A/N: Now presenting the next chapter. Thanks for coming back, and please read, review, and enjoy!

I do not own Avengers or Gravity Falls.


As Ford packed his suitcase with the equipment he and Dipper had been using to study the yellow symbiote, footsteps descended the stairs to his lab. He could tell by the slow gait and faint grunts that it was Stanley. His brother's left knee had never been the same after the fall he had taken down that shallow ravine while they were hunting a Chupacabra in New Mexico two years before.

"Ford!" he called as he neared the bottom of the stairs. "Ford, what the hell is goin' on? Dipper just woke me up saying Bill's back. How the hell is that possible?" He hobbled through the doorway to the lab. "We killed him, remember? You wiped my mind with the Memory Gun while he was in my head."

Ford sighed. "Unfortunately, Stanley, he's right. I don't have any definitive proof, but…it's very likely."

"How do you know?"

"Overnight I heard an…explosion from the woods outside. I got up to see what it was. Dipper heard it too; he was up. We both headed out there, and we found something not far from the Mystery Shack. It was a ball of yellow slime that had crashed in the woods."

"Slime? When did you start documenting inanimate objects in those journals of yours? And what does this have to do with Bill, besides being yellow?"

"Years ago, when I was on friendly terms with Bill, he told me about someone else he had…visited before me, who wanted to create a race of creatures known as symbiotes. Well, this slime was alive. It was moving on its own, and when Dipper and I brought it back here and studied it, we discovered that it actually possesses a crude nervous system. But not long after that…." Ford adjusted his glasses. "…Tony Stark showed up here."

Stanley gave a sharp laugh. "Tony Stark? Yeah right. That one-percenter snob who flies around in a suit of armor dropping cities out of the sky? Here?" His brother folded his arms. "I'll believe it when I see it."

As Ford had discovered in the past few years, Stanley's view of superheroes hadn't changed much since Ford had been sucked through that portal in the early '80s. Granted, when they were kids, the only superhero – or, at least, the only famous one – had been Steve Rogers. Like so many other children who ran up and down the streets, Ford had admired Rogers' heroism…and been fascinated with the super-soldier serum that had transformed him into Captain America. Stanley, on the other hand, had always felt superheroes were overrated for reasons Ford didn't entirely understand.

"Look where being a hero got him," Stanley had said of Captain America on several occasions. "Frozen into a Capsicle up in the Arctic." Nowadays it often seemed like the ever-growing number and popularity of superheroes drove his brother crazy, as though the universe were personally attempting to prove him wrong.

"Whether you believe it or not, he was here. Vision, too," Ford said.

Stanley's expression clearly said, "Who the hell is that?"

Ford sighed. "Never mind. Stark said he and the other Avengers were tracking several of these things that landed around the world, but he called them symbiotes. The only other time I'd ever heard that word was from Bill."

"But…but how?" Stanley spread his arms. "He's gone. The statue's still there in the woods. We check it every day, us or Soos or Wendy or McGucket. The only change in it over the past three years has been more bird shit piling up on it every summer."

"I don't know how this is possible either, Stanley, but it's too big a coincidence for me to ignore. I'm heading out to New York to keep an eye on the situation, and Dipper volunteered to come too."

His brother's eyes widened. "What? No way! You want to investigate this, that's fine, but-"

"Stanley, I didn't force him to come with me. He wants to. It's his decision to make. I was actually hoping you and the rest of the Zodiac would come with us too. If this really is Bill, without the Memory Gun, that's our only chance to stop him."

"Even if we did have the Memory Gun, there's no way he'd fall for the same trick as last time. He's a lot of things, but he's not stupid."

Ford hadn't even thought of that.

"So what would Bill want with these…symbiote things anyway?" Stanley asked.

"I don't know. He never told me any details about them. They might be connected to the Nightmare Realm somehow, or a type of living weapon that Bill plans to use against us. Or he might not want them after all. Stark's eyes weren't yellow when he visited us, so Bill wasn't in control of him at the time. Stark could simply be tracking them down to research and contain them, like he said. But even if Bill wasn't motivating Stark's trip here this morning, there's still likely been contact between them. Which is concerning."

One thing he didn't have to wonder was why Bill had chosen Tony Stark as his latest victim. In fact, if anything, he was surprised Bill hadn't made contact with the Avenger sooner, especially after finding various obscure records hinting that several other famous inventors over the years, from da Vinci to Marconi to Tesla, had been visited by the one-eyed triangle at some point in their lives.

Stanley sighed. "Of course I'm coming. If you think I'm gonna let my brother walk into a rematch with Bill on his own, you're crazy."

Ford put a hand on his brother's shoulder. "Thank you, Stanley." He heard footsteps echoing on the floorboards above them, at the foot of the stairs to the Shack's second floor. "Sounds like Dipper woke Mabel and Soos too. The rest of you just worry about packing your stuff. I'll take care of getting us a flight out to New York."

