Vic was rummaging through a box of random junk Stan had, looking for some kind of string or leather cord or something to stick the ring he'd gotten on his first day in Gravity Falls when the worrying music started.

He liked his ring a lot—its bright color added a lot to his appearance, at least in his opinion. But it was pretty large and heavy, and it made it hard to play guitar, so he figured he'd string it up on something to change it into a necklace instead.

He was still looking for something that would work when music started up again. It had been a day or two since that had happened—since Dipper summoned Rumble McSkirmish to fight for him and whatnot. Vic's hair was still a little singed on the back of his head from that incident.

He had to get his brain back on track. The music wouldn't last forever. He set down the box and listened. It was definitely eerie, fairly high in pitch, and slightly discordant, and it was quiet. Though soft might be the better descriptor. Probably some dialogue happening, meaning there was something up. It sounded familiar, and he racked his brain to try and figure out where he'd heard it.

The gnome forest? No, that was a little more whimsy. The ghosts from the convenience store had been a lot more outright threatening than this. It was only when the more ominous tones in the song started to come out that he finally figured out whose theme it was.

Gideon.

He'd only had the barest contact with the ten-year-old, so he didn't really know much about him, but he was definitely set up as a villain. Vic narrowed his eyes. If his theme was playing, then it probably meant that he was up to something.

Well. I'm gonna have to keep my eyes open, then.

A thin leather cord about the right length caught his eye, so he shoved the box back in the closet and went to find the Pines.

They were lounging by the armchair, watching Ducktective, but since he didn't feel like squeezing into there, he plopped down on the bottom of the stairs and watched from there, stringing along the ring and finding a comfortable place to tie it around his neck. The doorbell rang before too long, and Vic scooted a little further up so Stan could answer it.

He mimed along as Stan said, "Welcome to a world of mystery!"

"Stan Pines?" a low voice asked.

"The tax collector?! You've found me!", with stings punctuating his words.

Vic cocked an eyebrow as Stan rushed back into the living room, panicking about something or other with some lively music. He was still on the Gideon mindset, so his first thought was maybe that the little kid had tipped off them that Stan was evading his taxes? How would he even know that?

Well, okay, he supposed that Stan did look exactly like the sort of person to do that.

"Mr. Pines," the guy said, the music stopping abruptly, walking straight past Vic as if he didn't exist. He leaned forward slightly to peek out the door. There were a couple camera people and some ladies holding a giant check, so it definitely wasn't the tax collector. Sure enough, the next words out of the guys' mouth were:

"I'm from the Winninghouse Coupon Savers Contest, and you are our big winner!" They all rushed into the room (again, right past Vic, who finally stood up to investigate) and chucked confetti and whatnot.

Excited music played, and while it was pretty catchy, Vic was wary. It was a cartoon, after all. Was this the premise of the episode, or . . . ?

He spotted Gideon fixing his hair just outside the door, and he rolled his eyes. Of course not. This must be the scene before the theme song, or something.

As soon as the little kid came in, completely ignoring Vic once again, Vic knocked him over with a halfhearted kick, rolled him under the huge check, and walked past one of the ladies holding it. A record scratch played in his head, and then it was dead silent, inside and out.

"Alright, yep, stop celebrating, it's another scheme," Vic said dully, rolling the kid to Stan's feet. "Here you go. You can do what you want with him, I dunno."

"Hacky-sack! Hacky-sack!" Mabel started chanting, and Dipper gave her a weird look.

Stan didn't react fast enough. Gideon gave that annoyed little grunt thing he did and stood up, dusting himself off, before he leveled a glare at Vic. "You! You ruined everything!"

He was red in the face. It was actually kind of funny.

"You fool! I would've had the Shack right now if it wasn't for you!"

"Okay, well, one, I don't actually want that, so why would I be rooting for you, and two," he glanced over at Stan, ". . . I don't think he was ever going to fall for that."

Gideon went even more red and started breathing heavily through the sheer force of his anger. Vic was vaguely concerned at this point.

"Um . . . I think you need to sit down for a little bit." He glanced at the tax collector game show con guy. "Do you wanna, like, bring him back to his parents, or something . . . ?"

"I am not a threat to be taken lightly!" he snapped furiously, pointing up at Vic. "You have made a grave enemy today, Victor Merlin. Mark my words!"

