A/N: And I'm back with another chapter at long last! I'd hoped to get this done by the 6th, but unfortunately medical matters got in the way. Don't worry, I'm okay, but I've been left really annoyed with myself and my revised schedule - more delays, more trips to hospitals and doctor's offices. At times like this, writing and reviews are my solace - and wow, the reviews you furnished me over the last few days were incredible.
a very angry ravage: Oh, a Gravity Falls/Warhammer crossover would be awesome - I've no idea why it hasn't been considered yet... but then again, I'm the sadaxe who's still grumpy that nobody's arranged a crossover between Gravity Falls and The Secret World.
Kraven the Hunter: I know, I know, I'm cruel. Don't worry, I understand: we need to give the heroes some wins... and this chapter is the start of it - though I will admit that Bill gets the chance to kick the dog again before then. Thank you for your candor, and I hope you enjoy the chapter.
Hourglass Cipher: I'm glad you're impressed with my abilities, but please don't be afraid to take breaks if the depression starts affecting your life outside fanfic. I hope you enjoy the chapter.
Ethan: I have haters? Don't get me wrong, I'm very grateful for your support, but I didn't know I even had haters - very passionate commentators, sure, but not haters.
Promissa Fidel: Thank you so much for your wonderful review - you summarized everything so beautifully! Your support is much appreciated, and I hope this chapter will a) live up to the hype and b) provide some much-needed hope for our heroes.
Brenne: Thanks for the review - hope this chapter continues the excitement.
Blind Eyephone: Yes - I know it might not seem like this, but I'm a strong believer in the Earn Your Happy Ending trope. Also, I loved the fanart. Thank you so, so very much for your wonderful work.
Guest: Thank you for the review; I'm glad you liked the finely-supplied hopelessness, and with any luck, this serves as the turning-of-the-tide (without feeling unearned or too spontaneous). I hope you like the newest chapter!
LoyalTheorist: Do not despair! There is hope on the horizon - small though it may be - and this chapter is the start of it. I'm glad my work's been able to inspire such emotion, and I thank you for your review.
Fanboy-Guest: Don't worry - Gideon and Robbie will be featured very soon. And as for who famine is... well, it's already been mentioned in one of the earlier chapters, but Bill will explain the idea further in this very chapter; I hope you enjoy it.
OMAC001: Well, there is a chance, but it won't be easy...
Northgalus: Once again, do not despair. The turn of the tide is on its way. I hope you enjoy this chapter, and I thank you so much for your lovely reviews.
FantasyFan223: Glad I was able to surprise you! You'll get to see how the Shapeshifter situation is resolved in a few chapters, but in the meantime, you'll be pleased to see Axolotl giving himself a good kick for not acting sooner. Hope you enjoy it, and thanks again!
Guest/The Fellow Who Doesn't Sleep: I loved the Game Of Thrones references in your review, and I particularly like your theories as to how the Shapeshifter situation will be dealt with; I hope you enjoy the latest chapter, and thanks so much for your review!
Guest: Don't worry - Gideon will be up very soon.
And without further ado, the latest chapter! Read, review, and above all, enjoy!
Disclaimer: Gravity Falls is not mine, nor is the poem Ozymandias, and neither are all the characters referred to by Axolotl (see if you can guess which Fandoms they belong to for extra fun).
…ZMW LM GSV KVWVHGZO GSVHV DLIWH ZKKVZI:
NB MZNV RH YROO XRKSVI, TLW LU TLWH!
OLLP LM NB DLIPH, ZCLOLGO, ZMW WVHKZRI!
Looking down at his dominion from the spire of the Fearamid, Bill Cipher would have been hard-pressed to erase the smile from his face – if he'd had lips to smile with, of course.
It was a glorious day to be alive.
Pine Tree – the nerd, the goody-too-shoes, the Boy Scout, the one plaything that had earned total dissolution for his crimes – was gone, soon to join the Henchmaniacs as the newly-freed Shapeshifter.
Red, fittingly enough, had been reduced to a drooling lunatic cruising the roads for anything that could give her the edge she needed to survive; last he'd seen, she was en route to the Drowning Lands, seeking out the Acolytes of the Deep in the hopes of stealing their saltwater sacrament.
And as for the other prisoners, the arcane mechanisms in their playgrounds had recorded every minute of their suffering; as such, Bill had months of happy watching to catch up on..
Best of all, his kingdom, his empire now spanned roughly half the known universe: one by one, the galaxies of this dimension had succumbed to Weirdness, and every single planet touched by his powers had surrendered after less than a day of enduring the madness he brought.
And of course, their palaces and halls of government were now the bricks of his ever-expanding Fearamid – just as their monarchs and governors were now the mortar between those bricks.
