A/N: And here we are, ladies and gentlemen; the conclusion to this strange little story.

I want to thank all of my viewers, reviewers, favouriters and followers for being with me on this ride, and I hope you find my following works as enjoyable - and the ending to this story entertaining, emotionally satisfying and appropriate.

Disclaimer: Gravity Falls is not mine. A full list of what was also not mine will be forthcoming.

"All hail the Zodiac!"

"Praise be to our saviours!"

"Bless us with your wisdom! Bless us with your protection! Blessed be those who are faithful!"

"Show us the way! Let your light reveal the path!"

Dipper and Mabel smiled awkwardly back at the teeming crowds and tried not to look as uncomfortable as they felt.

Up until a few minutes ago, it had seemed a good idea to seek some advice from the guests Axolotl had invited to the afterparty; after all, the overwhelming majority of the men and women celebrating at the bar were down-to-earth militiamen – loyal, devoted, and maybe even a little bit on the adoring side, but none of them as fanatical as the worshippers they'd acquired along the way. Unfortunately, the same couldn't be said of the Fearamid's slave population: over the last month or so, the rumours of rival gods loose in the World of Weirdness had slowly filtered through to the Henchmaniacs' playthings, and now that Bill Cipher had fallen to the Zodiac, every other slave in the palace wanted to bear witness and pay homage. Those of them who hadn't actually known the Zodiac before Weirdmageddon now regarded them with the same religious awe as all their other worshippers... and that left a few hundred of them attending the festivities at the bar today.

As the two of them later discovered, Amanda and Sherriff Blubs had done their best to keep these new worshippers from going on pilgrimage to the new "home of the gods" to pledge their loyalty, and even succeeded in keeping them away from Grunkle Stan and Grunkle Ford when they'd paid a visit to the bar – perhaps helped by the fact that Ford tended to frighten people without meaning to these days. But with the ringleaders of the revolution now wandering across the dance floor, the fanatics couldn't be held back a moment longer. As one, they surged through the crowds of revellers, surrounding Dipper and Mabel in a matter of seconds: some threw themselves to their knees and genuflected, praying loudly as they did so; some clutched at Dipper and Mabel's hands, begging with tears in their eyes for all kinds of things – for their families, for the world, for salvation; a practical few wanted to know what they were going to do next and what their orders were, pleading for purpose and direction; and a few simply stood and stared, the faces aglow with awe and wonder as they reached out for the leaders of the Zodiac, hoping to touch divinity – or what they thought was divinity. They were all ages, all colours, all faiths, had emerged from every corner of the shattered globe, and they wanted nothing more than to be in the presence of the Zodiac.

The militiamen in the crowd tried to calm them, or at least to force some distance between them and the Zodiac, but short of actually getting violent, there was very little they could do to hold them back. Dipper and Mabel could only freeze in place and smile nervously at the congregation now walling them in, not knowing what to say.

For a moment, Dipper could only wonder if this was what their lives were going to be like from now on, an endless procession of adoring crowds begging for answers that neither of them could give; how could he cope with that? How could he shoulder the burden?

For a split-second, Mabel's confidence, already on shaky ground, wobbled dangerously as she took in the worshipful throng around her; how could they accept her after everything she'd done? How could any of them proclaim her a god after how badly she'd screwed up?

But then they both took a deep breath, and remembered themselves: they'd survived Weirdmageddon, they'd won the war, they'd defeated Bill, and now they were close to learning their next move.

Dipper had led the forced of the Zodiac alongside Mabel and proved his worth time and again. More importantly, he was himself again, but he was also the Shapeshifter, and where Dipper's self-assurance fell flat, Shifty had confidence by the truckload. He might never be comfortable around freezers ever again, but he knew how to navigate the path ahead.

And Mabel's shameful secret was no longer a secret, its power over her well and truly broken: the others knew of the deal that had put the Rift in Bill, and they had forgiven her. Nobody blamed her for what had happened. She was a long way from feeling as exuberant as she once had, but she could live with herself again.

So as one, they gently wove their way through the crowd, waving to the onlookers and assuring them that all would be right with the world. They weren't sure how they could make it so, but hopefully today's meeting would be a good step in the right direction: the two of them had come up with this odd little idea – almost in unison – not long after Pacifica had destroyed the Northwest throne, and it was a bit of a gamble as to whether or not it could give them any concrete information, but that wasn't the point of today. The point was to find a tiny bit of support for the one possibility for a future that had occurred to the two of them.

Ahead, the revelling figures of Axolotl's guests loomed on the horizon, all of them lost in their fun – except for Jheselbraum, who was deep in conversation with Ford. As the horde of worshippers drew back from the mass of alien deities in fear, Dipper and Mabel drifted closer until they could be heard over the jukebox melange, and called out:

"Hello-ooo? Excuse me up there! Can we talk to you for a minute – all of you? Yes, all of you. Um, you too, Blue Man."

There was a pause, as the interdimensional gods, demigods and heroes detached from the festivities and assembled around Dipper and Mabel: Q, Elizabeth and the Lutece Twins, the Ellimist, Dr Manhattan, Emma Smith and her bodyguard, John Murdoch, Dave Bowman, Rick Sanchez and Morty, and all thirteen of the Doctors.

"We, uh, wanted to ask you something," said Dipper hesitantly. He took a deep breath, and briefly faltered under the searching gazes of the crowd. It took all his willpower not to shapeshift out of sheer nervousness, for all of them seemed to be staring at him, their eyes strange and unsettling even if they happened to look perfectly human; worst of all was Emma Smith's silent bodyguard, thanks in no small part to the plague doctor's mask she wore, its blank glass lenses seeming to bore clean through Dipper's head.