"Yeah, okay, the gnomes said the same thing, and look how much they've done. Out. Get out." He shoved the little guy out the door, followed by the grown man. "You too." He glanced at the girls with the torn check. "I trust you can see yourselves out?"

They nodded and left, and Vic plopped down on the stairs again.

"Can we turn Ducktective back on? It was just getting good," he requested.

"I dunno, my favorite part's the theme song," Mabel said, and it immediately filled his head.

He was caught between groaning and rolling on the floor with laughter.


Gideon stood on the Mystery Shack doorstep, frozen with fury. How dare he?! How dare that nobody ruin his plans?! It was like he was expecting it, but how?! It was the perfect plan, who could've anticipated it?!

His teeth ground with anger. Something was up with him, but he didn't know what. How could he have known?

The boy's words echoed around in his head, until Gideon caught something he hadn't before. Gnomes. He'd mentioned gnomes. How could he have known about them? Had he just been wandering in the forest?

Gideon's mind drifted back to his Journal. Could it be . . . ? The other Journal was out there somewhere. Maybe . . . just maybe . . . this nobody had found one, and he'd already made enemies. Enemies that he could exploit.

Hm. The Shack was still the priority, but if that boy got in his way again . . . well, he'd have to make some changes to his plan.

Someone new might have to be brought into play . . .


Vic leaned over the chessboard, trying to figure out how he could possibly win this. Dipper was insanely good at the game, and Mabel's 'helpful' suggestions were not actually very helpful. Plus, she'd stolen all the horses and stuck them in her sweater.

The boppy Mystery Shack music wasn't helping matters, either.

He moved a pawn (when in doubt, move a pawn), and Dipper swiftly moved his piece. "And checkmate!" He knocked over Vic's king, and he slumped in defeat.

"Oh, come on, Dipper, you can't find this fun," he moaned. "You always win."

"Sounds like a skill issue," the other boy swiftly replied, and Vic gave him an extremely annoyed look, which he ignored.

Soos, who was working on restocking the gift shop and rearranging stuff, asked, "Yo, Mabel, can you pass me that brain in the jar? The lady one." The girl looked up from the magazine borrowed from Wendy in the corner.

"I got it," Dipper said.

"Thanks, but Mabel's taller," Soos said.

Vic facepalmed. "Soos, what have you done?!" he hissed, and the handyman looked at him blankly.

A confused note played, and Dipper said, "What? No, she's not. We're the same height. We've always been."

"Better check again, dude," Soos said, completely missing Vic's eyes pleading for him to stop already.

So they measured both of them, found that Mabel was exactly one millimeter taller than Dipper, who threw a fit about it. Vic sighed from where he was resetting the chess board. "Dipper, can you chill? You're not even the shortest one here. I'm like, three inches shorter than you, and I'm only a couple months younger. So cut it out."

Though it was kind of embarrassing to admit it, it was a necessary evil to stop unnecessary shenanigans.

"Yeah, but we're twins! We've always been the same height," Dipper complained. He slouched against the wall, folding his arms. "This is stupid."

"Yep, it is. I'd rather play another game of chess against you than listen to you complain. Wanna go again?"

He didn't move.

Vic groaned and started messing with the chess pieces on his own, resigned to his fate as Mabel and Stan, who came in purely to mock, made jokes about being short in the background and Dipper slouched off to do to plot things.


He was trying to figure out how to play chess against himself, but it was extremely hard. Apparently, the game isn't very interesting when you knew what both sides were planning, so he ended up basically role-playing a war between two kingdoms, with not even the dust wanting to be his rapt audience.

Well, he couldn't blame them. His storytelling skills were a little lackluster.

"Well, I have news for you, Brother White! I was behind your enemy lines the entire time!" he said when the rook took the bishop from behind.

"Alas! What shall I do but die?!"

He knocked over the bishop with great gusto, and almost as if on cue, an extremely loud, extremely dramatic string of notes played as his eyes narrowed on the white queen, now in line to attack the rook. With no better line for her to say, in a falsetto he said, "I am no atheist! I must take revenge on my dear bishop!"

The rook: "Gasp! Not an . . . affair?!"

The queen: "Mayhaps, though the secret will die with you!"

She knocked over the rook with a vendetta, only for the pawn who Vic had previously forgotten to step up and hesitantly take her out.

The pawn: "Ack! Oh no! Wait, was I supposed to do that? I'm too new for this!"

