WARPED
Chapter 29
All eyes in the room were on Jocelyn, who was too shocked to properly react. Why would Lucy, who Jocelyn had made her feelings very clear toward, say her name before keeling over?
Jocelyn winced as Lucy suddenly straightened up, her eyes sharp and focused. But they weren't Lucy's muddy hazel color. They were bright yellow and catlike, her lips curling into a devious grin.
A very familiar devious grin.
"Bill!" Jocelyn couldn't hold back her shout of surprise. It was so clearly the dream demon that it was almost disturbing to see those strange eyes on Lucy's face.
Lucy—Bill?—started to clap. "Bravo, Pines and company. Took ya long enough! I mean, I could tell Caduceus was starting to catch on to my little game, but c'mon guys, a preschooler could have been a better detective than the rest of you!"
Hazelle scowled. "Get out of Lucy!"
"Eh, I dunno about that." Bill flexed Lucy's fingers out, as if he still wasn't used to her body. "Pen's got a nice gig here. Not sure if I'm done with her yet." Bill laughed. Jocelyn was disgusted to see Lucy's mouth spread in that wide ugly grin.
Lucy's yellow eyes swiveled to Jocelyn. "What's a matter, Music Note? I thought you hated Pen. Nice to not see her, eh?"
Jocelyn frowned. "Better her than your freaky mug."
Lucy's delighted expression went sinister. "Well, it sure took me long enough to wear her down to a point of submission. You should've seen the way she fought me for control! Admirable, but she gave up eventually, like they all do." The smile stretched, revealing more of Lucy's teeth. "Now, I can do this!"
Raising Lucy's hands, he created a tiny portal, only the size of Lucy's head, but powerful all the same. The wind whooshed through the den, ruffling the curtains and the leaves of the dying plant in the corner.
Lucy made eye contact with Jocelyn. "And wait till you see what else I can do!" Bill cackled again, shrunk the portal to the size of a dime and closed Lucy's fist around it. Lucy then smiled at Jocelyn, Hazelle, and the Pines, and then jumped out the window. She sprinted along at an inhuman speed, and disappeared into the forest.
"After her—him—whatever!" Jocelyn yelled.
"Wait!" Dipper rushed ahead to stop the group from leaving the room. He held his arms out, Journal #3 held tight in one of his hands. "Guys, this is obviously a trap. Bill's leading us into the woods to get us alone!"
Hazelle flinched but kept her anger prominent. "But he has Lucy! We have to get her back!"
"The kid's right, though. We can't just go runnin' into the woods on a wild goose chase," said Stan. "Dipper, you and Mabel stay here."
"WHAT!" Mabel yelled, outraged. "Grunkle Stan! You're kidding!"
"I am most certainly not kidding." Stan looked like he'd aged twenty years in the past ten minutes. "Look, the loud one and Four-Eyes coming—that makes sense. But you and your brother will be in too much danger."
"We've faced Bill before," Dipper argued. "And won!"
"Yeah, and from what little I've been able to pick up from that, you were in the dreamscape, or whatever the heck it's called," Stan said, anxiously fixing the cuffs on his suit jacket. "But this is real life, and that triangular freak has a human body. I'm not saying I know anything about him or anythin', but any old idiot could figure out that there's major trouble in a demon possessing a teenage girl who can make portals the size of Oregon."
"You can't really expect us to stay here," Mabel fussed, arms crossed over her chest. "That's womp."
Stan fixed Soos with a trusting but assertive stare. "Soos, don't let them leave the Shack. Board up the windows and lock every door. Close the shop, too—use the bat to chase out any lingering suckers." The twins began to argue again, but he shut them down with a glare Jocelyn could only describe as almost fatherly. "Kids, you're my responsibility while you're here in town, and that means that anything that happens to you is on my head. If either of you got hurt…" He shook his head, and steeled his expression. "You're staying here."
Dipper and Mabel looked insulted. Jocelyn couldn't blame them: she wanted them to come too, but there really wasn't a lot they could do. Unbeknownst to them, Stan knew exactly what he was talking about when it came to Bill.
"Fine," Dipper sighed, shoving the journal back into his vest. "But answer this: what are you guys even gonna do if you find him?"
Jocelyn, Hazelle, and Stan exchanged a threeway glance. It was obvious no one had thought that far ahead.
"We'll figure it out," Stan finally said, nodding at Jocelyn and Hazelle. "Right, knuckleheads?"
"Sure, let's go with that," Hazelle said weakly.
"Yeah, yolo-ing it," Jocelyn added, gaining a strange look from Stan. She suppressed a smile.
The three of them left, the sounds of planks of wood being hammered to block the windows behind them. Faintly, Jocelyn could hear Soos harassing tourists to get out of the gift shop. They entered the woods, taking the same way they'd seen Bill trample through, and walked in careful, calculating silence for only a minute.
"Okay," Hazelle said to Stan. "So how do we really stop Bill?"
