"Dietrich," Mabel said, mostly to herself, as she stared up at him. "The brother of the baby-killer guy?"

Despite her blunt wording, he smiled gently down at her and shrugged. "That's one way to put it."

The wheels in Dipper's head were spinning. "You. You were there. You worked on it! You can help us-"

"Hold on, kid," Stan said, getting between the young twins and Dietrich. "We got some catchin' up to do."

"I have neither the time, nor the patience, for you two to reminisce," Winter said flatly. Her attention went to Dietrich. "What do you know about Bellissima?"

"Plenty," he replied while shedding his jacket. After some adjustments to his white collared shirt, he waved at the shack. "Shall we go in? Dreadfully hot out here." He regarded the dry skin of Winter and her sister with mild curiosity. "Not that you two seem to mind."

Mabel moved to fill him in. "Of course they don't mind, they're a-" And then she had second thoughts. "Uh, maybe those beans should stay in the can."

"Aliens? I guessed."

Stan rested his shotgun on his shoulder and started walking toward the house, expecting everyone to follow. "I didn't know you could sniff out E.T.s too."

"I cannot." Dietrich glanced at the sisters as they fell in beside him. "But I'm not dumb enough to believe we have the means to contain that much magical energy. Even Bellissima herself would be vaporized trying to hold that much."

"Okay, so you know about her. You can help her, right?" Dipper asked with a nervous grin. "Right?"

He wouldn't even look at the boy; instead he seemed content to stare blankly ahead. "Hmm. Stanford has a point. There is much to catch up on."

Before Winter could press her point again, Summer chimed in. "Oh, let them have a minute, sister. The world isn't going anywhere."

She placed a hand on her hip, glaring ahead. "How can we be sure?"

Summer didn't have an answer for that one. "Well, I...?"

"It will hold for the moment." Dietrich held open the door for everyone. "Please, after you." Wendy, the last to enter, shot an odd look his way as she hastened past.

They all gathered in the living room, which barely had the space to hold them. No one felt like sitting. "So, uh... place probably doesn't look like you remember, huh," Stan admitted as he rubbed the nape of his neck. "Yeah."

"It's not so different," Dietrich corrected him. He looked through the open door into the gift shop. "Except that."

Dipper looked as well. "Don't even go in there, man. There are eyeballs and bad bumper stickers everywhere. Everything we sell is probably made of lead or mold or something."

"I shall keep that in mind." He turned to the old con-man and frowned a little. "I would ask what you've been up to, but I already have a good idea."

Stan folded his arms, unable to make eye contact. "Yeah. Leave that for later."

"I'm not judging. My sins are far worse than yours." Dietrich tapped on the fish tank, trying to get a reaction from the lobster inside. "Dinner?"

"Heck no! He's mine." Mabel pressed her face to the glass. "Isn't that right, Lob-Lob? Shhh, it's okay. Gideon's still in jail."

Winter, tucked away in a corner and looming as usual, was clearly losing her patience. "Can we-"

He glanced at her, then at Stan. "Is the device still here?"

"Devi—oh. Oh boy." Dipper broke out in a huge smile. "Man, we've got something to show you."

"We sure do," Stan agreed with an equally huge smirk. "Come on."

"I'll—uh, keep watch," Wendy muttered. "In the gift shop."

Soos spoke the truth for both of them. "Look dudes, I don't wanna go down there because it's horrible now. I'll hang out with Wendy."

"I don't blame either of you." Stan weaved a path to the gift shop, patting both on the back as he went. "Anybody who's willing, come on."

"I'ma pass too," Mabel said, pointing toward the stairs. "My... back hurts. Yeah. From being awesome." Dipper groaned at her lie. "What? My greatness is a huge weight, bro."

Stan shook his head with a smile. "Just go on, we'll be back in a while." He watched Dipper chase her out and up the steps before nodding toward the gift shop. Once he'd gotten Dietrich and the identical twins beyond the vending machine door, the serious talk began. "Did you have something to do with that girl?"