Those conquered peoples were now his subjects, his playthings, his guests at a party that had grown to encompass billions upon billions of helpless worlds. At his command, they performed, they danced, they sang, they tortured one another, they sacrificed their firstborn to him, they killed one another in genocidal conflicts, and they wept in despair as they realized that even death wouldn't be enough to free them from servitude. Most importantly, they worshipped him as their patron god, redeemer, reaper and devil combined, as well they should: he had brought a judgement that lesser deities could only dream of, and ushered in a reign of nightmares that made the crimes of other chthonic monsters pale by comparison.
Who else but a god could have transformed planets into donuts and made skies swap places with oceans? Who else but a devil could have imprisoned entire populations within their own nightmares for millennia on end – without ever allowing a single second to pass? Who else but the very spirit of death would have made entire constellations go cold and dark at his approach? Who else but a messiah could have liberated the universe from every single natural law that once enslaved it? Was it not fitting, then, that so many proclaimed him their Eternal Master, Bringer of the Sacred Plague of Weirdness?
Only a few populated galaxies remained untouched by his divine pandemic, and many of those had already seen the chaos on the horizon; before the first tendrils of Weirdness could even touch them, those prescient civilizations had either fled in terror or nuked their own cities in the hope of escaping his rule. Neither approach worked: the Weirdness always caught up with the refugees, and as for the suicides, Bill just brought them back from the grave and forced them into his service.
Any of his subjects who resisted the call to worship – or tried to – were immediately obliterated, either by Bill, his Henchmaniacs or by the latest shipment of Rust Thralls cooked up by Old Man McGucket.
Oh yes, McGucket – now officially known as the Ruinous Toymaker. That was another thing to celebrate: ever since he'd been remade, McGucket had been transformed into the perfect instrument of the new regime. True, he was far too passive to be a real Henchmaniac, much less join the parties Bill tossed, but he was more than diligent enough to do the work that the others couldn't be bothered with. Yes sir, the Toymaker had outdone himself in the creation of the Rust Thralls, and judging by the screams echoing from his workshop, his inventiveness wasn't letting up anytime soon.
That same creativity had been put to good use in designing the entertainment for Bill's latest party. After all, the downfall of the zodiac deserved a celebration like no other; plus, after so many renovations, expansions and improvements, the Fearamid also deserved a housewarming party.
In any event, Bill had games planned for the evening that would make it into the history books. And yet, this was still only the beginning: even after everything he'd done, there were yet more worlds to conquer. Once those last remaining systems fell, the realms of mythology awaited him!
Heaven and Hell, Elysium and Tartarus, Aaru and Duat, Valhalla and Niflheim, Tian and Diyu, Tlalocan and Xibalba; all the manifold afterlives and netherworlds and spirit realms that mortals hinged their faith upon would be his to explore, conquer, destroy and remake in his image. And even if they existed only in the minds of the believers, he would make them real just so he could dominate them. For the few silent rebels who still prayed to their native gods, there would be no escape: he would drag their defeated messiahs before them and watch as their hopes shattered, as they finally realized that salvation was dead.
And once that was done…
Somewhere downstairs, music was playing: big band jazz rippling up and down the corridors of the Fearamid, Pyronica belting out the lyrics to "After You Get What You Want."
Bill chuckled. He could think about future wars later: after all, the multiverse wasn't going anywhere, not while Bill still had an eternity or two to really stretch his metaphysical muscles. In the meantime, it was time for the festivities to begin.
Brushing imaginary dust off his top hat and straightening his bow tie, he began the slow descent from the tip of the Fearamid to the throne room fifty thousand stories below.
"Party time," he giggled to himself, as the world unfolded beneath him.
Oh yes, it was a glorious time to be alive!
"Axolotl? Oh Axolotl? Can you hear me in there? I can see those jellied little eyeballs beginning to glow again under your host's eyelashes, so you're obviously on the way to regaining consciousness. Of course, it's difficult tell just how far along you've progressed, given that you're currently inhabiting the single most chipmunk-like human being on this tormented ball of pus and vomit, but them's the breaks. So, if you can hear my voice, please open your host's eyelids. If not, I may have to resort to large and unpleasant syringes."
Somewhere in the depths of Tyler Cutebiker's brain, Axolotl stirred, shivered, and finally awoke.
Forcing one eyelid open, he looked out at the world through aching, bloodshot eyes, and immediately found himself gazing up at the smiling face of Nyarlathotep – still in the form of Mr Carter, still backdropped by the ruined Earth.
"Good," the Outer God purred. "You're conscious. The syringes can go home unfulfilled."
Axolotl groaned, partly out of exhaustion but mostly out of sheer exasperation. "How long were Tyler and I unconscious?" he asked.
