Under normal circumstances, Mabel would have taken the phrase 'giving someone's heart a hug' and run it happily into the ground until Dipper complained about hearing the words in his sleep. Given the context, however – and the utterly blinding pain that came with it – she'd have to pass. Her body had no idea how to qualify her heart being squeezed this way, and so decided to describe the situation as a heart attack. Words were out of reach for both of them. Only agonized wheezing remained.

And then it all stopped. The pain stopped. The organ crushing stopped. Unfortunately, their suspension in mid-air also stopped; they fell to the ground and squirmed in anguish, gasping for air.

"I can't move her!" one of the women soldiers yelled again, visibly shaking with concentration. "Why is she so heavy?!" Even assistance from a male companion yielded no effect. "What is..."

"What—what made me drop the kids?" another of the men asked.

Summer wore a smile now, the sort of grin one would put on when having a chat with the end of the world. "I'm sorry. That was me. Thank you for helping me aim," she said, her gratitude hollow. A loud, wet pop rang out from under her target's helmet, sending him limply to the ground. "It looks like my sister's message didn't get delivered." All of them were invisibly assaulting her by this point, but their attacks were a gentle, tingling breeze over her skin. "Oh, now you're afraid."

"Nobody told us she was psionic!" one of the women yelled. "What are we supposed to do?!"

"Disengage!" The troopers scattered, flying off in different directions.

"Hide and seek?" Summer asked the forest. The tone of her smile changed from idle apocalypse to amused shark. "How fun. Of course I'll play with you." The hunt was on. She rocketed away into the woods, kicking up a cloud of moss and grass in her wake.

Only Mabel had the vaguest idea that the red-eyed woman was gone, but there was a bigger concern now anyway: her brother wasn't making noise any longer. "Dipper?" she called, still unable to sit up. When he didn't reply, anxiety crept in and made her chest hurt even more. "D-Dipper? Bro? Hello?" Silence. There was no choice but to rise now. After grimacing her way through the pain, she found him more or less where he'd fallen, face down and still. The dead soldier was between them, a puddle of crimson blooming under his head. "Oh. Well. I'm gonna say we might be in some trouble here." Walking was out of the question, so she crawled past and fell on Dipper's back. "Boop. Armless hug." He was still breathing at least – she could feel herself slowly moving up and down. "Dipperrrrrrrrr, come on. Things is happening." She weakly poked the back of his hat. "Earth to dork! A-are you okay down there?"

"Why—why are you laying on me," he finally said in protest, groaning afterward. "And did you punch me in the chest?"

"No way, bro, those weird guys did. With their minds." She looked back at the corpse and swallowed hard. "Just an FYI, I think Summer's blown a gasket and might be about to kill us all? Not really sure where she went."

"Terrific." Dipper gave her a nudge to make her get off. Even after she did, he couldn't manage to right himself. "Agh, I feel like someone parked a bus in my lungs." After some struggling on both ends, Mabel helped him off his stomach and upright. "Thanks... uh... wow," he said lowly, eyes landing on the body. "She did that?"

Mabel refused to look over again. "I guess. I don't really wanna think about it."

"Yeah. I can see why." While trying to recover, he took a long look around. Aside from an occasional singing bird, the forest was empty and deathly silent. "We need to get out of the open," he said, rising with great difficulty to his feet. "Can you walk?"

Once she managed to stand, the kids stumbled away from the body and managed to get about twenty yards before falling against a tree trunk, utterly spent. "Does this count as out of the open?" Mabel asked with a whine. "'Cause I don't think I'm gettin' all the way outta here without somebody carrying me."

"Better than nothing." Dipper held her close, eyes darting around as he searched for any sign of their chaperone. "Where did the other guys g-" A man's scream cut him off, slashing through the air and bouncing off seemingly every object as it traveled. "Okay!" he squeaked. "New plan! Hide here and stay really quiet for the next hour or so!"

She lacked a snappy comeback, betraying just how deep her fear ran. Silence washed over them, broken at intervals by a random shout – though sometimes it was a cheerful laugh instead, fading in and out with distance and direction. Its source was easily recognizable. "Is that who I think it is?" she whispered. "What is she laughing at?"

He grew pallid thinking about it. "I dunno, but I hope she keeps the joke to herself." A loud crack followed his words, so powerful the twins could feel its lingering bass notes pass through their bodies. Summer's giggling chased the noise away. "Wh-what the heck?"

