#agent trigger

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Bill woke late in the morning to the smell of dead fish and a subtle but insistent full-body itch. It was one of the most pleasant mornings he'd had since he died.

Sunburn, he thought. No surprise there. He dragged the false nails that had survived since the girls' sleepover across his shoulder and reveled in the way the pain was momentarily relieved and then flared back up twice as strong as before. Sunburns had always been one of his favorite human sensations, that constant pleasant background burn prickling across his skin and blazing higher any time he was touched; he hadn't realized just how much he'd been missing them while he was locked inside. He wasn't built to be out of the sunlight.

While most of him just vaguely itched, the bands of skin around his waist and upper thighs where he'd applied the anti-sunscreen were on fire. When he tossed aside his bedsheet to inspect, he was satisfied to see the difference the anti-sunscreen had made—the skin was only slightly darker and ruddier, but it was visibly leathery with tiny bumps. It was a good start. Still—they might have been more visible if the rest of him were less sunburned.

He pushed that thought from his mind. He'd sooner die again than admit that sunscreen might have been a good idea for any reason. If the lines weren't visible enough after the sunburn healed, next time he could strengthen the anti-sunscreen recipe and shoot for blisters, that might leave scars.

He dug his nails into one of the more deeply burned lines and was hit with a dizzying rush of euphoria as the burned skin screamed in pain. Oh, he could happily do that all morning. But first maybe he should get some breakfast.

He rolled off the sofa, landed on all fours on the floor, and grabbed Journal 4 from under the sofa—he'd left it there with the pages spread out so the watery fish brains he'd finger painted on each page didn't glue the book shut. He documented last night's "dream"—he'd haunted the halls like a ghost, collecting what tools he could access to start repairing the portal—then hid the journal behind the sofa in the window seat's cushion where it belonged. He still needed to find a better hiding place for it. Maybe after breakfast. 

There hadn't been a grocery run since he'd acquired his new fridge, so all he had upstairs were half a dozen condiments, a bag of tortilla chips, and enough cider to kill a horse. If he could get somebody to open the kitchen fridge, maybe he could steal the eggs, that was probably the single most nutrient-dense ingredient currently in the house; that'd keep him going between meals until grocery day...

Where were his clothes.

The t-shirt and bikini he'd worn to the beach yesterday were still flung across the sofa; but the box he'd stuffed all his other clothing in had vanished. He stared at the shelf it was supposed to be on. His hoodie. Who'd stolen his skin?

He scowled.

He folded his Pony Heist bedsheet lengthwise, folded it around his waist and rolled it down like a sarong, pulled on the t-shirt and his eyepatch, and stalked from his room.

The kids' bedroom door had been left open. No sign of Bill's clothes in there, but he found an important clue: Dipper's ever-present mountain of dirty clothing was gone. Laundry day. Soos must have mistaken Bill's box of perfectly clean clothes for dirty laundry and stolen the whole thing. Great.

While he was momentarily unsupervised in the kids' room, he flipped through Dipper's journal, annotated some of the recent pages with helpful info and added an embarrassing anecdote about Ford's research years (all in code, of course), and stole Mabel's glass pyramid and a pair of pink sunglasses that were shaped like the words "RAD DUDE" from her bedside table. He stashed the pyramid in his room on the window seat.

And then he headed downstairs, trying to mentally calculate the most impactful way to whine about his clothes having been stolen in order to make Soos feel as guilty as possible without making himself look pathetic.

"Hey Bill!" Mabel called from the living room. She held up a couple of headbands; she'd wrapped two pipe cleaners around each that stuck up like antennae. Foam stars were glued to the ends of one headband's pipe cleaners and pompom bees to the other. "I'm making deely boppers! Do you want one?"

"More than anything!" Bill claimed the one with bees and shoved it down over his tangled hair. Mabel was in here doing crafts, Dipper was watching crappy local TV—Bill couldn't get into the gift shop with them in here as witnesses. "Hey, here's something crazy: did you kids ever notice the stairs to the attic have 32 steps going up and 28 steps going down?"

Mabel and Dipper looked at each other; and then ran for the stairs. "No way!" "How's that possible?"

That would keep them occupied for a few minutes. Bill backed through the gift shop door.

Wendy looked up from her phone. "What up, dude."

"Hey, cool girl!" He spun around on his heel and trotted over to lean against her counter. "If anyone asks, you let me into the shop."

"Got it." She glanced at Bill's sarong. "Is this the return of Toga Guy?"

"Nope; laundry day."

"Oh, yeah. Washing machine's been going all morning," Wendy said. "Soos says Ford's been running around in a coat that smells like nasty lake water, so he stole it."

