Something jarred Wendy awake, but her addled brain and sore body – why did she sleep on the stupid couch? – left her unable to figure out what. The dawn's genesis was already filling the living room with dim golden light. As she righted herself and tried to collect her thoughts, she jumped with surprise upon seeing Winter at the other end, slumped back and apparently asleep. It was fine, she told herself, trying to slow her breath. She'd made it. One of the super-twins had made it. The house looked intact. Nothing was wrong.

But what about her family? Despite all the precautions there was no way to be sure; if the United States could kill a guy across the ocean by remote control, it could certainly find a few lumberjacks in Oregon. Only one thing could give her solace, so she carefully got to her feet and went looking for her phone. Her new phone. Summer had spent an hour cloning their huge smartphones for the redhead, the kids, and Soos and Stan before finally turning in last night. It seemed a bit unwieldy for someone used to a little flip phone, but the case was colored in red flannel just like she asked. Eventually, she found it charging in the spotless kitchen. Next to it was a strange little cable, one end of which was connected to a jack in the wall, and a note.

If anyone wants to call someone, attach a phone to this first! The writing was smooth and cheery; Wendy just knew it was Summer's. She did as it asked and dialed her house.

"Hello? Who is this?"

The gruff voice of her father had never sounded so sweet. Wendy exhaled – one weight was off her shoulders. "Hey, dad. How's things?"

"Fine, fi-" A loud sound cut him off. The redhead giggled – that was him bumping his head on the ceiling again. "Dang it!"

"Careful, man. What'd I tell you about crouch-walkin'?" Breathing was much easier now. "Sorry about the short notice last night. This was one sleepover I couldn't miss. You guys gonna be all right out there without me?"

"Sure, if your brothers ever wake up. You coming back tonight?"

"I hope—yeah. Tonight. I gotta go, I don't wanna wake Tambry up. Love you guys. Be careful."

"Love you too."

She hung up, hoping against hope that whatever was in these devices stopped prying ears. Like a nervous ghost, she crept back into the living room and sat down. Winter was still asleep. With most of her anxiety gone, the redhead drifted off again. An instant later, or so it seemed, something else woke her up. This time it had a clear source – Dipper, sitting between them and hugging the journal. He let out a tremendous yawn. "Hey, man."

"Huh?" He looked over, bleary-eyed. "Oh, sorry. Didn't mean to wake you."

"I was kinda up already." She rubbed her face, sighed, and looked over at the other end of the sofa. "Man, Winter sleeps like a brick."

"Heh, yeah. I'm jealous." Gloom settled into his eyes. "I guess everyone survived the night?"

Wendy nodded and thumbed over her shoulder. "I called home to check. There's a bunch of those big phones in the kitchen if you wanna do the same."

"Yeah, yeah, give me a minute to remember how to speak English." Just as he got up, however, a familiar noise reached his ears. "Wait... is that Stan's car?" he asked, moving to look out the window. Sure enough, the ancient sedan was coming to a halt beside the twins' BMW. "Hey, they made it too. Phew."

Stan poked his head in after Dipper opened the front door. "Hey, kid. Everyone all right?"

He flashed a thumbs up while trying to smile. "Seems so." Soos came in next. "What's up? Where'd you guys stay?"

"In the lab," he replied, giving the boy a low-five. "It's hard to sleep when you're worried about aliens coming out of a glowing hole in the next room, you know?"

"I bet." Dipper noted the other two journals in Stan's arms. "Hey, more reading material."

"Yeah. Figured if the feds were gonna play dirty, so would I." He set them on the coffee table and frowned at journal three on the sofa. "Something tells me you had the same idea."

"Sure did. I was thinking of using the crystals. Maybe one of those amulets Gideon had, if there's another."

"Speaking of journals..." Winter's arrival to the conversation caused everyone but Soos to jump. She smiled a bit at their surprise. "Sorry." After a minor stretch, she got right to business. "Mm. Dipper, I want to talk to you and Mabel."

The boy looked up at her, confused. "Huh? About what?"

"About Bill Cipher."

Wendy seemed a bit confused, but Dipper turned white as a sheet. Soos couldn't figure out why and paid it no attention. "Oh yeah. That was crazy! Right?" He blinked when the boy wouldn't answer. "Or were we just hallucinating? Heh, sometimes—uh, sometimes it's hard to tell around here."

Winter peered at the handyman, arms crossed. "You knew? Was anyone going to tell us?"

