Going of the the Falls 9: Endgame

William stared at the glowing crystal in shock.

"Was it supposed to charge that fast?" Madelyn asked.

"No, somehow little waddles here just multiplied his temporal output by an order of magnitude."

"Well he's just such a smart pig, yes he is," Madelyn cooed.

William chuckled. "Well regardless we can return him to his Madelyn and return home now; we have more than enough temporal energy to prevent father's death."

"Ok, but my other self is a tad homicidal," she warned him.

"Let me do the talking," William said.

*0*0*0*0*0*0*0*0*0*

"I'm not eating dinner unless you're eating with me," Dipper said putting his foot down.

"I will be," Mabel said.

"All of you," Dipper said. "I don't want you having to eat alone or skip meals."

"But I can do both at once," Mabel pointed out.

"I may eat alone but I'm also eating with you," the other Mabel added.

"Don't care," Dipper said. "I can't eat without you and that means all of you."

"We are so sappy," Mabel complained as her other self hugged him.

"We aren't being too clingy are we?" Dipper asked nervously, still conflicted about everything.

"No, we're fine, Mabel assured him, ignoring the self that was hugging him. "How are we going to explain this to Grunkle Stan?"

"We aren't," Dipper said cheerfully.

"What?" the two Mabels chorused.

"We don't explain anything, we just pretend it's always been this way and let him make up his own reason for why he never noticed," Dipper explained.

"Are you sure that will work?" Mabel asked.

"What's he going to do, claim there is only one of you when you are both there?" Dipper asked. "If he does that we'll just claim he's seeing things."

"It would be nice not to have to sneak around, if a bit more boring," Mabel admitted.

"Sneak around anyway," Dipper replied. "Ninja practice is always fun."

"I'm sold," Mabel agreed.

"Good, then let's go eat dinner," Dipper said.

Stan looked up from the stew he was making surprised to see two Mabels, one of which clung to Dipper's hand and looked a little nervous.

Dipper met his eyes and Stan swallowed whatever he was going to ask, not sure how he could play off being ignorant of the unusual happenings in the town if he confronted them and rather proud of the kid for challenging him.

"Dinner will be ready in a couple of minutes, set the table for four, Soos is going to be joining us," Stan said returning to cooking.

"Ok, Grunkle Stan," Dipper agreed relieved it had worked.

The three were in high spirits when the doorbell rang.

"I've got it," Dipper said, as Mabel raced him to the front door, barely beating him there. Opening the door his face gained an ugly scowl. "You!" he growled out.

"We've come with a pig and an apology," his own voice spoke quickly from the face of his doppelgänger.

Dipper's eyes glowed a baleful golden color as he glared at the boy who had almost separated him from his twin.

"What—" Madelyn began when she saw Dipper's eyes.

"Don't look!" William yelled spinning around to hold his suddenly shivering twin.

Everyone present flinched back from an empathic blast of pain and loss as Madelyn broke down in tears.

"I'm here, it's ok, I'm here," William said holding her close, whispering gently in her ear.

"Oh god!" Dipper moaned eyes returning to their familiar brown as his anger vanished. "I'm sorry, I didn't mean to do that."

"Give us a minute," William ordered. "It's ok," he told Madelyn gently. "I'm still here, I still love you. I'm not going anywhere." He kissed her tenderly and the pain and loss she was projecting slowly faded replaced by love and joy that took the watchers' breath away.

"Is she going to be ok?" Dipper asked concerned.

Madelyn waved him to silence not releasing William until she needed to breathe.

Dipper and both Mabels stared at the couple in shock.

"When you used that on Dipper it almost killed him," Mabel said taking Dipper's hand.

"You have a heart condition?" William asked concerned, still a little breathless from the kiss.

"He thought I was dead and tried to follow me," Mabel chorused with herself.

"I love him, but he has some issues," Mabel admitted.

"Says the girl who actually challenged death for me and pulled me back," Dipper replied.

"What's yours is mine," Mabel said. "Any issues you got I'm sharing the subscription costs."

"I apologize," William said. "I thought you'd struck my Madelyn and I lost my temper, it should have made you pass out at most. And may I say I'm impressed? It took me years of careful training by father to learn that technique."

"I'm sorry as well, I didn't mean to use it on you," he apologized to Madelyn.

"If it gets him to kiss me like that again, feel free to use it whenever you like," Madelyn purred happily.

"Madelyn!" William groaned.

"You are much too controlled, love," she told him.

"I wasn't trained really," Dipper said. "I had to hunt down a pack of gremloblins and stare them down one by one."

"So what's your story?" Mabel asked as her other self reclaimed Waddles, who was wearing a cute little blue suit, and radiated her own blast of positive emotions.

"You clearly aren't us, but you are," Dipper said.

"We used a faery gate to hop timelines in search of temporal energy so we could go back in time and save our father," William explained. "Waddles leaks temporal energy which meant he could give us the power we needed. We have what we need now so we came to apologize and return him."

"How did we end up..." Mabel trailed off exchanging glances with her other self. "Dating our brother," the other Mabel finished. Mabel was never one to ignore an elephant in a room.

Madelyn laughed. "Our worlds are very different. William is my adopted brother and he's only that because he refused to be adopted without me. You three no doubt have a much different background. I'm guessing you were adopted much earlier than we were, since you seem to have a sibling bond from what I can tell."

"Zeus Pines sensed my psychic potential while he was searching for a heir," William explained. "We were already six years old at that point and best friends, despite the fact that the nuns at the orphanage kept us segregated by sex. We've known we were meant to be together since we first laid eyes on one another."