"Approximately a week and a half of nonlinear time. It took me a little while to call for advice and patch you up; in the meantime, unfortunately, the temporal activity that caught your attention has… spread."
Suddenly wide awake, Tyler's body sat bolt upright, every single nerve ending alight with eldritch energies. "It did what?!" Axolotl shouted.
"Oh, don't act so surprised. You were worried that something like this might happen, weren't you?"
"Naturally. That's why I tried to stop that pulse of Weirdness from rippling backwards through time, but… well, even if the exertion hadn't almost killed Tyler and nearly wiped my existence from the cosmos, I doubt Bill would have given up after just one attempt." Axolotl sighed deeply. "So tell me, what's he done?"
"Take a look for yourself: by now, the action's all over and done with, but you can still see Bill's dirty fingerprints all over history. He's been fiddling around with the past for his own amusement for some little time, apparently for nothing more than his own amusement, but he's already put it to a disturbingly practical use."
"What do you mean?"
"We appear to have lost one of the zodiac."
The transition was astonishingly swift: one moment, Tyler's body was lying flat on its back; the next second, it had quite literally achieved lift-off. Hovering five feet off the ground, Axolotl scrutinized the distant shape of what was once planet Earth, searching for the members of the zodiac amidst the pocket realities that comprised Bill's playground. One by one, he located them: some had been driven mad or worse, some were suffering incomparably, some of them were still resisting, and a few had actually managed to escape. Before his multifaceted vision, they were all accounted for – all except one.
Dipper was nowhere to be seen.
In his place, a trail of Weirdness trickled backwards through time, and into a new existence altogether. It took perhaps five seconds for Axolotl to recognize where Dipper's new life had led him, and by then, he was fuming.
"I swear," he hissed, "Just when you think Bill's reached the absolute nadir and there's no way he can possibly sink any lower, the bastard finds new depths of depravity to plumb."
"One would think you'd be able to predict such things," said Nyarlathotep. There was a touch of mockery in his voice now, a touch of venom that even Axolotl couldn't help but recoil from. "After all, you know him better than most: you knew the lengths he would go to just to ensure his fun."
Axolotl muttered a vowel-less expletive normally impossible for the human larynx to replicate. "Pointless conceit on my part," he admitted. "If I really knew him, Bill would be dead and Gravity Falls would have been saved by now. Always the same mistake on my part: hubris and half-measures! Because I presumed to understand his thoughts without even dreaming of the worst-case scenario, this world has been damaged beyond repair, and my attempts at fixing things from behind the scenes have not been enough! So far, only two of the prisoners have been freed and barely a handful are in a position to stage jailbreaks of their own. As for the others, Fiddleford is now Bill's creature, Robbie's been blinded, Stanford's in danger of becoming a Henchmaniac, Wendy's been driven mad, and Dipper is gone – perhaps forever!"
If Nyarlathotep had anything to say in response to the tirade, he gave no sign of it. By this time, he had conjured a large bag of popcorn from nowhere and was now gleefully stuffing his face, scarcely bothering to hide his smirk as he did so.
Axolotl, meanwhile, was still ranting. "And because I failed to imagine that Bill might do something this insane," he continued. "Because I took too long to act decisively, he's had every opportunity to wreak untold havoc on the past, the one thing he hadn't been able to corrupt up until now! And the damage it's already done to what's left of this dimension's barriers and defences! Beforehand, we might have just had a few incursions from other realities, but now…"
Nyarlathotep grinned wickedly. "In other words, our cycloptic friend has opened Pandora's Box for business and the beautiful ignorant bastard doesn't even know it."
"You could be a little less enthusiastic about this, you know. In case you hadn't noticed, someone who was counting on me for rescue has – for all intents and purposes – just died!"
"And yet his suffering lingers on," said the Outer God, his smirk growing. "So, it rather begs the question: what are you going to do about it, Mr Mayor? Are you going to sit here brooding over past mistakes while Bill's Weirdness contaminates every aspect of this misbegotten dimension… or are you going to do something about it? I await your response with baited breath – well, I would if I needed to breathe, but that's beside the point."
Axolotl thought for a moment.
"There's not much I can do," he said despairingly. "Bill knows I'm after him; he's known that ever since he first escaped. The only reason I managed to break in was because he hadn't counted on me finding a willing host, and now that I'm here, I can barely use my powers. I thought I'd be able to gather the zodiac under Bill's nose; that he'd be too distracted by Dipper and Wendy to notice the jailbreaks… but I moved too slowly. As soon as he gets around to taking a good look at his playground, he'll notice the missing prisoners and the whole thing will go up in smoke. Worse still, now he's got the perfect means of counteracting rebellions: he's mastered time travel, and he's crazy enough to use it regardless of the consequences. If I try to spring anyone else from captivity, Bill can just rewind time and undo it – and in doing so, the stupid bastard will unknowingly let in all manner of monsters from beyond the tattered veil."
