#robin writes stuff

Bill didn’t make it very far in before getting tired of the mouse book. He’d been encouraged at first by how ridiculously dark and miserable the lives of these mice were shown to be. But then the book just kept going on and on about this one little runt mouse and how “weird” he was. How he was born looking up at a tiny beam of light peeking through a crack in the wall, something no other mouse ever did. How he might have been totally normal if he hadn’t looked up at the light, but he did, and after that he could never go back to being a regular mouse again. Not the “right way”, like all the others could. And all the other mice just knew that he was wrong, he didn’t fit in. He’d seen too much, and now he couldn’t stop seeing, he saw things mice weren’t supposed to see, he knew things mice weren’t supposed to know, and the others just couldn’t handle it…

And it wasn’t like Bill felt bad for the stupid little thing. He was a grown shape and this was a dumb idiot mouse book for stupid babies. He didn’t care about it at all. When he felt something ache while he stared at a picture of the newborn mouse gazing up at the light, it was just a snack cake he’d been eating that got stuck in his throat for a second. It was just annoying how long it was taking to get to the fun part, the part where the mouse tried to fight with a needle and got smushed to death. It was boring him with all this soppy nonsense. Before long, he’d tossed the book aside and grabbed for another. On a whim, he picked up “MISSING”.

And this one, this one was a winner. Just a rollicking good time. A bunch of kids trapped under a town-sized dome, with brand new magic powers and no adults, going all Lord of the Flies and murdering each other in various gruesome, hilarious ways. Man, he’d been dying for some lighthearted entertainment!

It was a quick, breezy read too. Too quick and breezy, in fact. Less than three hours after picking it up, Bill flipped a page and was confronted with the words “To Be Continued”.

“WHAT?!” he shouted, shaking the book like he expected more words to fall out. “WHAT A RIPOFF! THEY’RE NOT EVEN ALL DEAD YET!”

With a weary groan, he tossed the book across the room, where it landed in a sprawl on top of the mouse book. Just to keep his eye from drifting shut, he grabbed the book with the cat painting; that one was more violent than expected, which was enough to keep his attention, but he’d only killed about half an hour before he got to the end. With an even wearier groan, he tossed it against the wall with the others and turned to the coloring book. The kid had only given him a few colors, but the bare essentials were there, and nobody could accuse Bill of not enjoying a challenge. He kept reminding himself to take his time, seeing how thin the book was. He was making some pretty great progress on turning a milquetoast little two-page spread of a wyvern perched on a castle into a real work of art. Until he got a little too into his detail work and broke his only red crayon.

“FOR FUCK’S SAKE!” he yelled, spiking half the crayon into the pile of trash across the room. Sure, he could keep struggling on with the broken crayon, but it was only a matter of time until it wore down to nothing, or broke again, or some other stupid little inconvenience came along and drove him completely over the edge. So why even bother? Why give the universe another chance to screw him over? All this time since his resurrection, and not one single thing could ever just go his way. He thought he’d hit the jackpot making this deal with Shooting Star, but now she was blackmailing him into a goddamn babysitting gig, and it was only a matter of time before her stupid brother caught sight of him, and then he’d be worse off than he’d been before running into her. And just when things were looking up after he’d found the shrink pen…

He jolted up, then rushed over to the trunk. The shrink pen was still buried under the blankets. He needed to put it back before Ford noticed it was missing. In one hurried motion, he snatched up the pen and his lock pick, making his way upstairs as fast as triangularly possible.

He was halfway through the living room when a thought occurred to him. The wall clock read 3:30, and the sky outside the windows was still sheer darkness… everybody in the house should still be hours from waking. With slow, alert movements, he made his way to that hallway Question Mark had blocked him off from earlier. Sliding a door slowly open, his eye landed on exactly what he’d been hoping to see. Shoved into the corner of Stanley’s dingy, stale office was Ford’s magic copy machine.

After what must have been the loudest, most agonizingly slow print job ever performed, Bill snatched up the freshly duplicated shrink pen and tested it on a shard of shredded credit card from a wastebasket in the corner. Sure enough, the shard swelled in size until it looked like a flat orange plastic prison shiv you could kill a Cosmic Rhino with. After a bit of consideration, Bill shrank the thing down to a pocket knife size and hid it in his hat with the copied shrink pen. You never knew when a shiv might come in handy.

Once the original shrink pen was back where it belonged, Bill couldn’t resist the temptation to rush down into the basement. Keenly aware of his limited time, he scanned the beam of the pen all along the floor until all the portal wreckage in sight was reduced to a pile of dollhouse-furniture-sized rebar and scrap metal, which he swept into his hat. Then he rushed back to the basement and dumped it all into the chest in the corner. He’d gather up as much portal material as he possibly could, stick around just long enough to build up a good stock of Shooting Star’s snack offerings, and then get out of dodge. Now that was a plan of action.

At last, Bill settled down onto his beanbag, heavy with the satisfaction of a productive day. So heavy, in fact, that sleep almost snuck up on him again. But just as reality started to fade away beneath a muffled blanket of shadow, he lurched upright with a shout.

“HA! NICE TRY!” he yelled, pointing at nothing. “NOT THIS TIME, UNIVERSE, YOU SNEAKY LITTLE BITCH. YOU’RE NOT GONNA SPOIL MY GOOD MOOD THAT EASY.”

He staggered across the room and grabbed for one of his books. He just needed to kill a little more time until the kid showed up again. He’d give MISSING another read. Really savor the flavor this time. Give his mind a good old workout, try and guess the plot of the sequel, maybe formulate some theories about the dome and whatever’s going on with the creepy little psychic kid. He’d give himself so much to think about, he’d forget all about how tired he was.

Flipping back to the first sentence, Bill scoffed at the voice in his head that was piping up about “sleep deprivation” and its ill effects on mortal beings. “OH, I’M SO SCARED. WHAT, AM I GONNA GET HEART DISEASE IN FIFTY YEARS? I’LL BE IN THIS BODY A FEW MORE MONTHS, TOPS. I’LL SLEEP WHEN I FEEL LIKE SLEEPING AND NO SOONER. THIS BODY’S NOT THE BOSS OF ME.”

