohl, ru blf orpv nfhrxzo zxxlnkzmrnvmg, "Gsv Vmw Lu Zoo Gsrmth" yb Qvhhrxz Xfiib nrtsg yv z tllw xslrxv uli gsv vmw lu gsrh kiverlfh hvtnvmg - li, ru blf'iv z Dslerzm, "Gsv Oruv Zmw Wvzgs Lu Znb Klmw."

---

Some distance away, a scarred figure sat huddled in the ruins of a long-abandoned encampment, muttering fretfully to herself as she stoked the flames of a feeble cooking fire.

"Trust no-one," she whimpered to herself. "Trust no-one, because no-one lives long enough to be trusted. Trust no-one, because no-one lives long enough to be trusted. Trust no-one…"

Wendy was alone, now. Bill Cipher had made sure of that. He'd taken everyone else away: her friends, her family, and her last and dearest companion. Bill had made his pet monster deliver Dipper's bloody cap to her doorstep.

Shivering, she struggled to hold back the tears, even as she glanced down at the two remaining mementoes she'd been able to save: his Journal and his hat.

Dipper was gone, now. She had nothing left to care about and nobody to rely on…

…except herself.

"Trust no-one, because no-one lives long enough to be trusted," she repeated.

Survival was all that mattered; survival was her only means of resistance; survival was all she had left, because it was the only way she could make Bill Cipher as miserable as he'd made her… because one day, she would find others who would listen to her message. She would find the desperate survivors who were still clinging to hope that they could stop Bill; she would find those futile revolutionaries that believe they could somehow win a war against a god; she would find them all, and she would teach them: she would show them that victory was impossible and survival was all that mattered.

"Trust no-one, because no-one lives long enough to be trusted."

In the meantime… there were settlements out there beyond the mountains, all of them with just enough food to sustain her; some were still populated, but Wendy didn't care about robbing from the living any more than she cared about robbing from the dead.

And if no supplies were left…

… well, there were always plenty of corpses.

Licking her lips, Wendy stoked the fires one last time and double-checked the meat spitted over it. To her disappointment, the frost hadn't quite retreated from the flesh, but if nothing else, it proved that it was still edible; no signs of decay, no disease, just a nice plump length of arm and five juicy fingers.

"Trust no-one," she said, "because no-one lives long enough to be trusted."

And as she waited for her feast of human flesh to cook, she began to laugh raucously and entirely without mirth, tears of purest despair trickling down her starved features as the maddened giggling filled the air.

---

Over thirty years in the past, an egg shuddered, shifted, before finally cracking open, and a baby shapeshifter crawled out.

The entity that had once been Dipper Pines scanned the area with newborn curiosity, instinctively analysing the world for new forms to adopt, and promptly shapeshifted into Stanford Pines' coffee cup.

---

Gsv tznv rh wlmv zmw Wrkkvi olhg
Hl mld sv wdvooh drgsrm gsv uilhg
Gsv nlmhgvi droo yv uivv hlnv wzb
Yfg zh uli Nzhlm, dsl xzm hzb?

---

A/N: A/N: This chapter's soundtrack choice is - alongside all the songs Bill himself suggested - The End Of All Things by Jessica Curry.

Up next, a tyrant surveys his kingdom, an interloper seeks help from across time and space, and a challenge (or two) is issued.