"Nope. Nope nope nope nope nope not gonna ask questions. Happy thoughts now. Kittens." She sank eyeball-deep into her starry blue sweater and tried not to shake so hard. "All the kittens." A shape came around the trunk – one of the soldiers, helmet gone, floated by. Her back was to the kids as she looked around, brown ponytail flying. It didn't matter that they hadn't been spotted; Mabel screamed at the top of her lungs in fright anyway. Somehow she managed one even louder than that when the soldier turned to face them.

However, their hearts weren't seized again. "Hey, you're her friends right?" the woman asked anxiously. "You can talk her down, can't you?"

"Didn't you just try to kill us?" Dipper countered bitterly, trying to calm his sister. "And now you're begging for help?"

Begging, indeed; she did everything short of drop to her knees to get them to help. "Listen, if you let me get out of here, I'll go back to headquarters and make them stop. I promise. We didn't know what we were getting into here," she explained, voice wavering.

Mabel, clutching her chest, glared daggers at the woman. "Oh, sure! Winter tried the same thing last night and look how friggin' awesome that went!"

"Okay, okay, that's fair enough." She clasped her hands in front of her face, growing more teary-eyed with each passing moment. "Come on, guys, don't let me die out here. Please?"

"Er, well, when you put it that way..." Dipper removed his hat and thought for a moment. "I guess I don't want somebody getting killed on my conscious. I mean, along with that," he said, waving in the direction of her fallen comrade. "Hey, Mabel, you're the loudest, you yell for her. 'Sev'Ral Timez just released a new single' volume should do it."

Her lips pursed at his request. "Are you sure? Like, really, really sure?" A nod made her brow furrow. "If I die, I'm gonna kill you." She spent a moment preparing and started to suck in air. The pain stopped her almost instantly. "Ow! I don't think I can. Somebody tried to squish my ticker, you know."

"My bad," the soldier sighed, blushing with regret. "Maybe I should just get out-" She whirled in midair, only to find Summer floating in her way. All three of them screamed this time.

"H-h-h-hey there, soul sister!" Mabel said as fast as her mind and lips would move. Her feigned happiness shattered when the soldier moved aside, allowing them to see the red-eyed woman. A dripping crimson sleeve decorated her left arm from fingertip to elbow. Bits of gray and white and purplish-blue were flecked in the blood. From the right corner of her mouth ran a thin trail of black substance, though it clung to her chin and did not fall. If the glassiness in her ruby eyes was any indication, she wasn't exactly herself at the moment.

"This was a bad idea," she told the trooper with a light smile. Despite the vacant tone, her expression lacked jittery, bloodthirsty lunacy. The Pines, staring up at her, couldn't decide if seeing her so calm was worse than the insane picture they'd dreamed up while listening to her rampage. "Are you still bothering them, even after what you've seen?"

The soldier waved her hands in denial. "No! No way. Look, man, I just wanna make a deal."

"Yeah, we're all good!" Dipper added forcefully, trying to hide his pain with a smile. "I think everyone's made their point, so let's just walk away and call it a day. Right? Right?"

"They made you cry," Summer denied, her words hard as diamond. "I don't believe you understand how angry that makes me." Arms flailing, the soldier tried to fly for it, but she pinned her in the air and kept her still. "Don't you dare run from me."

"Whoa! Whoa whoa whoa." Mabel winced her way into a standing position. "Summer, relax. We're fine! Right, bro bro?"

He plopped his hat back on and nodded furiously. "Y-yeah! Completely cool. No chest pain or anything. Yep." His lie fell apart when he tried to stand and failed, landing on his knees in a gasping pile. "Aaahhh... Sorry. Just—uh, give me a minute."

Summer frowned at his distress before turning displeased eyes to her captive. "You and I need to have a talk," she stated quietly, dragging the woman through the air along after her. They went behind the tree.

"They're not gonna talk, are they?" Mabel asked, dropping back to the ground and hugging her knees.

Dipper swallowed hard. "I doubt it. Should we go after them?"

"I can't move, bro..." Her eyes suddenly lit up with hope. "But I can be loud! Hey, Summer! Hey! Come on, now, we're fine! Dipper's just a huge weenie. Let's go home and go to McDonald's and forget all this happened, okay?" she yelled over her left shoulder, desperate to talk her out of anything horrible. "Please? Pretty please with an industrial-size barrel of sprinkles on top?"

On the other side, Summer already had her writhing prey secured to the tree trunk with spikes of ebony, which she'd nailed through her hands. Her cries were muffled with a sticky gag of the same substance. "I should have known better than to think they'd listen," she muttered with disgust. "Of all people, I should have known better. Well..." She paused, floating back a few feet to contemplate her options. "If reason won't work, I'll make our message a little more clear."

"Summer?" Dipper called. "What's going on back there, man? We all good?"