He scanned the text slowly, one word at a time. Nobody was the boss of Bill Cipher. Not even his own body.

—

A sharp, repetitive flashing dragged Bill back from someplace dark. He coughed and sat up woozily, blinking away the numbness in his eye. The open book fell off the beanbag in a flutter of pages.

Mabel stopped flicking the lights on and off to give him an awkward wave. “‘Morning,” she said, nodding to a plate of food she’d set beside the beanbag. “I brought breakfast. Sorry to wake you up.”

Bill coughed again, silently cursing his body. “I WAS AWAKE!” he said quickly. “I WAS JUST, UH…” he snatched the book up off the floor. “...READING.”

“Oh! I thought you’d like that one!” she said with a grin, seeing the cover. “It was kinda gruesome for my taste, but that’s why I picked it for you. How far did you get? Did they introduce the girl with the whip arm yet? I thought you’d like her.”

“OH, SHE’S THE BEST ONE BY FAR! THAT PART WHERE SHE FLAYS THE ONE GUY’S FACE OFF GETS ME EVERY TIME!”

“Whoa, that’s, like, right at the end…” she paused. “Wait, every time? How many times did you read that part…?”

“DON’T JUDGE!! I READ THE WHOLE THING TWICE. IT GOES BY QUICK!” He flipped through the book to demonstrate.

“You finished it twice? In one night??”

“I’M A SPEED-READER,” he said with a shrug. “I’LL ACE A COMPREHENSION QUIZ IF YOU DON’T BELIEVE ME.”

She grabbed the book and flipped through it herself, like she thought he’d rigged it somehow. “What, you just practiced until you could read at light speed?”

“BASICALLY. GIVE IT A COUPLE BILLION YEARS AND YOU COULD DO IT TOO.”

She squinted. Then she said, “What’s the name of the one with super speed?”

He rolled his eye. She was actually quizzing him. “BRIAN.”

“And the one with a crush on him? What was her name?”

“HIS NAME WAS DEREK,” he said smugly. “NICE TRY, KID.”

She looked impressed despite herself. “Well, uh… I’m glad you liked it enough to read it twice!”

“NOT LIKE I’VE GOT MANY OPTIONS HERE,” he said, his irritation resurfacing. “THIS WAS THE LONGEST BOOK YOU GAVE ME. THE OTHERS BARELY KILLED THREE HOURS COMBINED. I SEEM TO REMEMBER SOMEONE SAYING THIS WASN’T SUPPOSED TO BE A PRISON SENTENCE.”

“Hey, I didn’t have to give you anything to read!” she protested, crossing the room to pick up the pile of books he’d tossed aside. “I’m trying to be nice, okay? I thought all this stuff would be enough to tide you over for one night.”

He sighed, reminding himself not to push his luck too far. “YEAH, YEAH, I GET IT. SORRY.”

She nodded, looking relieved to hear an apology. Maybe she’d thought he was physically incapable of it, like some cartoon villain. “I guess I’m sorry too,” she said suddenly, and Bill blinked with surprise.

“I mean, I did kind of threaten you last time we talked. I really wasn’t going to let them hurt you… but still, I get why you freaked out.”

Bill squeezed his eye shut to stop it from rolling again. Maybe the kid really, honestly did think she would have been able to talk Stanley and Sixer out of killing him on sight. That would make her delusional, but not heartless. Which admittedly did sound more in character.

“WHO SAID I WAS FREAKING OUT?” he said with a dismissive scoff. “I KNEW IT’D TURN OUT FINE. IT WAS JUST… IRRITATING, HAVING OUR HOUSING DEAL REVOKED LIKE THAT. I DIDN’T WANT TO HAVE TO TAKE ANOTHER SHOT AT HIKING.” He shuddered, playing up his dread at the thought of the woods. You wouldn’t send the poor defenseless little triangle back out into the woods, would you, Shooting Star?

He shot a quick look at her face to see if she was buying this. The guilty look she was aiming at the floor encouraged him. “Sorry,” she said. Oh, this was even easier than he’d expected.

“EH, IT’S FINE. MAYBE THE SEQUEL TO ‘MISSING’ WOULD HELP SMOOTH THINGS OVER–”

“But you still have to go with us on missions.”

Bill stopped talking. He raised his eye to the ceiling and took a long, deep breath to keep from screaming in frustration. Ahead, he heard fluttering pages as Mabel sorted the books he’d thrown on the ground. He’d definitely have to find a new place to stay before these “missions” started. Maybe he could at least get that book first if he played his cards right…

He heard a gasp and looked back to Mabel. She was holding the coloring book, staring at the pages Bill had worked on earlier. Her eyes were as wide as dinner plates. He sighed. “WHAT NOW?”

“This is WILD!” she yelled, holding the book out to him as though he might not have seen it. “Did you do this?”

He shrugged sarcastically. “IT WAS BLANK WHEN I GOT IT, SO THAT’S A SAFE ASSUMPTION.”

“With just those couple crayons?” She brought the book closer, pointing to the dragon’s hide. “How? I’ve never seen– I mean, it looks 3D! The fire almost looks like it’s moving! And– did I even give you this color??”

He chuckled. She was laying it on pretty thick. “IT’S JUST LAYERING, KID. I HAD ALL THE PRIMARIES, IT’S NOT THAT HARD.”

She stared up at him almost reverently. Then she held up a couple crayons. “Show me?”

He hesitated, feeling somehow like this was a trap. Then he grabbed the crayons anyway; what, did he think they were poison or something? With the yellow and blue and a bit of smudging, he turned a patch of castle stone a smooth, vibrant green.

Mabel stared at it like she’d just watched a miracle performed. “Can I try?” she asked, aiming some crayons at a spot on the untouched half of the spread.

This was either some impressive acting, or actually just a kid getting super hyped up over a coloring book. Bill sighed and shrugged. “KNOCK YOURSELF OUT.”

She managed to get a fairly decent purple out of the blue crayon and a broken fragment of the red one. Then, realizing she’d placed it in the middle of a hillside, she started drawing the outline of a giant fuzzy worm around it. “Now he’s got a friend,” she said, pointing at the dragon.