Axolotl paused, realization slowly dawning on Tyler's chipmunk-like features.
"I can't afford to be subtle anymore," he said at last. "And I can't afford to micromanage this, either. If there's any chance of victory, it'll have to be achieved by the prisoners."
"You want them to form the Circle again after all?"
"No, no. The members of the zodiac have changed too much for the ritual to work, even if I could reunite them. No, I'm going to have to try something more radical: we need to make use of the blessings and curses Bill bestowed on the zodiac. I need to turn Bill's own instruments of torture against him."
"There's a lot of variables there, Axolotl," warned Nyarlathotep. "Assuming the zodiac ever become powerful enough to tackle Bill and resist his attempts at rewinding time-"
"-One of them might be able to do just that-"
"Then how do you propose to stop Bill from simply depowering every plaything that rebels against him?"
"I don't," said Axolotl simply. "With luck, I won't need to. The true nature of Weirdness lies in chaos, distortion, entropy, in warping individuals and objects beyond their natural state: it can create, destroy, resurrect, manipulate, mutate, transmogrify and transmute, but it can't restore normality. And over time, chaos asserts itself over order, even in the case of someone like Bill: the longer his playthings retain the powers he forced on them, the more they develop beyond his control."
"So it's as I said: "things develop beyond even the great Bill Cipher's control." But you still have to make sure they stay out of his reach until they develop that far… and for that, you need my help, don't you?"
Axolotl nodded sadly.
"I knew it," Nyarlathotep chuckled. "So, what do you wish of me? Who do you want hidden? Where do you want my powers directed?"
"Wait, you're not going to ask for anything in return?"
"What could I possibly ask for? I've already gotten one infinite-potential wish out of you. Asking for a second would just be gauche, especially considering your life isn't on the line at present. Besides, you forget: I'm in this for entertainment just as much as personal profit. If I don't cooperate, Bill wins and the entire scenario instantly becomes as boring and predictable as the average reality TV show. No, I think I'm more than satisfied with what I already have. So tell me, what do you need?"
You're lying. I know there's no logical evidence of you lying anywhere in the vicinity, but something tells me you're lying – or you're setting the stage for your next con. Either way, this can't end well: for all I know, you'll bug out in mid-request and leave Mabel and Stanford hanging, or worse… but at this point, I don't have much choice.
Axolotl took a deep breath, filling Tyler's lungs to full capacity. "I'm going to need you to hide the members of the zodiac who've already escaped. You'll have to make absolutely certain that the ones that are still imprisoned receive all the guidance they need – especially Mabel. When you're not doing that, I need you to play messenger."
"No problem there," said Nyarlathotep. "I was meant to serve as an emissary, after all. Who do you want me to contact?"
"Anyone capable of stopping Bill from escaping this reality if he tries to expand his reach. We need serious reality-warping firepower: Elizabeth, the Starchild, Coin, Einstein – the Ancient, not the 20th century scientist – Rehab Alma, Q, Joey Harker, Jessica Sorrow, the Purified Moon of Endiness, Emma Smith, Dr Manhattan, John Murdoch, the Ellimist, Judah Low, Minus, and… uh…" Axolotl floundered for a moment. "The Other Weaver might agree to the job if you appeal to him as a fellow trickster; see if you can find some sympathetic Mages from the World of Darkness; Rick Sanchez could be encouraged to help out if you suggested that Bill might threaten Morty at some point; hell, even those self-pitying twits from Brakebills might be skilled enough if you catch them in the right point in their timeline… oh, and the Doctor. Definitely get the Doctor – all fourteen of them, for choice."
"Then you're getting serious about this. Good."
"One, one more thing: before then…"
He hesitated, and took an even deeper breath just for good measure. It wasn't fair to endanger Tyler's life so soon after the last near-fatal mistake, and he wasn't much looking forward to risking his own immortal existence in what might just be the chanciest gambit in this dimension's history. But by this stage, risk was unavoidable: he couldn't afford to remain in the shadows any longer, not if the surviving members of the zodiac were to be kept safe; Bill needed to be distracted… and at this point, there was only one thing that would get his attention.
"I need you to help me sneak in and out of the Fearamid," Axolotl said at last. "It's time I showed my hand…"
Not long ago, Bill had thought that his throne room had seemed a little bit on the plain side apart from the neighbourhood-spanning stained glass window and the gargantuan base of his throne. But in the months since then, he'd spruced up the place, filled in the empty spaces and added some fresh new artworks to the seat of his universe-spanning empire.