Thankfully, Mabel was quick to step in: "What's it like being immortal?" she asked.

There was a pause, as the guests digested this.

"I'm not immortal," said John Murdoch.

"Technically I'm not," added Rick. "I've got a few options, though."

"I'm not sure if I qualify as mortal or not," Elizabeth admitted. "Being a quantum impression on the multiverse is funny like that; maybe I'll fade away, maybe I'll last forever. Who knows?"

"Likewise," chorused the Lutece twins.

There was a muffled rumble from the Doctors. Eventually, Ten announced, "Time Lords technically have a limited lifespan, but it can go on for millennia as long as we have a few regenerations left… and after everything that's happened to me and my other selves, even losing that hasn't done much to stop us. So I guess you could say that we're immortal – which is to say that I'm immortal. But as for what it's like-"

"Say nothing," said Rick.

"I'm just-"

"I mean it, Ten: say absolutely fucking nothing."

"Do you mind watching your language, Rick?"

"Oh yeah, they've got so much to worry about from my goddamn potty mouth, don't they? Your outlook on immortality is fucking schizophrenic it's a surprise you can even mention it without having a meltdown. At first it's 'oh no, immortality is a curse,' and then it's 'nooo, I don't wanna die, waaaaah!' One day, it's 'everything has it's time and everything dies,' the next it's, 'oh no, my friend of the month should live forever!' I mean, Jesus Christ, would it hurt you people to make up your mind?"

"They're probably gonna be a while," Morty advised, as the argument skidded back and forth behind him. "You'd better ask someone else."

In the clamour that followed, Q drifted over, robes billowing in an invisible breeze. "You want to know what immortality's like?" he chuckled. "It's an unceasing banquet of experiences, enough to satisfy any appetite or inclination, a never ending procession of amusements. Lesser minds might proclaim the nobility of death, but they rarely have any clever philosophies to offer up when they sicken and die. Immortality – like life – is to be enjoyed."

"Easy for you to say," Elizabeth muttered. "You've never known anything but eternal life."

"Immortality is analogous to any other form of life," intoned Dr Manhattan. "An infinite existence is neither any better nor any worse than a finite one. It simply is. I perform my experiments; I observe the invisible processes of the universe; I walk across history; I witness past, present and future unfolding all around me. I am not happy, nor am I sad. I simply am."

"Immortality is a duty," said Emma Smith. "I will be the successor to the Immaculate Machine one day, and I will be truly eternal. I do not accept it for my own pleasure, but to preserve the lives of Gaia's children. The queen bee does not seek command for her own grandeur, but for the good of the hive."

"Immortality is… change," Dave Bowman announced, shifting from Starchild form to human form and back again. "It means leaving behind that which you loved and being given wonder beyond description. I cannot be who I was any longer, and I have accepted that. Now, I have greater duties and I have greater pleasures. Sometimes, I regret the events that led me to this transformation – the mission to Jupiter, HAL's madness, the death of my friend and the men I was ordered to protect, the journey through the Monolith – but at other times, I cannot imagine who I would be without them."

All eyes turned in the Ellimist's direction, but he only shrugged. "I've been immortal for the better part of several hundred million years: I've gone from the last of my kind to one of a kind, from a prisoner to a commander, from one mind to a collection of minds spanning a fleet, from a physical being to an entity beyond time and space. I've had my share of triumphs and tragedies, I've made wonders beyond imagining and I've seen more living beings die than have ever existed in the history of the human race; once, a long time ago, I even took up the life of a mortal to rediscover my joie de vivre. After all this time and transformation, though, I don't look upon my immortality as either good or bad. It's just… life."

"The same can be said for many immortals," said a voice from the sidelines.

Dipper looked up in surprise, and saw that Jheselbraum was striding towards them with Grunkle Stan and Grunkle Ford by her side.

"I've met many immortals in my long years as an oracle; my position close to the multiversal crossroads makes it easy for those in need of my advice to stumble into my company, and many of them have been among the eternal. Kalachakra, replayers, repeaters, perpetuals, minor deities, devil, angels, vampires, mages of the Traditions and the Technocracy alike – they've all come to me seeking answers. And if they found some measure of peace, they learned to see their existence as neither a blessing nor a curse, simply as a life."

"But how are we supposed to get that far?" Mabel burst out. "What are we supposed to do now? We can't just try to live ordinary lives, go to high school and college or whatever – I mean, most of the high schools are all gone by now, but whatever. So-"

"What should we do with our lives now that Bill's gone?" Dipper finished. "A couple of weeks ago, we knew exactly what we were meant to do... but now that Bill's been defeated, we don't know what we're supposed to do with our lives – and now we find out that our lives are going to go on forever. So… what's the point?"

"Can we really just stay at home and pretend to be kids? I mean, I don't mind relaxing for a while, but is that all we can do? There's people asking for help out there – you saw them: should we try to find a way to help them or just wait until Axolot's finished?"

"What are we going to do with our lives?"

There was an awkward and extremely localized silence; outside it, the party raged onwards, the fanatics went on praying, the DJs and self-styled musicians did their best to out-cacophony each other, and a baffled courier arrived with enough bottles of vodka to get the entire room pickled twice over. Rick stole one of them from a passing drinks cart and drank the entire bottle without even stopping to take a breath, while Morty tried patiently explaining to the courier that Bill and all his Henchmaniacs were long gone and the Earth was free; everyone else could only hover awkwardly about the room as they tried to think of something meaningful that didn't end up sounding embarrassingly clichéd or schmaltzy.

