Even in daytime, Gravity Falls' cemetery was a depressing wreck – in fact, the sunlight made it look worse. There was a problem not encountered on the identical twins' previous visit, too: an audience. Several had seen the red BMW pass by, and some of them followed to see what was going on. A nice clump of folks – a few of whom Winter and Summer had already had sessions with – met them as they tried to enter the graveyard.

The group's natural spokeswoman tried to make them disperse. "Now, now, I know everyone is super excited about ghost talker whisperers being in a graveyard and all, but... what?" Mabel tilted her head, trying to hear one voice above the clamor. "No, you can't come with us. Why? What if you scare the ghosts off? Ever think of that?"

"That can happen," Summer added. "Some spirits are pretty timid."

The girl crossed her arms and nodded. "Yeah, see? What she said."

"Mhm. So if you wouldn't mind, we need to go investigate—huh? Autographs?" Dipper looked up at the women and shrugged. "I dunno, what do you think?"

Winter's only desire was to get them to leave. If this was the means to that end, she was happy to oblige. "If they want," she replied quietly. "Does anyone have a pen?"

Two dozen signatures later, they were finally on their way through the lopsided headstones and dead trees. "You guys are a little more popular than I thought," Dipper said, looking around for the pointing angel. "Wait, there it is."

"Oo! Can I let it pick my nose again?"

He rolled his eyes a bit. "Ew, no. You had nosebleeds for two days afterward, remember?"

Mabel's face went blank. "Oh yeah. Everything tasted like iron, even sugar. Wasn't very fun. I hated eating."

"I know exactly how you must have felt," Summer muttered as she walked past with her sister.

"Yeah! Huh?" Her eyes became curious, but she held off on asking for clarification since they had arrived at the statue. It stood a fair distance away from Wilhelm Seifert's empty corner. "Who wants to pull the finger? Ha! Pull the finger." She snorted a few more times, which provoked some eye-rolling from Dipper.

Summer did the honors. They stepped back as the concrete slab withdrew, revealing a cobweb-laden, dusty staircase. "Oh my. How interesting," she said, stooping to peer down into the darkness.

"Yep. The booby traps shouldn't be a problem since Mabel set them off the last time we were here." He watched Winter produce her enormous phone, then proceed down the steps. "Good idea. We're right behind you."

The screen's white light cast a ghostly shine through the narrow cavern, exaggerating its craggy features and pushing out long shadows in front of them. Once in a while, the glint of a plastic wrapper would catch their eyes. Each time one appeared Mabel dashed ahead and picked it up. "I'm such a litterbug!" she scolded herself. "Gave away our location and ruined the environment. Wow, me."

"I'm pretty sure the giant open hole in a cemetery with a staircase gave us away more than your candy," Dipper assured her. Up ahead, the dirt was littered with large darts. "Oh, thank goodness. Looks like it's safe."

"What are these?" Winter asked, gently kicking one as she moved through the mess.

"Tranquilizers!" Mabel explained cheerfully. "Oh man, Deputy Durland got hit with like, twenty of them. It was so funny."

He smirked a little. "Heh, yeah." The corridor suddenly dropped off into a cylindrical tunnel that curved toward the right. "Okay, we just slide down through here and we're good." Suddenly, he was floating. "Gah! What the heck?!" he yelped, arms flailing.

Mabel had a similar issue, minus the terrified sounds. "I'm... I'm flying! Huh, it feels nothing like my dreams. Man. I'm disappointed." She began to giggle uncontrollably. "It sure tickles though! Pfffffff!"

Summer was the one suspending them. "Why slide when we can fly?" She grinned as Winter zipped down the hole. "Here we go!"

They screamed as she dragged them along after her. Rock flashed by at spine-chilling speed, but she kept them right in the center of the passage until they popped out into the cache and she floated them to a gentle standing stop. "Dude!" Dipper scolded, trying to shake off the weird tingling that plagued his exposed skin. "Ask permission first!"

A sheepish Summer kicked at the ground and pouted. "Sorry. I really like to fly." Her face dropped as she looked around. "I feel something." A lot of somethings; the cavern was pockmarked with hardly-perceptible little sparks.

Mabel gave her a pat on the back. "Aw, I thought it was fun! Once I realized I wasn't gonna splatter against the cave and all. What do you feel? More magic whatevers?" Once the adrenaline faded she realized someone was missing. "I think Winter left us."

The blue-eyed woman was just about to round a corner in front of them, though she pointed her phone backwards over her shoulder so they'd have some light to see by. "They've been storing magical artifacts here?" she asked, eying an axe and sword at her feet. "Why didn't we notice them before?"

