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.

34. Shattered Hourglass

A/N: Aaaand I'm back! Don't mind the bang, ladies and gents, that was just the sound of my head exploding.

Suffice to say, it's been hot as hell in my neck of the woods, and I've been dealing with work, family functions, dehydration and headaches, so the story's arrived a little later than usual. I can only apologise for the delay, and try to clamber back to some awkward semblance of a schedule. In the meantime, a hearty thank-you to everyone who viewed, reviewed, favourite and followed!

For those of you concerned about the tone, I've done my best to keep up the habit of gradually improving the heroes' lot in life despite obstacles continuously flung in the path, and in this chapter, I the binding of wounds begins. Be warned though, this will require catharsis and ventilation of harmful emotions before the healing can begin - just a disclaimer.

Without any further ado, the latest chapter! Read, review, and above all, enjoy!

Disclaimer: Gravity Falls is still not mine, shock of all shocks.

Also, I may one day write a happy, fun, upbeat story with only the barest minimum of crushing despair. Stop laughing.

---

"How long has he been asleep?"

"About fifteen hours by my watch."

"Your watch still works? Mine's all over the place: it can't make up its mind on whether it's been an hour or five minutes."

"Time's still acting up around me, I guess."

"And he hasn't budged since then? Nobody's been able to wake him up?"

"Nope. Good news is, he's stopped transforming in his sleep, so the doc's finally been able to take a look at him. By the sounds of things, everything's normal… well, as normal as it can be when you're a thirty-year-old shapeshifter who also happens to be a thirteen-year-old kid. There's nothing wrong with him, health-wise: he just needs sleep."

"What about you?"

"What about me?"

"Mabel, you haven't moved from this spot since we first put him to bed and you haven't eaten anything in all that time. By the looks of things, you haven't slept either. I mean, have you seen those rings around your eyes?"

"Of course I haven't slept; I need to be here when Dipper wakes up-"

"And do what? You need your sleep, too, in case you hadn't noticed: you need solid food and fresh water, and you've spent the last few hours drinking nothing but this… this weird pink stuff with plastic dinosaurs and novelty icecubes floating around in it-"

"It's called Mabel Juice."

"Whatever! You need to look after yourself as well, you know."

"I'm fine, Pacifica. Jeez, you don't have to keep babysitting us now that we're back in civilization."

"Who's babysitting? I'm just trying to make sure we all get through this in one piece. We've lost enough of ourselves already, remember?"

Mabel smiled wearily, and absently glanced back down at the battered watch on her wrist, still not entirely believing that it had been fifteen hours since she'd been reunited with Dipper. Right here and now, it barely felt like fifteen minutes.

But then, time passed surprisingly quickly at the Rallying Flag, particularly in the wake of a narrowly-averted crisis.

No sooner had Dipper lapsed into unconsciousness, people had started hammering on doors: Wendy's Society of the Enduring had been locked outside during all the confusion, whilst the refugees that Gideon had sent to the hotel had all been sealed upstairs for the last couple of hours, and now everyone wanted in again.

Immediately, the hotel foyer had dissolved into complete confusion as Wendy and Pacifica had begun chiselling their way through the resin and webbing the Shapeshifter had used to seal the doors shut. Within minutes, the lobby was crowded with new faces, from the downtrodden vagrants of Gideon's entourage to the mutants and monsters of Wendy's army.

For her part, Mabel had ignored it: all that that mattered had been getting Dipper away from all the staring eyes and suspicious glares fixed on him, away from the whisperers, rumourmongers and all the other things he'd shouldn't have to deal with when he finally awoke. So, as soon as the doors to the bedrooms were clear, she simply carried Dipper away with Waddles in hot pursuit and Pacifica clearing a path through the crowds, sending doors flying open with a wave of her hand before Mabel had to reach for the handle.

It didn't take them long to realize that the interior of the hotel seemed to take up a lot more space than the outside, so if nothing else, there was no shortage of rooms. So, while Wendy had grimly billeted her underlings along the first floor and the refugees nervously angled for literally anywhere else, Mabel went about hunting for a place that would suit Dipper best: remembering everything he'd said back in the lobby, she eventually tracked down one of the more spacious rooms in the building, big enough to keep him from suffering any claustrophobia and equipped with enough blankets and quilts to keep out the cold.

Then, with Pacifica drawing the covers back and telekinetically plumping the pillows, Mabel had helped Dipper into bed, plucked off his shoes, drew the covers up to his chin and let him rest at long last.

And then the waiting game had begun in earnest: Mabel had found herself a large armchair lurking in a corner of the bedroom and sat down to wait, while Pacifica had reluctantly hovered away to check on the other guests.

Since then, the clamour from downstairs had finally subsided as the new arrivals gradually settled in; even the persistent angry snarls from the Society of the Enduring had gradually died away, replaced with the occasional murmur of conversation from the neighbouring rooms, courtesy of the refugee doctor making his rounds.

"How's everyone else doing?" Mabel asked quietly.

Pacifica hesitated. "It's a bit mixed," she said at last. "Mom and Preston are both asleep, the refugees are a lot calmer now that Gideon's giving orders again and Amanda's receiving medical attention, but the Society… well, they're waiting for Wendy to explain what's going on, and right now, she's not up to explaining anything."

"Why's that?"

"Probably because she just had the biggest rug on the planet yanked out from under her. Think about it. All this time, she's been thinking that Dipper was killed by the Shapeshifter and that Bill's guaranteed to win no matter what we do. Now she's just found out that everything she believed in was wrong: not only is Dipper still alive, but he was actually the Shapeshifter all along, and now there's a chance Bill might not be unstoppable after all. Wouldn't you be lost?"

Mabel eyed Pacifica strangely. "Since when did you get so good at analysing people? A few months ago, you could barely get through a conversation without-"

"-getting even more snobbish than usual?"

"I was gonna say 'threatening to sue someone,' but sure, let's go with that. I mean, you didn't even know what sharing was a few months ago, and now you're everyone's shoulder to cry on. What's up with that?"

Once again, Pacifica hesitated, and a look of pain crossed her porcelain features. "When I was still playing Bill's game… well, you've seen enough of the prisons to know that's not easy for anyone in there. After what I saw back there, after what Bill made me do… after what I almost chose to do… well, I really don't want to even think about losing anyone else."

And that's why you've been everyone's babysitter for the last few weeks? Mabel thought – but of course, she didn't say it out loud.

"So… I think it's about time you started taking care of yourself, Mabel. Even Waddles is asleep by now; maybe you should follow his lead."

"But-

"Please, Mabel. You've been awake for almost two days straight, and you're still coming down from a fight and one of the biggest shocks of your life. You need sleep just as much as Dipper. So just rest your eyes and have a nap for a while, okay? Dipper will still be here when you wake up."

As she spoke, the door opened, revealing a blanket and a pillow hovering in midair. With a wave of her hand, Pacifica draped the blanket over Mabel and tucked the pillow behind her back, even reclining her chair for good measure. Mabel was already opening her mouth to object, but the expression on the little doll's face beggared all resistance. Whatever had happened to Pacifica to give her all this newfound concern and determination, it hadn't gone for half-measures, if that look of bullish obstinacy on her face was any evidence.

"Just get some sleep," Pacifica whispered gently. As an afterthought, she added, "Or I'll sue you for every last dime you've got."

Mabel blinked. "Was that a joke?"

"Um… kind of. I've been auditioning it for future conversations, but my delivery's still pretty wide of the mark."

"Well, at least you're trying, that's the main thing. Aren't you going to get some sleep as well?"

Pacifica shook her head sadly. "I don't really need to anymore. I'm still not sure if that's good or bad… but that's another issue for another day. You just lay back and close your eyes: I'll make sure this place is still running when you and Dipper wake up…"

---

Some distance away from the Hotel, a huge warehouse sat baking under the black sun; here, under the watchful eyes of armed guards, the ruling gangs had hidden a cache of drinking water – far from the only one in the city, but definitely the biggest. Pallets of mineral water stood in towering rows like the skyscrapers of some bizarre bottle metropolis; water purification tablets sat in readiness, just waiting to be sold only the highest bidders; and of course, for those lucky enough to have access to indoor plumbing, the huge tanks of water were always present and always safe.

Until now.