"And stole my box of perfectly clean clothes." Bill refused to entertain the possibility that this might be partially his own fault for making his room smell like dead fish. The smell would air out! "So I'm gonna humiliate him for it in front of his tour group."

Wendy laughed. "Don't do that, man. You know what he's like, sometimes he makes goofy mistakes." She gave him a quizzical look. "You keep your clothes in a box?"

Right, he'd been keeping Wendy teetering on the edge of thinking Bill was in an unsafe situation here. Was there any benefit to her knowing how inhumane his living conditions were? Not at the moment, when things were finally improving. "Shack's run out of guest rooms and I didn't need new clothes in the mindscape! We just shoved my clothes in a crate until we can get a spare dresser or something." Topic change! "Hey—I saw your brother beating up a fish at the lake yesterday."

"Oh yeah, you mean dinner? Marcus was so proud of his catch. He did the worst job deboning it, though. I almost got a surprise lip piercing." Wendy stuck out her tongue. "What about you guys? Soos says you fought Bigfoot or something?"

"They did. Ask the Stans for the details; while they were catching fish, I was catching rays," Bill said. "And I think I was more successful than them."

"Suntanning?" Wendy took in his blatantly sunburned appearance.

"Unless you're about to say 'oh wow, you look great!' say something different," Bill said. "Anyway, I'm a wilting houseplant! I have a sunlight deficit I'm trying to catch up on." He glanced wistfully toward the window in the door and the bright beautiful day outside. "If I didn't have to ask someone to let me in and out, I'd be out there right now."

He'd been angling for Wendy to graciously offer to help escort him outside. Instead, she said, "Oh, dude, we leave the door unlatched during the day. You can just walk through it backwards like you do from the living room."

"Wait—really?"

"Yeah, go ahead."

He gave her a skeptical look; but when he glanced through the door's window, he could see himself standing out on the porch just a few seconds in the future. All right, he wasn't complaining. "Then I'll see you later." He sauntered over and backed through the doorway.

It worked. He was outside. He stepped off the porch and spread his arms, soaking in the sunlight. Look at that—escape was really that easy the whole time. He could have just backed through a couple of doorways. A little frustrating that he was learning this after he'd found a complicated workaround that required climbing on the roof, but this would make his life easier in the future. He walked back into the doorway again.

It didn't budge. He kept trying to walk for a couple of seconds before his brain forced him to accept that there was, in fact, a door there, and it wasn't getting out of his way. Did the doorway trick only work in one direction?! How did that make sense! The doorway to the living room handled two-way traffic just fine!

"Hey!" He spun around and gave Wendy a death glare. She laughed silently. He knocked furiously. "Hey, I'll get you for this, see if I don't!" When Bill had his power back, maybe he'd make her into a gargoyle on the outside of the Fearamid while the rest of the town was nice and cozy in his throne. See how she liked being locked outside. Pyramids didn't even need gargoyles.

She just waved at him, oblivious to the danger she was courting.

He muttered, "Oh, Icy, if you weren't Raina's kid..." She was Raina's kid, though.

All right, fine, no big deal. He wasn't letting anyone think this bothered him. Eventually a tourist would come along and let him in. If the Pines caught him and got mad, he could tell them that Wendy had tricked him into getting stuck outside, and it wouldn't even be a lie. (Would they believe him, though? Mabel would. Ford definitely wouldn't. Bill thought he at least ought to earn points for nicely sitting on the porch like the obedient dog they wished he was...)

A dented beige car rolled into the parking lot; Bill perked up as three out-of-place-looking men in black suits stepped out. Well, look who was back. "Hey, nice car! Much subtler than the fedmobile you were driving yesterday."

Agent Powers almost stumbled mid-step when he noticed Bill. "Er—yes. I appreciate the recommendation."

Bill got to his feet and leaned with one hand on a post. "I see you at the beach, I see you at this tourist trap... I'm starting to think you're on vacation, agents!"

Solemnly, Powers said, "I can assure you we're not."

"Definitely not," Agent Trigger agreed.

Bill glanced past them. Agent Dale was grinning broadly and snapping photos of the Mystery Shack with a camera hanging around his neck. "Wow, this place is so much fun." He tilted his head back to get a picture of the totem pole.

Bill raised his brows.

Trigger said, "Those are investigation photos."

"Sure," Bill said.

"We're looking for the owner of the Mystery Shack," Powers said. "I don't suppose you've seen him, ma'am?"

"Not yet. I think 'Mr. Mystery' is giving a tour right now."

"I see. Thank you for your help, ma'am." He almost moved to head inside, then hesitated.