"I, uh, well," Dipper stammered. He glanced around for an out and found Mabel stumbling down the hall toward them. "Ahahaha—hey! Mabel! Look who's here!"

She blew him off sleepily. "I can't even see right now. Come back later."

Summer wasn't far behind, looking much more sprightly – at least until she saw Winter's displeased look and the crowd in the living room. "Oh, am I missing something serious?"

"You're just in time," Stan said, flipping through journal one. "Dipper was just about to tell your sister about Bill Cipher." He stopped and looked up, feeling many pairs of eyes on him. "What? You never asked me if I knew anything. I didn't technically lie." Even half-awake Mabel was staring at him now. "Guess it's my turn to talk, huh. Fine. I'm gonna answer some questions I know you got first. No, I don't know who wrote these journals. No, I don't know why the portal activation sequence is in 'em. On the other hand, I know about Bill, 'cause..." He trailed off, searching the room for further words. "It's hard to explain."

"Does he have something to do with our situation?" Summer asked, now seated on the couch and gently trying to keep Mabel from dozing off again.

Stan's eyes became distant. "Everyone in Gravity Falls knows about Bill, even if it ain't something they're aware of. I'm sure you read the journal. He haunts your dreams."

"He hasn't haunted ours," Winter said flatly.

"Maybe you ain't been here long enough yet." He looked over as Dipper took journal two and started rifling through it. "Or maybe he doesn't know what to do with you. You've got strength in places you shouldn't."

"What does that mean?" Mabel complained, brain finally reattached to reality. "I mean, when we fought him..." The hair on her arms stood up when Summer's gaze landed on her. "Bro, I don't think we ever mentioned the whole invading-Grunkle-Stan's-mind business."

"Nope." He took a breath, closed the book, and proceeded to make hasty amends. "Long story short, Mabel, Soos and I had to save Stan from Bill after Gideon summoned him to steal the combination for a safe out of Stan's mind." A pause was necessary for more air. "We won after we figured out that-" When the memory hit him, Stan's remark about misplaced strength suddenly made sense. "Wait a second."

As usual, Mabel didn't. "I turned my hands into kitten cannons!" she exclaimed with glee, punching the air. "Bow! Kabow-pow-boom!"

Winter was genuinely surprised at her words. "You could change things?"

"Sure! You can do anything in the mind! Least that's what Dip said."

"Yeah, and that's exactly what Apollyon was trying to accomplish," Stan interjected, taking off his glasses. "They wanted to bring the power of dreams into reality. The project wanted to make telekinetic super-soldiers that could fly and do all sorts of stuff. Things kinda went off the rails after the hospital thing, though."

Wendy finally found the power to speak up. "How do you know? You got stuff we should be readin', man?"

"Heh, read? I don't need writing to remember this. I grew up watchin' it first hand." He drew back as Mabel stood, shaking hands balled into fists. Her eyes were incredibly upset. "What, kid?"

"Did you do the things?!" she demanded, voice wavering. "Did you do any of the things?!"

"What? No! I was eleven!"

"Oh. Oh." She sat back down with a sigh and mentally stepped away from the edge – at least until she noted how fidgety her great uncle still looked. "If there's a 'but' coming, I'ma grab it, and I'ma beat you with it. You hear me?"

"Stanton Pines," he said, arms halfway up in case Mabel made good on her promise to attack him. Summer put a hand on her shoulder to keep her sitting. "Thanks. Stanton was my grunk—I mean great uncle. He was also a science-y kinda guy."

Dipper raised his hand for attention. "Do I wanna hear what's coming next? I don't think I do."

"No, you don't. I'm gonna say it anyway: he was a scientist in Project Apollyon." He winced as Mabel began howling with – grief? Anger? It was hard to say which. "Wait! Wait! He was a theoretical physicist!"

This fact did nothing to quell her temper. "You've got five seconds to translate that into regular people words!" she yelled, a trembling finger pointed his way. Dipper's eyes said he had the answer, but neither him nor anyone else moved to calm her down.

While Wendy and Soos regarded Stan with nearly equal uncertainty, the identical twins' expressions were only curious. "He helped build the machine. The stuff that came after wasn't his doing, but the Seifert brothers..." Stan fell silent, rubbing the back of his neck as he looked away. "I knew Dietrich and Wilhelm. I knew them 'cause Stanley idolized the guys. Stanley is—was... my twin brother."

"You—you had a twin?" Dipper asked, eyes wide with shock. "But I... we never heard that from mom and dad. Where is he? I mean, is he—because I'm sorry if he is I just—I'll shut up now."

