delta✦rune

####

Bill had been in the floor room playing on Soos's electric piano all evening, trying to remember a song that wasn't made to be played on human keyboards or heard by human ears.

That was his story if anyone asked him what he was doing by himself, anyway. More truthfully, he didn't want to be around Soos after that little talk in the car about involuntary matricide (momslaughter?), and after letting slip that Bill knew less about this phenomenon with his own face plastered all over it than Ford did, he didn't want to see Ford either. It felt like being convinced the backs of dollars were blank all over again.

He had to think of some way to get the intellectual upper hand again. Ford may see Bill as a con artist, manipulator, abuser, monster, person who could be but wasn't good, etc., and that was all fine; but he'd be damned again before he let Ford think he was ignorant. He needed something fresh to impress him. What was Ford into these days? He'd spent the year sailing with Stan, Bill hadn't heard nearly enough about that yet. He'd made a stop in Atlantis, maybe Bill could drop a little ancient lore on him...

And thus was how he spent his evening while the household nerds went out to anime night and came back, and the household slowly went to sleep.

All except Bill, headphones on, playing piano in the dark.

####

It was nearly midnight when Waddles waddled into the floor room, carefully easing down the stairs. Bill glanced at him, concluded he probably wasn't looking for a turn on the piano, and ignored him. Waddles trotted to the windows and put his front hooves on the windowsill, staring out into the night.

Bill nearly forgot Waddles was there until he attempted to jump up onto the bench with him. Bill toppled off with a yelp, bench coming with him. "Hey! If you want a turn, ask nicely!"

Not the least bit ashamed of his inconsiderate actions, Waddles planted his front feet on Bill's abdomen, squealing in agitation.

"Ow. Get off." Bill shoved him away, which at Waddle's one-year-old weight was getting increasingly difficult. He pulled off his headphones. "What? What do you want?"

Waddles squealed.

"Yeah, I got that the first time. Can't you try charades or something?"

Waddles galloped to the window and propped himself up to see out again, still squealing.

Bill trudged up and looked out into the dark. Oh.

At first, he assumed he was looking at the legs of Baba Yaga's house, before realizing they were too short. Baby Yaga?

Bill looked up.

To his surprise, there wasn't a house atop the giant chicken legs, but rather a giant chicken. Its golden-red feathers were each edged in black, making it look like it was wearing lead chain mail. The waxing moonlight glinted off its eyes as it stared down at them with both the tyrannical majesty and dinosaur stupidity of a T-rex.

"Ah," Bill said. "Yeah. That would do it."

The giant chicken slowly bent down to peer in the window, giving Bill only a passing glance as it inspected Waddles. He pressed his snout flat to the window, inches away from the tip of the massive bird's beak.

Apparently satisfied with its inspection, the bird straightened, puffed out its chest, and slowly retreated into the dark, its footsteps oddly delicate for how massive its claws were. It vanished between the pine trees.

"Well?" Bill asked. "Did you impress her?"

Waddles ran to the door outside and leaned his hooves on it, giving Bill a pleading look.

"Sorry, pal. But if you can't open the door, then we're both out of luck."

Waddles kept staring at him hopefully until Bill finally left the window. Show was over. He had tunes to bang out.

He'd only been back at the keyboard a couple minutes before the weight of Waddles's stare grew unbearable. He sighed harshly, turning toward the pig again. "What!"

Waddles was still sitting in front of the window. Now that he had Bill's attention, he stood to lean on the glass again.

"Why should I do you a favor?" Bill asked. "What did you do for me when I was locked in the bathroom, huh? I don't owe you a thing!"

Waddles made distressed little oinks.

"I'm not letting you out," Bill said. "If there's anything out there, it'll still be there in the morning."

Waddles gave him the saddest eyes a pig had ever given.

"I can't work like this." Bill turned off the keyboard. He was leaving. He really should be sleeping so he could work on repairing the portal, anyway.

The last he saw of Waddles, he was still staring out into the night.

####

Bill went to bed; he slept; he dreamed; he sleepwalked.

He was pulling on his hoodie so he could use its eye when another eye, the zodiac blanket on Dipper's bed, caught Mabel creeping out of her own bed. Bill froze. A moment later, the blanket serving as his bedroom door spied her heading down the hall.

He had to wait for her to return before he left. He couldn't risk the Pines catching on to his sleepwalking trick yet.

A few minutes later, she passed by the curtain again. He waited for the kids' door to shut before he crept out himself.

He was halfway down the stairs when the eye in the kids' room shifted and Dipper groggily said, "Mabel?" Bill froze again. "What're you doing up?"

"Waddles isn't in bed," Mabel said, pointing at the empty pet bed on the floor. "I found him pacing downstairs. I think something's bothering him."

"Pigs don't pace, Mabel."

"Well, that's what he was doing! What if something's wrong?"

Dipper grumbled, but said, "Is he sick or hurt?"

"I don't think so."

"Then whatever it is, it can wait til morning."

"I guess." Mabel grudgingly slid back into bed. "It's gonna bug me all night, though."

Bill quietly sighed and changed his plans for the night.

####

As soon as Bill reached the first floor, Waddles stampeded up to him, oinking for his attention.

"Shhh! Don't wake the whole house, I can't help you if there are witnesses."

Waddles took off down the hall to the floor room, and had to double back to glare balefully at Bill when he instead went through the living room. Eventually, Waddles followed him into the gift shop, and immediately ran to sit by the exit door.

So optimistic. But Bill had decided to help Waddles; that didn't mean he was letting Waddles out.

From the ladder, through the roof lids, Bill climbed up to the roof. Waddles watched him warily until he was out of sight. When Bill jumped lightly from the roof down to the gift shop porch, Waddles immediately rushed back to the door, wiggling in excitement and oinking his little heart out.

Bill shushed him again. "Do you want me to get caught? Don't make a scene! And don't tell anyone I'm out here or you're dead meat, bacon bits." He hopped off the porch into the weeds, leaving Waddles behind at the door as he circled the shack.

It wasn't hard to identify the path that the giant chicken had taken into the woods. Bill followed the shadowy trail of snapped branches away from the shack. It took about a minute for him to find what he was looking for: a giant egg, perfectly spherical, cradled in a pile of downed underbrush. It was about the size of a basketball and gleamed like a pearl. It was still hot when Bill picked it up.

By the time he emerged from the treeline, Waddles was back in the floor room again, anxiously watching through the window. Bill held the egg up. "Congrats. You must have impressed her."

Waddles completely lost his little mind.

At least if Waddles's squealing woke anyone now, they'd be distracted watching him run circles in the floor room while Bill was slipping in through the gift shop. He enchanted the egg to near weightlessness, bounced it up to the roof like a beach ball, and climbed the shack's log walls to join it.

He could hand this off to Waddles and still have the rest of the night to work on the portal. He'd just about finished taking inventory of what pieces still remained, maybe tonight he could start a list of the replacement parts he needed—

He stopped dead in his tracks.

He'd climbed high enough to see the top of the roof hangout spot. There was something written on the roof, letters painted large enough to completely cover the surface. It was in invisible ink. The letters were the in the most common Dimension 0 pidgin cipher. The message read:

DEAR 2012 BILL: DON'T DO WEIRDMAGEDDON! YOU'LL LOSE AND DIE AND GET REINARCA REINCARNATED AS A HUMAN AND BE MISERABLE! PLUS IT'S EVIL! YOU CAN DO BETTER! LOVE, 2013 MABEL

Bill stared at the message.

Huh.

####

Getting the egg into the living room was difficult with Waddles pressed to Bill's hip like he planned to knock him over if he didn't receive his delivery soon. Bill shoved his snout. "Back off. You weigh as much as a second grader, do you want to crush your crunchy little bundle of joy?"

Waddles did not back off. He gazed up at the egg with the deepest yearning.