Eventually, there was a cough from the back of the group; to Dipper and Mabel's surprise, it was from Emma Smith's bodyguard. She was strange enough already, even among this weird group of gods, demigods and heroes, what with her immaculate white uniform, blue beret and beaked plague doctor's mask… but as she stepped closer, Dipper found himself gripped by the inexplicable notion that he'd met her somewhere before, though this was of course impossible.

"Nobody can tell you that," she said quietly.

Her voice was soft, and though it sounded young-ish to Dipper, there was something tired, almost exhausted in those near-whispered tones.

"Nobody can give you a purpose, not really: you can be given duties and responsibilities, but there's no guarantee of finding an atom of satisfaction there. You have to find a purpose for yourself, Dipper."

"But what?"

"You know," she said simply. "You and Mabel aren't here for answers: you've already talked about what you're going to do next; you're here because you don't trust your own judgement, because you needed someone else to give you the confirmation you needed."

"How did you kn-"

"If I can give you any advice, it's this: whatever you choose to do, don't do it alone. The longer you stay apart from humanity, the harder it is to focus on what matters; your thinking becomes alien, unrealistic. Imagining positives becomes almost impossible. Being among mortals might one day hurt, but being without them can drive you mad. And..."

She hesitated. "Never rest on your laurels; the longer you stay still, the harder it is to escape your doubts. They... creep up on you, drag you down and never let you go. Do something constructive – help people, write a book, build something... but whatever you do, don't waste what you've been given. Don't let your doubts win."

Once again, there was that hesitant pause; then without warning, she leaned forward and hugged Dipper tightly around the shoulders. "You're going to be okay," she told him. Then, without another word, she was gone, hurrying away into a corner of the room, suddenly self-conscious and afraid.

"What was that about?" Mabel asked.

Emma offered a distant smile. "They've met before," she said mysteriously.

"But I've never seen her in my life!" Dipper protested.

"Another world, another story."

"Seriously," said Mabel, "Who is she? What's under that mask? What other world are we talking about? What-"

Dipper held up a hand, eyes suddenly fixed on the horizon; the anxiety was gone from his expression now, his face set in a look of calm determination.

"I think we know what to do now," he said at last.

While the party rippled onwards, Dipper and Mabel went back home for a conference.

Over sandwiches and cola, they talked at length about what they were going to do with their immortality: they'd done so before, of course, but now they had confirmation from an expert on the subject – or what seemed to be an expert on the subject, at any rate. Jheselbraum and the Ellimist seemed to agree with her, and that was good enough for Ford at least. So for the next few hours, they planned, discussing who to tell and what to do, exchanging the role of questioner and answerer readily until they had thought out all the angle – or as many of them as they could.

As they did so, Dipper jotted down notes on a legal pad, absently chewing on the end of his pen as he did so, scribbling faster and faster as he gradually returned to the comforting ebb and flow of writing; he wasn't taking notes on the meeting, but chronicling the interior of this strange new world just as he had in Journal 3 and in his own journal of shapeshifting (both of which now sat on a shelf next to his bed). Mabel knitted away at a mass of new sweaters, slowly and clumsily at first, her hands trembling as she took up the needles for the first time in what felt like months; for the longest time, she couldn't progress beyond the first few stitches and worried that art might be beyond her forever after everything that had happened to them... but she persevered, and as she began to pick up speed, the colours began to flow into a new pattern, and at last she could create again.

It took a long time before they were satisfied with their new idea for a future – or with their creative output – and by then it was evening. With nothing else to talk about, they both collapsed into their beds and sank into a deep and wearied sleep; Dipper half-transformed into the blankets and pillows, Mabel dozing with Waddles at her feet.

During the night, Mabel awoke with a start from a dream too terrible to mention out loud. For one heart-stopping minute, she thought she was back in Mabeland with an army of cute cuddly animals and animated plush toys just outside her door, waiting for her to sign the execution orders. Then, when she realized that the room was too small and cosy to be her palatial bedchamber, she stared frantically down at Waddles, briefly terrified that she might have ended up in Endless Summer. But no, the little pig was still breathing: time was still in motion. She was safe; she was free.

Not long after, Dipper began to whimper in his sleep. He was changing, his body shifting and warping in response to something only he could see: one minute, he was the Shapeshifter; the next, a polar bear; the next, Wendy. On and on it went, until his frantic writhing very nearly tipped him over the edge of the bed; suddenly aware of gravity, he finally lurched back into wakefulness with a gasp of "It's cold in the cryotube, I don't want to go back." It took almost a full minute for him to remember who he was and where he was, and by then, Mabel was looking over at him with undisguised concern.

For a time, they talked about their nightmares, knowing that this wouldn't be the first time they'd suffer through nightmares of their imprisonment.

Still, they could at least take comfort in the fact that not every night since had been cluttered with bad dreams. And in the end, the two of them agreed that no matter what their dreams had in store for them, the fact that they were there for each other when they woke made it all just a little more bearable.

In the end, exhaustion caught up with them: they fell asleep almost in mid-sentence, dozed peacefully for what seemed like eons, waking not to nightmares but to the sound of the residential sector slowly returning to life.

They had been asleep for nearly fifteen hours.

The party had ended a while ago, and now the militia, the liberated slaves and the worshipers had returned to their temporary times… and sooner or later, they would begin asking themselves the same questions that Dipper and Mabel had been asking themselves over the last few days of freedom: they would want to know what they were to do next as well.

Breakfasting and freshening up as quickly as they could, the two of them said hasty farewells to their parents for the day before departing – each of them secretly grateful that they hadn't noticed the previous evening's nightmares.

(Of course, they were completely wrong on that front: Mark and Anna knew their children well enough to recognize when they were suffering from bad dreams, and they knew that Dipper and Mabel had good reason to – what with all the horror stories they'd heard of Weirdmageddon and the war. In the end, they could only be supportive and hope that they could ease their troubles in whatever way they could.)