"Everything is fine," she replied, rubbing her chin in thought. "Just rest there a-" Tingling on her shoulder blades made her turn around and stare into the forest. "-moment." Hand outstretched, she fired and retracted a column of magic in that direction just to see what it would grab. She'd hooked another thrashing soldier, who tumbled through the air as she reeled him in. "Oh, good. I want someone to see this." To silence his struggling, she ran a fist into his throat. "No, shh."

Her charges heard enough of something to be worried. "What was that?" Mabel asked. "I heard other people! What's going on?"

Summer stared at her limp and gurgling catch as she held up him up by the collar. "Another one of them just attacked me. I think we're finished talking."

"No! No!" both twins yelled frantically. "Summer! Don't do anything you'll regret! Please! Let's just get out of here!" Dipper added between coughs.

Sadness crept into her smile as she murmured. "Oh, Dipper. That advice is about five years-" her free hand balled up into a tight fist, "-and several hundred bodies too late." She drove it through the woman's skull and into the oak tree behind, shaking it with the force.

"What the heck was that?!" Mabel screamed. "Summer?!"

She ignored the cry. After withdrawing her arm, she held up the other victim and pointed. "Look at this. This is a warning – our last. If you live, you'd better deliver it. If you don't, you'd better pray someone else does." He flew through the air – physically thrown, as she didn't feel he was worth the effort of telekinesis – and landed out of sight with a faint thud.

"Summer!" Dipper, this time. "Answer us! What's going on?"

"Hmm." She peered up through a shower of leaves, detached by her punch, and sighed before shouting back. "Everything is fine. I gave them another chance to back off, that's all." The now-faceless body got another glance. "Are you all right?"

"No! No we are not! You get over here this instant and, um, on second thought I should probably drop the threatening tone. Hahaha! Oh wow I'm scared."

She gazed at her bloody arms and sighed. "In a moment." While the twins fussed and fretted about their situation, Summer began to suck the crimson off her fingertips. As the blood touched her lips, the trail of black fluid flowed up back up her chin, disappearing between them.

"Dude, can you eat these?"

Stan groaned at the question again; Soos had asked it once every five or so minutes since they'd arrived in the grove. He was curious about a hearty-looking clump of blue mushrooms with purple spots that grew from the roots of a gnarled, dark tree. "I don't know how many times I gotta say 'these mushrooms explode when eaten'."

"But they look delicious! So colorful. So enticing. Hmm. Yummy mushrooms, exploding death, yummy mushrooms, exploding death," he said, balancing the options with hand motions. "I gotta think about this one."

Winter rolled her eyes at the exchange. One of the mushrooms was in her hand, sending out a faint magical signal that was almost lost in the larger cluster. "Now I know why the entry mentions gunpowder. They must change themselves in self-defense." Her face screwed up as she contemplated the mechanism. "Although I'm still not sure how they generate the ignition source."

"I dunno, probably from the body's own electrical doohickeys. You know, nerve impulses or whatever. Or maybe stomach acid." Stan picked a few and placed them gently into his blazer's interior pocket. "Hey, can you talk to these things? Could you ask them not to blow up? I'd appreciate it."

She stared at him in disbelief at first, then shrugged lightly. "I can't say I've ever been asked to chat with fungus before, but I'll try."

"Great, thanks." He swatted Soos' hand away from the clump. "No. You don't play well with magic. Bad Soos."

He waved away the sting and pouted. "Aw, Mister Pines. I swear the fairy thing wasn't my fault. I just saw a really shiny fly. Didn't know what was up until Mabel stared at me like that."

"Yeah, well. You don't just go around swatting things to death unless you're sure they're bugs." He produced a flashlight and waved for them to follow. "All right. There's a tree near here that produces glue sap. Literal glue. Figure it might be good for some traps and maybe to put my spare reading glasses back together. Besides, Soos is gonna get his hand stuck to the trunk and I wanna laugh at him."

Soos pumped his fist with excitement. "Sweet! Like sticking your tongue to a flagpole in the winter!"

Patience wearing thin – an hour of their idle banter was more than she could take – Winter decided to ask some hard questions. "Where did this Bill Cipher come from?"

Stan's brow furrowed as he shone the light around. "Things go in the portal, things come out. Like any other door."

Now her curiosity was piqued. If that was so... "I should be able to feel him, shouldn't I?"

"I don't think he exists on this plane," Soos said thoughtfully. "When we fought him, it was in Stan's brain. Maybe he just operates in dreams? Then again... me and Hambone – I mean Mabel – saw Gideon summon him into reality, sooooooo..." His face went blank. "My head hurts."