"Are you sure you're ready for fatherhood?" Bill asked. "No offense, but you've never struck me as a terribly responsible guy. And you've got a good thing going with Mabel, are you sure you want to hand her a baby replacement that's ten times more adorable than you've ever been?" Bill hefted the egg in one hand. "It's not too late to abort this thing and make a very interesting omelet!"

With an authoritative but genial voice befitting a respected science communicator, Waddles said, "I'm prepared to tackle this new phase of my life. And Mabel's and my relationship is secure; I feel confident that we will maintain a strong partnership while raising this new life together."

Bill's jaw dropped. "Since when can you speak English?!"

Waddles chortled good-naturedly. "Remember—you're still dreaming."

"Oh! Right. Almost forgot." Bill pulled off his hood and opened his eyes. "Speak!"

Waddles snorted. That was more like it.

Well, if Waddles was so determined to throw the next eighteen pig-years of his life away, who was Bill to talk sense into him. "Don't say I didn't warn you!"

He helped Waddles pull all the cushions off the living room chairs to make a nest, and set the egg in the middle on a pile of Abuelita's lace doilies.

Then he finally headed downstairs to get to work on the portal.

####

A couple of times, he caught himself staring at the dead portal's frame, like he expected to see himself rip it open from the other side and fly through to tell his relieved human parody that Mabel's message had retconned him out of existence and the real Bill Cipher would take things from here.

The problem with dimensions with branching timelines was that anything could happen, but not everything did happen. The portal remained cold and still.

Bill sighed and got back to work.

####

Stan woke before Ford. Right, Ford had been out last night at the Northwest place, wildly partying. (Watching Japanese cartoons.) Stan used the bathroom, made coffee, and went into the living room to watch TV.

Where he discovered none of the seats had cushions.

"Ugh, that darn pig got in the living room last night." He planted a fist on his hip. Waddles, all bright-eyed and curly tailed, looked entirely too pleased with himself. "What a mess. Pulled out all the cushions and laid an egg, and right in front of the TV, too!" He trudged upstairs to get Mabel, grumbling under his breath.

He came back downstairs. "Laid an egg?"

####

Within ten minutes, the Pineses, Ramirezes, and Ramirez-to-be were all crowded around the cushion nest. Waddles looked between their faces, confused by all the attention but nonetheless honored to have it. He was laying next to the egg, slightly curled around it.

"But Waddles can't lay an egg," Mabel said, "he's a boy pig!"

Dipper said, "Mabel, that's the least of the reasons he can't lay an egg."

"Hold on," Soos said. "Maybe we should make sure he's a boy pig. I'll text Tate." He pulled out his phone, crouched behind Waddles—"Nobody look for a second, okay?"—and gingerly lifted Waddles's tail to snap a picture of his butt. Waddles twisted around to snort in confusion at Soos, but he concluded he probably didn't pose a threat to the egg.

Dipper asked, "Grunkle Ford, have you ever seen anything like this before?"

"Never," Ford said. He'd hastily retrieved his journal and was sketching Waddles on his nest. "I've never even heard rumors about egg-laying pigs. And this is the largest hard-shelled egg I've ever seen in this dimension."

"Good news, dudes," Soos said. "Old Man McGucket says Waddles is a boy." He lowered his phone. "So how did he lay an egg..."

Dipper said, "You guys remember girl pigs don't lay eggs either, right?"

Bill oozed downstairs. He glimpsed the living room crowd on his way to the kitchen. "Hey, humans! What's everyone standing around for? Martians drop a monolith in front of the TV?"

Ford said, "Waddles laid an egg."

Bill clapped a hand over his mouth to keep from laughing. (He sort of missed and covered his nose and eyes too.) On the one hand, Ford being wrong about something was hilarious; on the other hand, Bill was dying to correct him. But he couldn't do that without admitting he'd been outside. He managed to restrain himself to a "Huh!"

Better feign interest. He sauntered into the living room. "Mabel, you need to get your pig fixed."

"He is fixed," she protested. A beat, and then she dragged her hands down her face. "So how did he lay an egg?!"

"Again," Dipper said, "not the primary reason this should be impossible."

He ought to have known better than to say anything should be impossible in front of Bill. "Oh, yeah?" Bill asked. "I can't think of any other relevant reasons!"

Dipper considered ignoring the comment and just letting Bill look stupid. He could smell the trap being laid. He caved. "Pigs are mammals. Mammals can't lay—"

"Platypus."

Bill grinned at Dipper's scowl. Okay, that was enough feigning interest. He returned to the kitchen. "So! Who wants breakfast! Bacon? Eggs? Bacon eggs?"

"Bill!" Mabel shouted. "Be nice to the baby!"

"Sorry, sorry!"

Soos ventured, "Maybe the dad is a plaidypus?"

"Or mom," Melody said. "Maybe Waddles wasn't the one who laid it."

"Oh, good point."

Reproachfully, Mabel asked Waddles, "Did you cheat on Gompers?"

Waddles gazed at her serenely.

"It can't be from a plaidypus," Ford said, "they lay plaid eggs."

Relieved, Mabel said, "So it could still be Gompers's!"

"We won't know for sure until we've done a DNA test."

Seeing that now even Ford was embracing this nonsense, Dipper threw up his hands and went to get breakfast as well.

"This is fascinating," Ford said. "Waddles looks the same as he did yesterday, no visible change in his mass—did the egg form via magic? I have some equipment I can use to run tests on it—"

"No!" Mabel flung herself protectively over the egg. "Nobody's experimenting on Waddles's baby!"

"I won't hurt it," Ford insisted, pouting. "Just, do a few scans... pierce the shell to get some fluid samples..."

"Nooo way."

"What about a trade?" Ford asked. "I can give you an equivalent amount of chicken eggs. I'd say the volume of this egg is about the same as the volume of... 160 and 1/3 chicken eggs? I'll round it up to 161!"

"Do any of those eggs have Waddle's baby in them?"

"Well. No."

"Then no."

Ford's shoulders drooped sadly. "Okay."

Bill was surprised at just how disappointed he was, too. He hadn't heard Ford get this excited all summer. Heck, he wasn't sure whether he'd seen Ford this excited over anything since the portal test in '82. DD&MD came close, but not quite. He hadn't realized just how much he'd missed hearing his pet nerd nerding out. It felt like some giant Rube Goldberg machine with half its components knocked akimbo was finally clicking back into alignment. It was nice.

With no immediate answers and no pressing actions needing to be taken over the egg, the group dispersed. Soos and Melody had to open the Mystery Shack, and Stan and Abuelita had important old people business to attend to. Only the kids and Ford remained behind.

"But this is great," Dipper said. "This is something we can investigate!" At Mabel's glare, he quick added, "I don't mean bothering the egg. We can do research! We can ask if anyone in town has heard stories about this kind of thing, or go look for old newspaper articles in the library about pigs laying eggs..."

"That's a fantastic idea, Dipper," Ford said. "I ought to dig out my old college cryptozoology textbooks to see if they mention any similar phenomena I've forgotten."

"Hey, kids!"

The three humans, with various levels of wariness, turned toward Bill. He was leaning in the doorway with a plateful of blue pancakes, grinning mischievously. "I couldn't help but overhear that you're trying to find out where that egg came from!"

"Yeah," Dipper said, "and Ford and I are going to investigate it. By ourselves. Without help."

"Isn't that cute!" Bill dug into his pancakes. "You know," he said, mouth full, "I could save you a library trip. I already know where the egg's from."

Mabel's face lit up, but Dipper said firmly, "No, thanks. We've got it handled. Isn't that right, Grunkle Ford?"

Ford nodded, but Bill was sure he hesitated for a second.

The offer wasn't even for Dipper. Did Bill have to talk him into it just so he could tell everybody else? "Seems to me like a big waste of time, spending what could be years trying to solve a mystery that's already been solved! As long as you're still reinventing the wheel, you'll never get your little paranormal investigator career rolling! Why turn down a free answer just to go looking for the same info somewhere else?"