Dietrich clasped his hands behind his back as Stan entered the elevator code. "I certainly did."

For some reason, his answer made Stan cackle. "What, you get turned into a 'consultant' too? I shoulda known. They probably would've taken Wilhelm if he hadn't got arrested."

His brown eyes narrowed. "Perhaps so. Although whether it would have been better than prison is another matter."

"Uh... you're soundin' awful vague. Whenever you sound vague it's bad."

Dietrich chuckled lowly to himself. While he laughed, the elevator doors slid open with a pained creak. "Let us reminisce for real, Stanford. Away from the world. Close to our transgressions."

"Wow. He sounds a lot like you do, sister," Summer pointed out with a cheeky smile.

Winter rolled her eyes a bit. "Is that an insult or a compliment?"

Nobody spoke for the next few moments – partially because of the tight quarters in the elevator, and partially because no one knew what to say. Dietrich was at the head of the group as they went into the underground lab. He saw it the moment he stepped out. "No." Steps quickening, he ran toward the portal room. "No!"

"Huh? What? Rich! Wait!" Stan yelled, pushing past the twins to catch him. "What?!"

The foursome regrouped when the old doctor stopped in the portal's chamber to gaze up into the abyss at its center. It was still off, but some of the blue lights were lit. "How did you..."

Stan anxiously brushed that question off and asked his own. "Why do you look so terrified? Do you know something I don't?"

Dietrich hesitated replying at first. He shed his glasses, stared at the lenses, and fought a war with himself about what to say next. Several seconds passed before he spoke. "I know many things you don't."

"Uh..." Stan said. He and the twins were staring now. "What have you been up to, Dietrich? 'Cause I'm getting a bad feeling all of a sudden."

Winter broke away from the group and leaned against the metal triangle. She pinned the old doctor down with icy eyes. "I don't care where you start, just start."

Once more, she failed to get her wish. "Why did you tu—how did you turn it back on?!" he demanded, waving angrily at Stan. "Who told you you could? Are you insane?"

Stan raised his hands and backed away. It was one of the few times the twins had seen him look so caught off-guard. "Whoa, whoa! Look, I know you weren't here for what happened in '84. Let me explain! Stanley came back here and worked on this thing, right? To decommission it. Something happened though. He's in there, Dietrich, and thanks to my nephew I've finally got a chance to get him back." He left the conversation quickly, dashing into the next room to grab journal one from the desk. He returned, waving it around. "These things have the activation sequence in them in code! It's crazy. There's three of them in the series. I dunno who wrote 'em, but-"

Dietrich took the old book out of his grasp and flipped it open. In an instant he squinted with... what emotion was it? None of them could decide, but they knew it wasn't exactly positive. "Hmm. The handwriting seems familiar," he stated flatly. He didn't even bother turning a page before handing it back. "Where did you find them?"

"Dipper found number three in the woods somewhere. Number two was with a kid named Gideon Gleeful – don't ask me where he got it. Number one..." Stan straightened his bolo tie and frowned. "Number one was already here. I found it in Stanley's bedroom the day I got back to town."

"Ah, yes. Three days after I left Gravity Falls. For good, I thought."

Stan's jaw nearly slammed into the stone floor. "Wait, what? You were still here? But—but you… I thought you got run out of town when we did!"

"For a brief time." He walked to the portal and placed a hand on the cold steel. "My brother was a sacrifice. A dog and pony show to draw all eyes while they swept Apollyon under the biggest, darkest, deepest rug they could find. Do you know what that broom caught? Everything. Even my existence. I officially died in 1963 – but with the Department of Defense's help I remained close to Gravity Falls."

Stan moved a few steps nearer to him. "What were you doin'?"

He issued a stilted laugh. "Why, I was in charge of the crucible that produced America's secret army, Stanford! At least until they spun off the work into Project Briathos. All the Apollyon research went right into the hands of that idiot McGucket."