“HEY, NOBODY SAID THAT WAS AN OPTION! LET ME TAKE A STAB AT IT.” Bill started roughing in an outline of some massive eldritch horror looming over the horizon. He saw Mabel excitedly drawing in his periphery, but kept focusing on his work, summoning all his concentration to perfect the design.

“I always add new stuff in these books,” she said as she drew. “My ideas are always better than what the coloring book people came up with, anyway.”

“I LIKE YOUR ATTITUDE, KID,” Bill said as he applied some finishing touches to his masterpiece. “THOSE LINES THEY PUT IN THERE ARE JUST SUGGESTIONS ANYWAY. THEY CAN’T MAKE YOU PLAY BY THEIR RULES.”

“Exactly! See, that’s why I hate those paint-by-numbers things. What, you’re telling me that patch HAS to be green? No other color? Says who??” She laughed. “Y’know, I remember one time in kindergarten, they gave us one of those sheets and I colored the whole thing pink in protest. I think they made me stay inside for recess.”

“WHAT?!” Bill scoffed in disgust. “BUNCHA FASCISTS. YOU SHOULD’VE BURNED THE PLACE DOWN WHILE THEY WERE OUTSIDE DISTRACTED.”

Mabel looked uncomfortable. For a second, Bill had forgotten to rein it in. He waved a hand to shoo away the awkwardness. “METAPHORICALLY. YOU KNOW, LIKE, START A REVOLUTION OR SOMETHING. METAPHORICALLY BURN THE SCHOOL DOWN.”

She snorted, looking unconvinced but mollified. “Yeah, okay. Anyway, check it out!” She pointed to her side of the page.

Bill couldn’t hold back a laugh. Mabel had entwined the purple worm with a tangle of multicolored siblings, all adorned with googly eyes and brightly clashing patterns of spots and stripes. All the worms were connected at their tails to a massive pink lion, forming a writhing Medusa-style mane around its goofy smiling face. It was batting at the tower of the castle with a giant paw. “HORRIFYING,” Bill said, eye squinted in an approving grin.

“Thanks!” she chirped. “I was just kinda making it up as I went along…” She glanced at Bill’s side of the paper and her eyes bulged. “WHOA! What IS that?!”

Bill laughed, reveling in the horror on her face. He moved aside to show off the full breadth of what he’d drawn. “LIKE IT? I BASED IT OFF SOME GUY I HAD A BAR FIGHT WITH SOMETIME AROUND THE CAMBRIAN EXPLOSION. HE MIGHT HAVE STARTED OUT WITH MORE TEETH THAN THAT. HE WAS LOOKIN’ PRETTY ROUGH BY THE TIME I WAS THROUGH WITH HIM.”

“How’d you even DO that?!” To Bill’s surprise, the kid was leaning over the page, examining the creature closely. “You just drew that now? This looks like it took MONTHS!”

“OH, C’MON,” Bill scoffed, wanting to brush off the attempt at flattery. But his skepticism faded as he watched Mabel’s eyes follow each writhing coil of each glistening, flayed tendril he’d drawn. With rapt interest, she took in every detail of the shapeless beast that filled every inch of the skyline, spilling over the horizon like guts pouring out of a wounded stomach. What had looked like horror at first now seemed more like sheer, entranced disbelief. Maybe she would have been more unsettled if he’d had more red crayon to work with… he’d had to use pink for the exposed muscle instead. But still, it seemed Shooting Star had a stronger stomach than he’d given her credit for.

He coughed and finished his sentence. “...IT’S REALLY NOT THAT BIG A DEAL. LIKE I SAID, BILLIONS OF YEARS OF PRACTICE. GIVE ME A DAY OR TWO AND A FEW MORE COLORS, AND I COULD REALLY IMPRESS YOU.”

She stared at him, eyes bright. “I’ve got tons more crayons you can use. Colored pencils and markers too, you name it. I can get paper too, or– I dunno, whatever works best! Show me what you got!”

Seemed like he’d talked himself into yet another “project.” At least this one might actually be fun. “ALRIGHT, FINE. GET ME MORE OF THOSE BOOKS AND YOU’VE GOT A DEAL.”

She smacked her forehead like she’d completely forgotten. “The books! Right! Yeah, of course I’ll get more books. I don’t think I brought the sequel to ‘Missing', but I bet the library would have it. Heck, since you read so fast, I could get you like a pile a week and just swap ‘em out when you’re done! We can stop by today while we’re in town!”

“‘WE?’” Bill hoped he’d misheard.

She shrugged nervously. “Well, yeah. That’s what I came down here for. Dipper and I are going out to research stuff. We saw this weird lightning thing yesterday and we were gonna go split up to try and find out more about it. I wanted you to come with me in the bike basket. And I know you’re gonna say no–”

“NO.”

“--But think about it! Dipper and I are going totally opposite directions! It’s the best possible test run for this, he won’t even be there to notice you. I can just drop you off once he’s gone and pick you up before we meet back up and he’ll never know!” She raised a hand to cut off his next objection. “Wouldn’t you rather take your chances outside than be stuck in this room all day?”

He paused. “WELL. I DID RUN OUT OF BOOKS…”

“We’ll get you more books! We’ll get you SO many books. I swear I’ll cover for you, don’t be scared of getting caught–”

“HEY! WHO’S SCARED?!” Bill demanded. “ALRIGHT, YOU KNOW WHAT? FINE! I’M IN!”

Mabel lit up. “Awesome! Okay, meet me outside by the window in, uh…” She pulled out her phone to check the time. “Whoa– what?! How is it already– how long were we drawing?! Geez, I totally lost track of time…”

Bill couldn’t repress a laugh. “HEY, THEY SAY TIME FALLS AWAY WHEN YOU’RE MAKING ART.”

“Do they??” Stress was tugging at her voice. “Ugh, I bet Dipper’s wondering where I am… I gotta run. I’ll text you when it’s time to meet up.” She rushed to the door, then jabbed a finger back at him as she reached it. “Don’t trick me like that again!”