This time, Ford's conflict was plainly visible on his face, and Mabel looked like the effort of holding in her questions was killing her. But Dipper's face didn't soften. "Because I don't want it from you."

"Okay! Fine! Have it your way!" Bill shrugged. "If you want to waste your precious summer, that's your business. You kids have fun looking for whatever gave the egg to Waddles." He graced Dipper with a fleeting wicked smirk before biting a forkful of pancakes.

"Gave it to Waddles?" Ford echoed.

Mabel said, "Aww, Waddles, you didn't lay this egg yourself?" He gazed at her face, his eyes conveying inscrutable piggy thoughts.

Dipper let out a growl of annoyance. "Could you stop spoiling everything for one day?!"

Bill feigned innocence, batting his lashes in faux confusion.

"YES, we GET IT! You know everything! You've been around for a trillion years, it's not that hard! But you know what? When you ruin everyone else's fun just to remind us all how smart you are, again, you don't look cool, man. You just look like a... an insecure jerk."

The fake innocent act didn't last long. Bill's eyes shot wide open. The corners of his mouth twitched with the effort of preventing them from turning downward into a scowl. He turned his stunned stare on Mabel, looking for a little sympathy.

She sucked her lips into her mouth and avoided eye contact. Ouch. Et tu, Brute?

He huffed dismissively, face flushing. "Wow. Okay! You want to talk about insecure? Nobody else here has a problem with getting blessed with the wisdom of the multiverse for free—but Mr. Honors Roll just hates being reminded he isn't the smartest guy in the room, doesn't he?"

"Bill..." Ford said warningly.

"What!" Bill said. "What! Am I wrong? He'd rather be ignorant than let me tell him anything. He doesn't want knowledge, he just wants the credit of discovering—"

"For goodness's sake, Bill, you're trying to tear down a child! A child who happens to be my great nephew," snapped Ford. "Besides, he's right about you."

"He's r—?!" Bill laughed in disbelief, face going even redder. "As if you aren't dying to know what I know! Show of hands, who would love to hear me explain where the pig's egg came from?"

Ford tucked his hands behind his back. Mabel stuffed hers in her skirt pockets.

Bill gave them both a withering look. "There's a timeline where you cowards raise your hands and I can see it."

"Just drop it, would you?" Dipper spread his hands wide. "You're competing with a 13-year-old. That's pretty lame."

Bill pointedly looked him up and down, and sneered. "I don't see any competition," he said. "1803."

"Don't you—!" Dipper lunged at Bill, reaching to grab his collar.

Laughing, Bill spun out of the way on one foot—nice try, you little wanna-be judoka—and turned his side toward Dipper, facing him like a fencer, an arm extended to parry any more attempts to grapple him.

"Whoa, whoa, whoa!" Mabel darted between them. She grabbed their shoulders. It was a grip that gently but firmly announced that she could do far worse to either of them than they could do to each other. "Guys. Fellas. Buddies. Bro-bro and Bill-Bill. Knock it off. You're both smart and you're both acting super stupid."

Dipper glared at Bill, but backed off, tugging out of Mabel's grip. "Come on," he muttered. "Let's go find out where that egg came from. Without his help."

Ford patted Dipper's shoulder as he passed, cast one last disapproving look at Bill, and followed Dipper out of the shack.

Bill huffed. "Fine! Have fun wasting time!" He glowered imperiously after them until the door shut.

And then he sat on the floor, knees to his chest, eyes to his knees, hands laced on the back of his burning neck. He groaned.

Mabel dropped down onto a cushion and began drumming on Waddles's side. After a moment, she warily said, "Bill? What is it."

Bill mumbled, "I looked like a loser in front of Sixer, didn't I."

"Mmm..." Mabel grimaced. "Well..."

Bill groaned again in irritation. "Your brother started it! You saw him! I was just talking about Waddles's egg when he flew off the handle!"

"Okay, but he was so excited to figure out the egg by himself and you were trying to ruin it, of course he was upset."

"I wasn't trying to ruin anything! I wasn't even thinking about the kid's dumb wild goose egg hunt! I just wanted to explain where the egg came from and he got offended."

"Then you could have just said you didn't think about his feelings and apologized and everything would've been fine!"

"He'd already gone off on me by then, was I supposed to just not retaliate?" Bill demanded. "Besides, I can't just admit I didn't think of something in front of the guy I spent years convincing I'm all-knowing."

"Yeah you can," Mabel said. "And think of this: if Dipper had gone and insulted you and everything, and then you acted all nice and backed off instead, he would have looked like the jerk for getting mad. But instead you proved him right."

Bill considered that. He was silent for a long moment. "Well. Maybe if he didn't try to make me look stupid in front of Sixer," he muttered. "I can't just... I don't know." He flopped onto his side, still curled in a ball.

Mabel considered whether Bill's distress was worthy of a little sympathy, then decided he'd suffered enough and gently patted his head. "Why do you have to pick on Dipper all the time?"

"I wasn't picking on him," Bill insisted, choosing to ignore all the other times he had definitely been picking on Dipper. "Really! I was just trying to show off a tiny bit of my infinite wisdom for Sixer, like how we used to do! But your brother just had to butt in. Where does he get off getting mad about a conversation that has nothing to do with him!"

"You're the one that was butting in on our conversation," Mabel pointed out.

"I was not."

"We both know you were. And so does Waddles."

Bill shot Waddles a dirty look. This was the thanks he got for rescuing his egg. "Yeah, well. Whatever." He sat up with a sigh, picked up his pancake plate, and held it out to Mabel. "Here. Made the brown one for you."

She surveyed his plate in disappointment. "How come mine isn't blue, too?"

"The blue is from cough syrup."

"Oh." She picked up her pancake. "Thanks!"

"Yours is chocolate."

"Awesome." She folded it in half like a New Yorker eating a pizza. "You weren't trying to be a bad guy. You just have to remember to be considerate of other people's feelings."

"I did," Bill said. "I considered what a big nerd Ford is and decided he'd love to hear about the egg's origins"—he realized how that might sound to Mabel, who was already unjustly suspicious of his intentions around Ford, and quickly added—"and that you would want to know what Waddles has been doing—"

"But you didn't consider Dipper's feelings."

Of course not, he didn't care about Dipper. "Oh, what, so am I supposed to manage the feelings of everyone in the world?"

"Not everyone," Mabel said. "Just everyone you know and everyone they know who might ever possibly be affected by your actions!" At Bill's dubious look, she said, "Maybe you can start with considering the feelings of the people in the room."

Bill sighed loudly. "Fine, sure, I guess I can do that." It wasn't like monitoring and manipulating multiple other people's emotions at once was hard. That was a basic skill for any cult leader. The hard part was forcing himself to care about the feelings of anyone he didn't want in his cult.

"Sooo," Mabel said. "Since Dipper isn't in the room..." She gave Bill a meaningful look.

He considered turning her down for her treachery earlier. "If anyone finds out you know, you are telling them that you asked me where the egg came from. I'm not getting in trouble just because you're a curious cat."

"That's fair," Mabel said. "Now, spill!"

"Giant chicken dropped it down the chimney," Bill said. "Like the mythical stork bring a baby."

"Whoa. Do all piglets come from the chicken stork?"

"Only the special ones."

"Waddles, you're having a special baby!"

Waddles snorted serenely.

"Is it a piglet?" Mabel asked. "It is, right?"

Bill hesitated. "Do you want me to ruin the surprise?"

"No!"

Bill pantomimed locking an invisible key sticking out of his forehead. "I won't spoil it." (He'd picked up that gesture from Keyhole, he remembered unbidden. Man, he really had been away from home too long—he was even starting to miss Keyhole.) "Okay, you asked me one, I get to ask you one. What's up with the warning on the roof?"

Mabel perked up. "You saw it?"

"Sure, I was stargazing through the roof last night! I read it from underneath, backwards and upside-down!"