At the heart of the warehouse, a huge metal vat stood amidst the tanks, a relic of the days when this had once been a brewery; most of the time, it remained empty except on the rare days that the desert prospectors found more water than the warehouse's tanks could hold. Had anyone been watching this gargantuan tub, they would have seen a normally inactive pipeline suddenly discharge a thick gout of black slime into the depths of the vat.

But for once, nobody was there to see: most of the guards were dead, gouged eyes and slit wrists to a man; an unlucky few remained alive, staring up at the sky and burbling nonsensically as their sanity dribbled away.

Bit by bit, the stream of Filth pouring into the vat thickened and grew, forming a lake of midnight-black ooze that gradually filled the tub entirely, a colossal mass off roiling, bubbling, tentacle-studded slime. Then, from the cloying depths, a form emerged, shaped from the liquid Filth itself – barely-solid and rudimentary at best, but still recognizably humanoid. And into this crude, oozing shape, the Black Signal poured its roaming intelligence.

There was an awkward pause, as the Filth-construct regarded the figure standing on the gantry opposite him with interest.

"Hiya, Gnarly," said John, pleasantly. "How's tricks?"

Nyarlathotep's eyebrows rose in amusement. "You're very well-informed, considering the limitations of your vision."

"Oh, I work best with tech, and thanks to the Toymaker, there is a lot of tech out there I can piggyback on. Lots of eyes to watch the fun with. But you wanted to talk with me…"

"Well, John, I'm very curious to know why you've been sniffing around the members of the Zodiac."

"Oh please. It's not as if the Zodiac's even a thing any more, is it? Bill changed the rules. He flipped the chessboard. Knocked old constraints upside down and turned them inside out. The physics that would have allowed the Wheel to turn are just so much old news and dead history."

"John…"

"You and your friend with the Salamander in his brain, you're not gathering the Zodiac to form the Wheel. The two of you are gathering an army."

John snickered malignantly, and added, "Well, he is. You've got your own little agenda up your sleeve, am I right? You want something from him, a little extra time on the clock for your magnum opus, I'm betting. Tick-tock goes the clock, and every day your hourglass is a little emptier."

"Try to stick to the point, John. Why have you been so interested in Dipper?"

"Because he's like me."

"Oh really? I must have missed the point in Dipper's history when he became a suicide bomber at the behest of some manipulative piece of ass."

"Missing the point, Gnarly. The Shapeshifter and I… we both started out as something different. We were both outsiders, always picked last, always trying to be noticed. We both had special ladies in our life, girls we would have done anything for; for them, we would have unmade whole worlds and killed the stars themselves-themselves-themselves. Now, we're more than just outsiders. He's a nightmare made flesh; I am flesh made nightmare. I think we'd be good friends."

At this, Nyarlathotep just rolled his eyes.

"You really are a child, you know that? I've met a few cosmic abominations that couldn't act their age, but for Azathoth's sake, you were in your twenties when you became the Black Signal, and you're behaving like a pre-schooler pretending to be the big man in the sandpit. If it's not the endless quest for friendship, it's the showing off, and if it's not that, it's the kid-with-a-magnifying-glass sadism. And then there's the quirks, the pranks, the electronic toy hoarding habit, the endless trolling…"

"You're giving me shit about trolling? Pot-kettle, Gnarly, pot-kettle. We're more alike than you think."

"Please. If you want to look for similarities, take a gander at Bill."

"Hmm. Perhaps. Do you think Bill might accept a handshake from the whale-mollusc gods if he realized just how much better it would be in the long-run?"

"That can wait until later."

"Ooh, ominous."

"For now, I want you to leave Dipper alone. This is a pivotal time for him and the other members of the Zodiac, one that can ill afford interruptions. Cipheropolis is a crucible, John, and what will emerge from it will depend entirely on how the catalysts react. Oh, and it goes without saying that your habit of driving people to despair, madness and suicide will not be tolerated when it comes to the rest of the Zodiac. Do I make myself clear?"

"And what makes you think I have to play by your rules, old man?"

Nyarlathotep smirked. "A little something I like to call 'do as you're told or you'll find yourself sealed in a room with Lilith.' How does that strike your black little heart?"

There was a deathly pause.

Inside the vat, the Filth slowly began to froth.

"Lilith is gone," John hissed. "Lilith is dead. Lilith is WORSE-than-dead. Lilith is with the Nephilim and won't be coming back any time soon! I made sure of it."

"The multiverse is vast and full of horrors, Johnny-boy. Your monster under the bed is alive and free in a billion other worlds, and every one of those Liliths remembers your assassination attempt. I could be wrong, but I doubt that they'd care much about little things like dimensional iterations: one John is as good as any other when it comes to vengeance."

"You wouldn't. You couldn't."

"Oh really? Keep pushing, then. See where it gets you, Little Dream."

There was another, slightly longer pause.

"What do you want from me?"

"As I said, I want you to be on your best behaviour, young man. But I also want a word with your… friends. The Dreamers. The Whale-Mollusc Gods. The Sun-Eaters. Whatever you want to call them, I'd like a nice long chat with those who sleep within the Dreaming Prison. I have a proposition that I think will interest them – an offer of alliance."

"What makes you think they'll listen?"

"Because I know that the best path free of their prison is sideways. Tell them that, and you and I can like each other simply for who we are."

He thought for a moment. "Oh, and one more thing: I'm going to need you for something a little bit more specific in the meantime. See, I'm putting a team together; you might be the second-last of them, but you will be playing an important part…"

---

"Mabel… Mabel! MABEL! MABELLLLL!"

Mabel was already halfway out of her chair before she had time to realize she was conscious. Belatedly remembering where she was and what she was doing there, she glanced around her, trying to figure out what emergency had just awoken her. She couldn't hear any sounds of fighting, she couldn't smell smoke or noxious chemicals, and though it looked to be about midnight by now, she couldn't see anyone attacking the hotel. However, from the sounds of things, someone was in the room with her – and moving a quite an impressive speed, too.

Then, she recognized Dipper's voice, calling her name in blind panic. Suddenly wide awake, she fumbled blindly for the nightlight to her left and hastily switched it on, bathing the pitch-black room in just enough light to see the shadows by.

A moment later, something small and terrified slammed into her at high speed, toppling the nightlight on its side and almost knocking her chair to the ground. Of course, Mabel didn't need to look too closely at the figure to realize that it was, of course, her brother.

"Dipper, what-"

"I thought I was him again!" he screamed, voice on the edge of hysteria. "I thought for sure I was gonna be him when I woke up! And when I opened my eyes it was dark and cold and I couldn't find the light and I thought I was trapped underground and that I was going to be there forever and thought I really was the Shapeshifter and I was never anything different and I'd never see you or Wend or Soos ever again and I'd be all alone and and and and-"

But already his voice was dissolving into panicked sobs, until at last, he was only crying. Even in the dark, she could already tell that he was giving full vent to his fear and loneliness. After all, he'd always done his best to hide his tears in public, or at least to hold them back until he was alone and well out of sight – particularly if he thought he might be mocked for "being a crybaby" or worse. If he was crying now, he was too far gone to care about little things like self-respect, and was just bawling his eyes out.

Mabel hugged him tightly around the shoulders. "It's okay, Dipper," she soothed. "It's okay. You had a bad dream, that's all. Just take a deep breath, and everything will be fine."

Several seconds went by, as Dipper continued sobbing into Mabel's shoulder. "But what if I… what if I forget again?" he whimpered at last. "What if the next time I close my eyes, I stop being Dipper and start being Shifty again? What if Bill tries to take me back again, or what I hurt you or-"

"You won't. Because even if you do turn into the Shapeshifter again, I brought you back once; I can do it again. And even if Bill does show up looking for you, you're safe: we've got a hotel full of weird mutants and people with weird-looking guns to help out. Wendy's turned into a super-strong barbarian hero, I can control time, and Pacifica can juggle tree trunks with her mind – she actually killed a Henchmaniac a few weeks ago. Even Gideon's got some actual psychic powers now. And you know what? Now that we know Bill isn't unstoppable, if he did show his face around here, I'm betting we could have him on the run in about three minutes flat."

And the weirdest thing is, I can almost believe it now that I've got Dipper back.

"You really think so?" Dipper asked.

"Absolutely. So, you just take a deep breath and have a rest. Everything's going to be okay."

It took several minutes, but eventually, the trembling figure in her arms stilled and relaxed, his pattering heartrate gradually returning to normal. Before long, he'd stopped crying and his breathing had steadied at last apart from the odd sniffle.