Her sister picked up the sheathed weapon to contemplate its markings. It certainly had enough dust to be old, but its features held no meaning for her. "Their signature probably got soaked up by the ground. I barely detect them even being this close."

"So, wait. This stuff has magic?" Dipper watched as Mabel ran over and grabbed the nearest item, an old telescope with a gilded exterior mounted on a flimsy tripod.

"I command you to give me a... a... bagel! Boom!" she yelled, pointing it at a stack of musty papers. "Bagelography commence! Bagelfy! Bagel... nothin'? Aw, really. Hey, how am I supposed to magic stuff again?"

Winter blinked when the girl looked to her for advice. "I don't think our power is something you can teach. You just have to... have it."

She threw up her arms in frustration. "Ugh! Fine. Dipper, hold my hairband so I can go find a gamma ray burst or a mutant spider or something."

He shook his head, took her by the hand, and headed for some nearby shelves. "Mabel, please. Remember why we're here."

"I don't wanna. It's depressing." She kept on whining as he dragged her away. "Last chance! Embagelize! No? A pox on your house, useless spyglass!"

Despite their smiles, the identical twins moved to a rickety bookcase full of manila folders and got to work. "A cache of enchanted objects and reading classified documents in a musty room," Winter mumbled. "It's like I'm reliving that day all over again." But this memory brought her a smile. "That was a good day."

"It sure was," Summer agreed, shuffling through yellowed papers. "I don't know these names. Lincoln? Franklin?"

"Keep looking. Seifert must have worked on the portal or knew someone who did." A few glances were afforded to their company, who were chattering over who knew what. She didn't feel the need to check, as it didn't sound like an argument. "If we could figure out how these were arranged..."

"Hey! Guys!" Mabel yelled. "I found something about a... Dipper say this for me."

"I'm kinda still reading it. I mean, what of it I can read."

They elected to walk over and see what was up themselves instead of continuing to speak at range. "What is it?" Winter asked as she arrived.

"Something called Project Apollyon," Dipper murmured to himself. "I've heard that word before but I can't remember what it means." His eyes darted uncertainly along, soaking up the type as fast as possible. "Soos' note mentioned the Seifert guy the Duskertons were talking about. I found his name in here." He handed the file over. Much of the text was censored with black bars.

Quickly, Winter flipped back to the first page to get an idea about what she was looking at. The project name was centered on the front, but almost everything on the back was blacked out – save for a list of names. None of these struck her as familiar until she got to the last one: Dietrich Seifert, Ph.D. "This isn't the man we talked to," she indicated with a frown. "His first name is Wilhelm."

Mabel shuddered with disgust, shrinking into her starry red sweater and whining. "Crap! There's more than one!"

He gave her a few light prods to make the noise stop. "Um, he's gotta have a family. Most people do. I mean, if they are related."

"So much of this is censored," Summer complained as her sister turned the pages. "Wait." Her slender finger landed on a phrase halfway down one page. "What's this? A gravity hill?"

Winter's face twisted in thought. "Hmm. I'm not sure." Everyone looked over when Dipper cleared his throat for attention.

"Oh boy, get ready for a Broface Level Explanation," Mabel groaned.

He crossed his arms and fired an annoyed look at her before proceeding. "It's an optical illusion. The surrounding landscape makes a descending slope look like a rising one, so sometimes it looks like a ball or a car is rolling uphill when it shouldn't. There's one in Gold Hill, a place called the Oregon Vortex. I thought the Mystery Shack was one too, but I guess something real is going on around there."

"If it's an illusion, why is it in this thing?" Summer asked. "This doesn't seem like the sort of document you'd use to talk about visual tricks."

"Unless it's a euphemism for something." Winter continued to thumb through the file. Her efforts were greeted by page after page of censored text, where only minor or useless words were left exposed. Dietrich Seifert's named continued to pop up, however. After a moment, she came to the last document, where she found printed and centered "Project Summary, Eyes Only" and "United States Department of War" below that. They knew the War Department from their own research. "I suspect this is a distillation of facts for a bunch of bureaucrats. We should look for other documentation. Internal documentation, if we can find it."

Dipper's head tilted at that conclusion. "Um... how would you know it's a just a summary?" He peered at the file when she lowered it for him to see. "War Department. There was a War Department?"

Summer flashed him a smile. "It's the Department of Defense now. Has been since 1949."

"Oh."