It took a while for Dipper and Mabel to gather the Zodiac for a meeting: Stan and Ford were still chatting with Jheselbraum, a subdued-looking Pacifica was busy making preparations for her parents' new lives, Gideon was meditating with his family, McGucket was engaged in a rather complicated discussion with Candy and Grenda concerning upgrades to their powered armour, Soos was making repairs to some of the more battered houses, and Wendy was still joyriding around the neighbourhood with Thompson, Tambry, Lee, Nate and Robbie. Of course, it took even longer to track down Time Baby, the once and future ruler of Earth being busy with increasingly irritated attempts to chisel the remains of the Time Paradox Avoidance squad into shape.

Eventually, though, they all gathered in the Fearamid's penthouse suite, where Bill had once boasted to Ford of his plans for "a party that never end with a host that never dies," now almost lost amidst snowdrifts of dust and piles of rubble. Thankfully, it only took a few seconds for Mabel to clear away the wreckage, for Robbie to bring in some extra chairs and for Grunkle Stan to put his fist through the framed portrait of Bill above the fireplace: then, once everyone was comfortable in the near-infinite space that the Tip of the Pyramid offered, Dipper and Mabel sprang the news on them.

It took perhaps a minute to explain themselves, and nearly half that time for anyone to break the ensuing silence.

"For the record," said Robbie at last, "This is a really, really bad idea, no matter what way you look at it."

Mabel grinned. "When has that ever stopped us?"

In spite of the situation, the Zodiac laughed as one. And when the time came for a vote to be called, the response was unanimous.

They found Axolotl hard at work on the fringes of what remained of the Earth, busy with a series of indecipherable chores enacted upon the very fabric of reality. With his ability to alter his physiology, Dipper could see at least a little of what he was up to: he was trying to incorporate Weirdness into the substance of the world, reducing the violence of the Rift that still blazed in skies across the universe, clearly doing his best to end the apocalyptic chaos of it all. Even from here, though, Dipper could tell that it was uphill work.

Perched atop a barren clifftop overlooking the maddened starscape above, the Zodiac took up seats upon the ledge and called out to him. Axolotl seemed surprised to see them again so soon, maybe even a little suspicious – as if he thought they might be in the mood to take revenge for screwing up so badly. Eventually, though, the atmosphere calmed enough for him to turn away from his chores, exchange a few pleasantries with them, even report on the status of various missing friends and loved ones.

Eventually, though, Dipper and Mabel couldn't bring themselves to delay a moment longer.

"You said that it'll take you thousands of years for you to fix the universe, right?" Dipper asked.

"At worst, yes."

"And you'd also fix Earth, give the people a new home and make sure they can survive on their own?" asked Mabel.

"In time, yes, but reducing the corrosive effects of Weirdness takes priority: I must guarantee that the universe won't collapse under the weight of Bill's handiwork as soon as possible before I begin making repairs to your world, otherwise it won't matter how much good I do."

"That's not all you've got to do, though, is it?"

"Beg pardon?"

"I remember Nyarlathotep said something about you when he lost his temper; he called you a protector of the multiverse." Dipper chewed the end of an already well-chewed pen. "Is that true?"

"This is so; I am one of many such protectors, but I have my own territory to protect."

"Then you're like a cop?" Mabel asked. "You've got your beat, you've got responsibilities, and you're always on call. That sound right – the bit about always being on call?"

"More or less, more or less: if threats emerge in my region of the multiverse, I am obliged to stop them or at the very least to prevent the danger from spreading."

"But if you're always on call, then how can you be helping us full-time?"

Axolotl hesitated.

"You're not, are you?" Dipper remarked coldly. "If something comes up in your neck of the woods, you've got to drop everything and head right back out there, and you've probably got to make inspections every now and again just to make sure it's not going crazy."

"And that's why it's going to take so long for you to fix our world," Mabel surmised. "You've got other universes to look after, right?"

There was a pause, and then Axolotl inclined his head in a shamefaced nod. "I promise you," he said at last, "I promise all of you that I will return to work on your reality no matter what happens; this is my mistake to correct, and I will not abandon my responsibilities."

"But you can't abandon all those other worlds either, right? You can't look after this world and take care of the rest at the same time. But we've got a responsibility to this world as well: this is our home... and some of us did end up helping Weirdmageddon along by mistake. So the whole responsibilities thing goes double for me."

"And me," added Dipper.

"And me," Ford chimed in.

"Ditto," concluded Stan.

"And I helped Bill after the fact," said Gideon.

"And my family was working for Bill for decades," Pacifica added, "So there's that-"

"Alright, alright, I get it! Now, where are you going with this?"

Dipper took a deep breath; they'd reached the tough part of the conversation: here was the point where Axolotl would almost certainly object, unless of course he wasn't as compassionate as he made himself seem. But even if there was a chance the giant newt god would immediately give his stamp of approval to the mad scheme they were proposing, Dipper still found himself hesitating ever-so-slightly: this was the biggest step any of them had taken since Weirdmageddon had begun, outdoing even their declaration of war against Bill, and despite all he'd done since then, he couldn't quite smother the sense of gnawing anxiety that had made a home for itself in the pit of his stomach.

They'd reached the top of the rollercoaster again: from here, it was a very steep drop, and judging by the apprehensive looks on the faces of everyone around him, the rest of the Zodiac knew it as well.

Still, it couldn't be helped. They'd gone this far: they couldn't stop now, not when the only alternative was to sit around doing nothing and hope that they'd be able to help the people of Earth some other way. Best thing to do was take that plunge and enjoy the ride.