Is it just me, or does he seem smaller than usual? I can't get a good look at him, but I swear he hasn't been this light in years. And maybe it's just my imagination, but I swear his voice sounds like it's gone up a couple of octaves….

"I'm sorry," said Dipper at last, voice still shaking ever-so-slightly. "I shouldn't have woken you up-"

"Dipper, you've been someone else for the last thirty years, and you spent most of it underground or frozen. I don't think anyone's blaming you for having a few nightmares."

"But still… I shouldn't have leaped out of bed and gone running around the room like that. I mean, screaming and flinging myself at you and crying with my nose leaking all over the place… I was acting like a little kid."

Reaching over Dipper's shoulder, Mabel set the fallen nightlight back on its stand. Then, as the light returned to the room, she finally got a good look at her brother's current form, and very hastily covered her mouth to hide her smile.

"Um, Dipper…"

Dipper looked down at himself, and realized that at some point in all the confusion, he'd accidentally transformed into his five-year-old self – right down to the pyjamas he'd have been wearing at this time of night.

"Oh right," he muttered.

A moment of concentration later, Dipper was thirteen and back in his everyday clothes again, except this time he was trying to hide the garnet-coloured blush spreading across his cheeks.

"Guess I should be glad I didn't end up wearing the lamb costume," he said. "Or being Bill's Lamby-Lamb. Urgh, if there was one thing I didn't want to remember, it was that. Worst birthday party ever…"

Mabel opened her mouth to ask what he meant, then quickly realized that Dipper could probably do without having the worst moments of the last few months cross-examined, and hastily closed her mouth. Unfortunately, that left the two of them sitting in the half-light with nothing to do or say, even though both of them clearly had a thousand things left to discuss; so, after about a minute of awkward silence, Mabel made a grab for the least innocuous topic on hand.

"What's it like to shapeshift?" she asked quietly.

"It… it's not easy to describe. See, because I used to be the Shifty…" Dipper shook his head. "Because I'm also Shifty – lord, this is confusing. Look, I'm of two minds on the subject: to Shifty, it was the most natural thing in the world; it was the sort of thing you could do without even thinking, like walking or eating. I… he was happy when he became something new, when he could try out all the new limbs or wings or whatever, but he never really thought about what it was like to change. He wouldn't know how to detail it. I mean, can you describe what breathing feels like when you've done it your whole life without having any problems?"

"Then how do you feel about it? Just you."

Dipper thought for a moment, idly chewing his lip as he struggled with the effort of putting the unknown into words. "Imagine you could change sweaters just by thinking about it," he began. "Imagine you could make a wish and be wearing a completely different set of clothes, just like that… but the clothes are a part of you now. Because you're not changing clothes: you're changing your skin and bones and organs, turning yourself inside out, smooshing yourself down or stretching yourself out, until there's new you facing the world. And that's just the way I feel about it emotionally. How it physically feels is…"

He sighed deeply. "At first, it hurt. Bill wanted it to hurt: he wanted me to feel every bone in my body breaking and distending and shrinking in all directions. But after I got used to it, the whole thing just stopped hurting. By the time I was with Wendy, I could almost transform on my own. And now that I'm me again… I think I like it."

By way of demonstration, he changed again, shifting rapidly from form to form: human, armadillo, seat cushion, gnome, python, and at least a dozen other shapes. For a split second, he was Shifty. And a moment later, he was Dipper again.

"Besides," he added. "I have to shapeshift every now and again, otherwise things start getting uncomfortable. It's not lethal and it doesn't damage my powers or anything like that, but… sooner or later, I have to become the Shapeshifter again if I want the itching to go away."

"Why?"

"Because it's my true form," said Dipper.

His expression didn't change at all and his voice barely rose above a whisper, but Mabel could tell at once just how miserable her brother really was when he said those five little words. Even with the room still thick with shadows, she could see the depression in his eyes.

"What about your memory?" she said, hastily changing the subject – if only so they could find something to talk about that didn't make Dipper feel terrible. "Have you really remembered everything about yourself?"

"Everything… including what happened after Weirdmageddon."

No, no, no! We're supposed to be talking about things that won't make Dipper miserable! Change the subject again! Abort conversation! Mayday, mayday!

"I remember everything from both my lifetimes now. It's still a bit difficult to get my head around, but I think I've almost gotten used to being thirty and thirteen at the same time. But… it's still hard."

"What do you mean?"

"Remembering my life as Dipper. There's so many embarrassing things I'd rather have forgotten, all those stupid mistakes and bad ideas… and worse. I was such a horrible person back then."

"What?"

"I was a horrible person," said Dipper flatly. "Shifty was a monster and I'm glad I'm not him anymore, but Dipper was a hateful little brat. You know it, I know it, so let's just move on."

"No!" Mabel exploded. "No, no, and no! We are not moving on from this! What could have possibly given you the idea that you were a horrible person?! Dipper, you've helped save the day so many times it's not funny: you rescued me from the gnomes, you saved us all from those ghosts at the Dusk 2 Dawn, you led the fight against Bill the first time around, and you brought down a giant robot with your bare hands! That's just the stuff you did in the first half of the summer! And what about everything you did for me this year alone? You helped me say no to Gideon, you gave up a chance to be with Wendy just to let me keep Waddles, and you helped me rescue Mermando! I haven't even gone into all the things you've done for all the people in Gravity Falls-"

"Blips on the radar," Dipper scoffed. "None of that adds up to much in the long run, Mabel, especially when I spent my entire life being stupid, selfish and wrong about everything. All that stuff about helping you keep Waddles? The first time around, I didn't care until I ended up accidentally guilt-tripping myself. I mean, you heard what I said back in the lobby, back when I was still being Shifty full-time: every other day of my life was another stupid mistake. When I wasn't hurting someone's feelings, I was screwing up everything without even realizing it, and when I wasn't doing that, I was being wrong! I was wrong about the gnomes, wrong about making a deal with Bill, wrong about Stan, wrong about the portal, wrong about keeping secrets from you, wrong wrong wrong wrong wrong!"

He took a deep breath to steady himself. "Frankly, Mabel, I don't know why you're pretending that I was anything other than a waste of skin."

"Oh, I don't know, maybe it's because you're not thinking straight? Or maybe it's just because I don't know why you've started hating yourself! What brought this on, Dipper? Why are you thinking like this?"

For the second time in as many minutes, Dipper bit his lip. "I've never really been… well, you know all about me and my self-esteem: it's been all over the map this summer. Every time I get a little bit of confidence, reality smacks me in the back of the head and reminds me who I really am. Back when we declared war on Bill just before Weirdmageddon went global, I got too big for my britches – as Gideon would probably put it; I got overconfident and stupid-"

"No you didn't! Everything would have been fine if the Wheel hadn't gone wrong!"

"Doesn't change the fact that I was too full of it to be scared. And because of that, Bill took me down a peg. You've read my journal, so you don't need the whole story but… well… towards the end was the worst…" He swallowed; by now, a thin glaze of sweat had coated his brow, and his shaking hands were already gripping the armrests of the chair like claws.

"We don't need to talk about this if you don't want to," said Mabel hastily.

"But I do. See, Bill made me into the Shapeshifter, made it so that I always had been. But that wasn't all he did: he wanted to make sure that I could still be tortured even if I didn't really exist anymore. So, he left a tiny bit of my mind inside Shifty's brain, "like a barnacle," so while I was being the Shapeshifter, I was also being Dipper but couldn't realize it: that tiny piece of me had all my old memories and thoughts, but it couldn't knowingly access them, and it couldn't even think for itself… but it knew that something was wrong. So, while most of me was out happily killing people and plotting revenge as Shifty, the other part of me was screaming for help and didn't even know why. Like a car alarm in the middle of the night, it just kept ringing and ringing and ringing…

"And that's why Shifty hated Dipper so much: because that tiny little piece of me could unconsciously remember what I'd been like, and he didn't know how to shut it up. And because it had nothing else to do but look out at the world and scream, that little bit of me had a lot of time to spend on memory lane without even realizing it. Every mistake I'd made, every time I'd hurt someone's feelings, every time I'd ruined something important, every embarrassing slip of the tongue, every time my voice cracked, every time I couldn't stand to look at myself in the mirror…" He blinked rapidly, eyes suddenly shining with tears. "…and how much I've hurt you over the years, and I just want you to know I am so, so sorry…"

"Dipper, you need to think about this for a minute – we've both made horrible mistakes and we've both wanted to be punished for them. I had Weirdmageddon on my conscience, and you've got… all this stuff. But that's not the point right now. The point is-"

"I don't have to be that person anymore, Mabel!" Dipper finished, ever so-slightly manic. "I don't have to be selfish or stupid – I don't even have to be Dipper anymore if you don't want me to be! Tell me, what's the first thing that pops into your head? I can be that."