Now, the place was alive with arcane gadgetry, a veritable metropolis of specially-designed toys to entertain the Henchmaniacs: blackjack tables, craps games, roulette wheels, slot machines, pool tables, electric chairs, suffocation chambers, drowning buckets, guillotines, long-drop gallows, iron maidens, Judas chairs, brazen bulls, and a whole host of miniature arenas in which Bill's subjects could duel one another to the death for the amusement of the watching crowds – along with several stadium-sized viewing screens for more remote events. None of these toys had been used before: tonight would be the gala opening for this newest hive of festivity and bloodshed, and every single wager would be paid with the only currency that mattered: slaves.
For now, though, the Henchmaniacs and Rust Thralls were all focussed on Bill – and the imposing curtained shape just below his throne. The other members of crowd (all five hundred thousand of them) could only stare in terror at the sight of their lord and master, waiting in dread for the newest torture to be announced.
Bill leaned back on his throne, relishing the feel of human flesh writhing in pain beneath his fingertips. With thrones of petrified suffering now decidedly out of fashion and couches of human skin being beyond passé, he'd fused the surrendering world leaders into a colossal throne of fused tissue, their beings intermingling into a monolithic sculpture of comingled flesh, bone and brain matter, forever conscious, always in agony.
"LADIES AND GENTLEMEN, BOYS AND GIRLS, MONSTERS OF ALL DESCRIPTIONS!" he boomed. "WELCOME TO THE NEW AND IMPROVED FEARAMID, NOW INCORPORATING OVER FIVE HUNDRED THOUSAND PALACES CAPTURED FROM AROUND THE UNIVERSE – ALL OF THEM DOMINATED AND CLAIMED BY ME!LET'S GIVE IT UP FOR THE UNDISPUTED CONQUERER OF THE COSMOS!"
The Henchmaniacs cheered raucously; the Toymaker's creations, too lobotomized to understand enthusiasm, offered polite metallic applause; and as for the mortals, they could only kneel in terror, faces pressed hard into the stone floor in a cowering abasement.
"That's what I like to hear! Now, to celebrate the newest round of conquests, damnations and destructions, I've arranged a special treat for us all. You saw how I dealt with Ol' Pine Tree, and you all heard what I had planned for the little pipsqueak's family – through TIME TRAVEL!"
Once again, the Henchmaniacs screamed their approval at supersonic volume, sending a few hundred guests collapsing to their knees with hands pressed tightly against their blood-streaked ears.
"See, I think it's time we tried something a little different: last few months, you've all been hard at work obliterating the weak in other galaxies and only ever getting a chance to spectate on the action. Well, IT'S TIME YOU GOT IN ON THE FUN! Time travel is going to be the best sport we've had since we introduced white phosphorous to daycare centres, and we're all going to get a chance to make the mortal rebels suffer like never before!"
He waved a hand: at the base of his throne, the curtained shape abruptly shifted, and the veil covering it fell away; beneath it was a brightly-coloured upright wheel, of the kind that would have ended up on a gameshow in the days before Weirdmageddon. Made of solid gold, bordered with flickering red-and-purple neon, studded with lightbulbs and equipped with a ruby-tipped starting lever, it was probably the chintziest thing in the entire Fearamid. Of course, this being Bill's domain, every space on the wheel was emblazoned with a particularly grisly incident from an alternate past: traumatic bullying, parental abuse, poisoning, disfiguration, a death in the family, drug addiction, madness, isolation, imprisonment, nuclear war, all events that could now be added to the personal timeline of every single prisoner in Bill's care.
And above the wheel, a tiny sign hovered, indicating the name of the game's current plaything – in this case, Mabel Pines.
"IT'S SPIN THE WHEEL TIME, BOYS AND GIRLS!" Bill shrieked, louder than ever. "YOU GET TO DECIDE HOW WE ALTER THE PAST! YOU GET TO DECIDE HOW WE TORTURE THE PRISONERS! SPIN THE WHEEL AND TAKE YOUR PRIZE, OR SACRIFICE SLAVES FOR ANOTHER CHANCE TO BREAK THE VICTIM'S SPIRIT! NOW, WE'VE ALREADY GOT OUR FIRST TARGET LOCKED IN, SO… WHO WANTS TO GO FIRST? WHO WANTS TO SEE HOW FAR THE SHOOTING STAR CAN FALL?"
Immediately, there was a storm of hands frantically thrust in the air as each one of the Henchmaniacs waved and jumped for Bill's attention – a few of them accidentally crushing a score or two of mortal audience members.
"Alright then… eenie, meenie, minee – you! PYRONICA! GET ON UP HERE FOR THE FIRST SPIN OF THE WHEEL!"
