(A/N: It's time to get back to the battle. Last time, Anne and Luz managed to defeat imaginary Darcy and Belos, but we still have Dipper and Mabel left to deal with Bill. This chapter and last were originally meant to be one, but I split them up when I saw how long it was becoming. Plot bunnies, whether you love 'em or hate 'em, you just can't stop 'em. On that note, some people have been pitching me some ideas they have for this story, and while it's appreciated, I already have everything planned out, as I always complete the rough draft before I start posting the actual story, so it's unlikely that things will change. Don't get me wrong, I wouldn't be against tweaking some plot elements if I really like what's pitched to me and I can somehow work it in, I'm just saying not to take it personally if I can't or don't incorporate your ideas. So, with that out of the way, let's get back to it.)

Disclaimer: I own nothing.

Chapter 10: Emotional Damage

Dipper and Mabel were experiencing déjà vu. It may have been something from seventeen years ago, but it was déjà vu all the same. Bill in his giant, monstrous form was chasing them up and down the aisles of Marcy's mind, laughing like the maniac he was. It reminded them a little too much of when they had fled from the original Bill Cipher, who had declared that he was going to "disassemble their molecules".

"Run, run, little Pines twins," the interdimensional being taunted as he stormed after them. "I'm really going to enjoy it when I catch you."

Even though she knew she shouldn't, Mabel ended up looking back to see Bill closing in on them. "Dipper, what do we do!?"

"Run faster!" he stated simply.

If she weren't already running as fast as she could, Mabel would have rolled her eyes. "I meant, shouldn't we do something imaginary-y?"

"It's a little hard to think of anything right now while we're running for our lives.

"Well, how did we beat him while we were still in Stan's mind?"

"We just, I don't know, thought of stuff to fight him with."

"Ok, so think of something that will stop him."

"You're welcome to try it yourself."

They turned the corner and suddenly found themselves at a dead-end. Skidding to a halt, they turned around as Bill cornered them, his maniacal laughter becoming more sinister.

"Looks like it's the end of the line, you two," he told them. "Time to chop down this pine tree and shoot down this star. So, who wants to be first?"

"Now would be a good time to think of something!" Mabel cried.

"I'm trying, I'm trying!" Dipper exclaimed, but was drawing a blank. "And you're still welcome to do it yourself."

Mabel closed her eyes and scrunched up her face in thought. "Come on, brain. Think, think."

Laughing, Bill made to crush them, when all of a sudden, a giant pig fell out of the sky and right on top of him. The pig blinked and looked around, as if confused as to where it was.

"Waddles!" Mabel cheered happily.

Dipper gave his sister a peculiar look with hooded eyes. "Really, Mabel? Really?"

She pointed at him accusingly. "Oh, like you could do better while thinking under pressure. At least I thought of something."

All of a sudden, the giant Waddles expanded before popping like a balloon, and a shower of bacon rained down. Bill rose up, back in his normal form, but still enormous in size. "Did you just drop your pig on me!?"

"Waddles!" Mabel cried in horror.

"Not the real Waddles," Dipper told her.

His sister fell to her knees. "But it's still traumatizing to see!"

Bill pointed at her. "If you love your pig so much, then be one yourself."

He fired a beam from his finger that, upon striking Mabel, suddenly turned her into a pig, only she still had her hair and clothes. She let out a horrified squeal at her transformation as Bill laughed.

"Mabel!" Dipper exclaimed. He then glared up at the interdimensional being. "Nobody does that to my sister. Time to take a leaf out of Rumble McSkirmish's book. Raining Fists Of Fury!"

At Dipper's command, dozens of pixelated fists began falling down from the sky and onto Bill, who covered his head and recoiled against the onslaught. "Ow, oh, oh, ow! Really, you're stealing moves now?"

"Just using everything in my arsenal," Dipper replied.