"That's what you get for trying to understand Bill. Oh, and for the record, none of you are ever allowed in my mind again. All my nightmares are in technicolor now," he complained with a shudder. "Some of them aren't even in English!"

"But why hasn't he visited us?" Winter asked again. Her face also dropped when she realized there was an obvious answer – they didn't really sleep a lot. "Mm... never mind. I suppose it isn't important."

Stan chuckled faintly. "Heh, I wouldn't say that. If Bill's leaving you two alone, that's great news." His eyes suddenly grew distant. "Yeah. Great news."

His gloomy tone spurred another thought, one Winter hadn't toyed with since that night at the party. "Summer and I saw one of the spirits follow you at the party a few days back. Who was it?"

The question stopped him cold. "I don't wanna talk about it," he replied, rubbing underneath his glasses. "Doesn't have anything to do with anything anyway."

"Mister Pines?" Soos asked, hand raised in concern. "You all right?"

For once, the old man went with honesty as he started walking again. "No, Soos. No, I am not. Forget it, we got a weird tree to find."

She respected his denial this time, but only because it rang so familiar. They trundled on, hampered by thick undergrowth and ever-dimming light. The forest morphed into something that seemed more appropriate for a horror movie than a quaint valley in Oregon, becoming abyssal as night and quiet as a tomb. "Where is this tree, exactly?" she asked, frowning at the change in their surroundings.

"Uh, yeah. Just a heads up, it's been a while since I looked for it. We may or may not be lost."

"I should have-" Her voice failed, killed off by the smell that suddenly filled her nose. Wafting through the angry black was a scent she hadn't detected since they day they first visited the Mystery Shack. "That smell."

"What smell?" Stan took a curious sniff at his armpit. "Isn't me."

"I don't smell anything either," Soos confirmed, glancing around the dark forest. "What's it smell like?"

In order to keep anyone from panicking, she decided not to be too exact with the fleshy description of the odor. "I'm not sure. It's like trees, but with something else." She took careful steps over the tangled roots, playing hot or cold with the scent. It didn't change in intensity, no matter which direction she traveled. "It seems to be everywhere."

"Should we be worried?" Stan asked. He swept the flashlight around at every sound, perceived or not. "Too late. I already am." The beam went across an object, one recognizable enough that he brought the light back to it and squinted. "Hold on, what's..." It was a shoe, black with white soles. "I've seen this on someone's foot before." His eyes lit up with terror. "Dipper!"

"What?" Winter gave chase as the two men ran to investigate. "He's with Summer." And yet here the boy was – mostly. A portion of his left leg was gone, while the rest of him was entangled in a gnarly bramble at the base of a tree. His head had fallen off and rolled to the side. Empty eyes stared skyward. One other thing was missing, however: blood. The flashlight couldn't find a drop. "Oh, this must be one of the clones he told me about. He mentioned that two of them got away." She reached down and pulled at the body's left arm. The limb's texture was damp paper, not flesh – and with barely any urging, it pulled apart at the elbow. "Yes. It's fine. It's not him."

Stan's eyes said it was anything but. "First, stop messin' with that because I don't wanna dream about you dismemberin' my great nephew, and second, what clones? Who cloned him?"

"He cloned himself, with the copier in your office." When she raised up and looked back at him, his utter shock caught her off guard. "Mm? Didn't you know?"

"You can copy people in that old crate? I didn't... I..." He slapped his forehead in amazement. "How? Is it magical too?"

"I didn't detect anything. Perhaps because the portal was too loud." Winter was just about to walk away from the clone when a noise attracted her attention. "Wait," she said lowly, hand up. "Quiet." Tinny and distressed, it seemed like someone crying, but that was all she could discern. "We're not alone. Wait here." Floating off the ground, she tracked the noise to another twisted trunk, peeked around, and found a woman in a camouflage bodysuit with a helmet by her hip on the ground. She wept bitterly into her hands. "Who are you?"

"Oh no, not again!" she screamed, throwing up her arms in defense as she jumped to her feet. A closer look served to dampen her terror – for a moment. "Oh, you're not... you're her sister. Shit!" She unleashed a wave of power, but like last time it had little effect. "Oh no..."

Brow furrowed, Winter seized her with her mind and dragged her, shrieking with fright, back toward her companions. "A real, live magic user. And how would you know Summer?"

"I don't know how to answer this without dying!"

Her turquoise eyes narrowed. "I suggest you figure out a way."

Some seconds later, her captive decided honesty was the best policy. "I, I mean we kind of attacked her and those kids..."

This confession arrived just as Stan and Soos came within sight – and earshot. Confused, the old man walked over. "Huh? Who's she? Attacked wh-" The look on Winter's face said it all. His uncertainty morphed into rage. "Oh no. You what? You what?! Where are they? What did you do to them?" he demanded, waving his flashlight angrily. "I want answers, whoever you are! Who is she, by the way? Just for reference, I want a name to scream."