"And in secret code?"

"The code's only secret to humans! In the Nightmare Realm it's the lingua franca! Where'd you learn it, huh?"

Coolly—but clearly quite proud of herself—Mabel said, "Dipper's got a copy in his journal. He got it from Grunkle Ford."

Yikes. And Bill had been using that cipher to hide taunting messages in Dipper's journal all summer. He'd have to find a fresh code. "Clever, star girl."

She beamed. "So I thought, you could see forever into the future when you were a triangle, right? And you were spying on us like crazy all summer, so... maybe leaving a warning would've stopped Weirdmageddon completely. Especially a secret cody message! An invisible secret cody message! From the future! From your enemy! That's like a super major deluxe bad omen, right?

"Ultra super major deluxe." It really was clever. Too bad timelines didn't work like that. He took another bite from his pancakes to delay delivering the bad news. "I hate to break it to you, kid—but me being here now means I didn't see your warning. You can influence the past, but you can't change it. Not without pulling out that time tape you kids took from me at the start of summer." Hint, hint.

"I already tried that," Mabel grumbled.

Bill almost choked on his pancake. "You what? You did not! Why didn't I hear about this?"

"Because I kind of didn't tell anybody," Mabel said. "Except Waddles."

Bill glared at his contented little face. He was never doing that pig a favor again. "When was this!"

"After we went to the mall with Dipper and Grunkle Stan. I thought maybe I could warn myself not to trust you, and then Weirdmageddon wouldn't happen and you wouldn't be here this summer." (Oh, so she'd been mad mad at him, huh.)

"So what happened? I don't remember any future yous popping up last summer."

"I was only there for like a minute. And then this whole time SWAT team showed up and they time arrested me, and I spent like ten hours in a time interrogation room... they assigned me a time lawyer..." Mabel sighed heavily. "it was a whole thing."

And she hadn't mentioned this? Granted, they hadn't been on speaking terms at the time, but. "Oh, yeah. Time Baby's set up a pretty heavy spaciotemporal perimeter around Weirdmageddon. He thinks I might return to the scene of the crime. Sorry, kid."

"Yeah, well, Time Baby thinks you might've sent me instead. Since I'm the one that let you in to Gravity Falls."

Bill cringed. "Oh. Huh."

"So now I'm out on time bail and I'm legally not allowed to leave the time county until my time trial date."

"You worried about it?"

"Naaah. Apparently the trial's scheduled for like, four years ago. My lawyer says we won. Or, will win?"

"Will did won," Bill said. "Good. Sounds like you've got a competent lawyer." Unlike the big pink idiot who'd advised him to plea insanity.

The Theraprism was still looking for Bill, wasn't it? And Time Baby knew and was helping, that was the whole reason he'd set up a perimeter around Weirdmageddon in the first place. Bill's stomach lurched. "You... didn't mention that I'm here, did you?"

Mabel laughed in disbelief. "No? There's no way I'd convince the time judge I'm not your accomplice if they knew you're living with us. Like Grunkle Stan says: if you see a cop, shut your yap."

"Good," Bill said, relieved. "Yeah, that's—that's the reason I was asking. Nothing good can come to you if people think you're hanging out with me."

What was Bill offering that made it worth being his friend? He hated how quickly that question had popped back into his mind. What set his real pals apart from his pawns? If Mabel were just a disposable tool, would anything about this conversation be different? She wasn't just a tool, right? She really was his friend, wasn't she? 

It wasn't her commitment he doubted—her heart was an open guest book with "SIGN HERE" written in big glitter pen bubble letters. He doubted his own commitment. And doubt like that felt like realizing the ground he was standing on was only an inch thick, and beneath it was nothing but a dark void.

Change the topic. "Why did you try to warn me? You know that even if I'd seen it, I might've just revised my plan so I wouldn't lose and kept going, right?"

"Maybe," Mabel conceded. "But maybe you'd wonder why I cared enough to warn you, get to know me, and make friends even faster. Without destroying the town and torturing my family."

Wouldn't that be a beautiful reality. He shut his eyes and focused on it. He liked Mabel, right? He'd always liked Mabel, right? He told himself he had. He told himself she was his friend.

"Sure," he said. "Anything's possible. Maybe I would have."

####

(Show of hands who caught the Mothra movie reference? I know some of y'all have been following me since the Godzilla days.

ngl I forgot tbob had a baba yaga/baby yaga joke when I made one. pretend it's an intentional reference. 

This is one of my favorite plot arcs so far. It feels very Gravity Falls to me. Let me know what you think!! I also wanna know what y'all think is in that egg, because I feel like it's pretty easy to guess, but I still don't wanna give it away until the characters figure it out.

Mabel fell out of a tree and landed on her back. "Dang!" She pushed herself to her feet with a grunt and glared up at the tree and the rope ladder leading to the top. The obstacle course behind the Corduroy cabin was a lot less uniform and predictable than the practice obstacles at the gym where she was taking parkour. It was a lot less safe, too.

That wasn't going to stop her from climbing all the way up, of course.

On her fifth try, she finally climbed the pine tree as high as she could get before the slender trunk threatened to sway too much to hold her weight. "Yeah!" She let go with one hand to pump a fist in the air. "Woohoo! I'm queen of the wo—"

Twenty feet away, a bolt of green lightning struck between the trees. She squealed and wrapped both arms around the trunk. Maybe she should climb down.

But then again, hadn't Wendy said the lightning was harmless?

Another bolt crashed down farther away, followed by another. No, Mabel realized—not crashed down. Crashed up. There was something between the trees, off in the distance, that was both shooting off electricity and drawing it down.

Far off, floating between the pines, Mabel spied several glowing colored orbs.

She spent a couple of minutes clinging to the tree, squinting at the distant dancing lights.

"Mabel!" Dipper's voice was thin and far away. "Are you up there?"

"No! Mabel's been abducted by aliens! This is, umm... Elijah's spirit!"

"It's not Passover."

"So?! I visit earth the rest of the year! Maybe I'm here to debate smart stuff with rabbis, you don't know."

"Okay, well. When the aliens bring Mabel back, tell her that Marcus is up for sparring."

"Oooh! I'll be right d—I mean, the aliens will beam her right down!"

She glanced one last time at the distant glowing balls, memorizing their position in the trees; and then carefully climbed down.

####

Dipper yelped as Marcus swung an arm across his chest and knocked him backward over Marcus's extended leg. Rather than falling to the ground, he crashed awkwardly onto the flannel-upholstered couch. "Owww..."

"Uh oh." Wendy looked at a cushion seam that had popped open when Dipper landed. "Way to go, doofus, you ripped the couch again."

"My bad," Marcus said, voice much softer than his size or strength—or father—would suggest.

Wendy sighed loudly. "It's cool, I've got it." She fished out a stapler from behind the couch, which was kept there for this exact purpose, and began stapling the rip shut. So far, there had been a lot less property damage than there was when Marcus "sparred" by chasing their brothers around the house, so if all Wendy had to do was staple the couch again she was calling this a success.

"I forgot you were the big one," Dipper groaned, flopping off the couch and onto the floor. "This was a mistake."

Marcus suppressed a small smile.

"Nah, he's a gentle giant," Wendy said, ruffling Marcus's shaggy hair. ("Am not.") "You can take him!"

Marcus had shot up over the past year. Even though he was only 14, he had his father's build, a couple of inches on Wendy, and an enviable fifty scraggly mustache hairs. Dipper looked up at him dubiously. 

"It's not about how strong you are," Marcus said, "it's knowing how to focus your strength all on the edge of your body that hits your opponent. Like a..." He made a demonstrative karate chopping motion with the side of a flat palm. "Like an axe."

"Yep, yeah," Dipper sighed. "It's remembering how to focus it that I'm having trouble with. And... where to focus it."