"So we know there's a project, but not where the project is, what the project did, who ran the project, or if the project worked," Mabel surmised, tapping her foot. "You think what we need is in here too? It'd make sense to have it all in one spot."

"That's not how a secret works," Winter countered, putting the file away. "Data is compartmentalized to an extreme. Everyone knows what they need to know and no more. Paperwork is spread out through so many different agencies and organizations that an outsider trying to piece together the truth would give up out of frustration." An awkward lack of noise made her cease talking and look. The Pines stood there in dumbfounded silence. "What?"

"Uh, how would you know?" Dipper asked plainly.

Summer did her best to cover for her, shifting anxiously from heel to heel "You sure love your spy novels," she said happily.

"Ha, well. This file's a start, anyway. We know something happened, and now we know a Seifert was involved... at least, it seems. How would we find out for sure?" The answer was obvious, but unpalatable. He slumped over with a heavy sigh. "Mabel, we're gonna have to talk to him."

"Talk to who?" she chirped falsely, trying to hide her revulsion with a canyon-wide smile. "Who? Who... oh gosh please no." Her effort broke with a painful wretch. "No! I don't wanna talk to him, dang it! He's... he's like twelve million Gideons squished together! No!"

"Maybe there's a reason for what he did." They all looked to Summer, whose pensive tone released a chill into the air. Her eyes got wide. "He said it saved the world. I guess he thinks people like us are dangerous."

"Balderdash!" Mabel exclaimed in protest. "You're twins! Twins are never bad. Okay, yeah, sometimes you freak me out with the powers and the changy stuff, but you haven't hurt anyone-

"Um, they killed some fairies," Dipper interrupted. He ducked a vicious swipe that nearly took off his hat.

"-since you got here," she resumed with a pointed look, "and actually you've helped a lot! So he's wrong. Completely wrong." The identical twins' melancholic silence made her cringe. "Yo, I'm trying to encourage you over here. Smile. Dang. Give me something."

Winter's reply was chillingly quiet. "Is he? Given all the things we can do..."

"No you don't." Summer scolded her with a firm slap on the back and frowned. "Stop. You're the cool-headed one, remember? It's fine."

"I'm with Mabel. Your abilities just take some getting used to, that's all." Dipper was back to the shelves, hunting for more relevant information. "Come on. Let's be sure there's nothing else here before we leave."

Mabel went over to assist him, though it took a moment for her to get her sweater sleeves out of the way. "Or talking to evil people. Can we not do that?"

"Sometimes it's easy to mistake things – or people – as evil."

Summer tried to jostle the gloom out of her sister. "Enough of that. Let's go read more things we're not supposed to read!"

She rolled her icy eyes and submitted. "Oh, fine." With quick steps, she moved to some shelving near where the Pines were and started to browse. "I still want to know why some of these objects have magical charges."

"One mystery at a time," Dipper sighed. "I haven't found anything yet that wasn't related to Millard Fillmore secretly being a collection of ducks. Any luck over there?"

After some paper shuffling and brief reading, Summer replied with a confused look. "I've got one that says Montana was originally meant to be West Dakota?"

"Pff! West Dakota." Bored, Mabel was toddling about between piles of artifacts. A bright light suddenly blinded her. "Hey!" she complained, throwing up an arm. "Dipper, stop with the flashlight!"

"We're not using a flashlight." Realization struck all four of them at the same time. "Uh..."

"You know, I wish you would stop breakin' in here," Sheriff Blubs complained, pointing his beam at the floor. "My uniform gets so dusty. At least I know the alarm system works."

"Hey, Sheriff!" Mabel greeted with a smile. "Where's your buddy?"

Blubs shrugged a little. "Feelin' a little under the weather." He directed the flashlight at the other set of twins. "They roped you into this too? Shame on you, kids."

Neither Winter nor Summer said anything; since their young friends didn't seem to be particularly terrified, they decided to see how things would play out before acting – or reacting.

Mabel tsked a few times. "Aw. Tell him we hope he feels better."

"Why, thank you. I'm sure he'll appreciate it. Now, you're all under arrest for endangering national security. Again." He expected his stern tone and expression to get the ball rolling, but none of his would-be prisoners moved a step. "Don't sass me. I know you heard what I said."

"What, are we gonna get another free trip to Washington in a freaking box?" Dipper snarked, hands on his hips.

"Ooo, maybe I'll finally get to go to Congress!" She produced a top hat from under her sweater, popped it open and placed it carefully on her head. "Also, I don't think you can arrest me because I'm a congressman. Pretty sure that's how it works."

After an exchange of slightly confused glances, the older twins decided it was time to act. "You're interrupting our investigation," Summer informed him politely. "I don't think the spirits like you."