Something in the old man's eyes was deeply wistful. "It's fine. He went missing over thirty years ago."

"How?" Soos urged. "And, uh, do you want a hug?"

Stan waved aside his offer, but managed a minor smile. "'Cause he went into the portal. The Army tried that right after the thing was built, but everyone they sent in got vaporized. After it had been running a few weeks, though, they discovered people could go in without turning to dust and stay for a few seconds. That's when they started exposing people to the energy from the portal and sending them into it to see what else would happen. There were some, uh, weird results to say the least." He rose from the chair, moving to the windows to peer outside. "There still are."

"Wait, wait, thirty years ago would have been 1984," Dipper said, also unable to sit any longer. "The portal was active for that long after the war?!"

He looked back and shrugged. "I know it was active up until at least '63 'cause of the Cuban Missile Crisis and all that. Then the stuff with Wilhelm happened and, well..." He trailed off, rubbing his neck with a huge frown. "Stanley and I left town 'cause we were friends with the Seifert family. Caught a lot of hell. Anyway, they were still usin' the thing to create super-soldiers, or at least try."

"Did they succeed?" Summer asked. Her tone was too chipper for the topic; it caused Wendy, sitting on her right, to look perturbed.

"You got me. I know they learned what magic does to the human mind. They learned that it can become airborne. They also learned that it can alter human DNA so it'll be passed down to children." He expected the gasps of surprise – but once again, Winter and Summer were oddly unmoved. "After Stanley finished his doctorate at MIT, the government recruited him to come back here and decommission the project with a few other scientists. But something went wrong and he... he ended up in the portal and never came out. Musta been a big accident. He wasn't the only one to vanish."

"Dang, man, that blows. Did you ever find out what happened?" Mabel asked, hugging him so hard her arms began to hurt.

"No. Still don't know. Nobody would give me a straight answer," was all Stan could say. "I'm tryin' to find out. I'm tryin' to find out how to bring him back, too."

"Dude, I can't handle this anymore," Wendy advised, hunched over and scowling hard. "I don't... are there seriously magic users in Gravity Falls?" She glanced at the identical twins with a faint, apologetic smile. "I mean, other magic users."

Stan chuckled a bit, wiping his eyes with a sleeve. "Sure are, kid. You see 'em every single day. Like your dad for instance."

"What?!" she exclaimed, rising as if shot from a cannon. Every ounce of color drained from her cheeks.

"Come on, kid. No human is naturally that strong. Listen, magic doesn't necessarily give you abilities like Winter and Summer got. Sometimes it alters you in other ways."

"B-bu-bu-but how did he..." the redhead stammered, ready to faint.

He pushed his glasses back up his nose before replying. "That thing was open a long time. Magic was floating around looking for a place to go. The Army found out it liked people best, but not always. Most of the weird stuff you see around Gravity Falls are objects that were affected by its power." Stan nodded over to the journals. "And somebody made it their life's work to write it all down. I dunno who, and I dunno why, but they were real thorough."

Dipper's demeanor had suddenly changed. The shift was so violent it attracted his sister's attention away from trying to comfort Stan. "Bro? You okay?"

He said nothing, instead smoothing his hair back so his unbelievable birthmark was visible. He showed it to Stan, eyes shining with terror.

The old man knew exactly what his question was, but he lacked an answer. "I don't know, Dipper. Maybe it is, maybe it isn't." He gave the boy a weak pat on the head and sighed. "Your grandparents lived here long enough, I know that."

By now, the whole room had been carpet bombed with emotions. Soos wasn't spared either – the devastation left him unsure who to reassure first or how. Frozen by awkwardness, he looked to the unflappable, absolutely composed Winter to give him a hand. After a bit of odd staring, she got his hint and stood. "Let's talk about something more immediate," she said loudly, drawing their focus. "I had a chat with one of their agents last night."

Wendy laughed a little out of exhaustion. "Oh, is that what the gunshot was for?"

"What gunshot?!" all three Pines yelled. "Did somebody shoot at my babies?" Stan added, picking up the young twins and holding them protectively. The fact that Dipper couldn't breathe and Mabel was struggling to get her arms free didn't register in the least.

Winter shook her head once. "No. Nobody was hurt. It did get my message across, however. I sent her back with an ultimatum to leave us alone – or else."

"I'd ask 'or else what?' but I already know and it's makin' me sad," Mabel said as she extracted her limbs from Stan's death grip. "This whole thing is makin' me sad."