Stan heaved a sigh, rubbing the back of his neck absently. He appeared tired, his finger twisting around the tassel of his hat. "Sorry for the act back there. I just can't risk that demon being any closer to them than he has been so far. I can't believe they even followed him into the dreamscape."
"For you," Jocelyn pointed out, fingers curled around her braid.
"I know, I know. They're good, smart kids, I get that. But Bill…" A shadow passed through Stan's eyes. "He's a different story. He's way more dangerous than they think. The boy thinks he can sort through any of these creatures with that journal, but he hasn't even scratched the surface."
"Enough ominous foreboding," Jocelyn cut in. "How do we get Bill out of Lucy?"
Stan considered for a moment, staring at the grass below his shoes as it flattened under his every step. The forest was getting darker as twilight began to close in on Gravity Falls, and the bright green, harmless woods they'd entered was full of sharp, slanting shadows and trees with branches that appeared like outstretched hands. "We have a couple options," he told them finally, when Jocelyn had almost forgotten he was there. "We can either force him out, trick him out, or he can willingly leave."
"Yeah, well, we should probably forget about Plan C," Jocelyn replied. "He looked pretty comfy in there."
"What would be a strong enough force to knock him out of her body?" Hazelle asked.
"There are a few things. Lucy herself could force him out and regain control, but...that's, uh, a slight possibility."
Hazelle gasped. "She must have had control before! That's how she stumbled into the den. What I don't get is why she said 'Jocelyn.' They've been at odds for days."
Jocelyn was staring at the ground, but she could feel Hazelle's eyes flicker to her. She had been wondering the same thing.
"Unless that wasn't her," Stan said, nodding at Hazelle's observations. "It's hard to say, because I've been busy and haven't noticed these things the way you have, but if Bill's plan at first was just to stir up trouble, then he wouldn't have let it get this far. He was doin' all that stuff on purpose, and if it wasn't him taking temporary control and saying whatever he wanted, it was him manipulating Lucy into saying whatever he wanted."
"I don't know," Jocelyn said, and Stan and Hazelle's surprised stares moved to her.
"Lucy can be pretty strong willed when she wants to be. And when she said that… in the den, she was… different. Like not how she was when she cornered Hazelle earlier. She was almost… herself."
Stan raised a scruffy brow at Hazelle. "Cornered you?"
Hazelle went red, awkwardly adjusting her glasses. "She appeared out of nowhere this morning when I woke up. She was obviously different. The way she talked, the way she moved...it was scary. I could tell someone was wrong when she started talking about these, um, dreams I've been having lately."
"Dreams?" asked Stan. "That's why you've been sleeping till eleven every day and look like death when you're awake?"
"Thanks, again," Hazelle deadpanned.
"You know what I mean. They're not dreams, are they?"
Jocelyn watched Hazelle shakily nod and touch her fingernails. They were all chewed raw and cracked. "Far from it. I didn't want to worry anyone over what I just assumed were weird nightmares I was having, but I knew they were more when Lucy brought them up. There's no way she would've known what I was dreaming about in such detail...unless she...he...Bill was the one making it happen in the first place."
Stan nodded grimly. "I think I see what's been happenin' here. Bill's been messing with all three of you, even though he's been trying to possess Lucy this whole time. He pushed your buttons by pitting Lucy against Portal Girl, and then left you out to dry by having her in the middle of the tug-of-war. And then he's been givin' you nightmares to freak you out and wear your patience—and if it had gone on long enough, sanity—thin."
Hazelle went pale and Jocelyn felt her blood boil. Never in her life did she think she'd despise someone so much as she did Bill. He had messed with her life for the last time.
"I'm gonna kill him," she hissed.
Stan raised his eyebrows. "That's your problem, kid. You let your temper and your emotions take over, and you're gonna get hurt."
"And I'm gonna make it his problem, too!" Jocelyn retorted in a growl.
"Okay, okay, okay," Hazelle interjected, shooting Jocelyn a warning glare. "So, Lucy helping us out here isn't something to depend on. How would we go about forcing Bill out ourselves?"
Stan held his chin. "It's tricky, but I think we could make it work. Any amount of physical, brute force could knock him out of her body. But first we're gonna have to find him."
The three of them jumped at an explosion of blue up in the distance.
"Or we could just follow that," Jocelyn said.
The three crept closer through the thickets of trees until they spotted Lucy in the center of a clearing. Hazelle made a face. "I've been here before with Dipper. This is where Lucy sleepwalked to a couple weeks ago. That must've been Bill, too."
They watched as Lucy laughed maniacally, sparks of blue flame levitating inches above her palms. She was opening tiny portals all around her and shutting them just as quickly, allowing them to form a circle around her.
"What's he doing?" asked Jocelyn, baffled.
"Testing her limits," Stan replied, grimacing. "He wants to know what she can do without breaking her. She's no good to him if she's de—injured."