He then looked at his sister and concentrated, and Mabel turned from a pig back into a human. She blinked at her transformation before quickly patting herself down and letting out a sigh.

"Thanks, bro," she said, giving him a smile. She then sneered at Bill. "Now it's my turn to make it rain. And I say, it's raining men!"

The rainstorm of pixelated fists stopped and instead a hole opened up in the sky above Bill, and hundreds upon hundreds of duplicates of Mabel's past crushes came falling out onto the interdimensional being, completely burying him in a pile of boys.

Dipper cut his eyes at her. "Seriously?"

"Hey, at least my rainstorm is original."

"It's not original, it's a very popular song!"

The pile of boys went flying as Bill emerged. "Real cute, Shooting Star, but now it's my turn. I'm about to give you the ultimate punishment."

Dipper braced himself. "Get ready to counter, Mabel, it could be anything."

Bill's eye narrowed menacingly. "Oh, there's no countering this."

He snapped his fingers and braces suddenly appeared on Mabel's teeth. She cried out in horror and immediately began clawing at her mouth. "Nooooo! Not again! Get them off! Get them off!"

Bill laughed at her reaction. "Only someone who's had braces knows the torment she's going through by getting those back."

Dipper growled. "Enough games, Bill! We're not going to let you get away with this!"

Bill dramatically draped his arm over his head. "Oh, no, whatever will I do? You're not going to 'let me' get away with this. Funny, I remember you helplessly running away in terror just a few minutes ago."

Dipper pointed at him. "A momentary lapse in judgment due to temporary fear. I'd forgotten that the last time we faced you in the mindscape that we overpowered you. If we did it once, we can do it again."

Bill just looked bored at Dipper's speech. "Well, look at Mr. Smarty-Pants here. I bet you think you've got a really big brain, but really you just have a big head."

He snapped his finger. Suddenly, Dipper's head started expanding. He cried out and grabbed his head as it rapidly began growing in size, quickly reaching the size of the rest of his body and continuing to grow.

Bill openly laughed, clutching his stomach as he watched as Dipper's head grew so large that he could no longer hold it up and he fell over. "Looks like you've got too big of a head on your shoulders. You Pines always did have egos too big for your own good.

"You leave my brother alone!" Mabel shouted at him with a shake of her fist. It seemed she had gotten over her distress of having braces once more.

Bill turned to her, looking as amused as someone with only a giant eye for a face could. "Aww, how cute of you to stand up for your brother. I guess you owe him with how much he does for you since you so rarely return the favor."

She glared up at him. "What's that supposed to mean?"

Bill pointed at her. "You know exactly what I mean, girl twin. You may be older, but you've hardly changed from when you were a kid. You're still the same selfish, conceited, delusional little girl who thinks she's the perfect person, but you're far from it."

Mabel's glare became a somewhat uncertain look. "What are you talking about? I'm not like that."

Bill scoffed. "Please. You take advantage of your brother at every turn and constantly use and guilt trip him into getting what you want all the time. You fancy yourself a kind, generous person who does things for others, but it's really because you want it for them; you just tell yourself that it's really what they want even if it's not to justify your actions. Then you pat yourself on the back when you meddle with their lives and tell yourself that you did a good thing, but it's really all for your own satisfaction. Heck, you all but bragged that you were pure of heart when you presented yourself to that unicorn like it was some badge of honor. That's not being pure-hearted, Shooting Star, that's called narcissism."

It was obvious that his words were getting to Mabel, and she took a step back. "That's… not true."

"Mabel, don't listen to him!" Dipper told her, his head now five times the size of his body. "He's just trying to get into your head."