Before he could figure out how the white kingdom would react to losing their queen, ethereal music that didn't fit with his theme at all started. He looked up and thought, annoyed, If you're gonna project music into my head, would you at least make it match what I want?

"Whatcha doing?" Mabel asked, finally taking notice of what he was doing.

"Oh, well, Dipper's being mopey so I'm playing chess against myself. You see, the rook sprung a surprise attack on the bishop, except the queen was having an affair with him, so she murdered the rook to get vengeance and whatnot, but the newbie pawn boy accidently got her, and the king is distraught."

"Ooh!" She grabbed onto the white king and, in a deeper voice than usual, she fake-sobbed, "No! My queen! You! Go avenge her at once!"

He grabbed the knight in question: "Yes, your Majesty! She will not be forgotten!"

It continued on like that for quite some time, and they were just getting into the juicy stuff where the king discovered his wife's betrayal and lost all his assets in his anger and grief. He was being cornered against the wall when—

CRASH!

They both looked up from the confrontation of the bishop's apprentice (the pawn who'd become the new bishop) and the kings.

"Did you hear that?" Vic asked.

"Yeah, it sounded like it was coming from . . . upstairs?"

As Mabel headed up to investigate (it was her room and they didn't both need to go, after all), Vic searched his brain to try and remember if there was any helpful music cues, though he'd been tuning them out most of the time. He didn't think so, nothing more concerning than usual, at least.

A bell rang, and it took him a second to realize it was a real-life thing, not an in-his-head thing.

"Hey, guys," Dipper said confidently as he strode in. "Notice anything different about me?"

Yeah, since when does he stride?

He did a double-take as he looked around. "Wait, where's Mabel?"

"She went upstairs to check out that crash we heard."

Dipper laughed nervously. "Crash? What crash? I didn't hear any crash!"

Vic narrowed his eyes. "Dipper, what did you do?"

Soos, who had been narrowing his eyes at the ever-so-slightly-older boy, suddenly exclaimed, "Holy hot sauce! You've grown an extra millimeter!"

Mabel, unfortunately, had walked in at just that moment. "W-w-what?!" They went head to head and remeasured, and apparently, they were even now. Vic sighed in side character.

"What can I say, sis? Growth spurt."

"Yeah, mine happened first. I'm gonna be taller in the end. It's science, Dipper."

"What?"

The arguing continued a little longer and left with Dipper saying something super weird ("Something tells me I've got another growth spurt coming on right now", with weird music to go along with it) before leaving the room. All three of them watched him leave.

"It's magic, right?" Vic asked.

"Oh, yeah, dudes, it's totally magic," Soos chuckled.

Mabel grunted angrily and ran out of the room. Vic looked at the chessboard again. "Hey, Soos? What's the logical move for a king who's grieving and found out his late wife was cheating on him with a bishop from another kingdom and is now up against a wall with his enemy and the bishop's apprentice to take?"

"Huh?"

Before Vic could think of an answer, Gideon was threatening the Shack at the door and the twins were tearing through the house. He sighed reluctantly and stood up.

Seems like the plot's ready.

Do your worst.

They were fighting with . . . a flashlight? With magic growing powers, apparently. He just accepted that as fact now, though he didn't bother getting into that mess until the flashlight went flying out of their hands and at Gideon's feet. He cracked his knuckles, preparing for the confrontation, and . . .

. . . wow, Mabel could be dumb sometimes.

Gideon lowered his mason jar on the newly shrunken twins, but he was so focused on them that he completely missed Vic jumping at him and knocking him to the ground.

(If it's morally acceptable for Dipper to fight Gideon, it's fine if I do it, right?)

The music abruptly stopped to tell him that he'd gone ridiculously off-track, and the kid grunted as Vic landed on top of him, digging his elbow into the kid's side. He grunted and desperately tried to shove the older boy off, but not before Vic got a couple more hits in.

More importantly, not before Vic could get his hands on the flashlight.

"NO! MY LIGHT!"

Vic snickered as he stood up and dusted himself off. "Yep, sure. It's a good thing Stan didn't hear you say that, he'd never let you hear the end of it." He rolled Gideon along the floor like he had before, getting his baby blue suit even dirtier. "Get out of here." I don't care about your plot.

Gideon had pure fury in his eyes before he huffed and left.