He'd been doing that a lot around Bill the last couple of days. "Something else I can help you with, agent?"

"Uh—" Powers cleared his throat and flushed faintly red high on his cheeks. "I—feel that I ought to inform you that you're... looking even more exquisite today." Trigger stared at Powers.

Bill—slouched; sunburned; barefoot; fingernails and toenails painted in four different sloppy styles; and wearing a child's bedsheet with cartoon ponies on it, a purple puma t-shirt so large the neck hole slipped down his shoulder, an eyepatch with hot pink "RAD DUDE" sunglasses on top (and faint tan lines showing where he'd been wearing his eyepatch on the other side yesterday), and bumblebee deely boppers—said, "Tell me something I don't already know!" He laughed. "Kidding—that's impossible."

Powers nodded sharply and turned away, wearing an odd look somewhere between disappointed and relieved. "Dale, you stay out here and take some readings."

Dale flashed Powers a thumbs-up and pulled out a tablet.

Powers opened the door; Bill quickly pushed off the post. "Hey! Aren't you gonna hold the door for me?" He had something that looked like a skirt on, he could exploit that social norm today.

"Er—" Powers stopped in his tracks. "Yes, of course, ma'am."

"Aren't you a gentleman!" Bill swept back inside.

Wendy laughed at his grand reentrance—but petered out as she noticed the overdressed new visitors. Bill split off from the agents to circle the shop and try to look like a normal tourist, but he mouthed toward Wendy, "Feds." Her eyes widened.

"Excuse me, miss," Powers said to Wendy. "We're looking for the proprietor. Do you know when he'll be available?"

"Uhh..." All knowledge she previously had of the shack's tour schedule fled her mind in the face of a legit government agent. She circled around the counter. "I'll... tell Soos you're here."

Powers frowned. "'Soos'?"

"Yeah, um—Jesús Ramirez? The owner?"

Trigger muttered to Powers, "I think that's the handyman."

Wendy said, "He took over the business last year."

"Apparently our intel is out of date," Powers said. "Very well. We'll wait here."

Wendy veered toward Bill on her way to the museum and hissed, "Take the register—"

"Hell no," Bill hissed back. He wasn't letting the government know he worked here if the shack was under investigation. "Where's Melody?"

"Out. She slept bad."

Hmm. Strange. "I'll distract the suits." He wanted to snoop, anyway. "Go."

Wendy gave him an exasperated look, but ducked into the museum.

Bill sidled up to the agents, who were inspecting the display of alien-in-a-tube keychains. Trigger picked one up and murmured, "Are they suspended in jello?"

"That has to be a health hazard."

"Good likeness of the real thing, though."

Bill stopped in his tracks. There weren't a lot of places in the US where a government agent could have a personal meet-and-greet with an alien corpse in a glass tank. They must have been assigned to one or two investigations in Hangar 618. Strange; he would have thought there was more than enough going on in Gravity Falls to keep their schedules filled.

He shook off his misgivings, leaned on a display cabinet near the agents, and said loudly, "So!" He tried not to grin too widely when both agents jumped. "Looks like it's just us until the next tour."

Powers' cheeks turned pink again. "It looks like it." He cleared his throat and tried to surreptitiously adjust his tie. "I... suppose I'm overdue to ask you your name?"

"Call me Goldie!" Before Powers had an opportunity to dig deeper into Bill's identity, he asked, "So what brings you by the shack, agents? I don't think you ever explained what you're investigating!"

"Yes, that would be because it's classified. That information is shared strictly on a need-to-know basis," Powers said. "But we're here to check on last week's gravitational anomalies and an odd power surge that was witnessed over the weekend." (Bill loved this chatterbox, funniest secret agent ever.)

"Oh wow. Sounds exciting," Bill said, voice just a little too flat to sound convincing but a little too forceful to sound like he didn't mean it. (Always keep 'em guessing.) "Any leads?" He doubted it.

"Not yet," Powers admitted. "We've tracked similar power surges in Gravity Falls for decades, and last year several occurred concurrently with other gravitational anomalies; but our investigation last year..." Powers exchanged a glance with Trigger. Trigger just grimaced in irritation. Powers finished, "didn't find anything conclusive. So." His voice took on an edge of frustration. "Here we are. Looking around town."

"Again," Trigger grumbled.

Bill was surprised they could even remember last summer's gravitational anomalies. He'd expected Ford had completely erased their memories of the case; but he hadn't seen exactly what term Ford had plugged into the memory gun. "D'ya expect to find anything conclusive this time? Or is this just a routine follow-up on an old case."

"More of a routine follow-up," Powers said.