Bill crossed his arms, somehow looking smug. "Maybe I am, but it doesn't make what I'm saying any less true, and you both know it. That unicorn you met all those years ago may not have actually scanned your heart, but she was right, you're far from pure-hearted. You think only about what you want and what you want for others, and then you upend the lives of everyone around you to get it, then play the sad little victim when things don't go your way while condemning anyone who doesn't go along with what you want or who opposes you, all while discarding the thoughts and feelings of everyone else, even those of the person you're doing whatever you're doing for. You even guilt-tripped and coerced your pet pig, who you claim to love so much, into giving up his intelligence when he wanted to and was going to help the world, just because you preferred him as a normal, brainless pig. If that isn't selfish and conceited, then I don't know what is."

Mabel's face was slowly filling with dismay as Bill spoke, and the interdimensional being loomed over her. "Face it, Shooting Star, you're not a good person at all; you just like to think you are. In fact, the whole reason you went searching for that unicorn in the first place was to meet one, not to protect people from me. And then you wasted all that time doing 'good deeds' to make yourself look and feel good just to satisfy your own ego rather than actually worry about the fate of the world if you didn't get the unicorn hair in time. And that's only one example of how you delude yourself. The truth hurts though, doesn't it, Mabel? But the fact of the matter is, you're an awful person who only deludes herself into thinking she's good. Maybe that's the real reason you can't hold onto a boyfriend. You're selfish!"

He began laughing again, only his laughter was more malicious than humorous. Mabel was clearly despairing, dropping to her knees and clutching her head and shaking it in dismay.

"No…" she said quietly, her distress evident. "I'm not a bad person. I'm not."

Behind her, Dipper's head hand swelled to be twenty times bigger than his body, his arms and legs flailing about in the air uselessly. "Mabel, Mabel, listen to me. Don't let him get to you. It's true you make mistakes, but everyone does. Nobody is perfect; I'm certainly not. But being flawed doesn't mean you're a bad person. Not like Bill. He cares about no one and nothing but himself. He has no issue hurting people, and even finds it amusing and actively seeks to do it. Don't mix up being flawed with being bad. You're a good person, Mabel, you just make mistakes like everyone else."

Bill rolled his eye, now looking disgusted and bored. "Uch, gross, sibling encouragement. You're just biased because she's your sister. Heck, she was perfectly fine with straight up replacing you with Dippy Fresh and dooming the world as long as she got to stay in her happy reality bubble OG me created for her."

"That doesn't count!" Dipper accused. "You trapped her in there and manipulated her mind!"

"You mean I gave her exactly what she wanted and indulged her so she didn't want to leave or even think about what was really going on in the world. She wanted to force what she thought everyone else wanted on them, and to heck with what they actually thought or what happened to anyone else, just like always. That prison kept her trapped by allowing her to be her true, selfish self."

"That's not true! You were messing with her head, but she came to her senses when she realized she didn't really want to stay in some imaginary, fake world! Before that, she wasn't even fully aware of what was going on! You were–"

"That's ok, Dipper," Mabel told him as she got to her feet and looked up at Bill defiantly. "I got this."

Bill looked amused. "Oh, you got this, huh? And how exactly do you 'got this'? You gonna justify your selfishness by comparing yourself to me so you don't seem so bad? I guess a one-time murder doesn't seem so bad compared to a serial killer, does it? Is that going to be your logic loop? Well, come on then, just try and justify yourself to maintain your delusion of being a good person."

"No," Mabel stated loudly and clearly, "I'm not going to make any excuses. Maybe I have made mistakes in the past, and maybe I do still make bad decisions sometimes now, but I never chose to do bad things when I realized they were bad. Any mistakes I've made are in the past. They don't matter anymore. In fact, the only thing that does matter right now, the only thing I want right now," she pointed up at him, "is to stop you!"

Bill rolled his eye again, letting out a groan. "Uch, how very boring. You guys are no fun."

He snapped his fingers and the bottom of Mabel's sweater swallowed her lower body, tying itself off at the bottom, and her sleeves sucked up her arms as they grew in length before tying themselves up like a straightjacket. She was then tossed backwards by an unseen force, landing on top of Dipper's giant head, which was now over fifty times bigger than his body.