"I don't care what her name is, but I do want to know what happened." Winter dropped her against a tree and crouched, frowning as the woman curled into a ball and tipped over. "But based on her emotional state, I can venture a guess."

The soldier hugged her knees. "She was so strong... she... we couldn't. We couldn't take out any of 'em. Then she killed..."

"Killed? I think I've heard enough," Soos said, fidgeting with worry. "Is everyone okay? Our guys, I mean."

Winter turned the blubbering woman into a marble, stuffed her in her jeans pocket, and prepared the group to fly. "I don't know, but we'd better find out."

The whole scene had been sanitized. The body Mabel and Dipper had seen was gone, replaced by flowers. The body they hadn't, nailed to the tree, was also gone – though blood was soaked into the bark. The twins were still sitting on the other side, but Summer was now between them. She was clean too; no more blood on her arms, nor on her dress. She'd even changed it to a new silver one, figuring the color red wasn't one they'd want to see right now. If she could be certain they wouldn't ask questions, she would have even changed the color of her eyes to ease their misery.

Misery was too strong a word, perhaps. They languished, clinging to her because she was the only one to cling to. She could tell from their grip that they weren't totally happy with the arrangement, but waited for them to break the silence. Eventually, Mabel obliged. "You just straight up killed a guy," she said, looking up from her knees. "...it wasn't just one, was it?"

"No, it wasn't just one," she admitted quietly, eyes in her lap. "Are—are you mad at me?"

Her question seemed entirely misplaced, especially to Dipper. "What? No. You saved our lives. Again. It's just, I—I don't know. I knew it was serious, but now people are dying. And trying to murder us – us directly, I mean." He sighed deeply, which made him wince with pain. "I just hope nobody's tried to hurt the others."

"Sister would stop them." Summer finally looked up, but didn't make eye contact. "I guess some part of the project is still active if they're fielding soldiers like that. I wonder what we should do now."

"How 'bout a letter?" Mabel went straight to work composing one out loud. "'Dear shadowy government assassins, we're really sorry that we found your thing. Please don't kill us? Let's just forget all this ever happened. Signed, your best, not-at-all-curious-about-anything-you've-done buddy, Mabel'. And then about fifty stickers." She pulled a book full of them from under her sweater and searched through it with trembling fingers. "Huh, what kinda stickers do you put on a letter like that?"

"Do you think they'd go after mom and dad?"

Dipper's abrupt words made her blood turn to ice. Eyes closed and teeth clenched, she tried to smash down the wave of emotion washing over her. It was a losing effort; in a few seconds she began to sob. "What if they already have?"

Now they were both crying. Summer swept them up, one in each arm, and tried to hug their fear away. "I think we've waited long enough. Let's go home. Winter will have to catch up with us."

They didn't have to wait long. As she carried them out of the woods, her sister flew right past with Stan and Soos calling for the twins. Even after she'd brought the train to a stop, they kept yelling. "I think we've found them," she noted loudly and pointed. "See?"

"Kids!" Stan ran to them just as soon as he was let go, though the tingling of her grip made his steps somewhat jerky. "Gah! That feels weird! Ugh!" He took them from Summer and hugged them tight. "Oh, I was so worried."

"Yeah, so were we." Dipper gave Soos a weak wave as he walked up. "Hey, man. You guys find anything?"

"Some mushrooms that explode! Totally gonna microwave one later. Oh yeah, and we found one of the folks that roughed you guys up." He winced as the kids screeched with horror. "No, no, we're all good. She didn't fight us or anything."

"You three all right?" Stan asked, glancing over at Summer.

"Yeah, I guess. They tried to squish us, so we're kinda hurting over here." Mabel grumbled a bit while rubbing her eyes. "I just wanna go home, call mom and dad, and sleep for about a day. After lunch. Dang, I'm hungry."

"Sounds good to me," Dipper agreed. "And I'm with Summer. What do we do now? Because I dunno if our plan covers super-powered special forces, if that's what they are."

The identical twins, standing together and holding hands, already knew the answer. Winter's pocket was emitting a tiny magical spark. "We'll deal with it later," the blue-eyed woman decided. "Let's get out of here. Once we're all settled we can figure out a plan."

"What if they come for us again?" Stan asked, crossing his arms. "Maybe we oughta stay in the lab tonight. All of us."

"Perhaps." Winter looked at her sister again, frowning at the sullenness in her ruby eyes. "Wherever we go, I suppose all we can do now is wait for their response."