"Standard procedure," Trigger added.

"Except," Powers said, "that two days ago, we also received an anonymous tip that a dangerous individual may be hiding in this very building—and that they pose an immense risk to national security."

Trigger said, "Possibly global security."

Bill learned what it felt like for a human's blood to run cold. "Huh," he said. "Interesting."

"Witnesses claim the power surge appeared to originate in this part of the woods. We think this individual might have been involved," Powers said. "But it's probably nothing you need to worry about, ma'am." (Bill must have looked more alarmed than he'd meant to.) "We receive tips like this all the time. I doubt we'll find anything interesting here. All the same—"

The gift shop door popped open and Agent Dale poked his head in. "Sirs!" He held up a beeping tablet. "I'm picking up a signal from one of our flash drives."

Powers and Trigger turned their full attention to Dale. "Which one?" Trigger asked.

"The one we lost last summer."

The agents exchanged a look.

Soos hurried through the curtain to the museum, Wendy following close behind. "Hey, dudes! Welcome to the Mystery Shack! What can I get for you, a tour? Souvenirs? Um, bribes...?"

Bill grimaced. As Wendy passed, he muttered to her, "He does not have the grace at this Stanley does."

Powers's eyes darted between Dale and Soos; and then settled on Soos. "Mr. Ramirez. I'd like to have a word with you about your business. Privately."

"O-of course! I hope you don't think we're up to anything or anything." Soos pulled aside the museum's curtain. "Just step this way. Through my magic portal to a world of wonder and whimsy!"

"If I have to," Powers said tiredly. "Trigger, Dale—you two follow that signal. I want that flash drive back."

"Yessir." They hurried out of the gift shop.

Before Powers followed Soos into the museum, he turned to Bill. "My apologies for disrupting your trip, ma'am, but I'm afraid the next tour may be... delayed." A look of panic flashed across Soos's face.

"I can come back tomorrow!" Bill waved off the apology. "Watching a small-town business owner get investigated by the feds is way more exciting! You oughta check his financial records, I bet there's all kinds of tax evasion going on here!" Soos's panic escalated to sheer terror.

To Bill's surprise, something akin to fear flashed across Powers's face as well. "You think we're—? That is—we're not that sort of federal..." He cleared his throat loudly, mumbled, "Very kind of you," and hastily retreated after Soos, cheeks red.

What the hell was that? Powers had been paying way too much attention to Bill the last couple of days. Was it possible he was playing dumb? Did he already know that Bill was the "dangerous individual" in the Mystery Shack? Was he just trying to figure out the best way to bring Bill down and drag him in—

"Man." Wendy laughed, keeping her voice low. "You really distracted him. What'd you do to the poor guy?"

Bill leaned on the counter by the cash register. "What?"

"He's head over heels for you." At Bill's blank look, Wendy said, "Wait, did you not notice?"

Bill opened his mouth. Nothing came out while he tried to reconcile Wendy's claim with the idea of his body ending up suspended in a glass tube in a secret military base. "What?"

"Did you see him?" Wendy asked. "He can't stop staring at you, every time you glance at him he gets redder, you said one nice thing to him and he completely fell apart..."

Bill mentally ran through the last two days. Ohhh. In retrospect, that did explain why Powers had offered to rub sunscreen on him. "I barely even noticed! I'm used to everyone treating me like that! At least four people fall in love with me daily," Bill said. "I turn heads and drop jaws everywhere I go. I've got a whole collection of lower jaws preserved in formaldehyde." Admittedly, not all of them had dropped naturally. A few had been coaxed.

"Most people just steal their partners' shirts, but alright. I can respect a good murder trophy collection."

"There's a fine line between a lady-killer and a serial killer," Bill said cheerfully, "and I'd know! But enough about my love life!" As much of a relief as it was to realize Powers wasn't plotting Bill's arrest, that didn't mean it couldn't change. "What did you guys do with the flash drive with the agents' secret mission?"

Wendy shrugged. "Dunno, I wasn't here."

And Bill hadn't been either. While the Stan twins had been recounting their tragic life history, Bill had been fully occupied at the Quadrangle of Qonfusion, repairing the damage Ford had done before the portal opened and trying to get his Henchmaniacs to chill out about those guys who'd died. (Seriously, none of the dead guys had even been among the Henchmaniacs' A-listers, who cared?) By the time he'd realized something interesting was happening, the agents' memories were already erased and they were heading out of town.

"Okay. Great." He backed into the living room. "If you see 'em again, slow them down."

####

Bill pounded on the guest room door and waited.