"How'd you end up at the orphanage?" Dipper asked.

"A terrorist set off a bomb at the hospital we were born in," William explained. "I was lucky they managed to read my first name from my partially intact medical chart. Madelyn's was so far gone all they got was the first two letters of her name. They had to guess the rest and we were both labelled as Doe until father adopted us into the Pine family."

"You are multiplying!" a deranged voice screamed, fading into sight as the chameleon circuit on his coveralls failed once more.

"Blendin Blanden?" Dipper and Mabel chorused.

"Weren't you taken away by the time cops?" Mabel asked.

"All because of you!" he ranted. "But I fixed you, or at least I thought I had. I placed a bomb in the hospital to kill you all off... but, but you're still here and now there's more of you! All that jumping you did protected you from erasure!"

"Who?" William asked as he began to piece things together.

"Rogue time agent," Dipper said making the same connections.

"He's the reason you're not us," Mabel told Madelyn.

"I had a twin?" she asked softly, horrified at having a twin sister who'd been murdered by the bald headed man in front of them.

"Yes, no," the mabels chorused realizing Madelyn had drawn the wrong conclusion. "I'm not touching that one," they decided as they followed the Multibear's tips on how to synch with one another, becoming one though still in two bodies.

"You killed my sister!" Madelyne yelled beginning to draw up a tsunami of psychic power.

Blenden pulled a tuning fork and slammed it against a tree.

Madelyn screamed as her amulet shattered and the feedback knocked her unconscious. Both Mabels grabbed their heads as their own shattered, but not having been using it as heavily they weren't knocked out. William flinched as his shattered, but otherwise looked unconcerned.

"The amulets made it easier, but they weren't the source of our power," William said coldly, turning to deal with the threat.

"You think I don't know that?!" the deranged bald man shouted. "Psi-dampeners!" he yelled hitting a button on his watch and causing a series of poles to rise up from the ground and shoot out cross bars, encasing everyone but Waddles in a pair of cages. "I control time, I've had forever to set this all up!" he shouted.

The Mabels helped Madelyn up and were whispering something to one another.

Dipper and William tested the bars of their cage and found they were too close together to fit through.

"I'm at a loss," William admitted. "Do you have any aces to pull out?"

"I can't think of one," Dipper admitted.

"And now for you!" Blendin said pulling a ray gun out of his pocket. "I've got you now Waddles! Your tether to this time period is about to be cut!"

"No!" the girls screamed from their cage.

William stepped back from Dipper sensing something. "What are you doing?" he asked curiously, goosebumps running across his exposed flesh.

"I promised Mabel we would get him back... that he'd be ok," Dipper growled his hair taking on a course texture almost like bristles, his teeth enlarging slowly. "I've never broken a promise to her."

"Trapped with a werewolf, joy," William deadpanned backing away as far as the cage allowed.

"And I won't start now!" Dipper yelled his clothes tearing as he transformed into... a small pink pig.

William watched in disbelief as Dipper squeezed his much smaller body through the bars and leapt in front of waddles just as Blandin fired.

Mabel let out a heart broken scream as he was hit by the bright yellow beam and vanished, but her otherself slapped her, startling her into silence. "He has his time travel device on him, we get that we can rescue, Dipper!

"Synch with us," Mabel ordered Madelyn, tears in her eyes as she held out an arm. Joining hands in a triangle, the three slowly began to combine their power, causing a high pitched whine to come from hidden high tech equipment beginning to strain to contain them.

"You're stressing the dampeners!" Blendin yelled as something started letting out a high pitched whine. "Do you know how much those cost?!"

"Put it on our bill!" the Mabels yelled as one.

The cage and the girls inside vanished in a burst of light that was actually dimmer than the blinding triangular fountain of power the girls had drawn up. "I prepared for that too!" Blendin bragged. "Their bodies are scattered through at least a century, good luck coming back from that!"

William sighed. "I really wish it hadn't come to this."

"What?" Blendin asked confused. "Ah, you. What? Are you going to change into a pig too?"

"In a manner of speaking," William agreed. "But just to be sure, you caused our timeline by attempting to murder us and did kill our parents?"

"Yes, but you deserved it!"

"Then yes, I am going to turn into a pig," William agreed with a smile that didn't reach his eyes. "You see, father will understand and I'll be with Madelyn again, the rest doesn't matter."

"What? What are you talking about?!" Blendin demanded.

William pulled a glowing sphere out of his pocket. "I have the ultimate reset button a ball of temporal energy."

"B-but that'll just put us in an infinite loop," Blendin said in horror. "We'll be trapped repeating the same roles forever!"

"Psychic," William reminded him, with a smirk.

"You'll get flashes of the previous past and future," Blendin said in understanding. "You'll be able to alter things to break free eventually."

"This time loop will be a noose around your neck," William agreed. "And I'm going to kick out the chair now. Be seeing you."

"No!" Blenden screamed turning to fire only to go down in a heap as Waddles sank his teeth into his Achilles tendon, his eyes showing human intelligence.

"Be you later, Dipper," William said smashing the sphere on the ground.

*0*0*0*0*0*0*0*0*0*0*

Dipper woke as the bus hit a pothole. He yawned and stretched for a minute before flipping up the arm on the seat in between him and Mabel. Putting an arm around her she snuggled into his side and smiled in her sleep. for some reason he felt a lot more optimistic about how the summer was going to go. He slowly dozed off as the bus continued its long trip to Oregon.

Typing by: Stephenopolos

TN: Don't you hate timeloops?