The body of Abel Pines gazed up at the old triangular frame of the portal device, a practically inhuman smile across his face. Bill's yellow eyes turned to look at Abel's phantasmal form, only visible to him.
"Whadda'ya think, Pine Tree? I think I've got a chance."
"Even you need time to get this thing running," Abel spat, "and I'm not sure you can keep this under wraps for long."
"Please," Bill scoffed, "if anyone gets suspicious I'll just kill them."
Abel hesitated - he knew Bill might make good on that. Though-
"I think that might just make you more suspicious."
"Well, I mean, it would technically make you more suspicious," Bill corrected him, and if I get caught, I can just send your meat bag off to serve time and pick a new one! Geez, you guys really did a number on this thing," he added, taking in all the portal's missing parts. "Guess you really didn't want me coming back, eh?" he cackled.
Abel only glared back.
"Whatever, it's not as though anyone's going to be stopping me any time soon. I got lucky with question mark and good ol' Gideon being out of town, and all the others were just a simple matter of diversion! And all the old men are out of the picture, anyway-"
"The Stans are still alive," Abel reminded him.
"Sure, sure, but they're cooped up in some facility somewhere. I mean, what are they, 90? Sheesh. And Sixer survived that damn heart attack…" he grumbled. "at least the only one who gave me any trouble was your sister-" Bill stopped. Something was creaking behind him, getting louder. He turned to face the elevator - someone was coming.
He ran through the potential obstacles in his head: he knew where shooting star was, and had gotten all the others far gone, so who would know to be suspicious? That stupid brat sapling? Maybe if she'd tipped of the big girl, or the nerd, or-
The doors slid open, and Cassandra stepped out, cap on backwards, ready to fight.
"Cassie…" Abel breathed. She shouldn't have come back-
Bill let out a short laugh,
"What are you doing down here, kid?" he snickered, "Come to whine me to death? Gonna' shine a backlight on me? What?"
"Leave my dad alone!" she barked, storming up to him and looking up into her father's face with defiance.
"Why?!" Bill sneered, "I just got this meat puppet! I'm not gonna' give it up for nothing! Come on, kid, weren't you listening?"
"I'm warning you," she insisted, full of rage.
"What? What can you do?"
"Do you really want to know?" she asked, stalling for time.
"Yeah," he responded, "I do."
"Cassie, don't do this…" Abel muttered helplessly.
"I'm gonna' fight you!" she told Bill.
He sneered,
"Oh really? You and what army?"
Cassandra grinned - he'd played right into her hand.
"This army!" she responded, the elevator opening once more behind her to reveal the rest of her team.
Bill stared for a moment, nudged slightly off guard by the pile of humans under 25, half of whom were even under 16, but quickly regained his bearings and cackled at the image.
Ashwin stepped out of the elevator shaking a spray can, and quickly set to work.
"This?! This is your army?" Bill laughed, "yeah, real tough."
"We kicked your ass at twelve," Abel reminded him, gaining a short glare from the demon possessing his body.
"Hey, Gilda," Elowen cooed, handing the toddler her amulet and pointing her other hand towards Bill, "wanna' have some fun?"
Gilda beamed up at Elowen, and squealed with delight, the blue power field pulling Bill off the ground.
"Woah, hey!" he protested, scrambling, "Put me down, pipsqueak!" he snapped, "I gave that amulet power, I can take it away!"
"Do you think you can hold him there?" Elowen asked. Gilda nodded, and Elowen took her hand, Stan Ramirez taking the other.
Ashwin tossed the can of spray paint aside,
"Ready," he told his cousin.
Cassandra stepped onto the symbol of the pine tree painted on the basement floor, and threw out her hands. Ashwin took one, Elowen took the circle formed around Bill, held firm a few feet off the ground, and recognition broke over his face. Abel beamed at his daughter's cleverness. If this worked-
"What is this?!" Bill spat, "You think the stupid zodiac is going to work? It's not like it worked last time! Don't you know that stuff's all made up? It's not going to do anything!" he insisted, even as they began to glow. "Your stupid hippie mumbo-jumbo won't work on me!"
"Then why do you look worried?" Cassandra grinned, locking her eyes on Bill's slit pupils. Some sort of wind kicked up out of nowhere as the glow burned brighter.
The demon glowered.
"I said it won't WORK-" his roar of rage was cut off and undermined when he curled in pain for a moment.
"What was that?" Cassandra asked, "Still not working?"
Face knotted in pain, Bill glared her down with a single eye,
"You think this is all it takes?" he snarled, the mystic power of their formation whipping up the dust in the untouched basement. "You think you can stop an almighty demon with your little friendship circle?!" another spasm of pain overtook him. "It's not so easy, kiddo," he growled, shuddering under the force of the wheel's power, "'cause if I'm going down, you're coming WITH ME!"
He threw one hand out and grabbed the collar of Cassandra's shirt, and the other towards where her father's spirit hung in the air, and yanked, reuniting Cassandra with the sickening feeling of her soul leaving her body.