"I don't think you should be doing this job alone anymore, Axolotl," said Dipper solemnly. "If you can't fix this universe full-time, then maybe it's time we took over and rebuilt the world ourselves."

Overhead, the glossy block eyes briefly flickered shut and opened again.

"You what."

"It's really simple: from now on, the Zodiac should be in charge of the reconstruction. You do what you can while you're here and stop the universe from falling to pieces; we'll be handling everything else while you're here and while you're out. We'll put the stars back where they belong, we'll make sure gravity works again, we'll sew time back together, seal all the holes in the fabric of space, and more importantly, we'll build new homes for the people. And we'll keep it all safe while you're gone. This way, the work gets done a lot faster – sure, it'll still be a long time before it's finished and it'll probably take a lot of effort, but with any luck, it won't take hundreds of years to polish off."

Once again, Axolotl could only blink incredulously.

"Why?" he demanded. "Why in the name of all that's sane and reasonable would you want to do this?"

"Sane and reasonable isn't in the job description these days."

"Oh shut it, Ford! Why would any of you want to throw yourself back into this mess right after escaping from it? I mean, you can't know what you're setting you're setting yourself up for – you just can't! You're condemning yourself to decades, centuries of toil, and I'm not even including all the battles you'll have to fight to keep this world safe! This makes no sense, I..." He floundered, tail threshing the air in consternation. "Why would any of you want this?"

"Because it's better than nothing," said Pacifica. "And because this is the only way we can help the human race in the long run."

"You've already done that! You saved the world, you saved everyone! I mean, haven't you done enough?" He sighed. "Honestly, don't you think you've at least earned some R&R?"

"Not while there's still human beings suffering out there," Dipper retorted. "I mean, the people we've rescued are safe, but there's still thousands of other people living in hiding or forgotten about in playgrounds or whatever. They need our help just as much as the militia and the ex-slaves, and this idea's the best way to improve life for everyone. If you think that's not worth getting out of bed for, I don't believe you, not after everything we've done to stop Bill."

"But I can save them! I can make a search of the world right now!"

"You just said you didn't have the time to do that," Stan pointed out. "You're supposed to be busy making Weirdness safe so it doesn't Swiss cheese itself out of existence."

"Well, I can take breaks-"

"And you said that this is your break, for all intents and purposes," Gideon added. "And when it's over, you're meant to go back to making sure all the other universes on your beat haven't gone up in smoke. Are you supposed to take breaks from your break now? I mean, haven't you ever heard of the phrase 'many hands make light work?'"

Axolotl closed his eyes for a moment; perhaps it was Dipper's imagination, but he appeared to be counting to a very high number.

"You really don't want to take some time off? To live like normal people, just for a little bit? I mean, I could understand Stan and Ford volunteering for such duties, Time Baby even more so, but I would have thought the rest of you would at least enjoy the opportunity for carefree fun! And you, Dipper, I'd have thought you and your sister would relish the chance to be ordinary kids again-"

"But I'm not a kid anymore, remember?" said Dipper. "I've lived over thirty years as the Shapeshifter."

And I still have the nightmares to prove it.

"Besides, it's a little late to leave this to the adults," Mabel added. "Not after we've just won a war with a crazy nacho from another dimension... and definitely not when we're doing this for the sake of every human being on the planet – for the sake of everyone in the universe. And as for trying to live normal lives, you really think we can even pretend to be normal? After everything that's happened to us?"

"We're a little short on meaningful purposes in life these days," said Ford.

Axolotl hung his head in despair. "Writing. Exploring. Knitting. Sculpting. Playing. Do none of these hold any joy for you anymore?"

"Of course they do," Dipper grumbled. "Stop being so melodramatic. We're not total basket cases: we're in this to give ourselves some focus in life and help people, exactly the same as we've been doing every day for the last few months."

"Besides," added Mabel, "It'll be fun: we'll get to see what we can really do with these powers."

"Plus, it's not as if we can go back to being normal now that all the schools and jobs have been wrecked," Wendy chimed in. "This beats sitting around doing nothing."

Time Baby rumbled his approval. "AND I WILL HAVE ALL DUE OPPORTUNITY TO RECLAIM WHAT WAS LOST: THE FUTURE I BUILT IS GONE FOREVER, BUT ITS POTENTIAL IS NOT."

"Fair enough, but you must realize that you won't just be repairing the world if you do this. You'll also have to repair humanity – to say nothing of all the other species that Bill's mangled beyond recognition over the course of his games: putting aside the fact that a couple of billion people have been permanently killed off on Earth alone, there's a significant percentage of the human race who've been transformed, mutated, aged, regressed, shrunk, grown, distended across time, compressed across dimensions, frozen in stasis or warped beyond all notions of solidity. Sooner or later, you'll have to help them as well, and if you can't return them to human form – as I suspect is often the case – you'll have to find some way of making their lives more bearable. Being a social worker to every survivor lucky enough to have escaped with their brains intact is not exactly the most glamorous job in the universe, in case you hadn't guessed. And how will you even know how to start?"

"Well, we've helped each other with our own transformations," said Pacifica. "That's got to be a good starting point.

"There's another thing you haven't considered, however," Axolotl warned. "If you do this, there'll be no escaping what happens next: you've had problems with those who worship you before, but if you rebuild the world so blatantly, you'll be giving the fanatics all the justification they need to see us as gods. It'll be like pouring gasoline on a campfire. For all I know, the rest of the militia will join in as well. Once they find out that you're rebuilding the planet – and find out they most assuredly will – you will never be free of this nonsense, no matter how hard you try: they'll be building idols to you by lunchtime tomorrow."