Winter silently leveraged her power to start lifting objects behind the Sheriff as he laughed her off. "Please, you think I buy that ghost mumbo jumbo? You're probably just like Gideon." He nodded at Mabel as she made a gagging sound. "I feel you, honey."

"I think you'd better start buying it," Dipper advised, pointing toward and around him while putting on his best fearful act. "Because..."

"Huh?" He looked up and found himself staring at a cloud of weapons and objects, all of which had their pointiest, deadliest, or most painful-looking ends pointed right at him. "Uh. Well. I stand corrected."

"If you value your life, you should leave," Summer concluded with a sunny grin.

He did – with incredible haste, leaving a series of amazingly girly screams in his wake. While the elder twins went about replacing all the objects, Dipper moved to the tunnel and looked up it. "How did he climb this?"

Mabel poked at her hat and grinned. "Whatevs, bro, we won." A consideration chased her smile away. "Wait, you think he knows we know about the portal? Maybe we shoulda tied him up or something."

"I'm less worried about him than the others. He didn't even have a gun." Winter pulled another file and began to flip through the pages. It was a document about how Georgia grew very few peaches, but won the "Peach State" moniker in a secret game of poker. "Oh, I don't care about this," she growled, tossing it back and walking away. "We need to speak with Wilhelm. There's no way around it."

Dipper put his hand over Mabel's mouth to muffle her long-winded, whiny 'nooooo'. "Ugh. I don't like the idea either, but you're right. Let's just get it over with."

Summer lifted them again and prepared to depart, but her sister didn't do the same. "Hmm? Are you coming?" she asked.

"In a second," Winter nodded, picking up the same old sword and examining it. She watched them leave, then waited a few seconds more to make sure they were gone before looking down at the blade. Her palm split open, letting out a small sprout of black gunk. When she pressed that to the sword, its spark began to fade, joining the enormous chorus of formless whispers that occupied her own brain as it flowed through the ebony substance. "Hmm. It really is magic." She tossed the now silent object aside and frowned before taking off through the tunnel.

The Pines and Summer were waiting for her at the base of the stairs. "We still doin' this? Maaaaaaaybe I should wait in the car," Mabel suggested as she walked by. "'Cause, you know, German cars are like, super-safe. Almost as safe as Volvos!"

"Absolutely not. I don't want to risk something happening to you if you're out of our sight." She poked her head out and glanced around suspiciously. While the cemetery seemed to be empty, much of her view from this height was blocked by gravestones and monuments. "Hmm. Summer, come with me. You two stay down here for a moment." They emerged into the sunshine and cast a long, sweeping look at their surroundings. The red BMW was still parked along the sidewalk outside the gate; nobody was nearby, so the crowd must have given up and left. In fact, to Winter, the area looked a little too unoccupied. "Hmm. I see what you were saying about paranoia," she muttered to her sister. "I already felt like someone was watching me. Now I know they are."

She nodded at that with a sigh. "Oh, yes." Her eyes went to the empty corner. "Should we try talking to him now?"

That notion was denied with a nod over her shoulder. "No. Let's go and get these two settled in first. The less stressful we can make it for them, the better." With a few snaps, she got the kids' attention and motioned for them. "Come on, it's fine."

"Yay, but... boo," Mabel groaned, fearing what came next. "Please just let me leave. I'll hide somewhere. I swear."

Summer broke the good news with a big smile. "We're not going to talk to him now. We have shopping to do first!"

"Woo!" she replied, throwing her arms into the sky. In fact, she repeated the sound and motion a few more times until Dipper stopped her with a jab to the back. "Hey!"

"She said now," he reminded her with a small frown. "It's gonna happen eventually."

"Blargh. You always gotta rain on my parade, bro."

They weaved through the headstones and back to the sedan, piling in almost all at once and driving away. What none of them noticed as they headed back toward downtown was the squad car parked at the far end of the graveyard behind them. In it was Sheriff Blubs, caught between reluctance toward doing the thing he had to do, and the fear of what repercussions might come down on him if he hesitated any further. With Herculean effort, he finally made the call. "Control? It's, uh..."

"I know who it is, you're the only one with access to this frequency. Have you made the arrests?"

"There was a problem," he said with a gulp. "Ghosts. They got mad at me and I had to, you know, leave."

"...you're serious."

"Nah. I'm joki—yes."

"Sheriff, I don't think I need to remind you that the government already has a kill order on those women. Bring us the kids – at least – or something terrible may happen to your next re-election attempt."