“HEY, THAT WASN’T ME!” Bill had to hold back another laugh. He wanted to be indignant, but the huffy look on the kid’s face was too hilarious to get properly mad at. “DRAWING WAS YOUR IDEA, REMEMBER?”

She just glared at him for a second, red with embarrassment. Then she let out a big exasperated sigh, like she was furious at how unprofessional she’d allowed herself to be. She opened the door, then mumbled “Remind me to grab more crayons while we’re out.”

The laugh escaped. “SURE, KID.”

The door slammed shut.

Bill sat back on the beanbag, shaking his head. Talk about a bundle of energy. The day had just started and she’d almost worn him out. He’d have to demand some more of that weirdo juice concoction she’d brought him before.

He set out his prehistoric flip phone where he could keep his eye on it, and gave the coloring book another look while waiting for that text. Shooting Star’s side of the picture really wasn’t half bad. It seemed like she’d actually paid attention to the techniques he’d been using; her own attempts were imperfect, but he could see them improving as she went on. And that worm lion monster was just hilarious. He couldn’t help but chuckle, imagining it rendered with real flesh and blood, rampaging its way through Weirdmageddon. That dopey, grinning face the size of an oil platform, mountainous claws tearing through skyscrapers as its hellish living mane writhed and glistened in the blood-red sun. Just an utter delight. He’d have to remember it for later.

While he was looking over the drawing, he reached for the plate of toast and scrambled eggs she’d brought and started eating. He’d been planning to hoard his food, then cut and run as soon as he could. But maybe he could wait a little longer. As much as he resented the idea of being dragged around on little field trips, maybe it wouldn’t be awful enough to give up on his free access to the shack. While he was here, he had food, water, a roof, and all the makings of a working portal, as long as he could handle the various annoyances long enough.

Besides, his plan was working so far. Whether Shooting Star liked it or not, he was winning her over. She was a lot easier to impress than Sixer; he didn’t even have to pretend to like math. Look at what just happened! All he had to do was draw some pictures, and he’d played her like a fiddle without even knowing he was doing it!

Winning the trust of mortals wasn’t hard. He’d done it millions of times. You just had to find the right game to play, and it was clear Mabel’s game was one he was good at. Maybe he could keep playing it for a little longer. Even if this next part seemed tough, he could at least give it a shot, just in case it wasn’t completely unbearable.

That didn’t mean anything, he thought, pushing down a momentary surge of panic. He just needed to focus. He could concentrate better if he snapped his fingers.

He tried. That didn’t work either. He couldn’t snap his fingers. Why couldn’t he snap his fingers? Where were his fingers? Where were his hands?

The panic surged forth again. He tried to relax, but a thousand questions were piling up in his mind. Where was he right now? How did he get here? Why couldn’t he tell where his hands were? It was dark, sure, but he couldn’t even feel them. He couldn’t feel anything . He tried to send his vision outward, reaching his mind out to feel around for a depiction of himself to look through. A better vantage point would help him orient himself. It could be anything. A bit of graffiti scrawled on a dumpster would be enough. Anything that would let him see something other than darkness.

He couldn’t find anything. Why couldn’t he find anything? There were always options, billions of options, billions of little eyes scattered across billions of worlds like uncountable spy drones. Almost too many to choose from, that was the only problem. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d sought one out and not found one. He kept trying to push his mind further, to try and push through the darkness, but it seemed like it went on forever. He thought he was gasping for breath from the effort, he must have been, but he couldn’t hear it. He couldn’t feel himself breathing. He tried calling out. He couldn’t hear his own voice.

The panic overflowed. What was happening to him? What was this place? How did he even get here?! He tried to wrangle his unraveling mind enough to mentally retrace his steps. The last thing he remembered, he’d been in the Fearamid. He’d been celebrating. All his millenia of work had finally begun to pay off, countless eons spent watching and waiting and carefully prodding at history were about to come to fruition. Weirdmaggedon was finally here. At long last he was about to complete his life’s work, to complete the universe, to finally have everything he’d always deserved. He just needed one equation to collapse the barrier between him and reality. Ford was just about to hand it over when–

Ford.

It all came flooding back. It was Ford. Or, no, it wasn’t Ford, it was a trick . He and his brother had tricked him, trapped him in the wrong mind, and he’d been too caught up in the fervor of victory to realize it until it was too late. Until the jaws of the trap had slammed shut behind him, cutting off his exit, no escape, no way to backtrack, nowhere to run from the flames closing in, from Stanley towering over him, and then…

And then.

His mind scattered as horror tore through it. Was this death? Was this his afterlife? Was this how he’d spend the rest of eternity, an orphaned mind cut off from all senses, floating in the void? Trapped alone with his thoughts forever? He tried to call out again, to scream for help. There had to be somebody somewhere who could hear him. Somebody who could end this. He couldn’t stay like this. Torture would be better than this. If this universe really wanted to punish him so badly, it could set him on fire, or tear him apart into atoms, or pluck all his organs out one by one every day for eternity. Anything. Anything but this. Anything but nothing, forever.

Eventually, Bill accepted that trying to scream wasn’t working. He couldn’t even feel his own throat to know if the sound was escaping. And even if he was really screaming, who would answer? Who would listen? The Henchmaniacs had probably all split as soon as they saw the party was over. None of them were exactly “ride or die” types. They stuck around while the music was playing, but he knew they’d never stay late to pick up the solo cups all over the house. It had never been a problem before. He’d always been able to keep the music playing, keep stringing them along with promised glory and well-placed threats. But now? Forget it. They were all long gone by now.

And who else was there? Was there any other living creature left out there in the multiverse who knew who he was and didn’t have it out for him? His one last hail mary seemed to have fallen on deaf ears. There was no sign of anybody. No sign that anyone cared at all.

He was glad, for just a moment, that he couldn’t feel his face. He didn’t want to know if he was crying. He never gave himself time for self-pity if he had any choice. But now the only thing he had left was time. All the time he could ever need to torture himself with.

All he’d wanted to do was fix things. To make everything better. To make everyone see that without all their stupid rules, everything could be better than they’d ever let themselves imagine. He could have shown them. He’d tried to show them. That was all he’d wanted to do. And this was the thanks he got for it?!