"Just a second!" Ford answered the door, his freshly laundered coat in one hand and a Bigfoot fur-covered lint roller in the other. "What is—? Bill." His expression immediately closed off. His gaze flicked up to Bill's bumblebee deely-boppers. "What are you wearing."

"High fashion, not important. What did you humans do with the flash drive you got from the eagles?"

"The what from the what?"

"Last year. Right after you got home. Government agents. Little black plastic stick full of knowledge."

"Oh, that. Fed it to the goat," Ford said. "Why."

"Because the agents put a tracking device in it, and they're tracking it right now."

Ford's brows shot up. He hurried to the guest room window; Bill peeked around him.

Agent Trigger and Agent Dale were wandering around outside, Trigger in the lead while Dale trailed behind him looking at a tablet screen and saying, "Warmer... warmer... colder... okay, now warmer again..."

"Damn." Ford rushed to the back door.

Bill grabbed him by the sweater before he could get outside. "Whoa there, cowboy. If they see you, do you have a story prepared for why the 'superior officer' who sent them packing last year is still here?"

Ford raised a finger. "I... do not." He rushed to the stairs. "Kids!"

"Grunkle Ford!" Dipper stumbled to the bottom of the stairs, sweating and breathing heavily. "Hey—" Mabel ran into him from behind, nearly knocking them both down. They grabbed the banister for support as they panted. Dipper tried again, "Hey... did you know... the number of steps on the stairs..."

"Yes yes, the half of the staircase hidden by the turn in the landing changes when you can't see it," Ford said. "Dipper, Mabel, we have an emergency. I need you to catch the goat! Now!"

####

Gompers gnawed placidly on a paper towel hanging out of the trash can. He detected the subtle bouquet of rotting bell peppers. And was that spilled orange juice? Truly delectable. He took another bite.

The back door burst open. Gompers turned to stare as Dipper and Mabel charged outside.

He bleated indignantly as they scooped him up between them. Dipper hissed, "Go, go, go!"

They hauled him inside and slammed the door.

Trigger and Dale circled around the corner of the shack. Dale said, "It should be right... huh. That's weird."

"What is it?"

"The signal from the flash drive just moved."

"Moved? Where?"

Dale walked in a small circle, trying to get the tablet to re-triangulate the flash drive's location. "Inside the shack."

Trigger frowned at the door.

####

"C'mon, Gompers," Mabel hissed, trying to drag him down the hallway with Dipper. "We've gotta get you somewhere the government guys can't see you through the window!"

Gompers bleated again. Dipper smacked a hand over his mouth.

All three froze as someone knocked on the door. Voice low, Dipper said, "We're not home. Nobody's home right now." Mabel nodded.

####

Bill lurked next to the living room door, listening to the conversation in the gift shop as Powers said, "Thank you for your time, Mr. Ramirez. Oh, and by the way—you wouldn't happen to have seen any top secret government flash drives around the place, would you?"

There was a long pause. "Why, no," Soos said carefully. "I have not."

"Then do you have an explanation for why my agents detected one in this vicinity... and it's moving?"

There was an even longer pause. "Perhaps it was... eaten. Without our knowledge," Soos said. "Mayhaps by some variety of creature."

"Hmm," Powers said. "Perhaps. Would you mind if we look around for it."

"Uhh... yes. I would mind," Soos said. "Please don't."

Powers sighed deeply. "Fine. We'll be back." The floorboards creaked as he walked toward the exit. "Trigger, Dale—let's move out."

The household didn't heave a collective sigh of relief until the gift shop door had shut.

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(A lot of y'all have been waiting for the Bill Seduce A Government Agent plot for like a year and a half. We're finally here! Yay!

Back in April when I was starting to write this plot in earnest, I was trying to figure out a reason why the agents would turn their attention on the shack (and the Pines family) again that was more threatening than just "yeah there are more gravity anomalies, again. whatever." And @quartz-the-moth-cat solved it with one word: "Gompers." Genuinely that one suggestion pulled the whole plot together. So thank you again for that.

In the months since TBOB came out, a lotta folks have incorrectly assumed I've made changes to my plot due to TBOB or that eerily TBOB-compliant things I wrote before the book were actually written after. So I think I'm gonna start documenting what I'd already planned/written, because I'm petty and I don't want TBOB to get credit for my own ideas:

The entire Agent Powers plot arc was written before TBOB came out. Adding fish brains to J4 was a post-TBOB addition (since we now know that's how he controls books), as was the bit with the agents discussing aliens and the aside about Hanger 618. And the chatter about stealing people's lower jaws, because in the wake of TBOB I think I need Bill to crack more jokes about gore & body horror. Nothing else in this chapter was changed due to TBOB.