The three dimensional travelers stepped back into the familiar laboratory basement of the Mystery Shack, small smiles on all their faces despite the weariness to their steps. Once the portal was completely shut down, Dipper was the first to speak. "So, did we do it Grunkle Ford? Is one more piece of Bill gone forever?"

Stanford Pines was quiet for a long moment, carefully and attentively operating the dimension device's scanning function. Finally, he switched it off and smiled broadly at the two teenagers. "Yes. Thanks to you two, the multiverse has one less shred of Bill Cipher in it." he said warmly.

Dipper and Pacifica both smiled with relief at this, Dipper in particular beaming with happiness at the praise from his mentor, though he was somewhat flustered by being given so much credit. "Hey, we couldn't have done it without you too!"

The older scientist dismissed this remark with a wave of the hand though. "You two would have found a way to prevail, even without my help. I'm so proud of you."

"So what happens now?" Pacifica asked. "There's more of Bill out there, right? Are we going back out after him?"

A crease appeared on Ford's forehead as the reality of the situation was brought back up, and he began working the scanner controls. "Well, not right away, but you are correct that we must continue our war against Bill until all of reality is safe from him. It will, however, take some time for the scanner to locate the next Bill fragment, and from what I found inside Mabel's head before I cleared her, nine such fragments exist, and at the moment we've destroyed three and know the fourth is trapped in a dead skeleton buried in the desert of Arizona." He explained. "So, until we get a solid location, we all have a little downtime."

As good news as that was, Dipper's expression fell and he let out a worried sigh at the mention of his sister. "Mabel, right..." He breathed, knowing he can't avoid the difficult conversation any longer. "I... I need to go sort things out with Mabel. If you'll excuse me..." He said before making his way towards the elevator, leaving Pacifica and Ford alone.

Not wanting to walk out right behind Dipper when he clearly wanted to confront his sister alone, Pacifica was left standing kind of awkwardly in the room with the older Pines, neither really sure what to say. While the blond girl did greatly respect the seasoned scientist, both for his genius and for how immensely happy Dipper was be his apprentice, most of her conversations with him tended to be through Dipper.

"So, Doctor Pines..." she began to ask, only for the old scientist to hold up a hand.

"You can call me Ford if you'd like. You're a close enough friend of Dipper's that I don't mind." He interrupted.

"It's alright, I was raised to be very formal, and it's probably the least bad thing about my childhood." She dismissed before continuing her question. "So, once we defeat Bill once and for all, what's going to happen next? I mean as much as me and Dipper talk about the things you and him discover and how they could be applied, I don't know if we've ever talked about how, well, we're going to get things out there. Like, do you guys plan to publish your research, start making products, how's it going to happen? I mean what science publications would even accept papers about gnomes and size shifting crystals anyway? How could we get any of the medicines you guys have invented through the FDA when several of their ingredients aren't acknowledged as existing?"

Ford's eyes seemed distant for a moment as he thought to himself, but in the end he smiled before speaking. "Well, we have talked a lot about how we're going to present our findings to the world, but I can see we've been doing a disservice by not including you in the discussions, you clearly have some insight into the matters of business and publication." He praised, before letting out a bit of a sigh. "Well, for the time being we've been getting by much how I did when I worked alone, patenting and publishing only the inventions which are grounded in accepted scientific fact, with the more arcane parts of their invention... edited out. It's not scientifically ethical by any means, but it's a necessary ethics violation."

Ford was quiet for a moment, turning to look at the portal device, the culmination of his life's work, a gamut of emotions running across his face that eventually settled on satisfaction. "As for how we'll put the more arcane aspects of what we've discovered into public acceptance, I'll admit we don't have a solid plan yet, aside from generally starting with the stuff that at least has fringe acceptance before working our way up, but no matter what we're doing we're waiting until Dipper's eighteen."

Pacifica seemed a little surprised by that last fact. "Dipper never really mentioned anything like that, why?"

"Well, I wanted it to be a surprise for him, so maybe I shouldn't have said anything, but you can keep a secret, right Pacifica?" Ford remarked before continuing before she answered. "I want to wait until Dipper's a legal adult before we begin really publishing in earnest because I want him to get all the credit he deserves for the work he's done alongside me, and by being a legal adult he'll be able to be the full controller of any patents we put out."

"You're giving him the patents?" Pacifica asked, genuine shock and surprise on her face. Intellectually, she had long since learned and internalized this kind of generosity as being possible in people, but it still surprised her when it actually happened.

Ford simply nodded. "I'm old Pacifica, it doesn't matter how many phoenix feather tonics me and Stanley take." He remarked with smiling weariness. "As much as neither of us like to think about it, Dipper is going to spend the majority of his scientific career without me. I want him to have full control of any patents we make, legally free and clear, so that he'll always have a foundation to pursue his goals from."

Pacifica looked at the elderly man with a look of pride. "That's so generous of you Doctor Pines. I won't be able to access my father's remaining assets until I'm 18 myself, but I know for a fact when it gets out my parents have died distant Northwests are going to be coming out of the woodwork, plying me with false smiles to try and get it for themselves." She said, while growing a frown. "It's only two years though, so I guess I can last until then..."