Cackling triumphantly, the fiery-limbed demoness took centre stage by the wheel to the accompaniment of jealous roars and catcalls from the other Henchmaniacs. One yank of the lever later, and the wheel roared to life with the sound of a million tortured souls heated to the point of ignition: a plethora of horrific incidents blurred across its surface, each one more horrific than the last, every imaginable trauma and death imaginable fading in and out of view as the entries blurred by. After perhaps fifteen seconds, the wheel finally ground to a halt, leaving the needle stopped right above the entry marked DEATH OF DIPPER – PUPPET SHOW.
"IT'S THE BIPPER INCIDENT, LADIES AND GENTLEMEN!" Bill whooped, somehow still making himself heard over the thunderous cheers of the Henchmaniacs. "LET'S SEE HOW SHOOTING STAR REMEMBERS IT ONCE WE'RE DONE! LET'S PUT HISTORY IN A BLENDER!"
In response, two massive viewscreens on either side of Bill sprung to life.
One showed Mabel as she was in the present: still cloistered in her royal bedchamber in Mabeland, clearly struggling to think of some escape attempt in spite of all the torment that had been inflicted on her, and (amusingly enough) doing everything she could to ignore the boxes of sock-puppets.
The other showed the past – more specifically, Mabel's puppet show. For the first few minutes, everything played out exactly as it had happened: Bipper volunteered for the role of reverend, the first act began in earnest, Bipper searched for the journal, and Dipper's disembodied soul started looking for a vessel. Eventually, Dipper found his sock-puppet self.
And then, history changed.
Suddenly, Bill vanished from the present and reappeared in the past – fully incarnated on Earth. With a single wave of his hand, he evicted Dipper's soul from the sock puppet and dragged him all the way to the South Pole, leaving him effectively unable to reach the theatre before it was too late. With nobody there to warn past-Mabel of past-Bill's plans, the puppet show ended on the happy note she'd wanted, and Bipper was able to claim and incinerate the journal without anyone noticing… and with his mission accomplished, past-Bill had no further use for his current meat puppet.
The authorities found Dipper's life body crumpled at the foot of the water tower a good five hours after his death. With no evidence to the contrary, the incident was ruled a suicide, and unfriendly observers started to wonder just what was going on in the Mystery Shack. It wasn't long before Mabel was eventually removed from Grunkle Stan's custody, and by then, she'd already seen and heard all the horrific details of her brother's death.
Not realizing that Bill was responsible, Mabel descended into a long-period of grief-stricken mourning that only grew worse when her parents arrived to take her home; needless to say, they never allowed her anywhere near Gravity Falls or Grunkle Stan ever again. Without Dipper, Mabel was left alone in the world without anyone she could relate to, and every friend she met from then on only reminded her of how empty life felt; but it wasn't until almost two weeks after the funeral, when she found herself unable to speak to Gabe (even via email) without feeling disgusted with herself, that she finally realized that Dipper's death was all her fault. He'd killed himself because of her, she realized; she'd made him miserable, she'd ignored what he'd wanted, she'd made him feel like a freak for caring about different things, she'd made him feel alone in the world – just like she felt without him.
Lost, isolated, crushed by despair, Mabel retreated into herself, trying to take refuge in fantasies that only seemed more hollow now that Dipper wasn't there to share in them. And when the portal opened and Weirdmageddon erupted across the world, she almost considered it a relief…
All of this happened in the past, clearly visible on the left-hand screen as the alterations to history slowly rippled out across the space-time continuum.
And back in the present, Mabel suddenly remembered what had happened. Almost inaudibly, she let out a murmur of "but that didn't happen." Slowly, her breathing began to quicken in pace, faster and faster until she was all but hyperventilating; her fingers curved into claws, gripping the back of the chair as she struggled to cope with the influx of wildly-contradicting memories; and as the pain of cognitive distortion rippled out across her nervous system, her voice rose from a whimper to a scream, her words dissolving into a long drawn-out howl of agony. Hands flying to her head as if to hold back the intense pressure bubbling inside her skull, she lost her grip on the chair and crashed sideways to the floor in a twitching, shivering, vomiting heap.
"That didn't happen!" she screamed, once she had recovered her voice. "That didn't happen! That didn't happen! That didn't happen!"
Bill laughed. "LOOK AT HER GO, FOLKS! SHE'S GOT TWO SETS OF MEMORIES, NOW, AND SHE CAN'T TELL WHAT'S REAL OR NOT! THE MORE SHE STRUGGLES AGAINST THE NEW MEMORY, THE MORE REAL IT BECOMES! THE MORE SHE TRIES TO DENY IT, THE MORE IT FEELS LIKE IT ACTUALLY HAPPENED!"
Back in her room, Mabel had gathered herself into a foetal ball on the carpet, and was now hugging herself in a desperate and futile attempt to assuage the madness that threatened to overtake her. "Itdidnthappenitdidnthappenitdidnthappen," she gibbered pathetically, voice reduced to a barely-comprehensible stream of noise. "It didn't happen, it didn't happen, it… it didn't… it…"
There was a dreadful silence, and Mabel began to sob. "But it did," she tearfully admitted. "It did. Oh god, it's all my fault, it's…"
The rest was drowned out by the mocking laughter of the Henchmaniacs.
