Global discord was a process, but it was something to gradually enjoy as it happened. Bill and his crew enjoyed seeing the major national landmarks and taking before-and-after selfies with them. His personal favorite was Egypt, taking a selfie with the pyramids with the caption 'Me with the fam'. He then proceeded to turn them into his personal vacation home and relocate them right smack dab in the middle of Cairo.
He was just lucky there was an established cult dedicated to his honor to keep them clean while he was having fun elsewhere. Good help was so hard to find during the End Times.
While he and his crew traipsed around the world, the Pines instead elected to remain in Gravity Falls, which, in retrospect, was a good thing. A handful of his friends had readily welcomed the new abominable additions to the party, while a select few were less than receiving. They were the ODG-type, not very receptive of hybrids at all.
Teeth made the mistake of asking if he could still eat Dipper within earshot of Stanley, who proceeded to tear every tooth from the monster's body and then beat what was left to pulp with gauntlets forged from the molten gold and fire that ran through his veins. When he was finished, several of Stanford's tendrils snaked over what remained and seemed to absorb the pulpy mess into his body, all twelve of his eyes flickering with the curiosity he was internally studying.
And Bill sat back just to watch. Certainly, it was a necessity for his Fez and Sixer to establish themselves in the pecking order as soon as possible in order to make their places in the group known. He also wanted to see a bit of the extent of which the boys were capable of, and he was so far interested.
He didn't want to put his domination on hold just to watch them, however, so he let them remain to their own devices while he traveled, letting them develop on their own.
Time—dead as it was—passed and he took a break to return to Gravity Falls to check up on their progress.
The first thing he noticed was that most of his established weirdness was absent, save for the giant floating Fearamid in the dead center of the area, and the place looked less desolate and dystopian. It almost looked….normal.
Ugh, that word left a bad taste in his body.
It didn't take long to sense out his familial energy, and found Stanford first. The demi-demon was situated in a reformed library which had physics bent over sideways by being MASSIVE on the inside while retaining a relatively normal outside appearance. Books upon books were on the shelves, scrolls and tablets rearranging themselves here and there like the organizational methods were constantly being reevaluated, and in the middle of it all was Stanford himself, his right hand busy with writing in a familiar journal with the number 6 on it, the left holding a cup of tea, and the tendrils of his body holding no less than six books while the eyes around his head read them simultaneously.
Bill's earlier assumption of Stanford being a demon that craved knowledge was correct, it seemed. The man was collecting it and amassing it into more journals, a pursuit that would last for an eternity. From the fully-content look on Stanford's face, Bill could guess that it would be a blissful eternity.
It wasn't even a guess as to where Stanley was. Bill beelined right for the Mystery Shack, and found it in pristine condition. Surprisingly, he found Soos and Wendy inside as well, unchanged and looking well, if not traumatized and world-weary. One glance at them, and Stanley proclaimed them 'his', and were not to be touched.
Come to find, quite a few stragglers that had managed to hide from the henchbats were found inside, which, like Stanford's library, was also much bigger on the inside. Not only was the tour section still there—this time with real attractions, no less—but it was also outfitted like a luxury casino. Unlike Soos and Wendy, who looked…well, THEMSELVES…the other people inside looked almost enchanted by the ordeal, desperate even.
It took some watching to realize that Stanley hadn't brought them here out of the goodness of his molten-gold heart, but there was a price to being here. He was selling spots in here in exchange for anything valuable they could find. Bill had a feeling the Northwest Mansion had been raided like nobody's business because of this.
But it wasn't pay-once. They had to keep paying to stay. Hence the casino. Those who couldn't pay—or somehow invoked Stanley's wrath—risked being turned into either gold for him to devour, or some ungodly attraction for his tour.
All in all, it seemed like a brilliant racket going, and Bill approved 100%.
Mabel, on the other hand, had shanghaied his Fearamid for her own, and brought back her friends that he had turned to stone for company. All in all, Pacifica, Candy, and Grenda seemed to be taking the whole Weirdmageddon-BFF-turned-into-a-demon thing very well. He just wished there was much less pink, kittens, glitter, and boy band posters everywhere.
"You've made yourself right at home, haven't you?" Bill asked, looming over the girls. Pacifica naturally ducked behind Grenda, having not taken having her father's facial rearrangement very well, but Mabel didn't seem so concerned.
"It was just floating here, doing NOTHING," she replied, not skipping a beat in applying a nice shade of blue nail polish to Candy's nails. "Grunkle Stan said I'm not allowed in the casino until I'm 18, and Grunkle Ford doesn't even have TV in his library, so I stayed here. The glitter makes it an improvement."
Bill rolled his eye, crossing his arms. "You're just lucky I like you, Shooting Star, or I'd drop-kick you into the sun."