"We could fake your death." Ford said without hesitation, in a blunt but helpful tone. "Make it look like died with them, then make a miraculous return at 18 or 19 years old to collect the fortune!" he explained, well meaning but deeply insensitive.

"I'll... uh, think about it."

Upstairs, Dipper found Mabel in short order, as the girl was simply relaxing on a living room chair, relaxing after a work out. "DIPPER, YOU'RE HOME!" She yelled in excitement, jumping up and giving him a hug of relief that he'd not been lost between dimensions. Dipper, despite the troubles with his sister that weighed on his mind, happily hugged her back.

"Okay, Dipper, don't say anything, I got a homecoming gift for you and everything!" Mabel said as she disengaged the hug, before running to another room and coming back with the shopping cart full of eggs. "TA-DA! Eggs from the sky! I thought it was a meteor at first but turns out to be freaky sky eggs!"

Dipper was a little taken aback at the egg cluster, but none the less stepped forward and examined them. "Mabel, do you have any idea what these are?"

"They're freaky eggs from the sky, right? Originally I wanted to bring you back a fallen space rock since you emailed me a big thing about them before, but once I saw it was this figured, might as well not come back empty handed!" She explained with face paced, slightly nervous speech.

"Mabel these are Rod eggs, strange atmosphere dwelling cryptids that have defied all of Grunkle Ford's attempts to study them!" He explained excitedly. "We've found lone eggs falling and caught the occasional specimen, but never enough to make a sustainable domestic population. We have this idea to cross bread them with the mindswimmers to hopefully create free flying, atmosphere dwelling school fish that spread psychic understanding to everyone below them, creating pockets free of language divisions! This is great!"

Dipper did not know the emotional storm that was raging inside his sister, though if he were feeling it himself he would find it familiar. The drowning of the mothman who guarded these eggs still weighed heavily on her, another dark blot on her soul she added at a time when she was hoping to clean her soul of deathly guilt. Every moment she looked at the eggs reminded her of his red eyes sinking under the water.

But seeing Dipper so happy, so overjoyed at having a missing component of his dream handed to him... it vitalized her! Her brother's smile, such a rare thing when they were children, illuminated her whole being even if couldn't undo the price she'd paid. "So, this is why Dipper hurts himself for my benefit." She thought soberingly. Her own emotional pain was still there, gnawing at her, but the joy Dipper was clearly feeling flowed into her, the happiness she felt for his sake stronger then any joy derived from satisfying her own wants. With a guilty pit forming in her stomach, Mabel realized this was an extremely new sensation for her.

Soon however, the boy's face fell and he ceased his excited chattering, becoming tongue tied as he tried to speak. "No, wait, Mabel, we need to talk about this! I mean, no, I'm not saying you tried to bribe me with this, and I'm sorry I had to take off to fight Bill before we sorted this out, but we can't leave this hanging in the air!" Dipper babbled, trying to get all the anxiety, questions and disappointment out. Then, he simply swallowed, composed himself, and asked "Why'd you do it?"

"I... I didn't know it was Bill at the time Dipper, and I just figured, a little more time to..." Mabel began nervously before her brother cut her off.

"No, that's not what I'm talking about! Sure that was a stupid mistake but we've all made those! Why did you lie to us for so long!?" He demanded, frustration leaking into his tone of voice. "In that wretched bubble, while we were planning in the Shack, at the party afterwards, the YEARS of normal life afterwards! You had all the time in the world to come clean to us!"

Mabel was nervous now, shrinking in place and trying to force an air of casualness to her words. "There was, well, just never a good time I felt." She responded steadily. "Before the big fight I was worried the truth would mess the team spirit up, during the party I didn't want to risk killing the mood, and the years after, it just seemed so... unimportant, by that point? It wouldn't have helped anyone to bring it up, so I figured unless you guys asked..."

"Is that true?" Dipper asked pointedly. "If we'd really just asked out of the blue if you gave the Rift to Bill Cipher, were you really going to turn around on years of lying?" When Mabel didn't answer, he continued. "What would have happened if Bill hadn't been bafflingly stupid and told us the truth instead, at a critical moment!? If you'd gotten things cleared up first, that wouldn't have been a threat!"

"Who cares though!?" Mabel burst out, speaking with desperate anger. "You're always going on about what could happen or what was possible, but it didn't happen! Everything worked out fine! Why did I need to tell the truth so badly when it just leads to us shouting at each other!?"

"Because of closure dammit!" Dipper burst out in anger, surprising himself when Mabel flinched at this, taking a moment to breath and steady himself in a still angry but composed manner. "People deserve to know why things happen, especially things like a demon bursting into the world and creating a living hell!"

"You're one to talk!" Mabel shot back, becoming somewhat aggressive as the argument grew in earnest. "The whole reason any of this happened is because you and Ford didn't just tell me about the Rift and what it could do!"