Dipper sighed. "Not much we can do about that right now. If we can't convince them we're not gods, then nothing can. Maybe we can keep things from getting out of control this way, stop them from making human sacrifices and waging holy wars in our names – hopefully."

Axolotl let out a groan so low it registered as infrasound. "There's nothing I can say that'll convince you, is there?"

"'Fraid not, dude," said Soos. "Besides, it's not like this is anything new: when the world is broken, only the Handyman of the Apocalypse can fix it!" By way of emphasis, he issued a salute.

"Aaaaaarghghggh. This is a very, very bad idea..."

"That's what I said," Robbie remarked cheerily.

"...But, loathe as I am to admit it, there's not much I can do to stop you short of Unacceptable Measures, especially on the occasions in which I'm forced to depart this world. If nothing else, I can at least ensure that no unpleasant mistakes are made." He sighed. "This isn't what I wanted for any of you: I'd have hoped you'd at least be able to take a few years off to adjust to the changes in your life… but it seems I have no choice but to face the facts. Very well: you will have access to the flow of data from Bill Cipher's mind, and I can teach you how to deal with the more unpleasant paradoxes inherent in this new world's composition. I acknowledge that you have the resources to deal with the situation at hand, and many of you already have the powers necessary for the task of rebuilding this universe; those of you who don't will probably be strong enough long before you reach the halfway point, I have no doubt. You will be gods in all but name – and once the fanatics witness you in action, the name part of the equation will be taken care of. I hope you're ready for it, ladies and gentlemen, I really do, because if you're looking for assistance in dealing with fanatical worshipers, I can't help you.

"And there's one other thing you must be aware of: you may not be fully alone as gifted individuals. Others around this world have also absorbed quantities of Weirdness, and a handful of them could even begin exhibiting magical powers of their own; it's doubtful they'll ever approach the same level of strength as you, and their numbers will never rise higher than one in every hundred thousand, but they may gain enough power to represent a threat to the survivors – the fearsome dragons and evil sorcerers of this new mythic age. If they ever do appear, it will be your duty to train them… or to eliminate them. Alongside healing the masses transformed by Weirdness and returning the Earth to liveable status, this will probably be one of the biggest headaches facing you within the next few years. Frankly, I don't know why you'd bother to do any of it when you had a perfectly serviceable replacement – namely me, but…" He smiled in spite of himself. "I'd be lying if I said I wasn't a little bit impressed by resolve. Perhaps, when push comes to shove, you really do have what it takes to be gods worthy of the name."

He paused, presumably just for effect. "So… where would you like to begin?"

As it happened, Dipper and Mabel had already chosen a starting point.

The trick was finding it.

Thanks to Bill's capricious shuffling of the atlas, nobody knew what the playgrounds had once been or where their chosen building site was anymore. Even Dipper, who'd traversed most of Bill's kingdom while in search of Mabel and the others, was at a loss as to where to begin: he knew the environments well enough, but the playgrounds had been completely repositioned since then – either automatically, accidentally or simply due to Bill trying to drag the Zodiac within reach – so his frames of reference were all out of date.

After several days of searching, the Zodiac were forced to give up on hunting on ground level and seek higher ground, which they found on a tiny asteroid overlooking the ruined planet. Here, they hoped that they'd eventually find some idea of what they were looking for, but in truth, it wasn't much of an improvement over their original approach.

Right now, Earth didn't look like a planet. It looked like a puddle of soup in zero gravity, a semi-liquid mass of playgrounds, pocket realms and unrealities splashed across interstellar space; Mabel didn't know if Bill had done all of this on purpose, if he'd accidentally wrecked it in one of his temper tantrums, or if he'd simply let it happen on its own. Whatever the case, the world was beyond recognition: they wouldn't be able to find continents from up here, much less actual states.

Even with a laptop connected to Bill Cipher's brain implant providing all the information they would ever need, there was only so much the datastream could tell them; plus, the fact that it kept typing out the words "KILL ME" every few minutes proved something of a distraction.

After about an hour of searching, Mabel found herself sinking to the floor and half-collapsing onto asteroid ledge: she couldn't look anymore, not without at least taking a break to rest her eyes from that mind-pummelling sight.

A few minutes later, a portal opened on the ledge to her left, and two familiar figures sat down next to her.

"You okay?" Grenda asked.

Mabel could only shake her head; even if she'd had the presence of mind to think of a reply, her throat was too clenched and aching to allow for speech.

"Do you want to talk about it?" asked Candy.

It took almost ten seconds for Mabel to swallow the lump in her throat, and even after that, she still sounded as though she'd been crying. "I don't know," she admitted quietly.

One heavily-muscled arm gently draped itself over Mabel's shoulders, drawing her into a warm, soothing hug. "Whatever you think, this isn't your fault," Grenda said firmly. "No matter what happens, you gotta remember that."

"But-"

"But nothing." And now Candy's arms wrapped around Mabel as well. "You made a mistake: Bill did the rest. You're fixing the world, Mabel. That's all that matters."

At this, Mabel almost let out a choked sob. Even after all this time, there'd been some dark and awful part of herself that had believed that all the nice things said about her back in the Fearamid had been invented just to spite Bill, just so he wouldn't have the pleasure of seeing them turn on her. It was silly to entertain these thoughts, but it was worth the sense of lingering doubt, just to feel those terrible thoughts vanish the moment it turned out she really was forgiven.

"But how are we supposed to fix this?" she asked quietly. "That's what I was really worrying about. Even if we can put Earth back together again, we'll never be able to make the way it was, not with Weirdness part of the universe full-time. So… how can we even try?"

"There's got to be some way of getting it close to the way it was," Grenda reasoned. "I mean, it's like a jigsaw puzzle: just because it's missing a few pieces, it all still fits together, right?"

