'Well, well, well! It's been a while!'

It was him. Uh, wait a minute, Joel had never seen this… thing before. He was a… triangle? His yellow coloring and pattern made him look like a pyramid, with a single eye, bow tie and top hat – no, he HAD seen it. Where was it?

'How did you -?' Stan began. The triangle waggled its finger and Stan's mouth turned into a zipper that he couldn't open.

'Uh, uh, uh!' it mocked. The creature put its hands on – well it looked like where its hips would be. What should Joel call it, his vertices?

'You always were a loudmouth, Crescent, and I get the feeling you've exceeded your quota for a while!'

Wendy stifled a yell as one of the skeletons that they had forgotten about grabbed her ankle. The triangle rolled its eye.

'Oh, right! I almost forgot!' he said, snapping his fingers. The skeletons crumbled to the ground in a heap of bone. The area around them flashed white and in an instant they were in an amphitheater with a massive striped tent erected that covered the whole thing – a circus.

'Let's get down to business!' the triangle, reclining in the air. 'Pine Tree, Crescent, Ice Bag, Llama and… oh, who's this!'

The creature whizzed through the air towards Joel. He narrowed his eye and flew around him.

'Who is this?' he asked. Nobody answered. They were all looking at Joel in shock.

'I SAID, WHO IS THIS?' he demanded, bouncing up and down with rage. Pacifica cleared her throat.

'J – Joel,' she stammered.

'I see! Good, strong build, in good health, has a rocky relationship with his parents, enjoys playing board games, ten-pin bowling –' he began, making a complete evaluation of Joel.

'WHO ARE YOU AND WHAT DO YOU WANT FROM ME?' Joel commanded, facing the creature.

'Yeesh, kid, relax,' the creature said. He hovered back around to the front of the group.

'I'm Bill, and I'm your worst nightmare!' he replied with a manic laugh.

'Even worse than that poorly dressed ghost in the forest from before?' asked Wendy.

'Yeah, even better than Fre – '

A visor of sorts appeared around the Bill's eye, and he instantly stopped speaking, almost shutting down like a robot that lost power. From behind him, a figure materialized. He looked very similar to Stan, except he was wearing much heavier travelling clothes and was not as grey as him.

'Sorry I'm late,' he said, bringing the now motionless polygon down to the ground. Stan's mouth, now free of the zipper, widened into a smile.

o00o

They had called Stanley after the incident in the forest and asked him what he could do. Entirely out of worry for his grand-daughter, he had constructed a very crude mind-entering machine that allowed him to enter the mind of anyone close to him. Because of this, his figure was fuzzy, and he looked like someone from an old TV commercial. Apparently, he didn't have much time before the machine would become unsafe and he would have to leave.

'Ok, listen up people,' he said, gathering them around, 'Bro, I need you to incarcerate Bill, I don't know how he got out, but I knew as soon as I heard what was going on that it was him. You know what to do.'

Stanford nodded and picked up the pyramid and carried him out of the tent and into the fairground.

'Kids, I want you all to know that I love you – well, I don't know about Joel, I think it was; see, I don't even know his name yet.'

'It's Joel,' said the one in question. Stanley nodded at him.

'Just take care of yourselves. And Dipper, next time I don't want you hunting monsters you can't handle! We've already got a bunch of monsters in the house, we don't need any more.'

'You guys have captured monsters?' Joel asked, his eyes lighting up. Stanley nodded again.

'Oh yeah. We've got a hyperactive wild-child, a bookish nerd with a fashion loving girlfriend and a lumberjack's daughter. Not to mention the big hairy beast that manages the gift shop.'

They all laughed together. Joel felt like he belonged with these people. Even in this grey, depressing environment, they gave color to his world. As they laughed, the amphitheater gradually faded to white. Stanford reappeared, brushing his hands together.

'All done, brother,' he said, looking at his surroundings, 'and it looks like Mabel is waking up.'

'Good,' replied his brother, looking at his watch.

'I always forget the time is never right in the mindscape,' he commented, his watch showing 3pm in the afternoon. The others started to appear similar to Stanley – fuzzy and flashing into and out of existence.

'I'll see you around!' Stanley said, waving at them with his six fingered hands as he walked into the now completely white distance. Joel waved back and closed his eyes as he felt himself returning to the normal world.

o00o

Mabel rolled over. She had had a horrible dream, something about a terrifying creature that called itself the 'Dream Hipster'. She couldn't remember the last part of it, but she was happy that she didn't – nightmares were always bad to remember, lingering on bad thoughts didn't help with her happy and upbeat nature.

She could tell she was sitting in the lounge chair in the living room of the Mystery Shack. Her favorite torn spot where the fluff from inside the cushion came out was right behind her neck, and since she had ditched her long term trend of wearing turtleneck sweaters, it tickled her.

She giggled and her eyes fluttered open. In front of her, standing up and looking exhausted were Dipper, Pacifica, Stan, Wendy and Joel. All her friends were watching her. Had she been doing something in her sleep?

'Mabel!' exclaimed Joel, 'You're OK!'

'Of course, I'm OK, silly, or my name is Mabel Pi- '

She was interrupted by Joel pulling her up off of the chair and hugging her.

Success! she thought, followed by Wait, why is he hugging me?

Mabel didn't care what the reason was, she returned the hug and they would've stayed like that if Waddles had not wriggled his way in between Mabel's legs.

'Hello, you silly little pig,' she said over Joel's shoulder. Waddles went over to where Mabel could see him and got up onto his hind legs and tapped his front toes together – he wanted a hug too.

'Group hug!' called Wendy, and they all gathered around and joined in the embrace. Laughing and joking followed, and, being far too tired for sleep, the six of them sat down in front of the TV and watched the early morning re-runs of Cash Wheel.

It was going to be a good day.

Ta-da! That's the three-parter finished. I hope you guys liked it.

I played around with a couple of ideas for this chapter and I'm pretty glad with the way it turned out. I probably won't write much more of Bill – he might show up again when I decide to finish this fic, but I can't tell at the moment.

A happy ending is a good ending, right? Please leave a review if you can – any advice or comments help. Thanks!

Cal Pal asked in the reviews what my nationality is: I'm Australian, but I'm writing with American spelling (because let's face it, the percentage of the views on this story in the US vs. everywhere else is its own story)