He executed another quick shapeshift, warping wildly from one form to another – some of them familiar faces from around Gravity Falls, others complete strangers.

"I can be anyone you want me to be!" he exclaimed, a note of desperation in his voice. "I can be your friend, I can be your servant, I can be your bodyguard, I can even be Waddles 2.0 if you want me to be! You name it, I can be it: just say the word, and I can stop being Dipper and be anything else!"

"Dipper, stop it."

Instantly, he stopped in mid-transformation, multiple faces instantly frozen in mutually stunned expressions.

"I don't want you to be anyone else," said Mabel. "And I definitely don't want you to hate yourself, because that's the way Bill would have wanted you. I know, because that's how he made me feel back in my prison. Every day I didn't toe the line, he made me hate myself, and now he's got the same thing going for you: now that you're not Shifty the attack dog, you're hating yourself. And I don't want you to be whoever Bill made you to be. I don't want you to hate yourself, and I don't want you to keep punishing yourself for all the old mistakes. Like I said, I don't care if you're Dipper or Shifty: you will always be my brother, no matter what happens… but I want you to be happy on your terms – your terms, not Bill's terms."

If anything, the look on Dipper's face looked even more miserable. "I don't know how," he said quietly.

"I'm sorry, what?"

"I can't focus on the things I used to do for fun anymore. I can remember them, but I can't single them out in my memories: whenever I'm not thinking like Shifty, I'm thinking about how much I… well, you get the picture."

Mabel sighed grimly. "Well, that's settled then: tomorrow morning, we're going down to the markets and we're not gonna rest until we find a working TV and a Ghost Harassers DVD. Then, we're going to find every single conspiracy book in the marketplace and buy 'em all, just for you! We're not gonna stop until you can remember how to have fun, bro-bro!"

"I'd… I'd like that."

Then, after perhaps a moment or two of silent musing, he added "Maybe you could pick up some knitting needles and wool as well, right?"

It took a little while for Mabel to realize what Dipper had meant: after all the time in Mabeland she'd spent being punished for her attempts at art projects, she'd almost forgotten what it was like to create just for the fun of it. In fact, every time she tried to recall the thrill of building and knitting and sculpting and drawing, all she could think of were the times she'd been punished for breaking the rules: the void, the hellish visions of her future, the box of puppets and the nightmare encounter with the illusory Stan, Ford and Dipper. And lurking behind every recollection she experienced was the same terrible thought: you deserve to suffer; you caused Weirdmageddon. And it only kept repeating itself, echoing through her brain every time she tried to think of it.

How am I supposed to help Dipper when I can't even help myself? Mabel wondered despairingly. But of course, she couldn't say it out loud. She had to stay strong for Dipper's sake.

Instead, she replied, "I'd like that."

You know what? Screw it. I might not know how to have fun anymore, and Dipper might not know how to have fun anymore, but I'm going to do everything I can to learn how. I am not going to let Bill beat us like this: we are going to remember how to enjoy ourselves it if kills us...

...or better yet, kills Bill.

---

Pacifica wasn't sure when she'd started the evening patrol.

She knew that once she'd realized that she couldn't really sleep normally anymore, it had seemed a waste of time to just flop around and do nothing. Besides, lying in the dark with nothing to do but stare at the ceiling was an open invitation for the barbs in her back to send up those cute little reminders.

As she'd discovered, her doll body might be immune to pain but it wasn't without feeling: without the hustle and bustle of daily life to occupy her, the terrible presence of the barbs lodged in her body would be felt again, like ice-cold nails slowly burrowing deeper and deeper into her flesh, painless but somehow still managing to rasp every nerve in her body raw. At times it even itched, as if there was a swarm of ants amassing beneath her skin, clustering in their billions beneath her muscles. But of course, this was an itch she couldn't scratch; she could only lie there, listening to the silence of the hotel and trying valiantly not to scream.

So, she had to get up and go – or else risk insanity.

Unfortunately, the hotel wasn't exactly overflowing with alternatives: the only TV in the building was broken, there was no music to listen to apart from the BABBA album still in the lobby, and the only games on hand were the crudely-painted cards that the refugees had brought with them. Conversation was also off the table, because almost everyone was asleep by now and she didn't feel like making any enemies just for the sake of a chat.

Of course, this was one of the many problems of returning to safety: now that Pacifica didn't have to spend every other minute of the day keeping watch, she didn't know how to spend her newfound free time. She could kill a few hours training down in the lobby, but there were only so many ways you could telekinetically juggle furniture before it became boring; plus, after all the times she'd used fallen trees as barbells, soft couches and ottomans were a bit of a letdown.

So at some point in those grim, joyless hours of the night, she'd begun wandering, floating down the corridors and passageways of the inexplicably-oversized hotel with no aim other than to remain in motion. Eventually, she developed a circuit, orbiting the rooms of one floor before progressing to the next, until she arrived on the roof and repeated the whole thing in reverse.

After five or six repetitions, she'd come to the only-slightly-insane conclusion that continuing might be for the best: after all, what if someone attacked the hotel? What if a fight broke out between the refugees and the Society? What if someone needed medical attention? Pacifica might be the only one who could help. So, the aimless, meandering path through the building had become an official patrol. Now, she was keeping watch, just as she had back in the wastelands – except this time she had over two hundred people to keep an eye on.

If nothing else, it kept her busy.

However, at some point in the cold and lightless hours before the black sun rose, Pacifica happened to ascend to the rooftop – and found Wendy sitting up there.

She was perched right on the edge of the roof, claw-tipped legs dangling over a drop of several hundred feet, arms barely gripping the concrete ledge on which she sat. Her gaze was fixed on the street below and the few shadowy figures lurking amidst the alleys, but it was obvious that Wendy knew that she was being watched.

For a few seconds, Pacifica could only hover there, caught between following the Northwest family lessons and following the lessons she'd learned from Dipper and Mabel. She could tell that Wendy didn't want to be bothered; she knew that the leader of the Society wouldn't have any compunctions against using violence to maintain her privacy if she really wanted it; she even knew that it was impossible to predict how Wendy could react. Plus, father's old lectures on not associating with "crazy homeless folk" still occasionally echoed in her mind no matter how many times she tried to shut them out. And yet…

…something about the sight of Wendy sitting on the edge of the precipice seemed to override all logical concerns. So, almost on instinct, Pacifica hovered over to her and sat down on the ledge next to her.

The minutes ticked by in silence, Wendy refusing to acknowledge Pacifica's presence, Pacifica trying desperately to think of something to say.

"I like what you've done with your hair," she said at last.

Wendy gave her a look of exasperation that could have seared the paint off a battleship. Fortunately, her eyes hadn't turned red-and-black, so Pacifica was evidently off to a good start.

"I'm serious," she continued. "The cropped look actually suits you. Once you get back to taking showers, you might actually manage to get it looking really stylish. Maybe you'll want to grow it back to your old length before, but-"

Wendy groaned loudly. "Is that really what you're here for? Fashion tips?"

"…just trying to break the ice."

"Good luck."

"Look, I'm just looking for something to talk about. I don't know much about you, you don't know much about me, so I thought I'd open with a compliment."

"Cute. Now tell me, what the hell do you want?"

"Just to talk."

"About what? You just said we don't know much about each other and I know for a fact that we don't have a damn thing in common."

Pacifica's eyes narrowed. "Don't we? You've changed almost as much as I have: we both know what it's like to change so much that you can't even pass for a human being anymore. I'd say we've got that much in common. Also, there's one question I wanted to ask, as long as we're still talking: what are you doing up here? I mean, I'd have thought you'd be staying downstairs with the rest of the Society; they're your friends, right?"

Wendy slowly shifted in her seat, finally giving Pacifica her undivided attention. "I don't have much in common with them either," she said at last.

"What do you mean?"