Mabel beamed up at him, her smile as sweet as a piece of arsenic-laced candy. "You'd have to get past the Grunkles first," she replied, a deadly tease sprinkling her voice. "They might get along like cats and dogs, but…well, you were there when Teeth had a slip-up." She re-dipped the nail polish and started on another of Candy's nails.
"But you wouldn't REALLY kick me into the sun, Great-Grampa Bill. You like me too much. You've fallen trap for my adorableness and very real backed-up threats. Face it, you're stuck with me."
Damn it to the Nth Dimension, she was right. He narrowed his eye at her. "Of all the descendants, you had to get the most of me," he grumbled. "Am I REALLY this annoying?"
"Nope. You're worse. But unlike YOU, people actually LIKE me."
"If I had a heart, it'd be bleeding, Shooting Star, truly you wound me."
"You'll be fine." She finished Candy's nails, sitting back. "But since you're here, you could at least check on Dipper's bubble."
Bill's eye trailed upward on the pedestal, where his Pine Tree's bubble was resting. The bubble had expanded slightly, speckled with pinpricks of light that resembled stars, the sign of the Pine Tree glowing with a soft pulsing white light.
It was almost a month now in regular-time, much longer than anyone was hoping for. Bill wasn't especially surprised, though. Dipper had quite the existential crisis to work out in there, and it really WAS only a matter of time.
However, looking at it now…
Bill slipped up to the bubble, expanding his size and taking it in his hands. The bubble shimmered in his hold, almost like it was asking permission to come out, like a timid baby deer. Oh, wouldn't it just be hilarious if Pine Tree turned out to be a soft, timid creature, unlike the rest of the family?
He fed some of his own energy to the bubble, smiling internally when it was reciprocated, the bubble trembling in his hand as the incubation process was completed. The bubble began to constrict and fade, leaving behind a formless little ball of energy that seemed almost TOO small, too formless.
Well this was concerning. Perhaps he'd let the boy incubate for too long. The little ball of energy trembled almost fearfully in Bill's hands, unwilling to reform.
"Oh no…" Mabel mumbled, frowning. "He's scared." She perked up a little. "I know what you need, bro-bro! Some family bonding time!" She stuck her head out of the Fearamid window, shouting at the top of her lungs in an earthquake-like demonic baritone, "GRUNKLE STAN! GRUNKLE FORD! TO THE FEARAMID, CHOP-CHOP!"
Bill snorted. "You think they'll drop everything and come right away?" he asked dubiously. Mabel glanced back at him, her expression sweet but eyes sharp as razors.
"They will if they know what's good for them," she replied, and indeed, moments later, Stanley appeared in the room in a flash of fire while Stanford slithered out of the shadows, looking mildly annoyed at having his studies interrupted, even if his tendrils and eyes were occupying themselves with two different books.
"What's the word, Mabel?" Stanley asked before catching sight of the formless energy mass in Bill's hands. "He's out? Why is he like that? WHY isn't he forming?!" He glowered at Bill like it was HIS fault, and Bill returned the glower.
"Cool your jets, Fez, he's just anxious," he muttered, lowering his hands to show the elder Pines Twins. "Maybe you three can ease him out a bit."
Stanley gently took the little energy form, holding it in his arms. "Just like when you were born the first time, having your cord wrapped around your neck," he muttered. "You cant be born easily into this world, can you, kid?" He smiled at the energy mass in his arms, which shimmered slightly.
"It's probably that reason that he's having trouble now," Stanford remarked, slithering a tendril over the energy mass. "Being reborn was possibly a déjà vu to his first birth. He doesn't know how to 'breathe' on his own."
Mabel leaned her cheek against where she guessed the 'head' would be on the energy form, smiling. "C'mon, bro-bro," she murmured, petting at the prickling energy. "You're strong. You made it last time, you can do it again. We're all here waiting for you."
Being coddled by his family seemed to do the trick. The shimmering mass of energy quivered before it started to take a slightly more humanoid shape, expanding to the size of a twelve-year-old boy, albeit with longer, more spindly limbs and unnaturally-long fingers that ended in tapers with no nails. Other than that, he looked as he had before his incubation, save for the absence of his birthmark. In its place was a deep-looking line that spread across the span of his forehead.
Mabel beamed, hugging at him. "C'mon, wake up, Dipper!" she exclaimed. "We wanna see you!" At her voice, Dipper shifted in Stanley's hold, but instead of his eyes opening, the line on his forehead separated, spreading wider until a huge, golden eye was opened onto his forehead, the pupil slitted and constricting as it shifted around, taking note of everyone around him.
"…M…Mabel…?" he murmured, the eye blinking hard. "…Grunkle Stan? Great-Uncle Ford?" He sat up in Stanley's hold, rubbing his head.