It seemed this last bit of weight was all the floor could take, as it suddenly broke beneath the Pines twins, and they fell screaming through the floor. Bill laughed as they disappeared from sight, turning his back to them.

"Guess that big head really brought them down," he joked to himself. "Now, I wonder how the others are doing?"

Suddenly, a giant robot hand burst up from the hole the Pines twins had fallen through. Bill turned around in surprise as a giant figure came bursting through the floor, revealing the giant mecha the Mystery Shack had been converted into during Weirdmageddon that Soos had dubbed the Shacktron.

"What the!?" Bill exclaimed.

From within the Shacktron, Dipper and Mabel, the former returned to normal and the latter free from her sweater prison, sat behind a full control panel, both of them grinning confidentially.

"You want to play mind games?" Dipper asked. "We can play mind games too."

"With giant robots!" Mabel declared. She then reached into her mouth and tore out her braces before tossing them aside. "Let's go!"

The Shacktron began storming over to Bill, who glared at it and grew in size to match it. "You want to tussle? Fine, let's tussle."

He rushed forward to meet the mecha. Sprouting several more arms on his right side, he pulled all his fists back and punched forward, only to have his fists collide with a magic barrier.

"What!?" he thundered.

Dipper smirked. "Did you really think we would imagine the Mystery Shack without the anti-Bill barrier?"

"And this time, we made it big enough to cover the Shack's feet," Mabel added.

An angry growl escaped the interdimensional being. "Anti this!"

A massive laser burst from his eye. However, it struck the barrier and was deflected. Bill kept firing though, but no avail. The Shacktron then pulled back its fist and drove it directly into Bill's eye. The interdimensional being stopped firing and stumbled back, grasping his eye.

"Ah, seriously!?" he exclaimed, "Why do you people keep going for the eye!?"

"And now for a new addition to the Mystery Shack," said Dipper. He turned to his sister. "Mabel, if you'll do the honors."

"Pressing!" she declared, and hit a button.

The roof of the Shacktron opened, and a giant memory eraser gun emerged from it and pointed at Bill. Dipper smirked and grabbed a lever. "Goodbye, Bill."

He pulled the lever and the memory eraser fired a laser that struck Bill, causing him to cry out. Dipper and Mabel high-fived as Bill was blasted, and the light from the laser consumed him.

"We did it!" Dipper declared.

"Got 'em!" Mabel agreed.

But it seemed their celebration was a little premature as Bill's mocking laughter was heard from within the light. It suddenly dispersed as he burst out of it, looking no worse for wear.

"It's cute how you thought that would work," he taunted them.

Dipper's mouth dropped open in shock and horror. "But… the memory eraser. It didn't work?"

Taking off his hat, Bill dusted it off. "Yeah, no kidding it didn't work. You may be able to imagine whatever you want here, but even that has its limits. Imagining erasing memories doesn't actually erase them." He put his hat back on. "Seriously, I would have thought you'd be smart enough to figure that out."

"Uh oh," Dipper muttered.

"As for your little shield," Bill continued, "it might protect you from me, but it doesn't protect you from not-me. Like so."

He lifted his foot and it grew to a massive size, then stomped down hard with it, causing the ground to shake. The Shacktron wobbled and then fell over onto its back. Bill then snapped his fingers, and just like out of an old-fashioned cartoon, a giant, black weight with the words 1 Million Tons written on the front with big, bold white letters dropped out of the sky and crashed down on the Shacktron.

Bill laughed as he floated over to them. "Like I said, an anti-me barrier sounds good in practice, but there are ways around it. Now, come out, come out, little Pines."

One of the Shacktron's windows shattered and a grappling hook came flying out of it. A moment later, Mabel was yanked out of it as well with Dipper hanging onto her. She wasn't holding onto an actual grappling hook though, but rather, the rope was coming out of her wrist. It detached from her though, but she fired another grappling hook from her other wrist to swing along. This process was repeated with her firing grappling hooks from her wrists to fly through the air as if she were Spider-Man.