It could have been any amount of time that he spent in that place, stewing in rage and despair. It could have been days or weeks or maybe years, it really didn’t matter. All that mattered was that eventually, he ran out of energy. He gave up trying to scream loud enough to reach his own ears. He just focused on slowing his mind to a crawl. Stopping his thoughts. Trying to just fade away into the darkness, waiting to see if maybe someday something would happen.

Nothing happened for a very long time.

But eventually something did.

The first thing he noticed was a sound. Soft and gentle, reverberating through the void. Bill snapped to awareness, his mind spinning wildly as he tried to remember how to think. He’d heard something. He’d heard something. Someone else was here.

“WHO’S THERE?!” He winced at the sound of his own voice. He almost didn’t even recognize it; it was strained and ragged, on the verge of giving out completely. He didn’t care. He could hear it. That was what mattered right now.

The sound returned, and this time he caught what it said. A voice, speaking a single word. “Bill.”

“WHO IS THAT?! WHERE ARE YOU?!?” he roared, desperately scanning the void in front of him.

“Bill! Stop screaming. I’m right next to you.”

With a start, Bill realized the voice was directly behind him. He found that he could move again, turned around, and was instantly flashbanged by a searing ray of pink light. Floating before him was a massive pale creature, all soft rounded angles, with a long finned tail and a remarkably stupid-looking face.

Bill would recognize them anywhere. He let out a hoarse laugh. “DECIDED TO SHOW UP AFTER ALL, HUH? YOU SURE TOOK YOUR SWEET TIME! WHAT, YOU GET HELD UP IN TRAFFIC WHILE I WAS STUCK ROTTING IN HERE?!”

“I was waiting for you to calm down,” the Axolotl said.

Bill’s eye bulged. “YOU WERE– YOU COULD HEAR ME?!? YOU MEAN THIS WHOLE TIME YOU WERE– YOU COULD’VE– AND YOU JUST–?!?” His dumbfounded stuttering slowly turned to broiling rage. “YOU– DO YOU HAVE ANY IDEA WHAT I JUST WENT THROUGH?! YOU WERE JUST FLOATING THERE WATCHING ME WHILE I WENT THROUGH THE TENTH CIRCLE OF HELL RIGHT IN FRONT OF YOU?! IS THAT HOW YOU GET YOUR SICK KICKS?!? BECAUSE I CAN DO YOU ONE BETTER IF YOU WANNA SWITCH THE ROLES AROUND, YOU MISERABLE PINK–” his voice cut out halfway through the insult. He grabbed at his face and found it was numb.

“I can come back later if you’re not ready yet.” The Axolotl’s voice was completely flat.

“WHAT–? NO!!! NO NO NO WAIT!!!!!” Bill threw his arms out desperately, trying to grab for them. He didn’t get anywhere close, but they stopped in their tracks anyway, looking back at him.

“I– I’M FINE. I’M CALM. SEE?” He kept his arms raised in surrender to demonstrate. “I’M CALM, I SWEAR. JUST… DON’T LEAVE ME IN HERE AGAIN.”

The Axolotl stared at him with their blank, dopey expression. He kept as still and quiet as he possibly could.

“Alright,” they finally said. “If you’re ready, we can discuss the terms of our contract.”

“YES. TERMS. CONTRACT. I’M READY.” Bill forced himself to sound calm and collected and not at all like he wanted to crush his conversation partner’s big stupid pink head in his clawed hand. The instant their deal was made and he was alive again, this damn amphibian was getting an all-expenses-paid one-way trip to a snow globe full of acid.

“I've had time to think things over," they said. "There is a certain protocol I usually follow here, but these past few months watching you in here have made me think it might not work well for you. So here's how we'll do this. I will grant you a return to life…”

“YES! FANTASTIC. LET’S GET GOING ON THAT, HUH?”

“...but I have some terms that you’ll need to agree to first.”

Bill sighed. He suspected this was coming. No such thing as a free lunch. “LAY ‘EM ON ME.”

“I will return you to life. I will return your body to its original state, exactly as it was when you last had it; no more, no less. All I ask is the promise of one favor in return.”

It wasn’t like he had a choice, but he didn’t risk complaining. “WHICH IS?”

The Axolotl stared placidly. “We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it.”

Bill stared back. “SO… WHAT. IT COULD BE ANYTHING? JUST WHATEVER YOU FEEL LIKE?”

“It won’t endanger your life,” the Axolotl said. “And you will be capable of doing it. But beyond that… yes.”

Bill laughed humorlessly. “THIS IS A BIT, RIGHT? THIS IS A JOKE?”

“No, Bill.”

“SO YOU’RE ACTUALLY MAKING ME SIGN A BLANK CHECK HERE. UNDER THREAT OF DEATH.”

“I’m not threatening death.” A hint of annoyance breached the Axolotl’s calm demeanor. “I’m offering you life. A way out of this mess you’ve made. And those are my terms.”

“THE MESS I’VE… ?! YOU’RE PINNING ALL THIS ON ME?!?” Bill exploded. “THIS HAPPENED TO ME! I GOT STABBED IN THE BACK AND MURDERED!! AND I’M STILL WAITING TO HEAR THESE ‘TERMS’, BUD! YOU DON’T GET TO JUST HAND ME A BLANK CONTRACT AND FILL IT OUT LATER, THAT’S NOT FAIR !!”

The Axolotl’s dot eyes narrowed to thin slits. “Of course. ‘Fair’. Just like all the famously clear, mutually beneficial, deeply ‘fair’ deals you’ve made.”

Bill clammed up. He couldn’t go off like this. If the Axolotl decided they were fed up, he knew they wouldn’t stick around. And they might not come back. He had no other choice but to listen to their brain-dead, moralistic lectures and nod his head like he agreed. So, reluctantly, he did.

“I’m offering you one last chance,” the Axolotl continued. “A return to your original, physical body. A chance to start over and make things right. All I ask is one small favor in the future, when I return. If that’s not fair enough for you, I’m happy to leave.”