"They still believe in the mission. They still believe in everything I told them: about how pointless struggling against Bill is, about how we could only earn death by enduring everything the world threw at us, and about how we needed to spread the truth wherever we went. Everything I spent the last few months teaching them… I can't believe in it anymore. Come on, you know all this by now: you saw me lose faith back there in the lobby."

"But can't you convince them to change their minds? I mean, I don't know about everything you did to make them join up, but surely you can try to make them look at things differently."

"Maybe I can," said Wendy. "But it'd mean something terrible."

"What's that?"

"It'd mean that all my worst fears are true, and they didn't start believing because I showed them the truth: they started believing because I forced them to. It'd mean I bullied them into joining, I took them away from their homes and their families, I forced them to see what I'd seen back in the mountains, and I made them too scared to say no. And if I can get them to change their minds, they'd do it because they're afraid of me and always have been. It'd mean…" Wendy sighed. "It'd mean I was wrong about myself."

"And what's the matter with that? In case you forgot, I've spent most of the past summer finding out that everything I knew about my family was wrong. And… well, no offence, but you've already been proved wrong about a few things in the last twenty-four hours."

Wendy almost managed a smile – the key word being 'almost.' "Yeah, I've been wrong, alright. I was wrong about Gideon, wrong about Dipper, and wrong about the Shapeshifter. And that's just the thing: it's snowballing. I could have lived with it if I was wrong about Gideon, but now it turns out I was wrong about everything. I haven't just made a few mistakes, I've…"

She suddenly turned away, suddenly unable to meet Pacifica's gaze.

"I've hurt people," she said quietly. "Four refugees ended up getting maimed in that first standoff with Gideon, and one of them nearly died, from what I hear. When I was still roaming the wastes, we forced people to listen to the sermons, even if it meant beating them to a pulp, and even after they joined, dozens of new recruits were killed when the initiation rites went wrong. I thought it was for the best; I thought it was the only thing I could do if I ever wanted to escape from this nightmare, if I ever wanted anyone else to escape. And now, after all this time and all that blood on my hands, I find out that it was all for nothing: Bill was playing me for a sap all along."

"But he does that to everyone, Wendy: you heard what Mabel said back in the lobby, about what Bill tricked her into doing – and since then, we've all had to do terrible things while we were still playing his games."

Wendy laughed mirthlessly, though it sounded more like a choked sob than anything else. "Except he didn't just trick me, did he? He didn't fool me into starting the Society or having people press-ganged; he didn't do anything to me once he was finished playing with my head up in the mountains. No. He didn't force me to play his games: he made me want to play his games without me ever realizing it, then he let me loose on the wastelands, all because he knew it'd be funnier if he could just sit back and watch. Bill already turned me into a human Rottweiler… but if it turns out that nobody in the Society ever really believed except out of fear, I'm even worse than that. It'll mean that Bill made me just like him."

"That's not true and you know it."

"Oh really? I've seen the people who were made to work for him, the slave gangs he gathered up just for the hell of it: I did the exact same thing to the Society and I didn't even notice what I was doing. Who else but Bill would be that heartless? Answer me that."

"Wendy, if you were anything like Bill, we wouldn't be having this conversation. If you were really as bad as you think you are, you wouldn't have let Mabel stop you: you'd have just kept killing. Simple as that."

"And how the hell do you know that?"

"Because you're not the only one here who's been forced to play a part without knowing it," Pacifica countered smoothly. "My family played me for a sap as well; they wanted to me to be just as heartless as Father was, and for a while, I was… right up until I met Dipper and Mabel. I could have ignored what I learned from them and just kept playing my parents' games; I could have even left everyone in the mansion to burn to death. But I didn't. Dipper taught me that I had a choice, and I chose to be more than another link in the world's worst chain. You had a choice as well: you could have killed Gideon, ignored Mabel and killed Dipper before we could find out who he really was, and you probably could have done even worse… but you didn't."

Shivering, Wendy turned to face her again, gills flaring slightly. "What are you trying to say?" she asked; her voice was soft now, almost tremulous… and were those tears in her eyes?

"You're still a good person," Pacifica replied. "And nothing Bill did to you could possibly change that, not while you're still alive to set things right."

For two agonizing minutes, there was silence.

"How am I supposed to set this right?" Wendy demanded, almost tearfully. "I've seen how Mabel looks at me: she thinks I'm crazy. And how can I even speak to Dipper after I tried to kill him?"

"I think trying would be a good place to start. After all, you're still their friend."

"Even though I'm nothing like the person they met back in Gravity Falls? I'm not who I used to be, in case you hadn't noticed. All the cool, calm, self-assurance they remember me for? That's long gone."

"Even so. Besides, it's never too late to reinvent yourself: maybe you can learn to be like your old self again, if that's what you want."

In spite of herself, Wendy smiled. "Since when did you start giving out so much advice?"

"Let's just say that Bill gave me a lot of time to think about what makes people tick; Father was already giving me lessons on how to manipulate people, and I suppose I learned enough in Weirdmageddon to put all that knowledge to better use. Plus, after all the months I spent babysitting my own parents, offering concerned advice seems almost second nature by now."

"But it wasn't as simple as that, was it?" said Wendy. "There's things that happened to you that you haven't told anyone about, that you don't want anyone to know about."

"Of course. Dipper and Mabel have enough to worry about without hearing all about my problems."

"That makes two of us."

There was a pause.

"Maybe we could share, then?" she said at last.

Pacifica's brain immediately executed the mental equivalent of a double take: quite apart from the fact that there were still a few leftover pockets of Northwest instinct that were still demanding to know what the hell "shar-ing" was, the notion of telling another human being so much about herself was against her nature. Even before Weirdmageddon, she'd been a very private kind of girl, never letting her coterie of paid friends know what she really thought or felt – mostly because there honestly wasn't that much of a disconnect between herself and her performance. The night of the annual party had been the first time she'd ever expressed real guilt and fear to someone outside the family; up until then, she wouldn't have even dreamed of apologising in public, much less having the breakdown she'd suffered in front of Dipper. But even after that, she'd still done her best to keep the mask on in public, either continuously sniping on about lawsuits or determinedly shivering in the cold before Mabel convinced her to wear the llama sweater. And now…

Well, now she was just wearing a different kind of mask, wasn't she? Granted, it was a lot more caring and pleasant that her old one, but it was still hiding a lot of things she'd rather not share. The feel of the hooks in her back, for one thing; the concerns about her parents, for another. And then there were all those anxieties regarding what happened to Dipper, her worries over Mabel's state of mind, and the terrible uncertainty of what was going to happen next. And in spite of everything she'd learned so far, it still felt wrong taking the mask off.

"I… um… it's… it's a long story," Pacifica stammered. "A very long and boring story."

"So's mine," said Wendy, completely deadpan. "Doesn't mean it isn't worth telling, if only to get it out of your head. Besides, what are you afraid of, really? Weirdmageddon's made us equals: we've all done things we're ashamed of."

If anything, it took even longer for Pacifica to think of a response to this.

"I don't want Dipper and Mabel to know," she said at last. "They'd only worry about me, and they've got enough to deal with right now."

"And I don't want either of them to think any less of me. Sounds like whatever we talk about can stay our little secret. Come on Pacifica, it's not like we can judge each other for what happened: like you said, we don't know each other well enough for that. Besides, whatever it is you want to talk about, it can't be anywhere near as bad as my story."

"Do you promise not to pity me?"

Wendy smiled – not the brutal shark-toothed rictus she'd worn when she'd been advancing on Gideon, but a genuine human smile. "I promise," she said.

And somehow, as the two of them settled down to talk, Pacifica had the most inexplicable feeling that everything was going to be okay…

---

"…what the hell is that?"

"I think that's the sun, dude."

"No, not that, the thing beneath it."

"I could be wrong, but I think that's supposed to be a city."

Robbie groaned and tried to figure out how they could have possibly travelled so far and wandered for so long to end up on the doorstep of this jumped-up shitpile. How long had they been walking anyway? Months? Years? With day and night not always guaranteed, they had no way of telling the time, and because most of the playgrounds had their own specific rules, there was no point in finding out even if they ever managed to scavenge a watch from the ruins they occasionally passed. Time had ceased to exist out here in the spaces between playgrounds, and the only way Robbie and Soos could measure it was by the times they stopped for bathroom breaks or supply hunts. Of course, there was one other way to mark the time, but Robbie honestly didn't feel like using it – in part because it was based on something he'd never ever get used to, no matter how hard he tried.