Vic had to search through the grass to find the twins. When he ended up finding them, he was nothing but annoyed with Dipper. "Seriously? This was the first thing your brain went to? You need to learn some other alternatives. What would you have done if I weren't here?"

What the plot demanded, I suppose, though they don't need to know that.

He grew the twins back to full size and, deciding that while he shouldn't break it, it needed hiding, hid the flashlight in a random drawer, in a random filing cabinet, in an unused bathroom with no lights and a sign on the door saying BEWARE OF THE LEAPORD.

Why did Stan even have that?

It was getting late at that point, and Vic just needed some time to himself, so he and Soos started the drive back to Abuelita's house. He stared out of the window at nothing in particular when a light suddenly lit up in the sky and the world . . . darkened, somehow. Music darker and scarier than he'd heard in his time there before played.

Something felt . . . wrong.

"I sensed a disturbance in the Force, like a million voices cried out at once and were suddenly silenced," he quoted under his breath. It didn't do much to alleviate his growing fear that something was horribly, horribly wrong.

"What'd you say, dawg?"

"Huh? Nothing, nothing."

So why did he have such a hard time falling asleep that night?

What had he screwed up so badly?


This was the last straw.

That boy, Victor, he thought he could mock a psychic and get away with it?! Gideon would see to it that he wouldn't. The Journal had a great secret that he intended to pay out on.

It had been heard finding a picture of the boy, but he'd eventually found it and scratched out the eyes. The Journal didn't say you had to do that, but he was mad enough that it was good enough for him. The candles were lit as it said and everything was as it should've been.

"Triangulum. Entagulum. Veneforis Dominus ventium. Veneforis venetisarium!"

He clutched at his insides as it felt like they were burning a hole into him, and he cackled loudly, madly, at the pain and the thought of what it would bring to Victor. It would all be worth it in the end.

"Egassem sdrawkcab egassem sdrawkcab egassem sdrawkcab egassem sdrawkcab egassem sdrawkcab!"

The world went gray. Everything slowed to a stop and a triangle burned a hole into the sky. If Gideon thought he'd been cackling madly, the sound that echoed around him pushed all that away. He shied away from the sheer force of energy that he could feel radiating out of it.

It sprouted arms and legs until it resembled the drawing on the page and looked to either side. "Oh, oh! Gravity Falls, it is good to be back! Name's Bill Cipher. And I take it you're some kind of living ventriloquist dummy?"

He laughed that insane laugh again. "I'm just kidding, I know who you are, Gideon."

"What . . . what are you? H-how do you know my name?!"

"Oh, I know lots of things. LOTS OF THINGS . . ."

Gideon looked into his, its, eye again and saw things he wished he never had. Depth that he hadn't expected. Terrors he couldn't ignore.

"Hey, look what I can do!" He pulled teeth out of a deer's mouth and handed them to him. "Deer teeth, for you, kid!"

He laughed again, and Gideon dropped the teeth in terror, as any sane person would do. He yelped and jumped back, his eyes wide as he realized exactly what he'd gotten himself into. "You're insane!"

"Sure, I am! What's your point?"

Thankfully he put the teeth back in the animal's mouth, but the image was still ingrained in his head. Gideon couldn't get it out. It was like it was emblazoned on the backs of his eyeballs.

He pushed those thoughts to the back of his head and reasserted himself. "Listen to me, demon! I have a job for you! I need you to enter the mind of Victor Merlin and figure out how he keeps outsmarting me!"

"AHAHAHAHA, you keep getting outsmarted by—" The demon stopped mid-remark. "Who?"

"Don't play games with me! I need to know how he keeps expecting it! I NEED IT!"

Bill turned away for a second like he was thinking and apparently something he'd said had worked. "Okay, okay, you've convinced me. I'm sold! I'll help you with this, and in return, you can help me with something I've been working on. We'll work out the details later."

"Deal."

He shook hands with the monstrosity, self-satisfied. Everything was working as planned. Soon, he'd have the secrets that boy had access to, maybe even the Journal.

He barely even noticed the ominous blue fire.

"Well, time to invade his mind! Remember, reality is an illusion, the universe is a hologram, buy gold, byyyyyyyyyeeeeee—!"

And he was gone.

Gideon opened his eyes and cackled.

"It worked!"


Vic noticed something was . . . off. Basically immediately.