Mabel, who had been studying the slight pattern differences between the Corduroys' flannel furniture and their flannel wallpaper, said, "I'll go next!" She bounced to her feet and gave Marcus a formal bow.

"Oh. Um, you sure?" Marcus glanced hopefully at Dipper again.

Mabel rolled her eyes. (There were a couple guys in their home dojo like this.) "What's the matter! Scared to fight a girl?"

"Yeah," Marcus admitted.

Wendy burst out laughing at Mabel's surprised look. "When he can't find a sparring partner, sometimes he begs me to help him practice. And I kick his butt!"

"Not always," Marcus said, slowly reddening.

"Most of the time!"

Dipper said, "Are you taking a martial art too, Wendy?"

"Nnnope. That's all crazy lumberjack apocalypse training."

"Don't worry," Mabel said, "I'll try to go easy on you."

Dipper asked, "Do you know how to go easy?"

"Nope! I'm like a killer tiger! Rawr!" She grinned cheekily. "But I'll try."

Marcus swallowed hard.

Wendy flopped back on the couch with a sigh. It was nice having someone else entertain one of her bros for a while. Days like these when everyone was stuck indoors were the worst; if it wasn't Marcus looking for someone to help him with karate practice, then it was Kevin and Gus fighting over the TV (or the football, or the bathroom), or it was Dad needing her help to grab something in the back of a cabinet he wasn't nimble enough to reach, or it was a loud crash she needed to investigate to make sure no one had broken a bone, or something one of the guys had accidentally smashed that was in need of repairs, or or or...

Being at home was exhausting. Wendy wondered, not for the first time, how her mother had kept up with the household, because Wendy sure hadn't helped out like this before her disappearance.

Maybe her mother hadn't kept up.

"Marcus is pretty good," Dipper said. While Wendy had been zoned out thinking about property damage, Mabel had won a match against Marcus and Dipper had lost another one (although he'd put up a better fight this time), and Mabel was up again. He put his hat back on as he said, "Most people can't dodge Mabel this long."

Since the start of this match, he'd managed to evade two attempts to trip him—which was lucky for him, because as top-heavy as he was, once Mabel got him on the ground there was no way he was getting back up. He hadn't managed to land a kick or punch on Mabel either, the way she dodged him—but that was no surprise, the way she moved Wendy doubted anybody could hit her.

"He's coming along," Wendy said proudly. "It's funny. He used to be, like, the least sporty one in the family." Which was a relative measure—he could still blow away anyone else in his grade at climbing and/or felling trees—but it was enough to stand out in their household.

"Really?"

"Oh yeah. Marky's the sensitive one."

"Don't say it like that," Marcus whined.

He finally managed to get a kick to connect with Mabel, knocking her down; but seeing an opportunity, with a furious roar, she swept his other leg out from under him. He tumbled backwards on a coffee table, breaking it in half, knocking off a thrice-repaired leg, and bringing down an additional floor lamp with his flailing.

Mabel scrabbled on top of him, found she couldn't get him in a proper headlock, and twisted an arm to control him instead. "Pow! You're down." Marcus weakly tapped her elbow in surrender.

Wendy laughed so hard she almost slid off the couch. "Hey, Marcus! That's the first board you've managed to break in half! Way to go!"

He groaned, watching the wooden ceiling beams spin over his head, and trying to figure out if he had a concussion or had just fallen in love.

From the kitchen, where their dad was working on dinner, he called, "Somebody clean that up!" without ducking out to see what the latest damage was.

"Ooh." Wendy winced, looking at the destroyed table and bent lamp; then glanced out the window to confirm that the worst of the eldritch weather had passed; then, again, more thoughtfully, at Marcus, still dazed and in no condition to escape any time soon; and she said, "Hey! You guys wanna head home?"

####

Had any circus recruiters been watching the impressive balancing act Wendy and the twins pulled off—Dipper sitting uncomfortably on the handlebars of Wendy's bike, Mabel sitting on the back of the seat, Wendy half-standing as she pedaled—they would have immediately been handed a business card and asked if they'd ever considered a career in clown acrobatics.

As it was, though, all that saw them were some birds and a couple of gnomes—although the gnomes were quite impressed.

"Thanks for letting us come over," Mabel said. "That was fun! We should do it again!"

"Next time, you fight Marcus first," Dipper said. "Maybe I'll stand a chance if you soften him up."

"Ha! You got it!"

Wendy asked, "Did you get to try the obstacle course, too?"

"Oh, yeah, it was great," Mabel said. "Hey, Dip-Dop! How 'bout you? Did you get to see Bill in a horror movie?"

"What! You knew Bill's face shows up in eldritch weather?"

"You didn't know?" Mabel asked, as if she herself hadn't found out that same day when Bill heard himself sing on the radio.

Dipper huffed. "Yeah, actually, I did see him. And I got a recording of it, too!" He patted his backpack. "Assuming the footage isn't corrupted, anyway. But even if it is, maybe the corruption will show him. I might be able to make a whole episode about the weird weather in town!" His enthusiasm flattened as he said, "Although I'll probably have to ask Goldie if he knows anything about it."

"Oh? Why Goldie?" Wendy asked.

"This is... the kind of thing he specializes in."

"I don't think he does know about it," Mabel said. "When the radio started doing the eldritchy thingy, it really freaked him out."

"Did it?"

Wendy remembered how he'd suddenly run into the house, silent, terrified.

Was that what Goldie had been so scared of? Bill's voice? But he always acted like he and Bill had been friends, why would he—

"Omigosh!" Mabel grabbed her face in horror. "We abandoned Goldie!" Oh, right, they still had that "supervised prisoner" thing going on, didn't they?

Dipper gasped. "Oh no. If Stan and Ford find out, we'll be in so much trouble."

"It's okay! It's okay. We'll just go back to Tambry's, and—"

As if that weren't enough, Wendy's pocket vibrated. The bike wobbled when she flinched. The twins held on for dear life as she skidded to a stop to retrieve her phone. It wasn't a text from her dad telling her to get back home again; but that wasn't much of a relief. "Uh oh. Soos says he's about to come pick us up at Tambry's."

"What do we do?" Mabel asked.

Wendy thought they were less than a minute from the shack on foot, faster if they ran. Soos hadn't said he'd left yet, just soon. Tonight was Rainbow Club; Wendy hadn't been planning to go, but Soos had texted her about picking them all up, so he clearly expected to bring Dipper and Mabel home and then take Wendy and Goldie to the club. She could go one last time if it saved everyone's butts.

Trying to picture the fastest shortcut to Tambry's, Wendy asked, "Can you two distract Soos for five minutes?"

####

The unofficial Bill Cipher cult (and Bill) had been hanging out in the living room watching TV when there was a sudden thudding on the porch. They fell silent, turning toward the entryway. Bill frowned. "What's Wendy doing back here—?"

The front door swung open, then slammed, and Wendy rushed in, panting, sweating, and hair disheveled under her bike helmet. "If anyone asks," she said, "I was here with Goldie the whole time."

There was hardly a pause before the group nodded in agreement. "Got it," Nate said.

"We were totally here too," Tambry said.

"What?"

"Nothing."

Someone rang the doorbell. Wendy answered it.

"Hey dudes," Soos said, cheerfully oblivious. "Ready to go?"

####

When Goldie was out of hearing range, Lee turned to the others and said, "Okay. Is it just me, or do you think Goldie's in love with Bill or something? Cuz he got really emotional at the statue. And the eye licking thing..."

Nate slowly nodded. "I think you're on to something."

"Oh, whew, I'm not crazy."

"Do you guys think so?" Robbie asked, baffled. "Seriously? But Bill's like a... floating pyramid or whatever. What's there to be attracted to?"

They considered the question. Dubiously, Tambry offered, "Personalityyy...?"

"He's got the top hat and bow tie thing going on," Lee said. "Maybe Goldie thinks he's... fancy?"

They considered the question a little more. They shrugged and muttered vaguely. No idea.