"I am Grappling Girl!" she declared. "Or should I go with Grappling Hook Girl? Nah, Grappling Girl rolls off the tongue better."

"Mabel, focus!" Dipper shouted at her as he held on tightly.

Bill scowled after them. "Hey, get back here!" When they predictably ignored him, he once again transformed into his monstrous form. "Fine, I guess we're doing this again."

And once more, the twins were left fleeing as Bill pursued, only this time with them swinging through the air instead of running. Dipper looked back nervously to see the interdimensional being quickly closing the distance between them.

"Hurry, Mabel, he's gaining on us!" he cried.

"I'm going as fast as I can," she replied, firing grappling hook after grappling hook.

A nervous sound escaped Dipper. "Why did it seem like we beat him so much easier when he was in Stan's mind."

"Maybe because we were kids at the time, so our imaginations were much more active, but now that we're grown up, we think more logically, so it's harder to capture the same kind of magic we had as kids."

A few seconds of silence passed as they swung along before Dipper glanced up at her, looking impressed. "That's actually a pretty sound theory."

Before Mabel could respond however, they both let out pained grunts as Bill's giant hand closed around them. A sinister chuckle escaped the interdimensional being as he brought them right up to his giant eye.

"Caught you," he said in a singsong voice.

Dipper and Mabel struggled in his tight grip. "Let us go!" the former demanded.

"Oh, right, I'm just going to let you go because you tell me to. Just give it up, Pine Tree, you've lost. Now, if I recall correctly, when original me had the two of you in his grip seventeen years ago, he was trying to decide which one of you to kill. So, let's pick up from there. I believe he was at… eenie… meenie… miney…" he lifted his other hand to snap his fingers, "you!"

Suddenly, Sasha came flying in, and with a giant sword made out of pink energy, she cut off Bill's hand holding Dipper and Mabel. He let out a howl of pain, and as the Pines twins fell, the witches came flying in, with Amity and Hunter grabbing Dipper and Gus and Willow grabbing Mabel.

As Bill grasped the stump where his hand was, Luz and Anne, still in their full-powered forms, suddenly flew right in front of him. They both threw a punch, and Bill went flying backwards, crashing into the wall.

Luz and Anne looked back at the Pines twins. "You guys ok?" the latter asked.

Dipper's mouth dropped open at the sight of them, "Whoa, what happened to you guys? You look amazing!"

Mabel's eyes were shining in delight as she focused on Luz's Titan-hybrid form. "I want to fluff her fur," she whispered.

"Hey!" Bill growled angrily as he got to his feet. "I was in the middle of a killing. It's rude to interrupt." His severed hand floated over to him and he grabbed it and screwed it back on before pointing at them. "And how'd you beat those goons I created."

Anne scoffed. "You mean the Darcy and Belos wannabes? They were nothing."

Luz nodded. "Yeah, we already beat the real things. Compared to them, a couple of phony knockoffs were nothing."

At the same time, she and Anne pointed at Bill, and then they each drew half a glowing circle, the two halves connecting to make a whole that filled with energy as they held their hands up to it.

"And the same goes for you," Anne declared.

A massive beam of black and white energy swirling together erupted from the magic circle they had drawn. Bill's eyes widened before he was struck, and an explosion of light erupted, drowning out his cry. Anne and Luz continued to fire upon him until they were both satisfied before they finally stopped firing.

"Wow, that was amazing!" Mabel exclaimed.

Dipper looked up to the witch's holding onto him. "Are those forms…?"

King glanced down at him from Hunter's staff. "The final forms they took to defeat Belos and the Core? Yeah, they imagined themselves in those forms here in order to defeat the imaginary copies of them."

"It is pretty cool," Sasha lightly bragged as she looked down at her own transformed state.