Since he'd joined them, Soos had died over thirty-seven times.

The first time, it had been while they were raiding a trashed semitrailer for canned food: Soos had decided to give the zombies a break from retrieving the supplies, and instead marched into the wrecked truck himself. Unfortunately, the stockpile of canned peaches had already been claimed, and when Soos had forced his way in through the back doors of the truck, the resident scavenger had panicked, drawn a gun and shot Soos right between the eyes.

Even after hearing all about Soos' inexplicable ability to return from the dead, Robbie had been a mess for hours after seeing that, gasping and puking in horror even as the scavenger had run for his life. He'd been even more shocked when Soos – now sporting a head that was once again symmetrical – had galloped over the hill with a shout of "you okay, dude?"

After that, most of his other deaths had been due to starvation: because there'd been so little supplies to be found even when they had found the occasional ruined gas station, Soos had insisted that Robbie have them all. It had been hard to eat while watching him slowly wasting away, but Soos had kept reassuring every step of the journey, even as he'd grown less and less lucid before finally slipping into a coma and dying – again. On every single occasion, Soos would reappear just over the opposite hillside less than a split-second after death, fresh as a daisy and totally unharmed.

He hadn't even lost weight.

But by far the most disconcerting part of the whole thing was the point when Soos asked, "Dude, why don't you start bringing my old bodies back as zombies? They'll help speed up the journey."

Robbie had argued with him for almost an hour, citing everything from the risk of disease to the simple fact that he didn't want to be followed around by multiplying zombie doppelgangers of his only living friend in the world. But in the end, he'd given in: controlling the zombies was getting easier and easier as time went on, and as much as he hated to admit it, piggybacking on their shoulders was a lot easier and quicker than trying to walk and direct them at the same time.

So, in the weeks that had followed, they'd rocketed across the wastelands on a giant serpent of reanimated corpses: the zombies had done the running, while Robbie and Soos had sat up top in improvised sedan chairs made of driftwood and tarpaulin (with the occasional seat cushion from a wrecked car thrown in for the sake of comfort). Strangely enough, none of the newly-dead Sooses ever seemed to decompose for more than a few days before abruptly pausing in mid-rot. Perhaps it was some new aspect of Robbie's powers, or maybe it was sheer good luck. One way or another, monsters tended to stick clear of the growing horde of undead from then on.

With nothing to trouble the two of them any further, Soos and Robbie had marched briskly onwards. They'd found places where the world had literally turned upside down and forced them to walk along a ceiling above an infinite void. They'd traipsed across realms of meshed-together biomes where frostbitten glaciers rubbed elbows with mosquito-infested jungles. They'd tumbled aimlessly through corkscrew-shaped playgrounds where the entire local population had been reduced to screaming wallpaper gorily layered against the twisting walls.

And now they were here, gazing up at this… city.

"WELCOME TO CIPHEROPOLIS," the sign above the gate read. "ABANDON ALL HOPE YE WHO ENTER HERE."

The sun had only just dawned, but already Robbie had seen enough to make him wonder if they should even bother stopping. If the sounds and the smells wafting from over the walls was any evidence, there was obviously some form of human life here… but judging by the armed guards and the cartload of bullet-ridden corpses beyond hauled out the front gates, it probably wasn't worth the risk just to get a closer look.

Plus, "Cipheropolis" wasn't exactly a name that inspired confidence.

And yet…

It could be Robbie's imagination, but he had the feeling that they'd been led to this place, as if they'd been unconsciously following some kind of homing beacon across the playgrounds; Soos had voiced the idea as well many times, muttering that it simply felt as though they were going in the right direction. Assuming Robbie wasn't mistaken and Soos wasn't being an idiot again, what could they have been brought here for, if that was the case?

More importantly, what were they supposed to do now that they were finally here?

Robbie was halfway through turning around to ask Soos that very question, when the air was split by a thunderous, ear-splitting roar of sound from somewhere overhead, a wall of eardrum-popping sonic tsunami hammering down on anything within range and blasting dust from every surface in earshot.

Drawing aside the tarpaulin, he looked up just in time to catch the sight of something massive rumbling across the horizon at an impossible speed, a gargantuan agglomeration of whirring gears and hammering pistols and thousands upon thousands of tons of tarnished metal. It was almost impossible to describe the actual shape of it, or even what it might be: every time he was close to working out an edge or a straight line, more details crept into view – a wall became a chaotic mass of camshafts and pulleys and god only knew what else. In the end, it was simply a massive floating chunk of machinery floating through the sky, as translucent as a ghost yet substantial enough for the wind of its passage to blast Soos's hat off as it thundered across the sky towards them.

Judging by the screams of terror from beyond the wall, the inhabitants of the Cipheropolis had clearly noticed that shape approaching them; even from here, Robbie could clearly work out the sounds of hundreds of people stampeding in all directions, knocking things over, breaking down doors in a frantic attempt to escape.

By now, the thing was positioned directly above the city, and Robbie realized that it wasn't moving on its own: it was being towed by-

Robbie blinked rapidly, certain that he couldn't have seen what he thought he'd seen. He rubbed his eyes for a moment, then looked again, certain that the vision would be gone when he looked next. But no: there it was, tiny but somehow towing the impossible monstrosity behind it.

A chariot, drawn by four ashen-pale horses.

And somewhere in the back of Robbie's shellshocked brain, a long-forgotten snippet of the Bible rippled out: "And I looked, and behold a pale horse; and his name that sat on him was Death, and Hell followed with him."

---

And somewhere, not too far away, a man in a crimson coat was clapping his hands in glee.

"At last, at last, the movement ends and another begins," Nyarlathotep chortled. "We've had the overture; we've had the opening notes, we've established the melody; we've even kicked up the tempo a little bit. Now it's time to crescendo…"

Still chuckling, he reached for the stolen phone in his pocket, and began dialling the number he'd been waiting all day to call…

---

Back in the Fearamid, a distinctly uneasy silence had settled over the throne room.

Bill's foul temper had cooled immensely since he'd had the bright idea of bringing the Shapeshifter out of cold storage, and the regular reports he'd been receiving from Amorphous Shape had restored him to an almost copacetic mood. But for all the improvements, it still wasn't enough: he wouldn't – and indeed couldn't – be satisfied until the Axolotl and whatever body he was currently inhabiting were brought before him, ideally in pieces. Bill didn't know how the old bastard had brought in that weird spider-goddess from another dimension, and he didn't know how he'd managed to outrun the Henchmaniacs after being out of practice in the art of possession for Y'vnt only knew how long; frankly, he didn't much care. He could have these questions investigated when Axolotl was dead: for now, he was still on alert.

So for the time being, Bill remained seated atop his newest throne of calcified bodies, his one eye fixed on the wall directly ahead of him, his long fingers idly tapping out an alien rhythm on the armrests. Under the brim of his hat, his eye betrayed no emotion, nor did his posture reveal anything other than mild impatience. In the last few timespans since Amorphous Shape had hurried off, he'd been almost calm: he hadn't raised his voice, he hadn't turned gigantic and red, and in fact hadn't changed shape in any way. He merely sat there, waiting for the next call.

Around him, the Henchmaniacs busied themselves with the quietest games they had on hand, none of them daring to disturb Bill's reverie: some played blackjack, a few made do with craps, while Kryptos and 8-Ball assembled at the pool table for a tournament – using Toby Determined as the ball, of course. In all cases, the currency of choice was slaves, each one gagged, muzzled and shock-collared, just to make sure Bill wasn't troubled by unnecessary noise.

Of course, Bill probably wouldn't have noticed if Lava Lamp had let off a battlefield nuke in the middle of the room: all his attention was focussed on the tiny phone sitting on the left armrest next to him. He'd conjured it himself a few timespans ago, shaping it from the bones of the ancient Minoan dead and carving it with arcane sigils unknown even to the inhabitants of this puny dimension, just so he could keep track on his Henchmaniacs without having to leave the party.

Ever since he'd been sent out to retrieve the Shapeshifter, Amorphous Shape had been very timely with his reports: every week on the local calendar he would call to let them know that the mission was all going as planned and the Shapeshifter was loyal as an old sheepdog fed with human gibbets. Of course, this was on local time, back in whatever hick timezone Gravity Falls now existed in (truth be told, Bill was losing track): by the Fearamid's standards, it took barely two hours for a new report to arrive.