"I'll ask Mabel," Tambry said, switching apps to text her. "She'll know."

####

When they were settled in the back seat of Soos's truck, Wendy quietly asked Bill, "Hey, are you—you know—okay after today?"

Ugh. Humans. "Just peachy," he said. And then—because he couldn't restrain himself—he asked challengingly, "Why wouldn't I be?" Why would anybody ever have any reason to think that he wasn't okay? Of course he was fine. He was always fine.

Wendy shrugged. "Nothing, just—Mabel said hearing Bill's voice bothered you."

In a display of infinite patience and kindness, Bill made a mental note to get Mabel's side of the story before getting mad at her. "Well. It didn't. And I'm fine."

"Okay," Wendy said, in that way that said she didn't believe him at all but she was willing to drop it.

Which was more annoying than outright challenging him would have been. He tried to pretend he didn't care; and lasted almost an entire block before his ego couldn't bear imagining what misconceptions she was cooking up. He asked through gritted teeth, "What is it."

Voice still low, Wendy asked, "Was everything—normal between you and Bill?"

He gave her a wary look. "Bill doesn't do normal."

"I know, I didn't mean like that. Just—you always talk about him like you were friends, but then you freaked out when you heard him," (Bill reminded himself he was not getting mad at Mabel) "and I just..." She sucked her lips into her mouth as she decided what to say next. "Were you really friends, or were you afraid of him too?"

"What?! That's the most ridiculous thing I've ever heard!"

"What is?" Soos asked.

Wendy winced. She muttered, "We don't have to talk about it now, it can wait."

Oh no, she opened this can of worms, and Bill was gonna make her lie in it. He said to Soos, "She thinks that I! Am afraid of Bill! Cipher! What do you think of that, Questiony?"

"Oh." There was a long, awkward pause as he chose his words carefully. "I uh, I think that'sss... probably not correct. That seems very implausible to me. No offense."

"Oh, come on," Wendy said. "What's implausible about it? Bill's scary! And super mean."

"That's true," Soos said. Bill shot him a dirty look in the rear view mirror. "No it's just he can be a mega huge jerk! When he wants. I'm not saying he's always one, just when he tries. Which, in my experience, is a majority of the time—"

"Okay, I get the picture," Bill snapped. "But it's beside the point! That's how Bill treats his enemies! I'm not one of them!"

Wendy said, "You wouldn't be the first 'friend' he treated badly. I don't know a lot of the details, but—I heard a bit about how he pretended to be Ford's friend and then abused him..."

Bill felt heat rush up his neck and over his cheeks—although he wasn't sure whether it was because Ford had been telling stories about him, or because Wendy thought "Goldie" was the kind of loser who would fall for tricks like that. "I'm not Stanford," he snapped. "Ford's just some nerd Bill used because he needed his brains! But Bill and I are on the same wavelength, we get each other! He wasn't using me, we were pals! I'm different! I—" He choked on his words as Wendy grimaced in pity and Soos quietly averted his eyes from the rear view mirror—and he realized that he wasn't saying anything that any of his millions of victims hadn't said before. Telling your target that they were different from the rest was just another tool in a real pro manipulator's tool chest. Make 'em feel special—and make 'em feel isolated from everyone else.

"Really?" Wendy asked. "Different how?"

He stuttered uselessly as he tried to think of something, anything, that differentiated the people he actually really liked from the people he was using. Because there was a difference! He could feel it! But if all he could tell Wendy was it's different because he likes me more than those other losers, honest, he'd just sound like one of "those other losers": easily suckered by some con artist's promises, the kind of person who'd fall for I promise that after we con our third partner-in-crime out of his share of the heist we'll split it 50/50 or I swear baby I'm working on leaving my wife so we can be together. Bill needed something concrete.

But he couldn't think of a single way he treated his real friends differently from his pawns. Every promise and compliment he offered a friend, he was just as likely to use on a pawn, and they were just as likely to be lies—and every callous cruelty he'd casually inflict on a pawn, he was willing to turn on a friend, too.

He'd always known that the line between pal and prey was thin, and he could slide people back and forth across it depending on how fun/useful they were. And he was proud of his crown as the king of charisma—he could get anybody to like him and anybody to do anything he wanted. Of course the categories were blurry! Keeping them blurry was all part of the shell game, so nobody would know which shell they were under.

So he wasn't sure why he felt his stomach twisting more and more the longer he failed to come up with any concrete way the few fun, brilliant, eccentric rock stars worthy of his friendship could tell they were different from the disposable groupies he looked down on.

"I mean," he said weakly, "he hasn't done anything to me. Ever! He was always nice to me, he never talked me into anything I don't want to do, he didn't use me to get anything..." At Wendy's dubious look, he finally caved and mumbled, "If he was planning to exploit me, he never got the chance."

And it galled him to admit that that was the most even his best friends could expect: not to not be exploited, but only to be exploited later. Bill didn't regret using people like tools—most people were lame! and sooo usable!—and friends were like dogs: they were best when they loved you and were trained to do a useful job—but he'd also prided himself on being the best friend anyone could ever ask for, if you made it onto his highly exclusive VIP list. That was what made it worth being around him! The risk of exploitation was balanced out by a chance to be his real friend! If you spend your paycheck on the lottery long enough, eventually you might win the jackpot, right?

Was Bill offering a jackpot?

Friends were like dogs. And if a dog loves you but eventually mauls the face of everyone he meets, you put him down before he can maul yours.

"Hearing his voice on the radio freaked me out because he's my friend and he's dead. Okay?" Bill couldn't meet Wendy's gaze. He glowered out the window. "Can you imagine that? Just—hypothetically, here! Somebody who means the world to you is just—pfft—gone. And you were right there but you couldn't reach them, and you just—have to carry that. Then suddenly you hear them on the radio. And you hear them everywhere you go! They're always right there, lurking in the shadows between stations, ready to pounce you any time there's dead air between songs! Like they never even died! And you wonder if they're still alive somehow, caught in the static, and maybe you can reach them that way. Maybe you can rescue them, right? Since you couldn't save them! Haven't you ever wondered what you could have done differently? If you could make up for everything you did wrong—?!"

The gentle lurch of the car coming to a stop jerked Bill out of his thoughts. He fuzzily replayed the last few sentences in his head, trying to figure out the details of the story he was trying to feed Wendy. (Ignoring that he'd stopped talking about his own voice on the radio.) He glanced sideways at her. 

She wasn't looking at him like he was crazy, thank goodness. She was staring down at her own hands, her face drawn, her mouth pulled into a tight, thin line.

Soos said thickly, "Yeah, dude, I get it."

Bill and Wendy looked up. Soos was scrubbing at his eyes with the heels of his hands. "I think about stuff like that all the time."

Yeesh, collateral damage. "I didn't mean like that," Bill muttered. "You were a newborn. And it's not like you could control the size of your head."

"That's not the point! I still feel bad! Like, even if I didn't mean to? It was still my fault? I-I'm just really good at messing things up, dude, I was born that way. Literally! And then I'm like, 'I've gotta make up for this.' But dude. How do you make up for something that big?"

Bill swallowed hard. He had no answer for that.

Wendy leaned forward to pat Soos's shoulder and murmur, "C'mon, man. You know it's not really your fault. No one blames you."

"Except Dad, I think."

"Your dad's trash." Wendy looked at Bill.

He knew what was coming. His stomach sank.

"It's not your fault, either," she said. "I mean, you were stuck on a whole other plane of existence, right? What could you have done to save Bill?"

That might have been reassuring, had he actually been the human known as Goldie Locke watching from the mindscape as Bill died. But when he shut his eyes, even now, he could still see his hand stretching forever toward a door he couldn't reach, a door in the wrong dimension. If he'd just been a little closer—if he'd just figured out how to move in three dimensions a little faster...

"Sure," he said hollowly. "But whose fault was it that I was on the wrong plane to begin with?"