Stanley nodded and walked towards the door. Before he started up the stairs, he turned back. "Just as long as I don't have to sit next to Gideon on the plane. That kid still gives me the creeps."

Ford chuckled. Stanley headed back up the stairs to the gift shop.

Ford turned back to the supplies before him. He and Dipper knew what was going on; Dipper had told Stanley, Mabel, and Soos, and either already had or would soon call Pacifica to let her know too. Six members of the Zodiac…that left Wendy, Gideon, Fiddleford, and Robbie. He could call Fiddleford himself, but he would need someone else to contact the others for him.

He stopped for a moment to ponder something Stanley had asked that he hadn't had an answer to: how had Bill returned? The Memory Gun had wiped him from Stanley's mind, and since he'd abandoned his physical form to enter Ford's brother, that should have killed him for good. All that was left of the body he'd gained during Weirdmageddon was the half-buried stone husk at the edge of the woods. And he had died; with his life force gone, the Fearamid and all the other monsters he'd summoned from the Nightmare Realm had been sucked back through the Rift.

But if he had been dead at that time, that meant that someone – or something – else had resurrected him since then. And that thought frightened him. Bringing back an interdimensional being like Bill would be no small feat, not like the spell in Journal 3 that Dipper had once used to summon a horde of the undead. For someone to bring a being as powerful as Bill Cipher back from the netherworld, they would have to be even stronger than he was.

If the other Avengers hadn't been corrupted by Bill, having their help in this fight might not be a bad idea.

Bill thought himself a god. I wonder what an actual god like Thor would have to say about that.

Ford turned back to his suitcase. He placed the cases for his microscope and centrifuge in the last remaining space inside, then zipped it shut. It wasn't all of his equipment, not even close, but it would have to do. Besides, possessed or not, Stark was a scientist too. He likely had many of the same devices Ford did at the Avengers Compound.

He went to turn off the lights in the lab, but then paused. He contemplated the Electron Carpet, rolled up and leaning in the corner of the room, for a moment. A thought struck him. The carpet allowed two people standing on it to swap bodies. He didn't know exactly how – scrap that, he had no clue how – a dream demon like Bill would factor into that equation, but…. If it comes down to it, that'll be my last resort. If Bill fully takes over Stark's body, and I can get him on that carpet and touch him, maybe…maybe he'll be driven from Stark's mind. And he couldn't get in Ford's mind either; the metal plate in his head made certain of that. If he's knocked out of Stark's head and can't get into mine, maybe that'll be enough to defeat him again.

Ford walked over to the carpet, grabbed it under an arm, and left the lab. He still had more to do before they'd be ready to leave.


"So," Daisy said as she finished her tale, folding her hands in front of her, "you get all that?"

Tony rubbed his forehead. Well, that was a lot. "Alright, let me see if I've got all that," he said. "You're name's Daisy. You're a type of enhanced individual called an Inhuman. And because of that, you can make earthquakes with your hands?"

Daisy slowly nodded. "That is the CliffsNotes version of it."

Tony had only heard of the Inhumans, as they were called, in the past few weeks

Tony pointed to the dark-skinned man piloting the jet…the Zephyr One, they'd called it. "That's Mack." Then the man seated opposite him, with short, brown hair and a British accent. "Hunter." And finally the blonde-haired woman sitting next to him. "And Bobbi. You're with S.H.I.E.L.D., which is still a thing. Coulson was resurrected with alien blood after the Battle of New York, and Fury made him your new Director after that Winter Soldier fiasco last year. And in all this time you've still been around, you've been…what?" He spread his hands. "Earthquakes? I'm sure that could've helped us out in Sokovia."

"Tony…," Rhodey said.

Daisy raised her eyebrows. "I'm sorry I couldn't make it. I was busy off in Nepal making sure my mom didn't destroy first S.H.I.E.L.D. and then humanity as a whole."

"If you were really dealing with stuff like this, how come we never heard about it?" Tony asked. "This all seems pretty high-profile." Not to mention, in the handful of times the Avengers had met with Fury since the Battle of New York, not once had he mentioned bringing Coulson back from the dead. Then again, this was Fury; somehow that didn't exactly surprise him.

"You didn't hear about any of this because we dealt with it," Bobbi said. "I'm sure if we all sat back and did nothing, the Kree and the Inhumans and…that giant Frost Beast rampaging through London would've made it onto your radar sooner or later, but by then it might've been too late."

Well, that made sense. It had just never occurred to Tony that there had been people besides the Avengers dealing with major threats around the world…and at the same time staying under the Avengers' radar.

Clint nodded towards Vision and Wanda, who were both lying still in medical pods at the back end of the room. "This base of yours…you'll be able to treat them there?"