So far, the news had been pretty positive: the Shapeshifter was cooperating with commands and following the trail to the best of its ability, and according to Amorphous Shape, they were making good progress; since that Axolotl couldn't easily track its approach as he had with the Henchmaniacs, Shifty was rapidly closing in on his hideout, and managing to keep up with the cowardly bastard on the rare occasions he decided to swap safehouses. For all Bill knew, it would only be a matter of time before the intruder's head was sitting on his mantelpiece, embalmed and ready to display to the guests.

Wouldn't that be something to imagine?

Look, he'd say to all the cowering human masses. See that severed head? That was the last being in the multiverse who could have saved you. So if any of you are getting some crazy ideas about being rescued at some point in the future, give 'em up right now: you're my toys now, and nothing is going to get you out of the rumpus room now, not even death, not even the zodiac-

There was a sharp buzz from the phone, and Bill's ringtone echoed out across the throne room, filling the air with the joyous, atonal cacophony of a classically-trained concert pianist being rhythmically hammered facefirst into a casio keyboard. Bill glanced at the phone as he picked it up, but he already knew long before he saw the arcane caller ID that it could only be Amorphous Shape.

"Shaaaaaape!" Bill cackled into the phone. "Great to hear from you! How's the chase going? Is ol' Shifty getting close to the prize?"

But the only response was a deep, resonant ripple of laughter, and when it finally subsided, the voice that replied belonged to a stranger.

"You have no idea, Billy-boy," it said. "You have no idea."

For five nerve-wracking seconds, Bill could only sit there, staring in bewilderment at the phone in his hand; he tried vainly to place the voice, hoping that something familiar might leap out from his memory – but no luck. Whoever this was, it wasn't the Axolotl: even in human disguise, the bastard salamander wouldn't have been able to disguise the distinctive energy in his voice.

"Who is this?" he demanded at last. "Where's Amorphous Shape?"

"He's just having a rest. After Shifty left, the bunker was free, so he decided to make use of the cryotube. As for who I am… well, let's just say that I'm a seeker of amusements, much like you."

"Is that right?"

"Absolutely. The main difference between us, of course, is that I'm older than you. Older, wiser, cannier, and altogether more capable of withstanding boredom. But enough about me. What are you going to do when you learn the truth, Bill? What are you going to do when the final truth of entropy comes and nails you right between the eyes?"

"What do you want?"

"Ah, it's going to be a joyous time when you realize just how badly you've shot yourself in the foot, Billy-boy. I can scarcely imagine the rhapsodies of despair that will burst forth from your mind when the scales finally fall from your eyes. It won't be now, that's for sure – it won't even be next week. But it will happen… and when the time comes, I will be there to drink your tears."

"SHUT UP AND TELL ME WHAT YOU WANT!" Bill roared. "DID THE AXOLOTL SEND YOU? IS HE TOO COWARDLY TO TALK TO ME HIMSELF, IS THAT IT? ANSWER ME! WHAT… DO… YOU… WANT?!"

"Just to deliver a message, of course. See, whatever you were having Shifty do… well, it's not getting done now. The Shapeshifter's busy doing his own thing now, and he's having a whale of a time doing it. So sorry, but I think he's got away from you. I mean, you can try looking for him if you like… but how can you find someone who can be anyone. Needle in a haystack doesn't even cover it, Billy-boy!"

"Do not… call me that."

"Why not? You're enough of a child as it is, little triangle. Still too big for your right angles and sharpening your points just to make yourself look like a grown-up. I know you, Billy-boy…"

This time, Bill couldn't even speak: he could only snarl incoherently as the rage rippled up and down his contorting figure.

"Oh, and just one more thing you might want to cogitate on, golden boy: it's already too late."

"What?"

But the stranger had already hung up.

"What do you mean it's already too late?!" Bill screamed into the phone. "You thought it was worth mentioning, you asshole, so tell me! WHAT DO YOU MEAN IT'S ALREADY TOO LATE?! ANSWER ME!"

If something with no face could ever look smugly amused, the phone had somehow managed it.

Suddenly bigger than the entire throne and glowing a furious shade of crimson, Bill threw the phone across the throne room with a howl of rage, his powers blasting it to pieces long before it hit the ground. For a moment, he could only hover in the air, seething quietly as he struggled to get his temper under control and return to normal size.

Then he realized that everyone in the room was starting at him, and hastily took charge. "Right," he snapped, "I want someone to get over to the bunker in Gravity Falls and find out what happened to Amorphous Shape right now. We need to know what happened before whoever this guy is tries it again."

Lava Lamp mumbled in the affirmative, and vanished.

"And I also want all hands on deck in finding out where that signal came from: maybe he's working for Axolotl, maybe he's another interloper – we need to nip this in the bud yesterday. That means everyone, by the way, so someone had better go back to Mabeland and get Pyronica – I don't care how much fun she's having with Shooting Star, she needs to be back here on the double. Clear?"

Keyhole nodded, and teleported himself away as well.

"And once that's done, you're going after Axolotl."

"What, again?"

"Don't you 'what again' me, 8-Ball. We have an intruder that can ruin all the work we've done, and he's loose in my kingdom! So far, he's been unable to tap into his true power, but if he ever finds the nullifying runes I added to the dimensional substrata back at the start of Weirdmageddon, we are fucked. So, it's vital we catch him NOW. Clear?"

"But how did you know to add the runes back when this all started, boss?"

"Just shut up and do as I say! How difficult can it b-"

But before Bill could finish his sentence, Keyhole and Lava Lamp reappeared, both of them clearly aghast – and more upsettingly, alone.

"And just what the hell are you two doing back here so soon?" Bill demanded. "Where are Amorphous Shape and Pyronica? Why aren't they with you?"

For the next ten seconds, the two Henchmaniacs quietly argued among themselves as they struggled to nominate a suitable bearer of bad news. In the end, Keyhole stumbled forward and explained himself as best as he could. Immediately, there was a gasp of horror from the onlookers.

A long and distinctly awkward silence erupted across the throne room, as Earth's Lord and Master slowly processed what he'd just been told.

"WHAT DO YOU MEAN, THEY'RE DEAD?" he howled. "WHY ARE THEY DEAD?!"

By way of an answer, the bodies of Pyronica and Amorphous Shape were slowly brought in on stretchers, to the accompaniment of gasps and yelps from the onlooking Henchmaniacs: whatever had happened to the two of them, it hadn't been pretty.

Pyronica had been completely decapitated, and her headless corpse was covered in dozens of ragged, bloody craters, almost as if someone had driven a giant drinking straw through her flesh; for good measure, every last drop of her blood had been siphoned off, and most of her internal organs had been pulped and drained off as well. For good measure, someone had wrapped a silk ribbon around her severed head, and a tiny gift card had been jammed between her teeth. To a very special guy, it read. PS: Sorry I couldn't keep the head in a state of perpetual screaming, but that's the way the cookie crumbles!

By contrast, Amorphous Shape had been ripped open at the middle, his gaudy shell torn open to expose the flesh of his body; organs had been shredded, bones had been shattered, and huge handfuls of meat had been simply torn away – as if with teeth. Something had eaten him.

"What the hell happened?" Bill demanded.

Lava Lamp shrugged. "There was signs of struggle all over the place, but no sign of who did it, boss. Maybe the Shapeshifter did him in."

"But what about Pyronica? She was nowhere near the Shapeshifter!"

Now it was Keyhole's turn to look blank. "Whatever happened, boss, it was bad: Mabeland's in ruins, Dippy Fresh is dead, Judge Kitty's dead, and nobody left alive can answer any questions – they're all in hiding, I think. Oh," he added nervously, "And Mabel's gone."

"Gone? GONE? YOU MEAN WE'VE LOST SHOOTING STAR? WHERE IS SHE? WHERE COULD SHE HAVE GOT TO?!"

"I dunno, boss. I found Pyronica's body in Eternal Summer, and I managed to find traces of a portal to another playground – that's where I found the severed head, see – but other than that, the trail's gone cold."

Bill's mind raced. They'd lost one of the zodiac; somehow, one of the toys he'd gone to so much trouble to house and feed and torture so very specifically… had escaped. Either there'd been some kind of freak accident that had killed Pyronica and given Shooting Star a chance to escape – or someone had broken in and rescued her. This had Axolotl's dirty fingerprints all over it, but how could he have managed to do this much damage with his powers still nullified? Perhaps this mystery caller was helping him, but what was this stranger and how could he be so powerful? To kill a Henchmaniac and rescue one of the zodiac would take-

He stopped mid-thought, suddenly derailed by a new and more troubling idea: if Axolotl and his new pal could break into one prison, they could do it again.