Luz and Anne came in for a landing beside the others. "Stay focused, guys," the former told them. "This isn't over yet."

The smoke from the blast was beginning to clear, and once it did, Bill was revealed to be on his hands and knees, having reverted to his normal form and normal size. He looked up at the others, glaring at them furiously, then got up and pointed at them.

"You think this is over?" he demanded. "So you learned to utilize the power of the mindscape. That doesn't mean this is over."

Dipper crossed his arms. "Oh, it's over alright. Time to get you out of Marcy's head. Everyone, imagine a portal to send him out of Marcy's mind."

Together, they all focused on this one thing. And behind Bill, reality tore open to create a swirling vortex that began sucking Bill in. He resisted against it, but with everyone concentrating at once, it proved to be too much for him, and he dropped down and began clawing at the ground.

"How dare you!" he bellowed, fixing his adversaries with a glare. "You think you can beat me like this!?"

Dipper smirked. "Face it, Bill. You may be all-powerful in the real world, but in the mindscape, you're on equal ground with us."

"Curse you, Dipper Pines! You'll pay for this! You'll pay for thiiiiis!"

His threat echoed after him as he was sucked into the portal, falling further and further into its depths until he disappeared from sight. The portal then closed as the others let it drop, and all was quiet.

No one moved, no one spoke as they stared at the place Bill had been. Then they all shared a look with each other before the reality of their victory hit them, and they each let out joyful cries.

"We did it! We beat him!" Dipper declared.

Mabel placed her hands on her hips. "I knew we could. We beat him once, and now we beat him again."

"And we learned more of what's possible in the mindscape," Gus pointed out. He then flashed Luz and Anne a grin and pointed at them and winked.

Dipper's face lit up. "Hey, that's right." He then snapped his fingers and a soul patch appeared on his chin. A mirror also appeared in his hand and he grinned at his reflection before pointing at his sister victoriously. "Haha, told you I could pull off a soul patch!"

Mabel just scoffed and rolled her eyes. "Uch, debatable."

Willow glanced at Luz and Anne. "Speaking of pulling things off, we really owe the two of you."

Hunter nodded in agreement. "Yeah, you guys were the real MVPs."

"Again," Sasha commented with a smirk.

Anne bashfully rubbed the back of her head. "I guess. I was only doing this to stop Bill and save Marcy." She suddenly gasped. "Marcy!"

Remembering the girl in question, they all rushed back to where they had seen her. She was still there, still bound and hanging where they had been forced to leave her to deal with the Darcy and Belos that Bill had conjured up.

"We need to get her down from there," said Anne.

"I'm on it," Sasha declared, using her powers to create a blade of pink energy that she used to cut Marcy down from the pillar she was chained to.

The Taiwanese girl dropped to the ground, and everyone else gathered around. Anne crouched down by her side and lifted her up, cradling the back of her head.

"Marcy!" she cried down at her. "Are you ok? Answer me!"

A light groan escaped the unconscious girl and her eyes slowly cracked open. "Anne? Is that you?" She looked up at her, and confusion crossed her face. "What…? What happened to you? You're all glowy."

Tears of relief filled Anne's eyes and she hugged her friend. "Thank goodness you're alright! You had us scared to death!"

Sasha had tears in her eyes too as she knelt down beside them. "No more scaring us with getting your mind hijacked, you got it," she scolded with a smile.

"I'll… do my best," Marcy replied. She then noticed the others. "Who are they?"

Anne smiled. "Oh, they're our new friends. They helped us save you from Bill."

Luz smiled as well and waved. "Nice to meet you, Marcy. I get the feeling that you and I are going to become very good friends."

Marcy looked at each of them. "You guys defeated Bill. Wow, you're all… really dumb!"

At her words, confused looks crossed the others' faces. Anne shared a baffled look with Sasha before looking back at her friend. "Um, Marcy?"