He'd been having a . . . dream? And . . . he still wasn't quite . . . awake . . . huh, was he lucid dreaming? He kicked off the ground to try and fly or something, the typical first thought that he was, and it . . . kind of worked? It took more effort than he was expecting. And his hands were blurry when he moved them around (and it wasn't just them being animated shapes, either—he'd gotten pretty used to that recently).

Maybe it was a dream, then. Interesting.

He refocused. There was something that had pulled him from his dream, but what was it? Surely it wasn't his . . . surroundings . . . ?

What the heck was going on here?

It looked like everything familiar in Gravity Falls had been jumbled together in black and white, with bizarre, random elements from his normal life stuck in there. Abuelita's house living room was floating outside the shape of the Mystery Shack, with various books and games that seemed familiar floating around them. Stuff from . . . real life, he guessed.

Some things flickered between real life and animated, and it was bizarrely quiet.

That is, until he heard muttering from inside the Shack's gift shop.

He drifted over that way, still taking in his strange surroundings, and did a double take. That wall wasn't supposed to be in that position, and that carpet . . . the interior was not the Shack, or Abuelita's house, or even his house. It was a jumble of all three.

This is really weird.

The muttering, now clearer, seemed to be coming from behind a door labeled Memories. When Vic pushed it open, there were tons and tons of doors representing things from his past. And, interestingly enough, it looked like the most recent ones were closest to the door.

When he opened one of them, it was from earlier that afternoon, when Mabel had decided they all needed a snack break and had fetched her "Mabel Juice", a miscellaneous purple liquid swirling with glitter and plastic dinosaurs.

"Drink up!" she had said, thrusting a cup his way.

He'd backed up. "No, no, I—I'm not thirsty."

And, much to Vic's surprise, his own thoughts from earlier echoed aloud. "Uuughh . . . it's like dubious food, but glittery. Gross."

Huh.

The muttering got significantly louder until it couldn't be classified as muttering anymore and was just somebody talking aloud. Vic spun around, and . . . well, he didn't know what he expected to see, since this was a weird enough dream already, but what he definitely wasn't expecting was the Eye of Providence in a top hat and bow tie.

"Uh . . ."

"Well, well, well, you must be the famous Victor Merlin!" the weird triangle said, glowing in time with its (his?) voice and spinning around. "I'm Bill Cipher, pleased to meet you."

Vic took a hesitant step back. "What . . . are you?"

"Not familiar with the name, huh? Well, that doesn't matter. Just know that THIS IS NOT A DREAM. Gideon sent me to find something out of your head, so if you'd help me, I can get out of here faster."

Something about this . . . isn't . . . right.

"What is it that you . . . want?"

"Ah, Gideon, that little greaseball, wants to know how you predicted his plan. And I must say, I'm intrigued as well. How did a little nobody who even I knew nothing about manage to beat someone with Sixer's knowledge?"

Vic tried to keep his mind off any memories that could help Bill, but the door of him and Dipper finding Journal 3 in the woods opened up. Unfortunately, the triangle noticed, and even though he didn't have a mouth, Vic got the impression that he would be smiling if he did.

"So Pine Tree has it? Interesting, very interesting . . . thanks for the help, kid! You can go back to dreaming now, I just need to find a couple more things."

He didn't leave, though. Instead, he tried to sabotage Bill's efforts, as he focused in on memories of playing videogames with Soos late into the night. All the other doors clicked shut and those few flew open, smacking into the triangle, who went briefly red before calming down again.

"C'mon, kid, just go back to sleep. It'll all be over soon."

He pulled back the memory of his and Mabel's improvised story over chess, again, trying to sabotage, when the musical cues from before played along with it, the dramatic music as he narrowed his eyes at the queen and the ethereal music that didn't match at all with anything.

Bill stopped from where he was floating and watched the memory play out. He looked between it and Vic, who was getting the impression that he'd made a mistake somehow, before narrowing his eyes and vanishing.

Uh . . .

Well, fudge. What did I just do?


"Bill! Did you find it yet?!" Gideon snapped.

"Hold your horses, kiddo. Soon enough. Soon enough. I have some other questions that need answered about that kid."


So . . . uh . . .

Yeah, this basically came from me realizing that most of the cool stuff that I want Vic to do happens later in the story, with Bill and various other late-game plots, but it felt wrong for season one to be less than six or seven chapters, so . . . yeah.

Hope this isn't complete garbage, and I hope it was interesting to read.

Byyyyyyeeeeee! ~RTW