Summer had been lost in thought for a while, but she suddenly chimed in. "Just in case they don't listen, we should be ready. What could we use from the journals?"

Dipper also squirmed free and dropped back to the floor. "I'm thinking the crystals are the best bet right now. We know where they are and how to use them. Grunkle Stan, any other ideas?" he asked, looking up just as the old man released his sister.

He shrugged a bit while adjusting his glasses. "I got some emergency equipment that might help at the shack, but I'll look through mine again and see if anything else could be useful. Wish I knew what the blank pages were about. Bothers me a little."

"Heh, maybe somebody wrote on them with invisible ink," Wendy said, smiling at a memory. "Poor Thompson. We made him think he was insane for three days. Man, was that fun."

Dipper emitted a thoughtful noise and frowned at the floor. "Invisible ink? At this point I'd believe anything. Anyway, let's start brainstorming before somebody sends in the National Guard to take us out."

Three hours later, they had a plan. Summer took the young twins in one direction, while Winter traveled with Stan and Soos into a different part of the woods. As Mabel and Dipper poked their way through the undergrowth, however, their mind was on the person who hadn't come with them. "Man, Wendy looked awful," the girl said. "I hope she's okay."

Dipper had much the same air about him. "Yeah," he replied, attention elsewhere. Journal three was tucked under his left arm.

"Bro bro?" She grabbed his shirt sleeve and gave him a few hard jostles. "Come on! Forget your space acne! You're totally fine!"

He swatted at her hand weakly. "It's a little hard to ignore, Mabel. I'm not sure I want to have that kind of power. No offense," he said, glancing behind him at the red-eyed woman.

"None taken," she assured him happily. "If it helps, I don't detect anything coming from you." Of course, she left out the fact that neither her nor Winter had detected any other human sources of magic since they'd landed in Gravity Falls.

"I guess it does, kinda." Dipper looked around as the woods grew darker. "This is starting to look familiar. I think we're close."

"I feel something up ahead," Summer added, head titled curiously. "A big thing."

The sunlight continued to retreat until its presence was limited to solitary lances of gold that pierced the canopy. One of these struck a shining object up ahead, barely visible through a sea of thick tree trunks. "There!" Dipper yelled, running ahead. "Come on!" When they caught up to him, he was standing before a gray boulder topped with a tall, bluish crystal. Smaller crystal points encircled it. Light struck the formation, but was split by the crystal from white into blue and pink. "Here it is. Gideon almost destroyed us with these, too. I'm struggling to think of anything he didn't try to destroy us with, to be honest."

Mabel and Summer had basically the same reaction: wide-eyed, mouth-agape awe. "This thing is too pretty for me," the former said, gawking up at the big one.

"And they're definitely magical," Summer added, tapping one with a fingernail. "How do they work?"

"I'll show you. Can you make me a flashlight?" Dipper watched her beat one instantly out of a sliver of tree bark and float it over. "Of course you can, why did I even wonder if you could, uh, thanks." He plucked a small crystal out of the formation and held it up. "Blue for big," he said, shining the light on a nearby fallen leaf – which suddenly blew up to the size of an umbrella. He then turned the crystal between his fingers, changing the glow to pink. The leaf shriveled back to normal. "Pink for small. Pretty much all there is to it."

Summer nodded with a smile. "How fun. Are you two going to fight over which one is taller again?"

"Nah, we cool!" Mabel grabbed her brother in a one-armed hug and grinned wide. "I'm gonna be taller until he's like 15 anyway. I won the battle, but he'll win the war."

"Yeah, unless I got all the short genes from mom," he countered with a smirk, though it died quickly. "Speaking of genes, I wonder what magic does to DNA. I... wonder a lot of stuff right now." He yelped when she slapped the back of his head. "Hey! You can't smack the questions out of my brain!"

"I can try, broseph!"

Summer, giggling at their exchange, yanked a crystal from the rock with her bare hand to examine it closer. "These should help. I don't think the bullets will hurt very much if they're as big as grains of sand."

"And maybe shrinking some fools will get everybody to back off," Dipper said, using a screwdriver to pry more of the stones free. "Okay, everyone gets a flashlight. Hopefully this time around we won't have to worry about Gideon doing something stupid with them."

Mabel took one of the stones and tossed it around with a smile. "I accept this plan only if we can go to the state prison and shrink him into a creepy little ant person. And very, very possibly stomp him. Or use a magnifying glass!"