The girl in question began chuckling, her laugh becoming louder and more maniacal. And familiar. There was no mistaking that laugh. And the grin that also spread across her face was unmistakable as well.

The next thing Anne knew, the Marcy in her arms suddenly turned into a marionette. It continued laughing though as the strings on it suddenly yanked the Marcy puppet into the air. And from up above, Bill descended down, puppeteering her.

"What do you think, Pine Tree?" he asked gleefully. "A better performance than your sister's pathetic sock puppet show, right? Huh? You remember that?"

Sasha's fists clenched. "Bill."

"My play was a masterpiece!" Mabel shouted at him.

Dipper shook his head in denial. "No, it can't be. We beat you. We cast you out of Marcy's mind."

Laughing some more, Bill carelessly tossed the Marcy's puppet aside. "Did you, Pine Tree? Did you? Just think about it. This isn't the same scenario as it was with Stan. I didn't project myself into Marcy's mind from my dimension like I did with him. I am a mind. A mind that has dominated Little Miss Green Gem. So how can you create a portal to cast me out? I'm just a mind, there's nothing to cast out. Where are you even going to cast a mind out to? Like I said, I didn't come from anywhere. Don't you get it? I've been messing with you the entire time. This whole fight me from the inside plan was doomed to begin with. You can't cast me out, not any more than you can cast Marcy out of her own head."

"Then what was all that with you getting sucked through the portal a few minutes ago?" Luz demanded.

Bill just waved this off. "Eh, just a bit of fun on my part. It was amusing letting you get all excited in thinking that you won, and it was so worth it just to see the looks on your faces. I actually didn't think I would be able to keep up the act without cracking up. Oh, but seeing your distressed expressions right now really made this whole game worthwhile. Face it, I've been playing you all since you got here. The only way I'm getting out of Marcy's mind is with a new body. Or with a memory gun, but you're fresh out of those. Too bad."

He began laughing again. The others looked on with a mixture of angry and dismayed expressions. Anne glanced away from him and looked over at the Marcy marionette lying on the ground, and her face twisted with anger as she stood up.

"Fine then," she said coldly. "If we can't expel you from Marcy's mind, then we'll simply have to destroy you."

Bill stopped laughing and cut his eye at her. "Sure, right, you'll destroy me. I'd love to see you try. But I'm afraid I've wasted enough time fooling around with you all. I've got an apocalypse to get started. So I'm afraid that this is goodbye."

He snapped his fingers. From out of the ground, dozens of hands made of shadows suddenly emerged, grabbing and clawing at everyone's feet. They extended further into arms and then tentacles, entwining around them and dragging them down.

"What is this!?" Amity cried as she struggled against the shadowy limbs. "What's happening!?"

More and more limbs came out of the ground, wrapping around the witches and humans, the hands at the ends of them latching onto them. These shadow limbs then began sinking back into the ground, bringing their captives with them.

"Guys, what's going on!?" Anne exclaimed as she sank down up to her waist.

"Enjoy your friend's subconscious," Bill told them. "That's where you'll be spending the rest of forever. As for me, I've got a body to gain and a multiverse to conquer."

Then, laughing like the madman he was, he flew off into the depths of Marcy's mind, leaving the others to their fates.

(A/N: Well, that's not good. Just after a drastic battle, it seems that Bill was just messing with them the whole time. So much for the plan to expel him from Marcy's mind, because that doesn't seem to be possible. I used this chapter as an opportunity to address one of the major problems lots of people, myself included, had with Mabel throughout the series that I feel was never addressed. So I acknowledged it and tried to turn it into character development for her after Bill tried to exploit it. It made for some growth for Mabel. But now it looks like Bill is done playing games and is getting down to business, and our heroes are now at risk of being dragged down into Marcy's subconsciousness. How are they going to get out of this one? And even if they do, now that their plan is a bust, what are they going to do to stop Bill? Stay tuned for more to find out.)