"Don't even bother going there." Dipper replied dismissively. "Even if you didn't know what that was, you had no right to steal it. Besides, we didn't tell you about the Rift because you clearly can't be depended on to sacrifice for the greater good, since you'd already risked destroying the universe once already!"

"I did that because I trusted Grunkle Stan!" She yelled back, getting defensive at the involvement of their great uncle in the argument.

"More then you trusted me!?" Dipper yelled out, long buried hurt exploding into his words. It was like a dam had broken, and a torrent of bottled up emotional hurt and sadness spilled out, extinguishing any angry fire Dipper had. "You trusted a creepy old criminal who was going to destroy the world over your twin brother! How could do that!?" He demanded to know, tears getting into the boy's eyes as the long buried feelings kept rushing out. "It gave us Ford back so I felt like I didn't have the right to complain but that HURT Mabel! Every time I put my trust in you about anything you use it to hurt me! When I liked Wendy, when I was trying to get over Wendy, when you replaced me with that... THING inside the bubble!"

Mabel felt like she was shrinking in place as Dipper let it all come out, frozen in place and unable to respond. She wished on some level that he'd kept just yelling at her in anger, but at this point her brother just seemed to be pouring out sadness, and she couldn't bring out an argument against that. By now, Dipper had stopped talking and collapsed into the closest chair, looking like he'd just run a marathon with onions under his eyes. After spending a moment to compose himself and wipe his tears off on his sleeve, Dipper picked up again, speaking now with a more controlled release of his feelings.

"That's how I decided I was going to stay here." He muttered, half informing Mabel of this and half realizing it for himself. "It's been there all my life and even when you slapped me in the face with a 'more supportive version' of myself that has nothing in common with me that I realized it but instantly went into denying it. You've never appreciated me for who I am, and the moment I stopped catering to your every whim you were ready to throw me away like trash. So, I figured if you thought so little of me, you'd be fine on your own."

Choking up now, the other twin needed a minute to put herself together, ugly silence reigning between them, Dipper slumped in a chair feeling defeated despite the cathartic liberation of long buried emotions he'd just undergone, while his sister stood up straight, looking at the floor and stewed in misery, trying to make sense of and justify her own behavior, even to herself. "Dipper, I, you... I realize I haven't been kind about it, but it's not that I don't love you for who you are, I just want my brother to be happy!" Mabel replied, tears beginning to form and a creaky, uncertain tone to her voice. "You could lay alone in bed, completely away from anything or anyone that could possibly trouble you, and think yourself into a fit over nothing! I just wanted my brother to be happy, and the number one person who always made you unhappy was you!"

Dipper kept his head hung low for a moment, as if he wanted to bite his tongue, but felt the urge to argue back swelling inside him. "That was never your decision to make Mabel. I've always been supportive of you being you no matter how stupid you are, but you could never just let me be me. If you really wanted me to be happy, you would have let me pursue my dreams instead of doing everything in your power to hold me back." He stated, anger creeping back into his tone, but it was subdued, cold anger now. "That's the real reason you lied for so long, isn't it? You always wanted, always hoped I'd give up my dreams and go back to being miserable in normalcy alongside you, and you thought telling the truth would destroy that chance forever."

"Miserable? Dipper, what about the life you left behind!? What about growing up, making friends, our high school years, OUR PARENTS!? How were you able to just leave them behind without a second thought?" Mabel replied. "What kind of life are you living up here, in danger every day and growing old in a dark, underground laboratory?"

"Life back in Piedmont was terrible Mabel." Dipper replied bluntly. "If I'd gone back with you that first summer, I'd have abandoned the real friends I made here in Gravity Falls, and I'm honestly surprised our parents even know I'm gone." His last line drew a confused but hurt expression out of Mabel, so he elaborated. "Mom and dad always loved you more. They'd always give you whatever you wanted but never showed any support for any of my interests or desires. As far as I'm concerned, our great uncles are my parents."

Mabel seemed to deflate now, the fire going out on her arguing, and she now seemed resigned and exhausted, in a similar state to her twin. "So, is that it then? Your old life with me was terrible and you just want to cut ties entirely? If you want to do that, I'll get the novelty giant scissors." she remarked bitterly.

Dipper frowned a little, and seemed a little regretful with the next words he spoke. "I mean, there were some good times back then, the two of us, but these last three years I've spent in Gravity Falls have been the happiest times of my life. I always hoped you could have a place here someday and make things perfect, but now that I'm being honest with myself... If I have to choose between making you happy and making myself happy... I'm going to choose to make myself happy. I've done enough of the former."

Silence filled the air, as neither twin had anymore words to say or the energy to say them with. After almost a full minute of standing quietly and being unable to look at one another, Mabel broke the silence, muttering "Well, I can't blame you for that..." in a broken tone before shuffling out of the room, head hanging low.

With the argument over, Dipper sunk even deeper into the chair, emotionally exhausted and saddened over the massive argument he just had with his twin, but at the same time feeling lighter in the chest, having gotten some painful thoughts and ideas he'd not fully wanted to even acknowledge out in the open.