"YOU SEE?!" Bill roared triumphantly. "WE CAN ALTER THE PAST IN A THOUSAND DIFFERENT WAYS, AND IT'LL NEVER AFFECT THE PRESENT UNLESS I WANT IT TO. WE CAN DO WHATEVER WE LIKE TO THEM IN THE PAST, AND THEY'LL HAVE TO LIVE WITH THE MEMORIES OF IT… AND, IF WE FEEL LIKE IT, THE INJURIES! AND THAT IS HOW WE BREAK 'EM FOR GOOD!"
He paused, briefly allowing the video feed on the screens to fade out before he continued. "See, I've got something special planned for Mabel, ladies and gentlemen. I've got something special planned for quite a few of our prisoners, believe it or not. See, Preston Northwest was a total dumbass, but even he had a few good ideas now and again: does anyone remember his idea for my own personal Horsemen of the Apocalypse?"
The Henchmaniacs laughed obligingly, each one remembering the sight of the fallen plutocrat writhing around on the ground as he struggled to cope with his new face.
"Yeah, I've been auditioning this idea for a little while: I wanted to have old Preston as Pestilence, but he didn't have the stones for the spot, so I've made do with better candidates. Long story short, we've got a lot of worlds still to conquer, and I think it's time someone else led the charge while we sit back and have some fun… and who would be better suited to the role than those who tried to END OUR FUN?!
He waved a hand, and once again the viewscreens sprang to life, this time depicting figures that did not exist – yet: a quartet of four familiar figures, each one seated on a monstrous ten-legged steed with the eyes of a spider, each one armed with weapons that would have seemed eldritch to human eyes… and each one a former member of the zodiac.
"Behold my vision of the future, boys and girls!" Bill thundered from on high. "The most corruptible of the zodiac, remade into our emissaries: BILL CIPHER'S HORSEMEN OF THE APOCALYPSE, coming to a galaxy near you!"
"Starring, in order of appearance: Mabel Pines in the role of PESTILENCE!"
"Wendy Corduroy as WAR!"
"Pacifica Northwest as FAMINE!"
"And last but not least, Stanford Pines: I looked and behold a pale horse, and the name that sat on him was DEATH… AND HELL FOLLOWED WITH HIM!"
The crowd obediently applauded.
"But this vision won't come true without help, boys and girls! It'll only happen if you completely break our prisoners – and for that, you need to spin the wheel… and see how well you can exploit the results! Pyronica, you're out of spins for the time being: do you want to sacrifice a slave or six hundred for another spin of the wheel, or are you up for some direct headgames with Shooting Star?"
"I'll take the headgames!" Pyronica cackled. "I've already skinned her brother – might as well do the same with the little brat's brain!"
"That's what I like to hear! Now, get out there and MAKE HER SUFFER LIKE NEVER BEFORE!"
As Pyronica vanished, Bill turned to the rest of the crowd, his eye once again crinkled into its familiar oracular smirk. "The fun ain't over yet, folks! It's time for more time torture! Now, who's next on the-"
Bill's next words were lost in the explosion that shook the Fearamid in that moment: a massive, coruscating eruption of arcane power burst from the floor less than twenty feet from Bill's throne, blasting the wheel into gaudy shrapnel and sending a shockwave rippling across the throne room; in its path, the assembled guests either fled or toppled like ninepins and elaborate gaming machines exploded, melted, collapsed in on themselves, or simply disintegrated.
Bill himself was knocked clean off his throne and sent crashing into the opposite wall, where he remained for a time, gently bouncing back and forth against the brickwork like a lost helium balloon. By the time he'd recovered his equilibrium and returned to his seat, the smoke was already beginning to clear, the felled Henchmaniacs were hauling themselves to their feet, and the mortal audience members had finally been shooed out of their hiding places beneath the collapsed gaming machines.
"What the hell was that?" Bill demanded.
There was a long and distinctly terrified pause.
"WELL? Answer me! If that was supposed to be a joke, boys and girls, then I hate to tell you, but I'm not laughing. Whoever did that – you've just wrecked the best casino this reality's ever-"
There was a horrified gasp from the audience: suddenly everyone was pointing at the wall directly to the left of Bill's throne; following their astonished stares, Bill realized that at some point in the last few minutes since the explosion, words had been carved into the stygian stonework – an entire paragraph of mystic runes glowing with unearthly light. Nobody could fail to miss this act of cosmic vandalism…
…but only Bill could understand the meaning of the mystic graffiti.