"It's not a jigsaw; it's a mosaic."

All three of them spun around: Grunkle Ford was standing behind them, starry black eyes fixed on the nebulous horizon. Behind him, Jheselbraum stood in silence, bathing all around him in her reassuring aura.

"The world is broken, shattered into a million different pieces and jumbled beyond recognition; as Mabel said, we'll never be able to restore Earth to its former self… but maybe we can make something beautiful of it. A new world without the problems of the old: no more pollution, no more erosion, no more melting icecaps, no more global warming, no more looming ruination. We can't give the planet its innocence back, but we can give it a new lease on life." He blinked, and a strangely melancholic look crept across his face. "Am I a mosaic now?" he wondered aloud. "Do we have second chances after all?"

He slowly exhaled, and sat down next to them. "I'm sorry," he said quietly.

"For what?"

"For all that I did to you without ever realizing it: for isolating you from Dipper, for prioritizing his apprenticeship over your bond, for making you feel helpless and alone… and for not realizing this until it was almost too late to say it with my own voice. Jheselbraum will be leaving soon, and I'll once again be struggling to speak coherently without her calming power. So I had to tell you, just to clear the air before it all slipped through my fingers again."

Mabel bit her lip. "Is it okay if I say I'm sorry as well?" she asked.

"As long as you don't take the blame for what became of the Rift; you've already been forgiven and it was never your fault to begin with."

"Then I'm sorry for never trying to meet you halfway; I'm sorry for never speaking up about how frustrated I was with you; I'm sorry for hoping all the problems would just go away if I pretended they weren't there… and I'm sorry for spoiling the apprenticeship by making Dipper change his mind."

In spite of himself, Ford smiled. "I'm not," he said brightly. "If you hadn't 'spoiled' my half-baked apprenticeship, Stanley and I would never have regained our friendship… and in point of fact, I'd probably still be stuck in the Fearamid, being electrocuted. So, all's well that ends well, when you get right down to it."

"Even if you'll never be back to the way you were?"

"I can rebuild my psyche; I can slowly claw back a few pieces of my old self from the abyss… but not all. Perhaps that's for the best: we all change as we grow up. It's not so bad to be different."

In spite of herself, Mabel smiled. "You'd better believe it," she laughed, and hugged him fiercely. "I'm so glad I never pressed that button."

"Me too," said Stan cheekily. "Is this a private hug party or can anyone join in?"

And without waiting to be answered, he lunged forward and drew Mabel, Ford and even Candy and Grenda into a colossal bear-hug. "Dipper, get over here, you're invited too!"

Dipper immediately materialized among them, wrapping thirty-foot arms around all of them in what might have been the single biggest hug in human history. And suddenly they were all hugging, all laughing hysterically, because everything about the situation at hand was so gloriously, hilariously ridiculous: somehow, they were all alive and all healing in spite of how different they'd become; they were sane, they were helping people, they were rebuilding the world… and against all odds, they were happy.

Then, just as Mabel thought the situation couldn't get any better, there was a shout from the edge of the lookout post:

"I think we've found it!" Wendy hollered. "Gravity Falls is right below us!"

By now, all that remained of Gravity Falls was a soupy mass of unreality, the rampant Weirdness and Bill's lack of interest having all but swept it bare.

Not a single building remained standing; the forests had long since bled upwards into the liquid sky, the cliffs had softened and swirled away into a colossal maelstrom of unhinged matter, and the ground itself oozed and bubbled like molten lava. All that remained of the once-beloved town was the corroded remains of Ford's bunker, now hovering in the sky within a shell of bedrock and petrified soil; it had been built to outlast the apocalypse, and it had.

It was a sobering sight, made all the more upsetting by the fact that Stan's attempts to find some trace of the Mystery Shack – or the Shacktron – came up empty. For a time, they could only perch atop the floating bunker and wonder at how to begin; of course, Dipper couldn't bring himself to go anywhere near it. Even if the memories of his time in captivity hadn't made him feel anxious, he could feel chill from the cryonic tubes right through the bedrock and it nearly drove him to panic.

They weren't sure what finally prompted them into motion again, but whatever the case, something sent them hurtling down into the chaos below.

Ford's scythe carved clean through the anarchic mess, sweeping away the excess Weirdness in vast waves and unearthing a long-neglected foundation of rock beneath the horrorshow; slowly but surely, he pushed back the insanity almost right up to the barriers of the long-neglected playground. Weirdness could not be destroyed now that it was an integral part of everything, but it could be forced in certain directions, its excesses diminished enough to make something stable.

Then, Ford, Stan and Pacifica combined their powers of matter manipulation, building upon the lonely shard of rock until it had expanded into a vast rocky plain. Bit by bit, mile by mile, it grew to the size of an island, a small continent floating in a sea of Weirdness. Mountains rose at Ford's command, while Stan (assisted by Soos) pummelled great canyons and caverns in the new bedrock, and Pacifica sculpted the channels of rivers across the growing landscape.

For good measure, the bunker was swatted away into its own private reality, never to be seen again.

Robbie's golems and zombies flung themselves at the ground en mass, the dirt golems instantly dissolving and the zombies entombing themselves beneath the layer they had formed: one became the topsoil, the other became fertilizer. All the while, more golems helped reshape the land with their bodies, forming hills and valleys, moulding the region along familiar lines.

Wendy dove in from above with her flaming sword, setting off a cascade of chemical reactions within the soil as she swept past – pausing only to claw a few familiar configurations in the cliff-faces and hammer a few stubborn terrains into shape with her bare hands.