Before Wendy could think of a reply to that, Bill shot back, "It's not your fault, either."

Wendy flinched, her face spasming in shock and hurt. For a moment, Bill could take a little dull satisfaction from knowing he'd cracked the ice around the Cool Girl's facade.

That would have been the perfect moment to dramatically exit the car and leave the humans stewing in the memories of their missing mommies—if it weren't for the curse. He kicked the car door. "So is someone gonna be a gentleman for me, or—?"

"Oh." Wendy hastily unbuckled her belt.

####

When they were out of the truck, Bill grabbed the first topic change he could find. "The twins aren't gonna blow our alibi, are they? You know how uptight the Stans are about leaving me"—finger quotes—"'unsupervised.'"

"Oh, no way," Wendy said. "We totally worked out our cover story. It's airtight."

####

Dipper and Mabel wore their best innocent looks as Stan and Ford frowned down at them. 

"You're sure Bill's with Wendy?" Stan asked sternly.

"Definitely," Dipper said.

"She knows we're all keeping him supervised!" Mabel said. "She wouldn't be irresponsible and forget about him or anything!"

"We're all being very, very responsible," Dipper said.

They smiled.

Their grunkles didn't return the smiles. "How did you get home by yourselves?" Ford asked.

"Uhh... Thompson," Dipper said, at the same time Mabel said "Robbie!"

They exchanged a look. Dipper said, "Thompson gave Robbie a ride, who was giving us a ride," then winced at himself.

Their grunkles turned that over. "That sounds reasonable," Stan said.

"It's nice to hear about teenagers helping each other out," Ford said.

####

They were early for the meeting. Most of the attendees hadn't arrived yet, and Tyler was out in the hall talking to Tad. Far enough away that evidently Wendy felt safe grousing without being overheard.

"Man, it still feels weird hanging out here," she murmured, slouching in a folding chair. "Even with you back."

"Buuut it's better with me, right?" Bill sat back, perfectly at ease, one ankle hooked over a knee and his hands laced behind his head, the king of this mayor's office. "Say 'thank you for coming, Goldie'!"

She blew him off with a pfff. "I'm here for you, not the other way around. But seriously—I think this is my last time. I'm sure the rest of the club would be happy to get the doors for you if you explained your curse. That kind of stuff happens all the time here."

Yeah, but whoever the Pines sent to chaperone him next would keep a much closer eye on him than Wendy. To his delight, he spotted a new arrival coming through the door in a few minutes. He asked, "But would you keep coming if, say, there was someone else your age in the club?"

"Maybe?" Wendy said. "As long as it's someone cool. If we don't have anything to say to each other it'll be even worse, because then the adults'll expect us to hang out..."

Bill had to keep his smile suppressed. "I'm sure someone cool will show up soon."

####

"I have an interesting announcement today," Tad informed the group proudly. "I have reason to believe I am not actually a straight ally to this community, but a member of the community itself."

There was a flurry of gasps and murmurs around the circle. Eyes shining brightly, Tyler said, "Tad... you don't mean...?"

"That's right. I have recently begun exploring the possibility that I may, in fact, be a bisexual myself."

The group cheered.

"It's about time," Wendy whispered. "Everyone else noticed like a year ago."

Everyone except this club, apparently. "Too bad his crush can't return his feelings," Bill whispered back.

"He's only into girls?"

"He's only into birds." Bill knew what that was like.

One of the little old ladies in the throuple patted Tad on the shoulder supportively. Durland mournfully asked, "Now who's going to bring the snacks?"

"Don't you worry, Edwin," Tyler said. "Gravity Falls is a very accepting community, I'm sure we'll find another straight ally in no time."

(This could be Wendy's way out, she realized. At this point, the main reason she was coming was because poor Goldie couldn't get himself in the building; and the main reason it had to be her was because all the guys in the Mystery Shack were too insecure about being seen as gay or something. But the club took straight allies! Maybe sharing that would be enough to change their minds about coming—?)

There was a timid knock on the door frame. "Uh—hey. Sorry I'm late. Some scary guys said I might be looking for the club in this room? I saw a rainbow flag, is this..." Lee's nervously roving gaze froze. "Wendy?!"

Wendy sat bolt upright. "Lee?"

"Oh wow," Bill said unconvincingly, "what a crazy coincidence!"

Twin looks of panic flashed across their faces at being found out, followed immediately by delight as they realized this meant they'd found each other out. They pointed at each other excitedly. "Wendy! Why are you here?"

"Why do you think, man? I like girls!"

"Awesome! I don't!" They high fived.

"Dude. Dude. I had literally no idea."

"I had no idea about you! You've had like a thousand boyfriends."

"I only started thinking I might be bi a few months ago? Anyway, I don't know any other gay girls at school, do you?"

"Umm... no. Maybe they're all waiting for another girl to come out first."

"I've thought about that. It drives me crazy." She punched Lee's arm as he grabbed a chair and squeezed it next to hers. "What about you, didn't you date Rachel in seventh grade?"

"Ugh, yeah, I was trying to be straight? It wasn't great."

"Man, I should have guessed. You haven't dated since then, you haven't told us about your crushes..." As the word "crushes" passed through her lips, Wendy made a strange face, and then her eyes widened in realization. "Hold on..."

Panic seized Lee's face. "No."

"Oh my gosh??"

"No!"

"You do, don't you!" Wendy cracked up.

"You can never, ever, ever tell him, okay?! I'd die! Instantly!" He covered his red face and slid out of his seat onto the floor as Wendy laughed.

"You're the one who told me you didn't think Nate and I were a good match! You butthead! I mean, you were right, but!"

"I know, I know!" Now Lee was laughing, too. "I'm sorry!"

"Hi," Tyler said politely, "do you know each other?"

They fell silent and turned to the rest of the room as they remembered that they were in the middle of a meeting. Everyone was staring at them.

"Uhh yeah, this is Lee," Wendy said.

"Oh, Lee! Tambry's mentioned you! Hiii!" Tyler gushed, "It's so great to have you join us."

"Uh, yeah." Lee climbed back into his chair and tried to collect himself. "Glad to be here."

####

As they headed outside, Wendy said, "I keep thinking about who else at school might be secretly gay. It's like that game where only one person is in the mob and everyone else has to guess who it is? Except everyone could be in the mob and none of us know it."

"Awesome!" Lee said. "Secret gay mafia!"

"Woop woooop! Be gay, do crimes!"

Partway up the block, one of the men leaving the ex-convict support group shouted, "Right on!"

They said their byes, threatened to kill each other if they told anyone else in the group they'd been here, and Lee split off to head the other way.

This was it.

Wendy had been turning a thought over ever since they'd gotten out of the truck; and now she wouldn't be able to get it out of her head until she asked. Now or never. Here we go. This was it. There were only a few seconds before they reached the pickup for her to ask. In just another couple of steps, it would be too late. Unless she wanted to wait until the next time she got Goldie alone, which might be a week or longer—

She blurted out, "Hey, Goldie. You were haunting the town like a ghost for the last thirty years, right?"

"Pretty much!"

"So, you were around when my mom disappeared? Did you see anything?"

It took a moment for him to shake his head. "I heard about it after it happened. I haven't seen any sign of her since. Sorry, kid."

"Ah." She opened the truck's passenger door for him. "Yeah, no problem, it was a long shot." But Wendy noted that Goldie, whose stare was usually unwavering and inescapable, hadn't met her gaze as he answered.

####

As soon as Bill walked in the door, Dipper demanded, "Bill, how are you doing that with the TV?!"

Bill ignored Dipper, sweeping past him on the way to the living room. "Ford, why didn't you tell me I'm appearing on TV!"

"I didn't know until the weather started acting up today!" Ford was watching the TV with two camcorders aimed at it, just in case the tape recording in the VCR failed to capture the strange phenomenon. "The strange signal manipulating people's 'smart' phones petered out last September, not long after I threw your book through a rift; I figured you'd stopped doing it."