"McGucket... Fiddleford? Fiddleford H. McGucket?"

"Who?" Summer asked, head cocked.

"Don't insult him. I am referring to his brother." Dietrich's face became wistful. "Fiddleford was an amazing scientist. Whatever happened to him?"

"He—well, he lives in the junkyard and talks to possums. Guy's been off his rocker for a while, or so I've heard. Doesn't seem to remember much," Stan explained. "Why? What's he got to do with anything?"

"A shame – no, a blessing." Dietrich turned away from the portal and looked at Winter. "I'm sorry. Did you ever mention your names?"

"Winter." She nodded to her twin, who waved immediately. "This is my sister Summer."

"Hmm. And you're from beyond the 'portal'?"

Stan cocked a brow. "What's with the air quotes?"

"Apparently so," Summer said despite the interruption.

"No, you're not." Dietrich clasped his hands behind his back and walked toward the window that looked into the next room. "I know for a fact that you are not from beyond that damned thing. I'm not saying your power and its aren't related – perhaps even the same – but that thing is no door. It is a safety valve that protects the world."

So confused was Stan, he actually took off his glasses to stare at the portal. All he got for his effort was a blurry mess, so he put them back on. "I ain't a plumber, but I'm pretty sure that's not a valve."

"It's a metaphor, Stanford. Although it's comforting to see you were operating this device without a complete understanding of anything having to do with it."

He approached Dietrich with a clenched fist. "Hey, my brother needed me! Needs me. I know enough to make it work. And flash pretty colors. Sometimes."

The old doctor rubbed at his eyes. "Please tell me you haven't turned it on all the way..."

"Nope, not yet. Not until I figure out the settings it was on when Stanley got lost."

"That isn't… never mind." Dietrich's attention went back to the twins. "Forgive us. Two old fossils bantering must not be the most exciting thing you've ever seen."

"You don't want to know what counts as exciting for us," Winter said, shifting her weight to one hip. "By the way, how did you figure out we were magical?"

Dietrich laughed again as he turned his back on them. "Ah, yes. Stanford, do you remember the day we first met? How terrified you and your brother were to hear two people speaking German in the diner? You wanted to have us shot."

He flashed a strange smile. "Ha! Yeah. Thought you were spies. I wanted to be a soldier. That was back before I knew better."

"And then you saw us in the woods digging and wanted to have us shot again."

He couldn't help but laugh at that image. "Digging for magic. You better be glad Uncle Stanton was there." Stan glanced at the twins with a shrug. "Dietrich and Wilhelm felt it. I don't know how."

"Neither do we. I feel your power. I feel something close by beyond this cave, though not as strong. I feel two more returns at a distance-" he paused to point in their directions, "there and there. That red-haired girl has a slight presence… but Bellissima shouts down everything except for you."

Summer blinked at him. "Don't you detect all the other things around here?"

"What other things?"

"Mm. You only sense the unchanged magic. We feel all of it."

Dietrich's face dropped in confusion. "What do you mean?"

"The stuff in these, apparently," Stan said while waving the journal. "You said you knew who wrote these? Who w-" He blinked as Dietrich took it from him again. "What?"

An answer wouldn't come for a few minutes; Dietrich concentrated on the book in silence, circling the chamber and rifling through its pages. Abruptly, his eyes lit up. "This is what my son was writing about," the old doctor said with amazement. "He knew."

"Your son? I thought Wilhelm killed your son."

He looked back at Winter with a light frown. "Not him. My..." Melancholy flooded his eyes. "My second son. He ended up in much the same line of work as I did. He was brought in to help document the strange phenomena around this area, but I did not know he kept a personal record."

"You had another kid?!" Stan rushed over and took him by the shoulders. "First, wow! Great! Second, we gotta talk to him too! Did he come with you?"

Dietrich looked through his friend more than at him. "I'm afraid not."