Frantically, he tore open a dozen portals in the air around him, each one revealing a different playground, each one looking out at one of the tailor-made prisons he'd assigned to the zodiac. But already he could tell that it was as he feared.

Question Mark was gone, as were GIFfany and the faux Melody.

Red had left her playing field, having last been seen making a beeline for the Drowning Lands.

Northwest Mansion was deserted, the throne missing barely half its barbs.

Gideon's little refugee camp had long since been emptied and buried under the snowfield.

Zits was nowhere to be found in the City of the Dead.

And…

Bill's eye widened in shock and disbelief.

Fez, that cheating bastard, had somehow managed to escape from the Museum and beat his own self-loathing to death.

The Toymaker, who'd previously seemed perfectly content as master of the Forge and builder of playthings, had not only absconded – but taken the entire Forge with him!

And Fordsie, his favourite, his best candidate for Henchmania, the nearest thing he'd had to a friend among human beings, was gone. Apart from a few mad scribblings on the floor, the Dome of Wishes was empty; the reservoir of power had been pumped dry and the failsafe trap had been triggered, so by now Sixer should have become a full-blown Henchmaniac. So why wasn't he here? Why wasn't he by Bill's side, praising his genius and bowing to his magnificence? Why wasn't Fordsie his?

And where were they all?

Then, the answer struck him like the proverbial thunderbolt: why was he sitting here moping when he had two perfectly good witnesses to the disaster? Yes, Pyronica and Amorphous Shape were dead, but it wasn't as if that would be an obstacle to him now; after all, he'd brought over five hundred billion human souls back to life at last count, usually for the same shits and giggles that had inspired him to murder them in the first place. Bringing back Henchmaniacs would be a cinch.

So, reaching out towards the two mangled bodies with all his reality-warping power, Bill forced the energy of life back into Pyronica and Amorphous Shape, willing their souls to return to their corpses.

Nothing happened.

The two bodies twitched for a moment, then went still.

Puzzled, Bill tried again – only to realize that all the second tries in the world wouldn't make a difference in this case: there were no souls to return to the bodies. Whoever had killed Pyronica and Amorphous Shape, it hadn't just torn them apart, drank their blood and ate their hearts: it had eaten their souls.

The two Henchmaniacs weren't just dead – they were gone forever. And judging by those terrified expressions, the other were already noticing the fact that they were up against a foe that could put them down permanently.

There, in the awkward silence of the throne room, Bill began to tremble with rage. At first it began with only a slight tremor of the hand, but gradually it worked its way up his arms and across his body, until he was literally shaking in mid-air, his body rippling with pent-up wrath. His mind was blank except for the blackest, maddest rage he'd ever felt since he'd first left the Second Dimension behind, and sooner or later, that anger had to find voice… but he couldn't find the words. Words had finally escaped him, eluded all grasp and left him quietly gurgling on incoherent nonsense. But even if he could find it in himself to speak sense, his usual mouthless speech wouldn't have been able to convey the rage and frustration and fear eating him from the inside out in that moment.

So instead, he reached up with suddenly incandescent fingers and seized his face, nails digging into the gap between his eye and his bow-tie, and with one almighty wrench of tearing flesh and spurting blood, tore himself a new mouth. Power crackling, he shaped the gory trench in his body as best as he could, swiftly forming red lips, jagged white teeth and a writhing forked tongue.

And all the while, from the moment the bloody crevasse in his face had opened, he was screaming, pouring all his fear and anger through his new mouth in a single, unrelenting scream.

On and on it went, pummelling the onlookers with noise until it seemed that nothing could be spared the sound: windows shattered, machines broke down, cards erupted form their decks in all directions, gambling tables caught fire, slaves collapsed in weeping piles of madness, Toby Determined through himself into the corner pocket, and even the Henchmaniacs could only cover their ears in pain.

Almost two minutes went by before the scream finally came to a close, not because Bill had run out of breath (he had no breath to run out of, really), but simply because he couldn't see the point in continuing.

The echoes died away, and the hole torn in Bill's face gradually faded into nothingness.

And in the ringing silence that followed, 8-Ball asked, "Boss, what do you want us to do next?"

"Get out," Bill whispered.

"But if there's something that can kill Henchmaniacs out there-"

"GET OOOOOOUUUUUUUUTTTTTT!"

As one, the Henchmaniacs scattered in all directions, either flying, teleporting or just sprinting into the shadows – hastily taking their slaves with them as they fled.

In their wake, they left Bill, still quivering with rage.

---

For over an hour, he could only sit on his throne and wonder what could have possibly have gone wrong to leave him saddled with this many mistakes. When he was in the mood to focus, he'd be able to watch the recorded footage culled from the various playgrounds for evidence of where his playthings had run to – something he'd originally set up for his own pleasure, he noted bitterly – but for now, he could only stew in his own frustrations.

And then, just as he was starting to wonder if it might be time to conduct some kind of a purge of the human population just to draw the zodiac out of hiding, the answer hit him head-on.

Time!

Why had he been so upset about the jailbreak and the loss of two Henchmaniacs when he could simply turn back time and literally undo everything that the Axolotl's accomplice had done in the last few timespans? After all, the zodiac weren't immune to time manipulation like Axolotl was, and neither were the Henchmaniacs. One swift rewind, and his toys would be back in their prisons, and he could literally ask Pyronica and Amorphous Shape what had happened to them?

It was so simple that he had to laugh; all the fuss and commotion he'd kicked up, when the easiest solution in the world had been sitting under his nose all along!In fact, the only downside was that it didn't work on Axolotl.

So, giggling triumphantly to himself, Bill raised one hand, summoning up all the power over time Weirdness afforded him, and snapped his fingers – readying himself for the familiar rush of excitement and the roar of rushing wind that accompanied each of the last few dozen jumps through time he'd taken.

Instead, there was only an awkward silence, broken by the sound of time stubbornly refusing to budge.

Maybe he hadn't been concentrating properly. Raising his hand and feeling the energies course through it for the second time in almost as many minutes, Bill snapped his fingers once more.

But again, nothing happened.

Puzzled and more than a little alarmed, Bill tried again.

Still nothing.

An ice-cold droplet of terror landed in the very core of Bill's physical shell and began slowly freezing his internal organs. By now almost frantic, he tried one last time to shift the temporal energies around him, this time applying every last atom of his being to brute-forcing the flow of history.

But once again, history refused to change. And this time, as the ripples pulsed across reality, he realized why: something was blocking his control over time – something almost human, something that seemed uncannily like…

Shooting Star?

How could she be doing this to him? Did she even know what she was doing? From what little his senses could reveal, whatever power was being exerted over his own, it was doing so unconsciously - meaning that whoever had sabotaged him wasn't even aware that they'd managed it - adding insult to injury as far as Bill was concerned.

But how could any of the zodiac become powerful enough to block his influence over anything, much less time itself? They were just humans! Ordinary humans with no real powers of their own – or at least, that was how it should have been…

In the end, though, there was no point denying the threat: regardless of whether it was Mabel or not, there was something out in the world that was now keeping him from manipulating time, and would presumably do so indefinitely. From now on, there would be no more loops in time, no more studying the past, and no more reversing history – meaning that whatever happened next would be permanent from now on. Somewhere in his kingdom, there was someone or something that might just be able to kill him… and because of Mabel, there'd be no way he could rewind his way out of trouble.

It was exactly as Axolotl's graffiti had warned him:

No extra lives.

No second chances.

Nothing but death.

And in the terrible silence of the throne room, Bill Cipher began to cry – the low, gasping sobs of a man who had suddenly realized what that bright light at the end of the tunnel really was.

Had any of the Henchmaniacs been listening, they might have heard him whispering something between his sobs, something half-obscured by tears, but still just distinctive enough to be recognizable. But of course, there was no one there to hear, and so Bill's terrified weeping had no audience to hear it except for ruined machines and echoing silence… and, of course, the red-coated figure still watching from the shadows.

"No… No, no, no… it's not fair… I… I did everything right. I did everything right this time…"

---

A/N: This chapter's soundtrack choice is I Was Lost Without You from Mass Effect 3.

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