"Wow. I'm pretty sure this is the only grudge you've ever held in your life."

"Even I have limits, bro."

They started back up the slope. Summer trailed behind, gazing into the crystal. The farther away from the formation she got, the easier it was to find this one's individual spark – but even then, the sensation was faint. This was the first time she'd ever detected magic in a clear body, and as such her brain had trouble resolving its invisibility. "Hmm." At last she went back to the task at hand. "Where are we going now?"

"Uh, I dunno," Dipper replied, thumbing through his journal. "We're kinda close to gnome territory. I dunno how they feel about us, especially me." He suddenly let out a laugh. "They might try to make you their queen! I'd pay money to see that. You'd mop the floor with them."

"Oh my, I'd be terrible royalty anyway," the red-eyed woman said with an awkward smile, though neither of the Pines noticed. She checked her magical radar. "I don't feel anything close by."

Mabel was looking a bit grumpy. "Good. They best stay back, otherwise they're getting a flamethrower to the face instead of a leaf blower. Don't nobody got time for their shenanigans right now."

Dipper stared at her for a moment. "I stand corrected. Two grudges."

"Actually..." She hesitated and looked up in thought. "Do I have a grudge against Pacifica or do I just hate her? I can't really tell sometimes."

Wind danced through the towering elms above. Summer half-followed the kids' conversation, although after a few moments her mind began to wander again. Lost in the motion of the trees, the presence within directed her eyes to one section of the canopy that wasn't moving as it should have. Leaves were fluttering, the branches swayed – but slowly, as if weighed down. Something was above them. "Wait," she said lowly, but they didn't hear her. "Wait."

Her commanding tone froze them both mid-step. Dipper looked back first. "What? What's up?" She was still gazing skyward, so he did the same. "What? What?"

"In the trees. I don't know what it is." Summer put herself between them and it in a flash. A dark, indistinct shape dropped to the forest floor. Then a second, a third, a fourth, a fifth, and a sixth. They uncoiled from their impacts into humanoid forms but did not approach.

"Just wanna confirm for you guys that those are not gnomes," Mabel said, peeking out from behind the red-eyed woman. "Dip, get your flashlight. Can you make me one?" She blinked when Summer's snap compressed one out of the thin air above. "Dang, that was fast even for you." A little more confident now, the twins brandished their makeshift weapons and flanked their escort. "All right! Let's do this! Unless you're not here for that, in which case let's be friends! My name's Mabel!"

Dipper rubbed his face and groaned as she waved happily. "Try to focus, please."

The shapes approached, though something was incorrect about their gait – they didn't have one. All six drifted along like phantoms, dragging their feet through the low grass and moss. Their passing through a shaft of sunlight didn't reveal much more, as they were all clad in bodysuits emblazoned with digital woodland camouflage. Helmets with visors covered their faces. They came to a stop about ten feet away, hovering line abreast as they formed a wall across the path. No insignia decorated their uniforms. They were silent, floating clones, three women and three men – and not a single gun between them.

"Confirm primary target, Summer Weiss," one of the men said, his voice altered and twisted by some sort of respirator.

"It's definitely her," one of the faceless women acknowledged. "What do we do with the kids?"

Another woman brought the first back in line. "Operations made our orders quite clear. Let's carry them out."

"Nope!" Mabel said, pointing her flashlight at one enemy. "Eat shiny height-changing light stuff!" It flew out of her hands before she could press the button. Dipper tried to use his own, only to get the same result. "Uh. What." Suddenly the twins themselves were airborne. "Whoa! Hey!"

"What the heck?" Dipper shouted, flailing hilariously. After a second or two, his limbs stopped moving. "...am I being hugged?" The confusion in his eyes was replaced by panic. "Ow! Ow! Stop squishing me!"

Summer's optimism had gotten the better of her again. Why didn't they have guns? The bad people here have guns. She knew why they didn't now, of course, but it was the kids' screaming that brought her right past reality and into a chorus of hundreds of little voices just like Mabel's, just like Dipper's, that sprung from the darkest reaches of her memory. She vaguely heard one of her assailants say she was too heavy to lift; it wasn't weight, but her own power that automatically kept her anchored to the ground. But that remark was lost in the screaming. Endless, echoing, overwhelming screaming. It seemed like an eternity shambled past before her eyes.

Actually, it was only a few seconds – but spurred on by the real cries from her sides, and the false ones from her nightmares, that was all the time needed for Summer to discard her humanity.