That did nothing to shake his smile. "Let's go get him! These two know someone in the military that can probably bring him here."

"I doubt that very much." He looked up at the portal as Stan backed off anxiously. "Your brother was not the only one this device claimed. It took my son as well."

Stan's brow furrowed. "How do you know?"

"Because I saw it happen." Dietrich expected Stan and Summer's stunned looks, but Winter's visage was too calm for him to ignore. "You don't seem surprised."

"It takes a lot to surprise me." Her eyes went to Stan. "It looks like your question will get answered first."

"I can't believe… I… thirty years of dreaming and the day's actually here..." Overcome, he patted the sweat off his forehead and tried a few deep breaths. "You remember the settings, right? Please tell me you remember..."

Dietrich shrugged a little. "Of course. But if I activated the portal, what would you do? Go in after him?"

"You bet your ass!"

His fervor drew a smile on Dietrich's face. "I expected no less, though your loyalty would cost you your life. You would not survive the exposure."

"We probably would," Summer remarked nonchalantly. She blinked when all eyes landed on her. "What? I mean, the magic is native to our world. We should be fine."

"Unless the volume overwhelms and kills us," Winter pointed out with a sigh. Her sister's odd expression made her mouth twist. "Are you volunteering us?"

"It could be a good way to see what we're really dealing with. At least, I think."

"I suppose." Winter looked back at Dietrich. "Would you be willing to set up the machine?"

He shook his head. "I wouldn't be willing to send you to your deaths, no. At any rate, you may be the only ones who can help Bellissima and she is my biggest concern at the moment."

"Hmm..." Summer walked in tight circles, rubbing her chin. "Sister, it spoke to you through our-" she paused to glance over her shoulder at the men and blinked, "-you know. We could soak up her magic slowly and see how it affects her."

"Yes. If nothing else, we can leave her in object stasis and bring her home. They know more about magic than we do."

"Of whom do you speak?" Dietrich cut in politely.

"Our... parents. The people who run our home country."

Stan cocked his head with surprise. "Wow. King and Queen?"

"No, but yes, they have royal titles." Winter folded her arms and stared off. "And yes, Summer and I are technically princesses."

"We haven't told the kids because, honestly, Mabel is excitable enough," the red-eyed woman said with a giggle.

"Hoo. Good call. If she knew you were literally princesses I think she might pass out or puke rainbows." Stan paused a minute to clean his glasses. "All right, what's the plan? Bring her here, see what you can do?"

Summer nodded once. "With Dietrich's help, yes. We'll be right back."

"Got it." Stan tipped his fez as the women left. "So..." He glanced back at the silent doctor and frowned. All of Dietrich's attention was focused on the device. "What?"

The departure of the elevator made a noise that distracted him for a moment, but he turned to his friend and said, "Before we get too far, there's something I should mention first."

"I bet there is, heh."

Dietrich's eyes glittered with regret. "I wouldn't be so anxious to see my son. He's the one that caused the incident."

The look on Soos' face when he met Winter and Summer at the door upon their return said it all: something was amiss. "Dudes," he greeted nervously. "I think Mister Pines might be a little upset."

"Why do you say that?" Summer asked, pushing past him and into the gift shop. Wendy was no longer at the counter, otherwise the place seemed to be in order. "What happened?"

Soos pulled open the vending machine and looked down the corridor. "Well, uh, he came up, grabbed a pistol, and went back down. Wendy followed him. Trust me, I've been around long enough to know when he's mad. His neck gets all veiny? Like it looks like… I dunno, cottage cheese."

Winter shook her head. "We'll see what's going on. Make sure the kids are all right, please."

Without the code to operate the elevator, Summer had to compress it – into a ballpoint pen – so they could fly down the shaft, returning it to normal once they reached the bottom. Nobody was in the initial corridor, so Winter hovered quickly toward the portal room while Summer took possession of the golden cube-shaped Bellissima and followed. Thankfully, all of the chamber's occupants were alive. A visibly angry Stan was being cornered by Wendy near the viewing window. A pistol rested on the stone near his feet. Dietrich was apparently ignoring them both, reading one of the journals with his back turned.