"You figured I'd stopped doing it?" Bill echoed, disbelievingly.

"Well, yes." It took Ford a moment to process the question. He turned toward Bill skeptically. "You weren't doing it? If it's not you, then what is it?"

And suddenly Bill didn't want to have this conversation anymore. He didn't want them to see him ignorant about a topic—especially when the topic was him. He didn't want them to be reminded just how weak and limited he really was in this form. He'd worked so hard last night to make everyone forget.

He backed out of the living room. "Just one of those things that happens, I suppose. Have fun with your little investigation, I'm outta here!"

"Now, hold on! Bill!"

He was already heading up the stairs and he didn't slow down.

Ironically, the humans weren't alone in feeling the ghost of Bill hovering over them. This would haunt Bill, too.

####

Dipper watched Bill ascending the stairs, hands flung out as if to say come on, man; then he let them flop to his sides.

Ford turned back to the TV. Well, if Bill didn't even know about the odd broadcasts, that certainly changed the possibilities of what they could be, didn't it. Clearly it wasn't Bill trying to make contact with another dimension.

Unless he was doing it subconsciously? Some of Bill's buried power trying to leak out? But no, when Ford asked about the phenomenon earlier, Soos said this had been happening all year, long before Bill's return. (Unless it coincided with the moments Bill had time traveled to town while searching for the day the Pines family returned?)

Perhaps it was a mere echo of the lingering weirdness unleashed during Weirdmageddon, the way you could still hear the big bang in white noise? Ford's journal was downstairs, he'd taken to leaving it there to ensure Bill didn't spy on it; so he scrawled his thoughts and questions on a stray piece of notebook paper.

He'd have to call Fiddleford later. Surely he'd been taking readings on this—and likely found something promising that at least confirmed it wasn't a threat, if he hadn't thought the strange signals were concerning enough to let Ford know about them. If Bill (claimed he) didn't know anything, Fiddleford would.

"Why does he always do that?"

"Hmm?" Ford's attention was focused on the TV again; he'd seen another flash of Bill's face.

"Act like I'm not here." Dipper flopped on the seat beside Ford and slouched down. "I mean, yeah, he's a terrible person, I get that; but even at that, it seems like he's getting along better with... well, everyone now. Except me. I don't wanna be friends with him, I just want him to stop being such a jerk to me."

A wild, disorienting urge to defend Bill welled up in Ford's chest—yes, he has been a terrible person, but he's showing potential, he can yet change, he really might change—and he quashed the urge with some alarm. That was the kind of thinking that got you exploited by Bill. He'd have to keep a closer eye on thoughts like that before they became a problem.

Anyway, that was the whole point Dipper was making, wasn't it? Yes, Bill was getting along with most of the family. He had shown the potential to be kinder. But right now, in spite of all the promise he was showing, he was still the same person he'd always been—and that person shone through when he was talking to someone who didn't matter to him.

"I don't know," Ford sighed. "At the least, you'd think he'd recognize that it's in his best interests to win over all of us, not just some of us. I don't know what game he's playing."

"Kind of feels like he's trying to keep me out of the game completely," Dipper grumbled.

Ford smiled wanly. "Maybe that's exactly what he's doing. Last summer, you proved to him that you're clever enough to take him on in his own domain—the mind—and perhaps you fell for his flattering tricks once, but you made it clear that you won't fall for them twice." Unlike myself, he thought, who fell for them over and over. "Maybe he's keeping you at an arm's length because he thinks he can fool us, but not you."

"Maybe," Dipper said. "But Mabel's got him figured out too, and Bill's not pushing her away."

"Bill..." Ford almost said has won her over, but thought that might have been selling Mabel short—and he didn't want to think it might be true—so he amended himself: "has made friends with her. He can get something from her—even if it's just entertainment and sympathy. I'm sure he knows he won't get anything from you."

"Got that right," Dipper muttered darkly. He sighed. "Maybe it's better this way."

He didn't sound terribly convinced. Ford couldn't blame him. Living under the same roof as a source of infinite knowledge about the greater multiverse, and knowing he'd dump those secrets on anyone but him, had to be frustrating—especially for an eager truth-seeker like Dipper. Ford had certainly had his share of irritation the past few weeks each time he tried to ask something and Bill rebuffed Ford as "not his student"—

That was another thought pattern Ford ought to keep an eye on. Maybe he should update Stan on where his head was drifting.

Maybe—if it got worse.

"It's probably better this way, yes," Ford agreed. If he and Dipper couldn't convince themselves, maybe they could convince each other.

####

Bill was nothing if not good at locking stuff away to deal with later. Like, for instance, his entire emotional reaction to hearing his own voice—his own song—on the radio, and seeing his own face in someone else's phone.

But it was "later" now.

He flopped face down on his couch, shoved his face in a pillow, and screamed.

What the hell was that?

It wasn't him. Unless it was him? Perhaps his soul was too much to squeeze inside this weak little meat puppet; perhaps whatever was happening on the radio was the rest of him, the part that couldn't fit in this body—his subconscious, or his epithymetikon, or his gros bon ange, or the ib and khet and ren and sah and bah—however you wanted to define it, however you divided it up, he didn't care! What mattered was that maybe not all of Bill was in Bill! Maybe part of him was floating around town! Maybe that was why he was so weak—

But if that was part of his soul, then how had this been going on the whole past year while he was five thousand dimensions away?

But if it wasn't him—what was it?

Bill was interrupted from his thoughts by a knock on the door frame. Mabel was coming in in a few seconds. Time to shove those worries back into their compartment in the basement of his brain. "It's unlocked!"

Mabel pushed aside the curtain, did a double-take at it as she remembered it couldn't "lock," and rolled her eyes. "Bill." She trudged up to him.

"Sup, star girl?"

Solemnly, she held up her phone. "Why did Tambry send me this."

Bill squinted at the screen. It was the picture Tambry had taken of him licking his corpse's eyeball. He cracked up. "Oh—! I—I told h... send me a copy of..." He flopped down on the sofa cushions, still laughing.

"Is this your corpse."

"Uh-huh!"

"Why's it look all alive? Is it just the weird weather stuff?" Mabel asked. "Please tell me it's just the weird weather stuff."

"Yeah! Yeah, weird weather stuff. Nothing to worry about. Just took a lucky picture at the right time," Bill said. "Believe me, if that thing was alive without me inside it, oh-ho-ho, you'd be hearing aaall about it."

"Okay. Good," Mabel said, sitting on the couch. She looked at her phone. She gave Bill a tired, tired look. She whispered, "I can never unsee this."

He reached up to pat her head.

"Tambry says everyone thinks 'Goldie' is in love with Bill, by the way."

"I am. I'm madly in love with me. I've got self-love mere mortals can only dream of."

"I'm not sure you do."

Bill shot her a dirty look. "What do you know about who I love. You wanted me to marry a government agent," he said. "How's the matchmaking going, by the way?"

Taking a deep breath, Mabel put on her most professional business voice. "I've lined up a few candidates for your consideration that I think you'll find very intriguing." She gave him a hopeful look. "Do you wanna check them out...?"

"Are these candidates looking for love or looking for fun?"

"Um. Both?" (She had no idea if they were looking for anything at all. She hadn't spoken to them and didn't know if they even wanted to date. She was pioneering a new program she was calling surprise blind dates.)

"Pass," he said. "But if I suddenly discover I'm desperate for true love, I'll let you know."

She sighed loudly. "Okay, fine. Just promise to come to me first if you want to start dating. I really think I can find you your perfect match!"

"Sure, kid. Promise," he said. "It's not like I'm falling in love on my own anytime soon."

####

(And that, my friends, is what we call "famous last words."

We're BACK! Sorry for the unscheduled hiatus, i was working on a research paper for the Gravity Falls nonfiction zine. I'll include a link when it goes live!