"You doin' alright, kid?" Stanley asked, all four of his eyes narrowing in concern. Dipper nodded, looking down at his spindly hands.
"….yeah," he replied. "Just…weird. REALLY weird." His eye flicked around at his family again. "Really….REALLY weird."
"You're not so normal yourself there, Pine Tree," Bill retorted, rolling his eye, inwardly smirking at Dipper having a glaring similarity to him in the eye area. "At least with that gaping eye of yours, no one will questions whose gene pool you've been swimming in."
Dipper grimaced. "Didn't need or want a reminder," he muttered, shifting out of Stanley's hold to stand up on his own legs. "…So…this is what it's like," he said to himself. "…What I REALLY am…"
"Eh, you get used to it," Stanley said, slinging his arm around Dipper's shoulders. "At least you're not a walking pile of entrails." Stanford glowered at him, snapping out a tendril to knock the fez off of his twin's head.
"At least I'm getting the most out of my abilities rather than running ANOTHER tourist trap," he shot back. "A CASINO, Stanley! LIMITLESS POTENTIAL, and you open a CASINO!"
Mabel rolled her eyes, taking Dipper's arm and leading him off. "Best to not be in the way when they start up," she said, grinning. "It's funny, but sometimes they can get destructive."
Dipper nodded, noting that even Bill was surreptitiously tailing them to get out of the danger zone. He glanced over and saw Grenda, Candy, and Pacifica some distance away, looking both interested and terrified. "…so you're keeping them here?" he asked. Mabel nodded, smiling.
"Yeah. What's the use of eternal fun time without friends?" She beamed, hurrying over with him, pushing him forward. "Here's the new and improved Dipper, girls! Isn't he just a dreamboat now?"
"MABEL!" Dipper hissed, blushing hard, his eye flicking here and there for possible escape routes on instinct.
"Eh, he's a little thin for me," Grenda replied, giving Dipper a helpful look. "But if your beefcake great-uncle Stan is single, we can talk then."
"EWWWW, you're BAD, Grenda!" Mabel squealed.
"Beefcake is nice, but the intellectual, eldritch abomination type is more my speed," Candy put in, fighting to keep a straight face.
"STOP, STOP!" Mabel cried, laughing so hard she fell over. "You're all gross and horrible, those are my GRUNKLES!" She formed sleepover pillows out of thin air, throwing them at her friends.
Dipper wisely edged to the side out of the line of fire, finding himself sitting next to Pacifica, who was pale and giving him side glances. He swallowed, twiddling his thumbs, sitting in awkward silence with her as he watched his sister and two of her friends have a pillow fight that seemed WAY more violent than the catfight his Grunkles were having across the room.
"…Um. Hi," he said, chewing his lip slightly. Pacifica hugged her knees tighter.
"…hi," she replied. More silence. "…Your…uh….eye is big."
"Eeyup."
"Nice. I meant to say nice."
"…thanks."
Awkward silence. The pillow fight turned into an all-out war, and Dipper deftly reached up and grabbed a bottle of nail polish out of the air before it pinged Pacifica in the head, tossing it away.
"Mabel's gonna protect you, you know," Dipper said quietly. "You…Candy, Grenda, Wendy, Soos…we'll protect you."
Pacifica nodded quietly. "…I know," she replied, giving Bill a side-glare through her curtain of hair. "…that doesn't mean I have to like it or be grateful for it."
Dipper nodded, understanding. "…if you ever need a break from Mabel's glitter-bomb fun time…I'm pretty sure Great-Uncle Ford would let us have some quiet time wherever he is. His…um…body just makes him look weirder than he actually is." He pursed his lips when the aforementioned and supposedly more mature of his great-uncles suplexed the other into the ground. "…Or, you know, staying here is fine."
"Dipper…at this point, I'm too numb to care about that," Pacifica replied, rubbing her arms before looking him in the eye. "Just promise me something, okay? Promise me that…you'll always be Dipper…and Mabel will always be Mabel. Can…you do that? Please?"
He stared at her for a moment, the pupil of his eye dilating to a more human shape for a moment before he nodded, holding out his hand. "Deal." He yelped when a blue flame popped up in his palm, shaking his hand vigorously to extinguish it. "Nevermind, nevermind!" He tucked his hands under his arms, his face red. "…um…you've got it."
Up on his pedestal, Bill snorted and reclined back to observe his 'family's' antics, feeling oddly content. Maybe it was his 'children' seeing who could subdue the other more creatively, or Shooting Star having a glitter-paint-pillow fight with her just-as-odd friends, or seeing his timid little Pine Tree awkwardly reassure a potential mortal mate, but either way, he could get used to this.
He sputtered when a large glob of pink glittery paint smacked him right in the front, almost knocking him off the pedestal. He banished it away, grumbling. Pink. It was ALWAYS PINK.