Hazelle and Jocelyn flinched simultaneously. Jocelyn couldn't even imagine what she'd do if Lucy died. What would they tell her parents if they ever got home? How would everyone react at school? How in the world would Hazelle and Jocelyn cope? Jocelyn and Lucy had had their clashes, but deep down, Jocelyn still cared about her.
"Okay, so what's the plan?" Hazelle whispered.
Stan grunted, inching his brass knuckles onto his hands. "You two stay hidden. I'll go out and distract him. On my signal, hold him down, and if we're lucky, we'll get him back to the Shack. I may have something downstairs that can help us. Or, to save time, try tackling him. That may be enough to knock him out."
Jocelyn's heart was pounding so loud she could feel each beat in her ears. She tried to channel Mabel's natural bravery, but found that it wouldn't stay long enough in her chest for her to not be absolutely terrified. She glanced at Hazelle as Stan stepped out into the clearing. Hazelle's eyes were narrowed and calculating, but her hands were trembling.
"We can do this," Jocelyn murmured.
Hazelle didn't say a word. She just nodded fiercely, as if speaking would throw off her concentration. She gestured for them to start moving to the other end of the clearing, and they ducked down and crawled through the grass, listening to Stan and Bill talk.
"Well, well, Stanford Pines!" Lucy greeted, voice high and hyper. "I thought your little group might send a representative. By chance, did you bring Music Note and Caduceus? 'Cause I was kinda waiting for them to show."
"No, I let them stay behind," Stan replied, and Jocelyn couldn't get over how calm he sounded. "Kids, ya know? They really shouldn't be involved in stuff like this. They don't entirely understand the fire they play with."
"Oh, but I disagree, Stan." Bill's voice was playful. "I think it's even better when it's kids. What's funnier to laugh at, someone who knows how to play with fire, or someone who doesn't even get what fire is?"
"Why did you bring them here?" Stan demanded.
"Ugh, how many times am I gonna have to explain this? I didn't bring them. I went after them in their reality. But because I like to humor you, which is something I'm sure you're aware of, at this point, I'll spell it out: no one brought them here. They brought themselves."
"They what?"
"I was hunting them down in their reality because I can't open portals and they can. Of course, imagine my luck when Music Note awakens her own powers through the website I set up to find them! The combination of my power, infused with the website, and the fact that all three of them were gathered together near something as powerful as them, woke up the portal jumper in all three of them, but Music Note's were first."
"That's why her portals are the most dangerous?" Stan asked, incredulous. "Because she had her powers woken up before the other two?"
"There's also the emotional instability to take into account. The stronger the personality, the stronger the portals. Caduceus is that strange instance of the monkey in the middle-she's got the brains to figure out any riddle I could throw at her, but 'cause she's the peacekeeper of that group, her portals are pathetic."
Jocelyn glanced at Hazelle, who now looked pissed. But Jocelyn's head was whirring. The floating potato chip...that was a portal she had created?
Stan crossed his arms, stalling for time. "I guess you think you've got it all figured out, huh?"
Lucy frowned slightly. "No, not really. I still don't know why it's the three of them that got the powers, but hey, the universe is a crazy place, right? I don't care who they are, I care that these ultra cool powers finally decided to pop up again after so many years!"
"What do you want with them?" Stan's brow furrowed. He was desperately in need of help. "I don't understand why you're so obsessed with jumping realities."
Lucy's lips curled over her teeth into an ugly smile. "I'm so glad you asked. Allow me to enlighten you." Bill tossed Lucy's short springy brown hair over her shoulder before continuing. "You see, Stan, I—OW WHAT THE—"
What happened next happened too fast for Jocelyn to process. A grappling hook shot out from behind the trees, slamming into the side of Lucy's head. The force was so great that it knocked Bill right out of Lucy's body. Jocelyn heard Mabel's triumphant yell as her hook found its target, and Stan's surprised shout of, "KIDS?!"
"Hiya, Grunkle Stan!" chirped Mabel, emerging from the bushes, Dipper fast at her heels, appearing panicked.
"Mabel, me coughing wasn't the signal!" he squeaked.
As the Pines family argued, Jocelyn quickly ran over to Lucy, who was lying lifeless on the ground, with a large bruise forming on her temple. Jocelyn, channeling her inner Hazelle, quickly checked Lucy for a pulse, finding that Lucy was indeed alive.
"C'mon, Luce," Jocelyn muttered, shaking her friends shoulder. "Don't die on us yet."
Lucy slowly opened her eyes, and locked them with Jocelyn. Lucy's eyes became wide with fear as she looked past Jocelyn, to something just over her shoulder.
By the time Jocelyn realized what Lucy was staring at, it was too late. She felt a tingling that went from the top of her head to the base of her spine. The tingling quickly became a knife right through the base of her skull, freezing her in place. The last thing Jocelyn heard before everything went black was shrieking and yelling. But above all else, she heard dark, maniacal laughter.