Cassandra hit something like solid ground, and struggled to her feet. The world she found herself in was just south of reality - the whole place had an air and a texture like a home movie with slightly muted colors and some indistinct graininess. A look behind her found a dirt road, lined on one side by scattered trees and natural forrest, the other lined with neat but lived in suburban houses - somehow reminiscent of her neighborhood and the neighborhood her grandparents lived in all at the same time. Words were sprinkled across the homes and trees, written in some unknown tongue:
Fdvvlhv ixwxuh…
dqqlyhuvdub…
Fkulvwb'v sduhqwv…
zkdw kdyh L grqh zlwk pb olih…
eluwk ghdwk wdahv…
Wrkkvi…
zppi lrsxtciu ww Qxpc…
Piqtp ehmsh qv…
L vtth Ddjta…
umjcmfq…
wppco prc Vgemlbn Uecoa…
EQAA LRV KPHWZH…
The words were everywhere, even sprawled across the very ground. She wished briefly that she had the time and resources to understand them.
And before her stood a house, flickering slightly, like a jolt or a cut in old home video. Bits and pieces of it shifted constantly; one moment it had the roof of her grandparents old house, the front door of her home back in Piedmont, the porch of her parent's first house, and a window from The Mystery Shack. But then it would flicker in an instant to shuffle all the pieces around. But even as the home shifted colors, ages, and architecture styles, one facet remained the same. A pointed attic with a triangular window and a light on. She began to wonder about it, and how it looked familiar… but her train of thought was broken when Bill, small and triangular again, burst into existence, hovering just outside the front door.
She turned to fix him with a glare,
"Where am I?" she demanded, a little too much panic slipping into her voice. "What have you done?!"
"You wanted to save dear old dad," Bill explained, leaning casually on his cane, suspended in the air. "here's your chance. If you can find the real Dipper- sorry - 'Abel' - in this convoluted mindscape, I'll give him back."
"I don't trust you."
Bill laughed,
"You're just now getting there? Either way, it doesn't matter. If you can't find a way out, you're stuck here anyway. Indefinitely. Have fun, Sapling!"
And in a snap and a blink he was gone.
Cassandra took one more look around the grainy, muted landscape, and set her sights on the attic window. It seemed like a good place to look.
Cassandra was pulled to the ground as her father's body collapsed, and in an instant Ashwin was beside her, checking for simple vitals. Trying hard not to panic, he managed,
"She's just unconscious." and by the sound of it, it could have been much worse.
"Mr. Pines is still breathing," Gabby confirmed. "I think they're alright."
With Bill around nothing was aright, Ashwin thought, but held his tongue.
"We need to find a way to help them," he decided, taking the lead, "I'm not sure what's happening, but they're alive, and they'll be safe down here. Come on," he concluded, gesturing for the group to follow. But he hesitated at the elevator. "Actually, we're coming back anyway. I just need… Elowen, Mervin, maybe the Ramirez twins? Everybody else just, uh, sit tight. Get something out of the vending machine upstairs, or something. We'll be right back."
Ashwin walked with great purpose from The Mystery Shack, leaving through the back door they'd been able to unlock with a key Melody leaves under the mat.
"What's the plan?" Elowen asked, catching up to him. "Is there a plan?"
"I'm going to find the notebooks. If anything can help us, that's it."
"You think?"
"What about the stuff from the old journal?" Mervin offered his binder.
"Depends- how did you find out about Bill?" Ashwin asked him.
"Another demon."
"Then I doubt it'll be much help. If there's nothing about Bill in there, it's no good to us. Getting back in the rental is our best bet."
"We've got your back, kid," Stan Ramirez assured him.
"Thanks. Let's go find some books."
The house was eerily quiet when Ashwin creaked the door open.
"Let's split up," he decided. "I'm gonna' look upstairs, where I think they'll be, but you guys check for anything else that could help." Nods were exchanged, and Ashwin jogged up the stairs.
He was glad to find the notebooks up in Cassandra's loft, undisturbed. He flipped quickly through the pages of each one, but didn't find too much of obvious use. None the less, he grabbed all three, and had reached the doorway when he heard Elowen holler,
"Ashwin, you need to get down here!"
When he reached her in the kitchen, the notebooks fell to the floor, forgotten.
"Mom!" he shouted, bolting over to Mabel, limp on the floor. She was still breathing, heart still beating. She was alive, but what had happened? His eyes were drawn to a burgundy book in her hand, closed over one finger. He opened it carefully to the chosen page: 'In Order to See Who Has Been Possessed Recently.'
"She knew," he realized, "she knew about Bill. Elowen, can you check the notebooks for me? See if there's anything about incantations?"
"Sure," Elowen assured him, digging through the old pages.
Mervin looked over Ashwin's shoulder, perplexed.
"Hey, A-Ashwin, could I see the cover of that book for a second?" he asked.
"Sure, why-?" Ashwin cut himself off as the reflective gold hand caught his eye. "Oh."
Mervin was rendered dumbstruck for a moment, but when he spoke he spoke with awe and enthusiasm.
"It's the real journal!" he squealed, "Oh my gosh, I didn't know it existed! I thought this was I had the only copy! And it has so many more pages! No wonder Mr. Ramirez never realized it was gone!"
"Dude," Gabby cut in, "did you steal that binder from our dad?"
Mervin froze, and Elowen used the opportunity to cut in.
"There's several instances of incantations in here. Do you know what you're looking for?"
"Starts with…videntis omnium?" he offered.
"Ends with Magister Mentium?" Elowen said, settling on an incantation page.
"Yeah, that's the one!"
"It says it lets you enter another person's mind," she explained, showing him the corresponding notebook page. Ashwin looked over the two sets of pages. He began to get an idea of what might have happened to his mother… if this incantation really could take you into another person's head-
"I have a plan."
IVA LLBY BZ SJ, ALI RPAA'W RTTHA
NQZX ASTFA LRG RTIIH'Z QMYS PAIE DZM?