Blubs gasped with horror. "But then I'd have to get a real job!"

"How terrible. We could do worse, if you'd like."

"Fine, fine, I'll deal with it. It'll get dealt with and done." His face dropped with confusion. "Wait. If those two are supposed to be dead, why did I just see them alive?"

"What?"

Someone walking by caused him to glance out the window. His voice got low. "They're still alive."

"I... wow. Congratulations, Sheriff. You're not the biggest idiot I've dealt with today." The operator's voice changed as he complained to himself. "Charlie better be dead, for his sake. Otherwise... never mind." He returned to the topic at hand. "Arrest all of them. Don't call me again until you do."

"Yes, sir." Overwhelmed with relief after hearing the conversation-ending click, he slumped in the seat and tried to get his mental bearings. "I didn't sign up for this whole spy business. They oughta just get James Bond to do it. I ain't even got my deputy to help me!" Now he was fuming – or perhaps pouting. "Got me chasin' rich people all over town. Least they're more polite than the Northwests." He drove off after his quarry, grumbling lowly all the way.

He didn't find them at home. They made the briefest stop to pick up some money, but after that they ran around Gravity Falls for the better part of two hours buying all sorts of food. The trunk was full to bursting by the time they pulled up to the house. That didn't matter, however, when they noticed who was sitting on the steps: Stan Pines, looking as downtrodden as Mabel and Dipper had ever seen him, bracketed by two suitcases. Winter parked by the sidewalk since his old sedan occupied the driveway.

"Grunkle Stan?" Mabel called as they all emerged from the red BMW. "Whatcha doin' here?"

At first, he was only capable of a weak wave as he stood up. "Just, uh, bringing some of your stuff over. I would've broken in, but Blubs drove by lookin' for you and I got a little spooked."

"How... kind of you," Summer muttered with a frown.

For Dipper, the whole situation had reached a new plateau of seriousness. "Wait, we're really... I mean it was our idea yeah, but we usually get this stuff wrapped up in a day. You're gonna let us stay here?"

He shrugged weakly, eyes stuck to the grass. "I think it's best. I dunno what's going on here, but they seem to," he said, nodding to the identical twins. "They already saved ya once. I think I can trust 'em."

"Hmm." Winter leaned over and whispered something into Summer's ear; after that, the red-eyed woman beckoned Mabel and Dipper to follow her into the house. They did, but only reluctantly, and after a few seconds. Stan watched the kids go with a faint scowl. "You wanna talk to me, I guess?"

"Yes." She looked around for witnesses before speaking again. "I'll ask one more time: are you sure you haven't noticed anything strange?"

"Eh." He doffed his fez and looked everywhere but at her. "I'm just gonna tell you no until you believe me."

"Don't hold your breath."

Wilting on his feet, Stan finally made eye contact. Some undertone in her expression made his blood curdle. He tapped his fingers together anxiously. "I ain't sayin', sweetheart."

"Then I'll say it for you," she said, folding her arms. "We all know about the portal. And Summer and I specifically know something else is going on at the Mystery Shack. Since the government is officially trying to murder us, and capture them, I'd like to get this dealt with as soon as possible. I'll give you two choices: you can talk, or one of us will drop by and find out some other way. Which is it?"

Winter's bluntness was stunning, but he emitted a sigh of – relief wasn't exactly correct, but some piece of a burden had been lifted from his shoulders. "All right. Listen, I'm kinda stuck between a rock and a hard place over here. If the kids find out about this, I don't know what they'll think. This is some life-changin' stuff, you get me?"

Her brow cocked a bit. "Is keeping your secret worth putting them in danger?"

Stan replied without any hesitation. "Absolutely not. It's just... I kinda thought I'd be takin' it to my grave, you know?" he said with a chuckle. "And so did the guys in D.C. Can't say I blame 'em for wanting to off you two. Not that I ain't glad they screwed up." Thinking on that made him a little confused. "I figured they'd be, you know, competent. How did they screw up?"

"They didn't. Let's just say neither of us are what we seem," she smiled lightly. Her expression faded as she got back to the point. "We're worried this might be bigger than Gravity Falls."

"That's a fair point, and honestly I don't know either way," he admitted, plopping the fez back onto his head. A deep breath later, Stan had made his choice. "Doesn't matter. I gotta help those kids get back to normal as quick as possible. Whatever normal means around here," he concluded with a weak snicker. In an instant, his expression became deadly serious. "Come by the shack tonight, but keep the kids away. I ain't ready for them to lay eyes on what I wanna show you. Not yet."