For a moment, Bill could only gape in disbelief as the meaning of the words slid icily into place. Then, he scanned the throne room, looking for the telltale energy signature that was the only sign that his pursuer left in its wake: sure enough, the area around the throne itself was inundated with the Axolotl's space-time residue, all of it condensing into a path leading out of the Fearamid and into the furthest outskirts of his empire.
"He was here," Bill whispered. "He was here."
There was a rumble of confusion from the audience.
"He was here and I didn't even notice it! After everything I did to keep him out, he's here in this dimension, infiltrating my Fearamid, AND HE'S RUINING MY FUCKING HOUSEWARMING PARTY!"!"
The Henchmaniacs could only stare up at their master in uncomprehending silence: seeing Bill surprised wasn't that much of a shock anymore, following the final battle in Gravity Falls, but this was the first time they'd seen him genuinely scared.
"Am I talking to a brick wall!?" Bill screamed. "HE'S HERE! THE AXOLOTL IS LOOSE IN THIS DIMENSION, AND ALL YOU CAN DO IS SIT THERE STARING AT ME? WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU IDIOTS? DO SOMETHING!"
8-Ball politely coughed for attention. "Uh, Boss?" he called out. "Is this part of the party, or something? Because I don't get the joke, whatever it is."
"YOU F-" Bill paused mid-expletive, and very slowly closed his eye. "Right," he sighed, gently massaging his eyeball with his fingers. "You don't remember what happened the last time; almost slipped my mind…"
"What happened last time?"
"Shut up, 8-Ball."
"Shutting up, boss."
Bill took a deep breath, trying and failing to suppress the fear still bubbling at the back of his mind.
"Right," he said. "Long story short: party's over. We've got a do-gooder from another reality sniffing around here, and he wants to end the fun for good. The games are officially postponed until we can find the Axolotl and kill him before he finishes whatever the giant salamander has in mind."
"But who's the Axo-"
"DON'T ASK QUESTIONS, JUST DO IT!" Bill screamed. "FIND AXOLOTL AND DO IT QUICKLY OR YOU'LL BE NEXT ON THE TORTURE SCHEDULE! IF IT HELPS ME CROWBAR THE MESSAGE INTO YOUR CRANIUMS, KNOW THIS: EVERYTHING WE'VE BUILT HERE IS AT STAKE. UNLESS YOU WANT TO SPEND THE NEXT FEW ETERNITIES INSIDE-OUT IN A SALT MINE, THEN FIND THE INTRUDER AND DESTROY HIM! DO NOT COME BACK EMPTY HANDED, BECAUSE I WILL NOT BE HAPPY! NOW MOVE!"
In perfect unison, the Henchmaniacs scattered in all directions, running, scuttling, flying or teleporting away in search of the dreaded Axolotl. Most of the Rust Thralls followed, leaving the throne room empty except for Bill and the few human audience members who hadn't fled the moment he'd started shouting.
And in the silence that followed, Bill began to whisper furiously to himself. "It's not going to end the way it did the last time," he hissed. "If Self-Loathing did his job, Stanley'll be dead by now. He can't stop me. The memory gun can't stop me. And Axolotl isn't going to get one over on me again, that's for sure… not if I find him. Ah but… oh, the last time I trusted those idiots to get anything done, Pine Tree got away before Teeth could even take a bite out of him. If you want something done… it won't happen the same way this time…"
And with that, Bill vanished, following the trail of energy off into the outskirts of his dominion.
And in his wake, Axolotl's message remained graffitied on the Fearamid wall for all to see:
LMXV BLF WZIVW GL XZOO NB MZNV
RG DZH VRGSVI GSZG LI VMW RM UOZNV
DV NZWV Z YZITZRM LM GSZG WZB
ZMW BLF ZTIVVW GL XSZMTV BLFI DZBH
BLF YILPV BLFI XSZRMH ZMW YILPV LFI WVZO
ULI LMV OZHG XSZMXV GL HKRM GSV DSVVO
BLF GFIMVW YZXP GRNV ZMW DLM GSV DZI
GSILFTS HVXIVGH OVZIMVW RM WZBH YVULIV
HL MLD BLF GSRMP GSV HGIFTTOV'H WLMV
ZMW BLF XZM SZEV HLNV SZIW-VZIMVW UFM
YFG ZOO GLL JFRXPOB BLF ULITVG
GSZG GSRH GRNV BLF XZM'G KZB GSV WVYG
BLF SZW GDL XSZMXVH, ZMW BLF VIIVW
ZMW MLD BLF DROO MLG TVG Z GSRIW
A/N: This chapter's soundtrack choice is After You Get What You Want, by Kathy Brier.
Up next - paths converge, a utopia welcomes new visitors, and Pyronica moves in for the kill!