Bill dragged his hands down his face. If he said what he was really thinking, there was no way he’d ever get out of here. There was no sense dragging this out any longer. He didn’t want to listen to this smug bastard prattle on for one more second. There would be time for revenge later; right now he just wanted out of this place.

He extended a hand. “FINE. DEAL.”

The Axolotl grasped Bill’s hand in a massive pink paw. As the void around them began to fade from black to gray, a thought that had been gnawing at the back of his mind suddenly surfaced. When they’d laid out their deal, the Axolotl had been worryingly specific on one particular detail. “Your original, physical body… no more, no less…”

“HOLD ON,” he said. “WHAT DID YOU MEAN BY–”

“Time to wake up, Bill.”

It wasn’t too long before Mabel sent the text alerting Bill to head outside. He had just barely finished clambering out the window when he heard two sets of footprints approaching, Pinetree’s squeaky voice ringing through the air. By a rare stroke of luck, it was Mabel who rounded the corner first. Her eyes bulged and she froze in place when she saw him in the open. With what she probably thought was a subtle jabbing gesture toward the spot where her bike leaned against the side of the house, she scurried back the way she came, yelling “Oops! Sorry! Sorry, I forgot something!” Bill took his cue to lunge for the bike and pull himself into the basket on the back, pulling the lid shut behind him.

A few minutes later, he heard the kids approaching again. The bike rocked from side to side as Mabel climbed onto it, and after a muffled exchange between her and her brother, they were finally on the road.

Bill could only make out a few words of the conversation that passed between the kids along the way. Between the shrill wind whistling through the gaps in the basket, the mind-numbing white noise of the clicking chains and the pavement crunching beneath the wheels, the stray spikes of wicker jabbing into him like spikes in an iron maiden, and the nauseating rocking and swinging of his tiny, dark prison, it was hard to concentrate on much of anything. He did hear something Dipper said about “sentient storms” and things that could control lightning. Mabel made some remark about gremlins, which was laughed off. Showed what Dipper knew about the paranormal; gremlins were no laughing matter, especially when overcharged with electricity. No monster hunter with self-preservation would want to get anywhere near those things without some heavy-duty rubber armor. And this kid calls himself an expert.

Dipper was still going on about some book or article he’d read. Bill heard the word “thunderbird” somewhere in the rambling. Maybe it was just the power of suggestion, but he thought for a moment that he heard a roll of thunder in the distance. He didn’t want to tempt fate by sending up a prayer, but he desperately hoped this was just some weird ball lightning they were chasing, or maybe a gnome that got set on fire, and not actually a thunderbird or something like that. These kids were not ready for a goddamn thunderbird. If this stupid field trip ended with him getting dragged into the woods by these two smug toddlers and scorched out of existence, he would haunt Shooting Star for the rest of her life.

Eventually the bike stopped moving. Bill suppressed a sigh of relief, forced himself to stay still and quiet, unsure if Pinetree was still right beside them. But soon he felt a knock on the lid of the basket. “You can come out now,” a voice whispered.

Bill popped out like a spring-loaded puppet, sending the lid flying off and Mabel stumbling backward. He jumped out onto the pavement, groaned and stretched, letting his joints creak and pop back into functionality. “ABOUT TIME!” he snapped. “WHAT, DID YOU GUYS REBUILD THE SHACK FIFTY MILES FROM TOWN OR SOMETHING!?”

She rolled her eyes. “That ride took like ten minutes, you big baby!”

“YEAH, RIGHT! THAT FELT LIKE HOURS!”

With a defiant glare, Mabel raised her phone and jabbed a finger at the screen as it displayed the time. 10:15… so more like eight minutes since they’d left the house.

Bill blinked and tried not to look sheepish. “...IT’S A FIGURE OF SPEECH, KID. GEEZ.” Time had never moved so slow before. Every little discomfort seemed to last so long, now that he could feel this awful flesh vessel aging with every second.

She sighed. “Let’s just get started. Dipper wanted to meet back up in the square at noon.” She rolled her bike to the rack at the edge of the parking lot they’d stopped in. As she did, Bill turned and saw the library building hunched at the far end. Apparently a decent parking spot would have been too much to ask.

The walk wasn't too bad, at least. It got the circulation back into his legs, and although the sun had breached the clouds and was baking the pavement, the heat felt good on his scales. Before he could reach the door, though, Mabel caught up with him and threw an arm out to stop him in his tracks. He glared at her, then blinked in confusion as his gaze landed on her other hand. She was holding a limp, furry thing that might have been a dead rodent.

“You’re just gonna waltz right in? Don’t you at least want a disguise?” She held out the thing in her hand, stretching it out with the other, and Bill suddenly realized what it was. A big novelty stick-on mustache.

He couldn’t help but laugh. “WHAT– WHAT IS THAT SUPPOSED TO DO?! WHERE WOULD I EVEN PUT IT??”

“Hey, it’s better than nothing! Right?” She seemed to be genuinely asking.

Bill stared at the mustache, hoping she couldn’t tell he was smiling. His plan had just been to stay out of sight, and he couldn’t imagine that thing would stop anyone from recognizing him, but it was hard to shut down something this silly. “...YOU KNOW WHAT, SURE. PROBABLY.”

He held out a hand, and Mabel grinned enormously and handed the mustache over. Bill inspected it, peeled the backing off the sticky side, and applied it just below his lower lid. He tried to step forward, but Mabel stopped him again. “Hold on, it’s a little…” she gestured with her hands, like she was adjusting a crooked tie. “Can I help?”

Bill tensed up a little, just on instinct. He wasn’t wild about letting the kid get that close to his face, after all the stunts she’d pulled last year… if memory served, she’d injured his eye every single time they’d interacted. And it still felt so… weird, so disorienting, to have anyone touch this physical body at all. Every touch so far had felt like he was missing a layer of skin.

Still, it seemed like agreeing to the mustache had scored him some points, and he needed plenty of those if his plan had any chance of working. If she tried anything funny, he could always bite her. With a sigh, he said “YEAH, OK.”