"I want your kid, Dietrich!" the old man roared. "He's gonna bring Stanley back one way or another!"

"So brash. You'd really threaten to shoot the one person who can recreate the conditions of his loss? What do you expect to gain with such a plan?"

"Are you two freaking done?" Wendy interrupted angrily. Her right hand, fingers half-curled, rested in an odd position against her chest. "Come on, Mister Pines! Mabel and Dipper are up there! Think!"

Summer tilted her head at the scene. "What did we miss?"

"I simply told him that my son caused the incident that took his brother. He reacted about as you'd expect." Dietrich turned to look at the golden cube in Summer's hand, eyes widening with surprise. "Bellissima? I'm a bit confused."

"Aaaaaargh!" Stan tried to slip past the redhead, only to be moved back by an unseen force as she pointed her right hand at him. "Stop it! Stop with the magic! I got rage to vent!"

"Yeah, no. You're gonna stand there until you cool off. I swear, you're as bad as my dad." The thought started a train of images that made her frown strongly. "Oh, good. Let's think about that some more."

"Enough." Winter snapped once to bring Bellissima back to her normal form, then again to whip up a simple blue dress to cover her. Within seconds of becoming human again, the poor woman began to shriek at the top of her lungs.

While Dietrich winced at the noise, his concern was with what he'd just seen. "How?!" he asked Stan, one hand pointed at the three women.

"Literally magic. And I dunno if I want to talk to you anymore."

"You've been saying that for five minutes and it hasn't shut you up yet." Wendy's face went blank for an instant. "Wait… is this what teenagers sound like to other people when we argue? God, no wonder old people hate us."

Summer plucked one of the gumballs from her pocket and unfurled into its original white bug state, dropping it on the floor. It skittered right to the wailing woman and latched onto her ankle. The second it made contact, her screaming stopped and she hung limply in Winter's telekinetic grip. "I guess that still works," Summer noted simply. Her ruby eyes went to Dietrich. "Do you know why?"

Stan and Wendy had averted their eyes, but Dietrich examined the insect without reservations. While it wiggled against his touch, it wouldn't detach from Bellissima. "Hmm. I didn't know Ivan's work would have survived this long. Then again, I didn't know there existed so many possible sources of magic for them to feed on."

Winter blinked. "Someone made these too?"

He rose, straightening his glasses with a sigh. "Certainly. They were based off of a natural creature found here during the Apollyon days. Research on them happened in a different bunker. They comprised half of Project Bellissima. These creatures seek out magic and deliver it to her for storage."

"Whoa whoa whoa what?" Wendy exclaimed. "They're putting magic in? I thought they were sucking it out!"

"It's how I designed her. She screams if no magic input is detected – think of it as a rudimentary alarm. In the 80's, telepathy was still quite a hit-or-miss result of portal exposure. With the levels of magic we were dealing with, it might not have worked anyway." Dietrich stared at the bug for a moment longer. "If it's worked for this long, there must be a lot of magic around I cannot sense."

"You designed her." All eyes went to Winter, arms crossed and eyes on her shoes. "And I assume you built her too. For what? To be a storage tank forever?"

"Not at all to both. We know it likes humans. We know it has a certain… reluctance to its nature. Our plan was bottle it up and let it cool off into a weaker state. Then we could deal with it at our leisure. Apparently some pockets of it refused to go along with our idea." Dietrich stared at the twins, who had the most disdainful looks on their faces. "What?"

"That's not how magic works," Winter stated, moving her hands to her hips. "Sister, you do it," she added, nodding from Summer to Bellissima. "See if you hear what I heard."

"Okay." She placed her hand on the woman's back, squirting a dollop of the black gunk from her palm after making contact. With a gentle flick, she removed the bug and put it away in gumball form. Bellissima's silence had everyone confused. "How strange. She's talking up my arm with two voices."