Overhead, McGucket soared across the sky atop steel wings, a botanical crucible-dispenser now mounted from his colossal underbelly. Like the others, his power grew every day, and his creative abilities had grown a thousandfold without Bill to hold him back; he could build anything given time and imagination, and with his technomagic, he could do anything as well. Now, from the mechanism he created, billions upon billions of specially-synthesized seed rained down on the new land, sowing themselves in the fresh soil.

Dipper formed himself into a colossal bank of stormclouds and brought torrential rain upon the soil; then, while Ford and Stan towed a new sun into position, Dipper substituted, supplying the nascent plantlife with light and water in equal measure.

Then Mabel swept in atop her horse, bringing a wave of accelerated time with her: grass seeds erupted into fields, meadow, orchards, paddocks; ferns and shrubs bristled into life to form undergrowth; trees bearded the ground in familiar patterns, and lush redwood forests stretched towards the skies. Then, as the sun and stars were towed into position in the sky over the reforming playground, she spun them into the cycles of night and day, and bound them to the patterns of seasons.

Through the tricks he'd learned from the Henchmaniacs, Soos brought the water in to stay, filling the reservoirs; rivers flowed through the channels that Pacifica had made; a lake formed, perfectly suitable for fishing season; and last but not least, a waterfall cascaded down from the verdant clifftops.

At Pacifica's direction, portals began opening all over the region, depositing thousands of houses from the residential block, the Cookie Jar, and even Endless Summer (what little remained after Tzimisce's rampage). One by one, she deposited them onto select plots of land. Here was the Corduroy cabin; here was the Valentino funeral parlour; the homes of Gideon, Soos, Grenda, Candy, and hundreds of others all found new places in the new land; even Northwest Manor returned to its familiar place on the hill – to be used as a museum from now on, as Pacifica had insisted. For good measure, Pacifica added a few convenient spatial warps so more houses could fit in the newly-formed town.

Anything that couldn't be retrieved was rebuilt from scratch: though Gideon's physical powers were still embryonic at best, his telepathy was more than enough to bring forth the memories of what was once lost and transmit them into the minds of more capable matter-manipulators. Stan, Ford, Pacifica, McGucket and even Dipper all followed these psychic blueprints, churning out all the familiar amenities and landmarks of Gravity Falls: schools, parks, libraries, swimming pools, museums, hospitals, shops, golf courses, restaurants, farms, arcades, even roads – all took shape through one set of powers or another. For good measure, McGucket also provided them with plumbing, electricity, even a rudimentary internet.

Then, with the portals still open, Gideon sent out the call to the forest dwellers: from the depths of the Fearamid, they gathered in their thousands – gnomes, lilliputtians, manotaurs, unicorns, plaidypuses and countless other species of fantastic creatures – and trumpeting their thanks, dispersed into the forests, accompanied by more than enough deer, squirrels, racoons and other mundane wildlife to keep the ecosystem flourishing.

For good measure, McGucket then unveiled his latest masterpiece, built specifically to tackle any difficulties with overpopulation the town might experience: hovering on the horizon, on the border between the forests and the slowly-expanding outskirts of the frontier, were the Stepstones – a vast airborne causeway of ancillary settlements floating in the skies. Mounted on asteroid-like masses of rock, blessed with Weirdness and mounted with perpetual engines for good measure, they were almost completely self-sufficient and could be built at a moment's notice, making them ideal solutions for overcrowding until the Zodiac continued their expansion.

Only once all the essential elements were complete did Stan and Ford embark on the pet project they'd been keeping in reserve:

It was hard to rebuild the Mystery Shack exactly as it had been, especially given that Tzimisce had crushed the only remaining copy of it back in Endless Summer, but they managed to replicate it nonetheless. Everyone chipped in for it, even Grenda and Candy, each of them applying their own memories to rebuild it as best as they could.

When the work was finally done, the Zodiac collapsed into the sky to review their work from a comfortable vantage point among the clouds. They weren't sure if they'd been working for hours, days, or months on end; all they knew was the sense of luxurious exhaustion that only accompanied the greatest of achievements.

It wasn't a perfect replica of the grand old town, not with all the multi-coloured trails of Weirdness I the sky and the floating settlements on the horizon… but it was close.

They'd never be able to rebuild the world exactly as it was, but that didn't mean it wasn't worth it.

Soon after, the human population surged into the new land, returning to their homes in some cases and finding new ones in others. Familiar faces dotted the crowd: Mayor Cutebiker, Toby Determined, the Corduroys, Melody, Lazy Susan, and a whole host of others; for good measure, Deputy Durland could be seen crashing headlong into Sherriff Blubs' arms.

But alongside the original residents of Gravity Falls, a host of several thousand newcomers had arrived from the Fearamid and the Cookie Jar to seek shelter from the madness outside… and when they saw the figures of the Zodiac hovering in the sky, many fell to their knees in worship, thanking them for their generosity.

"Is this heaven?" a few of them asked, staring up at the Stepstones.

"It's a work in progress," chuckled the King of Faces. "Heaven might be a bit much."

"Then… is this the New Eden?"

"No," said the Timekeeper Queen with a sad, strange smile. "This is Gravity Falls. This is…"

THE BEGINNING

A/N: This chapter's soundtrack is Piano Concerto #20 in D minor 2nd movement, by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.

Oh wait...

I promised you a list of references, didn't it? Hrm. Well, there's only one way to explain myself: it's time for the code!

R yvg blf gslftsg dv'w ivzxsvw gsv vmw
Gsv gzov xlnkovgv, gsv xlwz kvmmvw
Yfg rg'h mvevi gszg hrnkov, zh dv'ev wdvoovw
Gsviv'h hgroo zm vkroltfv gl gvoo

Or, to put it another way...

SURPRISE.