Mabel leaned in close, kneeling so she was eye level with the mustache. She reached forward and grabbed one end of it with just her finger and thumb. Gingerly, trying not to touch his scales– Bill wondered if that was for his sake or hers– she unstuck it, moved it down an inch, then pressed it down again. With a quick bounce, she stood and looked him over, then grinned again. “Perfect! You look like a whole new person! Er-- shape!”

Bill laughed again. “UNLESS THIS THING BENDS LIGHT, I DOUBT IT. BUT AT LEAST IT'S A FUN LOOK!”

“Exactly!” Mabel hurried ahead and held the door open for him. Probably just instinct from needing to invite him into the shack, but he wasn’t about to discourage the tendency. Maybe one day, she really would make a good Henchmaniac.

-

The library was borderline deserted. A single weary old man sat behind the front desk, face buried in a dusty book. He lazily lifted his head to glance at Mabel, but Bill had plenty of time to duck behind a shelf and avoid his gaze. As he and Mabel made their way further into the stacks, she nudged him and pointed. “Pretty sure the YA books are that way,” she said in a half-whisper. “Not totally sure though. I’m usually not here without Dipper.”

“WELL, THIS PLACE ISN’T HUGE. IF WE… WHAT??” he raised his eyebrow at her as she flapped her arms, palms down, a universal “shut up” gesture.

“Don’t yell! It’s a library, use your indoor voice!”

“THIS IS MY INDOOR VOICE!” Bill shouted. “YOU’D KNOW MY OUTDOOR VOICE WHEN YOU HEARD IT. NOBODY’S HERE ANYWAY, WHAT’S THE BIG DEAL!”

“Don’t you think you should be keeping a low profile?” she hissed, quieter now, as if she thought she could balance out his loudness by whispering. “If the front desk guy comes to yell at us, that disguise might not be enough to save you! You turned his cat into a chupacabra last August, remember?! He said she still goes nuts every time she sees a goat!”

Bill blinked. She could be making that up, but it could just as easily be true. He turned a lot of things into a lot of other things that August, and she had a point about laying low regardless. “OKAY, FINE,” he muttered, doing his best to keep his volume down. A stage whisper was usually as quiet as he got, so he tried for that. “LET’S JUST FIND THIS BOOK AND LEAVE.”

She nodded, seeming to at least appreciate the attempt.

They set off into the shelves. Mabel moved slow and scanned the place carefully as they went, like she was searching for landmarks in a forest. Bill took no such precautions. He’d been in libraries this one could get lost inside. Hell, until a few days ago, he’d been able to summon planets worth of knowledge with the blink of his eye and scan through every inch of it for just the fact he’d needed, in the time it took a mortal to finish asking a question about it. This pile of pulp didn’t stand a chance against him. That book wouldn’t elude him for long.

That optimism faded more and more the further in they went. It wasn’t the size of the place that worked against their efforts; it was the layout. Or rather the complete lack of any layout that made even a modicum of sense. There did seem to be what could be generously called a “YA section”, but the books seemed to be crammed into the dusty, splintery shelves in completely random spots. Board books for literal infants next to third-grade-level chapter books and the dreaded Required Reading, with no discernible reasoning behind any of the placements. Bill spotted a dog-eared “Catcher in the Rye” sandwiched between two random entries of some picture book series about cats with wings. Some rows seemed to start out alphabetical and then give up halfway through. Others switched at random between alphabetical by title or by author. One looked to be arranged by color. Most of the shelves seemed to have no system of organization at all, other than “get all these books off the floor so I can go home.”

And worse still, Mabel refused to entertain the notion of splitting up. Not even the prospect of covering more ground and ending this chore in half the time would sway her. In fact, she wouldn’t even let Bill out of her sight. The minute he started to drift away from her, she shot him a glare and closed the distance, like she thought he was trying to make a break for it. Now, of all times, when they were dozens of rows deep into a dingy little trash heap of useless human slop! Where did she even expect him to go?!

He didn’t want to push his luck by asking, so he swallowed his pride and let her keep tailgating. Even though the pace of their progress could be described as “glacial”. It didn’t help that the rows of shelves were just as disorganized as the rows of books. When Bill found himself halfway through scanning a shelf just to realize he’d already checked it twice before, his last glimmer of optimism died. No book was worth this amount of frustration.

Just as he was about to announce his intent to throw in the towel, Mabel grabbed him by the arm and shoved him flat against a bookshelf. “AUGH!” he yelped. “WHAT GIVES?!”

Mabel made a frantic “zip-it” gesture across her mouth and pointed to a nearby reading area.

Bill’s eye went wide when he saw what she was pointing at. Pinetree was sitting alone at a desk, amid a pile of books, flipping furiously through a thick dusty tome.

Bill turned back to Shooting Star and hissed “WHAT IS HE DOING HERE??”

“How should I know?!” she hissed back. “He didn’t say where he was going! I mean, I didn’t either, but…”

“SO YOU BOTH JUST HAPPENED TO END UP IN THE EXACT SAME PLACE? YOU REALLY EXPECT ME TO BELIEVE THAT??”

“It’s the only library in town, so yeah, kinda!” She threw her hands up in exasperation. “We’re not ambushing you, Bill. It’s Dipper. He researches. That’s his thing.”

Bill sighed. She had a point. It’d be just like Pinetree to make his first stop on the trail of a lightning-summoning death beast at the local public library.

“So what should we do?” Mabel asked, shooting furtive glances between him and her brother.

“I’M THINKING,” Bill hissed. Pinetree hadn’t seemed to notice their approach. He was totally lost in nerd land over there. They might be able to just sneak off in a different direction and avoid getting near his little Homework Nest until they found what they were looking for and left. But that book the kid was reading looked nearly complete, and who knew where he’d decide to go looking for another one. If he caught a glimpse of Shooting Star, he’d surely be too nosy to mind his own business, and he didn’t trust the kid to keep their little secret in that situation. And if he caught a glimpse of Bill… then forget it. He’d never let it go, and he’d go straight to Ford, and then…

There was always the option of just running for the hills. But if Mabel didn’t go along, he’d be stuck out in the open in Gravity Falls, not knowing who might recognize him, and even if he made it back to the house in one piece, there would be the barrier to worry about. At the very best, he’d be stuck in the woods for who knew how long, with nothing to occupy his mind except maybe that damn cliffhanger at the end of that book.

