Bill popped back into the arena he had formed within Abel's mind. He turned to his opponent, looking disinterested.
"And where have you been?" she snapped, "Off trying to rig the game?"
"None of your business, Shooting Star," he retorted as she fired another energy blast through him. "But I see you're still not done trying to fight me. Did you forget I'm ultimately powerful?"
"Like hell you are!" she barked, shooting at him again, which he easily dodged. "We defeated you once-"
"You're all so hung up on that!" Bill chuckled, "Clearly you didn't defeat me, or I wouldn't be back! Really, you should just give up. I could take you back," he reminded her, and in a moment their battleground was surrounded with bright colors, happy faces, mystical creatures, 80's music-
"You really think I want to go back there?!" she shot back, dissipating it all with the swipe of a hand. "That was the most horrific time of my life!"
"I think you might be confusing it with the bits around it-"
"It was Still part of Weirdmageddon," she retorted, "It was a dirty, rotten trick."
"Suit yourself," Bill shrugged, dodging another blast.
Elsewhere in the mindscape, Cassandra found that the inside of the house was far more familiar (and less flickery) than the outer walls. The entryway looked very much like that of her own home, but with more doors. Many more doors. A curious look through one of the doors found a shared experience - her most recent birthday. So, the rooms held… memories?
Otherwise, the house looked almost exactly like her own, until she came to the stairs up to the second floor. These stairs were decidedly not the stairs in her house. A peek through another door revealed a window into a time before her, when her parents were just married, or at least a younger married couple. She realized she might not want to take any chances looking through those doors.
The stairway opened onto an unfamiliar hall, probably still from her parent's previous home, and there were a series of rooms built off the hall, different than the memory doors. Cassandra wasn't entirely sure what these rooms were. They were basically small apartments, but as she went farther down the hall the cruder they became. Noticing a pile of textbooks she could make an educated guess - dorm rooms. (Though, maybe with an apartment or two thrown in. She had more pressing things to do than to count out the rooms in relation to her father's life.)
She jogged up another staircase, this one lined with familiar wallpaper. She didn't really place the familiarity until she stepped up to the second story of her grandparent's old house. They'd downsized lately, wanting a change of scenery, but Cassandra had come here when she was younger. This was the house her father would have grown up in. She hazarded a looking through a door to find memories of school days, including Mabel. Another door showed her a scene from summer in Gravity Falls. By the looks of things, it might have been the summer she and Ashwin time traveled to. As she reached for a third memory door farther down the hall the swift motion and loud thunk of a ladder falling from a trap door drew her attention. She looked down the hall, weighing her options.
This building had already broken physics - from the outside it was clearly a two-story house, and she was about to climb up to a fourth floor attic - but that was no reason not to climb the ladder. She stepped toward the ladder, and looked up through the door. A warm yellow light was on. Just like the attic window she'd seen outside.
She pulled herself up and into The Mystery Shack's attic and onto a barren wooden landing. A few steps away was a door, the yellow light leaking out. With only the slightest trepidation, she padded forward, and opened the door all the way.
It was the same room she had stayed in the night she'd gone back in time, but the room seemed even more to belong to the twins. To her left was clearly her father's side - a painting of a boat hung on the wall and there was a cork board propped up, covered in what looked like conspiracy theories (it was hard to tell, all text was coded - the label at the top read 'ZKR LV WKH DXWKRU?'). Though, perhaps it was more obvious because of the comparison to the bed on her right that was so obviously her aunt Mabel's. Her wall was plastered with posters of boy bands and motivational cats, there was a flower painted on the headboard, a sweater with a shooting star hung off one of the bed posts, and she'd set up a nice lamp and small bedside table. Her father seemed to have just put a lantern on the desk between the two beds and called it close-enough to bedside lighting.
The lantern was what gave off the soft yellow glow, and she was drawn to the desk it sat on. The lantern was accompanied by lots of lose leaf paper, chewed pens, a blue and white cap just like the one she'd snagged from the gift shop, and a sturdy book. She pulled up the nearest chair and examined the book, bound in burgundy, a golden hand emblazoned on the front. She placed her own hand over the symbol absently and realized it was the six-fingered hand. Ford's old journal, and her father's gateway to the mysteries of Gravity Falls.
She lifted the cover and found herself sitting on a bus, journal suspended in the air before her, an isle away from Mabel and Dipper. Her father was looking out the window.
"Grunkle-Stan Grunkle-Stan Grunkle-Stan!" Mabel chanted, poking him in the arm. The water tower whipped by outside the window. "We haven't been out here in forever! This'll be fun!"
"Sure, Mabel," Dipper responded, cracking a smile in spite of trying not to like this situation.
"Imagine: summer romance!" Mabel said, throwing a hand out before her in a 'picture it' gesture.
"Yeah, you have fun with that," he retorted, "I'll settle for not getting eaten alive by mosquitoes."
Pulling herself away from the scene, Cassandra flipped through the pages of the journal. Would she find the 'real' Abel here?
The next pages she landed on stuck her on a boat in the middle of Lake Gravity Falls. The small dinghy sped away from a police boat, hot on their tail, and Dipper snapped a picture.
She flipped more pages and found herself at a fair, Mabel running by with a pig, Dipper playing a carnival game. What a weird plush creature…
She turned a large chunk of pages and was staring at a large, possibly infant pterodactyl.
She yelped and turned the page to hurtle through the air towards a large robotic head that vaguely resembled Mr. Gleeful.
Screaming uncontrollably she turned the pages again, coming to rest backstage at a play. But, where was Dipper? She turned around to find Bill's slitted eyes staring at her. No, through her, she realized after stumbling back. This was a memory. He couldn't see her.
Desperate to get away from that image she turned the pages into a fancy party. Extremely fancy. Though, she had to admit Mabel's dress was extremely poofy. And, was that Ms. Northwest-Passage? She turned back to the book; this was not what she needed to find.
A few pages away she stood in The Shack's basement again. She took in the scene: the room was wrecked, the only light coming from a glowing blue hole in a toppled triangular device. The one Bill had been working on. She took a curious step closer.
A silhouette appeared in the swirling blue surface and stepped through, walking over to retrieve a journal like the one in her hands from the ground.
"W-what-?" she turned as she heard Dipper stammer, "Who… is that?"
"The author of the journals," her Great-Grunkle Stan explained. "my brother."
Cassandra turned to find her Great-Grunkle Ford, somewhat younger, and more rugged than as she'd known him, but it was Ford none the less.
"Woah…" she breathed. This was more like it. Maybe one of these pages would lead her to her father.
She turned the pages, full of hope, to find birthday party preparations taking place. She frowned, that wouldn't do it.
She flipped some more pages, disappointed, to find the world bathed in red light.
"Now isn't this INTERESTING" Bill mused, looming over her. "My old puppet is back for an encore!" he said, giant eye turning around her. But as she followed his spotlight-esque eye she realized he was speaking to Dipper, standing just beside her. "You think you can stop me?" Bill chided, dangling what looked like… a gold statue of Great-Grunkle Ford-? "Go ahead, Pine Tree! Show me what you've got!"
"I- Uh…" Dipper flipped frantically through the journal, searching for answers.
"What about you, Sapling?"
Cassandra's blood went cold as Bill turned on her.
"Cassie-!" Dipper yelped just as Cassandra slammed the book shut, back in The Mystery Shack's attic.
Her heartbeat hammered in her head and her breath was shallow. She tried to make sense out of what she had just experienced, but didn't have much luck.
Out on the mindscape battlefield, Bill laughed.
BUX ABUHEKNSW KS P JQPES ISEOM
PDKUACHZN AOL US FQZH LQ WPWBR