"Vision, sure," Mack said, turning around in his seat. "Fitz has wanted to learn more about him ever since he first heard about him. Wanda…."

"Fitz is more of a tech guy," Bobbi said. "Normally we'd have Simmons look over Wanda, but she's…gone, currently. I've been working with Fitz more recently, but I don't know nearly as much as Simmons did."

"And just to clarify," Hunter added, "by 'gone,' Bob means sucked into a giant rock, and we have no idea where she is."

Clint raised an eyebrow. "You're serious?"

"Fitz has been trying to get her back for months," Daisy said.

Now it was Tony's turn to survey Wanda and Vision. Wanda still hadn't woken up after Daisy had expelled the symbiote from her, and Vision had chosen to power himself down for the flight, not fully knowing how the vibranium blade had affected him.

"Since you guys have been dealing with HYDRA too, have any of you heard of them getting their hands on vibranium recently?" Tony asked. "Because last I checked it's still the rarest metal on Earth. The thing that they used to hurt Vision-"

"Chakram," Clint interjected.

Tony turned to him. "What?"

"The blade, it's called a chakram."

Tony shook his head. "Sure, whatever. Vision said that was made of vibranium." If what was left of HYDRA had more of the metal in their possession, that could be problematic. As Ultron had proven, vibranium in the wrong hands could be catastrophic.

"Maybe," Bobbi said. "For a little while, I was working undercover, as a spy for S.H.I.E.L.D. within HYDRA. I was only in security, wasn't privy to any of their more sensitive information, but they did bring in a shipment of vibranium once, acquired from some arms dealer, Ulysses Klaue."

"Oh great," Tony said.

"You know him?" Mack asked.

"Ultron needed a bunch of vibranium to build his doomsday device in Sokovia. He got it from the same guy…then, like any good genocidal robot, cut the guy's arm off."

"The vibranium shipment was cataloged under something called 'Project Destroyer of Worlds,'" Bobbi continued. "I started trying to figure out what theat meant, but then I ended up having to blow my cover and escape."

Project Destroyer of Worlds. "Well, that sounds lovely," Tony said. "Obviously that name's just a coincidence and they don't have anything evil planned with it at all."

"Seems a bit underwhelming that they'd set it aside for something called 'Destroyer of Worlds' and then just turn it into a knockoff of Cap's shield," Clint said.

"For all we know, this could've just been some of the vibranium," Rhodey said.

As much as Tony didn't want to let it go right now, HYDRA was really the less pressing issue. Including the Carnage symbiote, they now had three of the six aliens that had fallen to Earth: this one, the black one from Clint's house, and the yellow one from Oregon. That left the one in Metro-General – which, for all he knew, Sam might've recovered by now – and the ones in the Amazon and Siberia, but there was no way Steve and Nat had collected those two yet. He vaguely wondered what colors the other three were, then dismissed the thought.

"Have you guys ever seen anything like these symbiotes before?" Tony asked.

Daisy shook her head. "No. We didn't even know about this one until we arrived and I quaked it out of Wanda."

"All Coulson knew when he sent us was that some people had reported seeing a giant plume of smoke in the desert, near where the old Project PEGASUS base was," Mack added. "It could've turned out to be nothing, but he didn't want to take that chance."

"Lucky thing for you he didn't," Daisy said. "If I hadn't blasted that thing out of Wanda, , you four wouldn't have been going anywhere."

"I'd love to contradict that, but I really can't," Rhodey said.

Tony still couldn't believe Coulson was still alive. The last time they'd seen each other had been three years before, when Loki launched his attack on the helicarrier. He'd run into Coulson in the halls on his way outside to repair the aircraft's damaged engine, and thought nothing of it. Later he'd learned that not ten minutes later, Coulson had been killed by Loki.

As much as Coulson sometimes got on his nerves, it would be good to see him again.

"You said another one of these slime-things you found was black, right?" Bobbi asked, snapping Tony out of his thoughts.

"Yeah. Why?" he replied.

"It…does remind me of something. This substance the SSR came across back in the '40s…Zero Matter, I think they called it. Peggy Carter and…." She gestured to Tony. "…and your father helped take care of the situation, but I wonder if this is more of that Zero Matter. Or a different type of it."

Just one more thing about the enigmatic Howard Stark that Tony had never known. But he doubted these symbiotes were actually the same thing as this Zero Matter. If that voice had been telling the truth – which, so far, he had been about everything else – then one symbiote wouldn't have come to Earth alone back in the 1940s. More of them would have accompanied it, and the planet would have been overrun by them long ago.

"Maybe," Tony said anyway. "Whatever they are, I'll feel better once we've captured all of them and they can't cause any more trouble. How long till we reach your base?"

"Little over an hour," Mack said. "Until we get there, just sit back and enjoy the ride."


A/N: Chapter 15 coming soon!