Wendy raised a brow. "That doesn't sound weird at all."

"I'm going to extract some of the magic." Summer turned the sticky splotch into a little blade that jabbed into Bellissima's back. As with Winter, the sensations flew up the conduit into her body, where they were obliterated by the much stronger force of her own magic and faded away.

"She's losing her magic," Dietrich noted, "But I can't see it in you. It's like trying to find a candle against the sun."

Winter had a close eye on Bellissima during her the process. No physical changes were happening, but that was about all she could tell. Since there was no wiggling in her grip, she assumed no pain was happening either. "Keep going, I suppose?"

Summer obliged, tapping a foot idly as she waited. "Anything?" She blinked as her sister shook her head. "Hmm. I don't feel different. What happened to you after you absorbed your charge?"

"I smoldered for a few minutes. What I ingested was a lot stronger than this." Winter kept Bellissima's head up and peered into her eyes. "Still clear."

Dietrich was over there as well, rubbing his chin curiously. "I doubt you'll see much in the way of physical change. We chose her for her genetic makeup. Magic exposure had already left her more durable than the average human."

"Chose her?" Stan asked, having finally gotten past Wendy to approach everyone else. "What, she volunteer to be locked up in a cave for thirty years?"

Dietrich just shrugged. "That was not my decision. She was left here in case new deposits popped up. The insects would deliver the magic until she could hold no more – and then I don't know what would have happened." He snapped his eyes back to Bellissima. "She's-"

It hadn't been Summer's intention, but once her skin had been pierced that magic flew right up the red-eyed woman's arm so fast she could hardly react. "Empty," Summer said for him, withdrawing her blade and hiding her hand in her pocket until the bleeding stopped. "I don't feel any different."

"She's still breathing," Stan pointed out, hunched a bit to look at her face. "Why isn't she, I dunno, doin' anything?"

In fact, she wasn't even screaming despite the severance of the connection, instead emitting a low, pained wheeze. She still looked exactly as when the process had started. The wound on her back, Summer noticed, was still open. "She's not healing anymore."

"Hmm. I'm not surprised. After some time of storing magic she had become incredibly resistant to injury." Dietrich looked back at the portal with a frown. "Oh, well. You tried. I should have guessed there was nothing we could do." He walked out of the chamber – they could see him a second later through the window at the console, rubbing his chin as he gazed at the switches.

Stan was the first to react, moving swiftly out ahead of the twins. "What are you doin'?" he asked suspiciously. He reached out as Dietrich began flicking a switch. "Hey!"

"Relax, Stanford. I'm simply granting your wish." Guided by the memories, his fingers danced across the console in a dizzying sequence of moves, flicking some of the levers twice, others four times. After a minute of this he stepped back and crossed his arms. "There you are. The core setting from October 13, 1984. Would you like to do the honors?"

"I..." Stan trailed off as he stepped forward, staring at the panel. Wordlessly, he pushed one final lever toward the portal. With a penetrating, metallic sound, the object came to life; every blue light in the ceiling and floor switched on, as did all the symbols around the circular opening. "It's spooling up!"

They all dashed back into its room as the sound increased. Stan grabbed the large floor switch with both hands and swung it to his left, issuing a mighty grunt in the process. The black hole filled with white light as the sounds faded away. "Dude," Wendy breathed, shielding her eyes against it. "What the heck did you just do?"

It was what they could not see or hear that held the answer; the silent symphony of magic that flowed through was the background noise the twins hadn't heard since leaving their home planet. Winter and Summer stepped closer to the opening, not needing to squint or shade their faces. "He has joined this world to ours," they said in unison.

"I was hoping you'd make it sound less creepy, man!"

Summer managed a giggle at Wendy's complaint. Even Winter smiled. "Stay here," the blue-eyed woman said calmly. "We're going in."