And of course killing Pinetree was out. Shooting Star would flay him alive. Although if he could cause a good enough distraction, maybe he could stage some kind of tragic medical episode…

“I’m gonna go talk to him,” Mabel said.

Bill’s train of thought flipped off the tracks. “NO YOU’RE NOT!” he snarled, grabbing her arm. “JUST STAY RIGHT THERE AND LET ME THINK!”

“He’s gonna figure out I’m here, Bill!” she whisper-shouted back, yanking her arm away. “We’re like the only other people here, and if he spots you you’re DEAD! Just let me distract him and we can—“

“Mabel?”

Suddenly Bill was wedged between a pair of plant encyclopedias. “Dipper! Hey!” Shooting Star’s voice rang out as her footsteps scurried off. “Fancy seeing you here!”

Biting back the rage and embarrassment as best he could, Bill waited for the irritating little voices to fade into the distance. When he was sure they were out of sight, he extracted himself from the bookshelf he’d been shoved into, brushed the dust and paper mites off himself, and stalked off into the shelves. This was a stroke of luck, he decided. A chance to get out from under Shooting Star’s thumb, even just for a second. A chance to actually accomplish something before she got back into his figurative hair. Well worth being shelved like a dusty old magazine. He’d get his powers back soon enough, and make the kid regret every little indignity she’d put him through. All of this would be well worth it.

As he swept his eye across each shelf he passed, scanning every title in an instant, his mood started to brighten. He was making much faster progress without the kid trailing behind him, and she and Pinetree gave no sign of losing interest in their discussion at the table. And now Bill had a whole building full of information to use to his advantage. Even the Gravity Falls library, lame as it was, had to have at least one book he could find a use for.

And right as he rounded the next corner, he struck gold. Leaning on a half-empty shelf, level with his eye, like a blessing straight from some hellbound demon god who owed him a favor. The faded, battered paperback spine read “Hexes A-Z”.

Bill snapped it up like a starving hyena and started flipping through. Oh yes. Ohoho, YES. This was exactly what he was hoping to find.

There were plenty of clunkers, some made-up “manifestation” slop and pointless filler rituals, but towards the back was some pure gold. “Ear Locusts”. “Plague of Welts”. “Power Word: Slough.” Whoever compiled these had some serious issues. Bill made a mental note to track them down one day. Most of the really strong stuff would take way too much prep work, but sprinkled throughout were plenty of subtler spells that would make his life so much easier while working on the portal.

With a quick motion, he grabbed the shrink pen, zapped the book down to Post-It size, and stashed both little treasures back inside his hat. A quick glance around confirmed no one had seen him, and he almost laughed out loud when he noticed the shelves around him. It was one thing to make a publicly available list of step-by-step instructions for hundreds of heinous crimes against reality, but to shelve it right next to a bunch of kids’ books? Now that was funny.

Wait a minute. Some of these kids’ books looked pretty edgy.

Following a hunch, Bill slowly drew down the aisle, eyeing the books carefully. All unmistakably YA, but the titles kept getting more truncated. “Unwound”. “Toxin”. And finally…

“Missing.” The same telltale green cover. And lined up neatly with five other books, all sporting similar bold colors and terse titles. Now we’re talking. These should hold him over for at least a week.

He was shrinking each book down one by one and arranging them neatly in the lining of his hat when he heard a familiar voice pipe up from the reading area. “Yeah, no worries! I just, uh… lost something. Hold on, I’m gonna go look…”

Bill zapped the rest of the books all at once and shoved them into his hat, then scurried back the way he’d come from. He was just in time to catch Mabel’s eye before she stepped away from the table. Her eyes narrowed at him, silent admonishment for breaking his unspoken curfew. He gave a bewildered shrug that he hoped conveyed “What?? I’ve been here the whole time!”

She rolled her eyes, then caught herself and made a show of rummaging through her pockets. “Whoops, false alarm!” she said, turning back to Pinetree. “Got it right here! Silly me!”

Bill pinched his brow. He might need to get the kid some books on acting.

Thankfully Pinetree didn’t press the issue. As he watched from the shadows, Bill saw some suspicious glances tossed Mabel’s way while she wasn’t looking, but nothing became of it. And once they finally decided to wrap it up, Bill managed to sneak out ahead of them without a hitch.

“Yeah, just a few more errands to run first,” he heard Mabel saying as the two crossed the parking lot towards her bike. “I’ll meet you back at the house!”

“Works for me,” Dipper said. “Let me know if your scanner picks up anything.”

“Of course!” she chirped, a little too brightly. Bill watched from his hiding spot behind some shrubs as the kids parted ways, and waited for Pinetree’s bike to glide out of sight down the road. Once it was gone, he crept out into the open.

Shooting Star was rifling through the basket of her bike, looking more and more anxious. She hadn’t even noticed him approaching, so he stretched an arm out and tapped her on the shoulder.

The bike clattered to the ground as she thrashed away from him. Her hand was fumbling around for the grappling hook in the holster before her eyes even focused on him.

Bill threw his hands up. “YEESH! CALM DOWN!”

“Bill!!” she half-shouted, slumping in exasperation and yanking the bike upright again. “Why would you do that?!”

“HEY, I WALKED RIGHT UP TO YOU!” he said with a laugh. “YOU SHOULD BRUSH UP ON YOUR SURVIVAL SKILLS, KID.”

She scowled, and Bill remembered he was supposed to be winning her over. “OKAY, FINE,” he sighed. “SORRY.”

The glare softened just a little, but didn’t go away. “You weren’t supposed to sneak off like that.”

He rolled his eye before he could stop himself. “I WAS TRYING TO BE EFFICIENT. I FIGURED WE STOOD AT LEAST SOME CHANCE OF FINDING THAT BOOK IF ONE OF US KEPT LOOKING, AND SINCE YOU GOT CAUGHT UP IN SOME STUPID BOOK REPORT…”

“It wasn’t stupid! We found some good leads!” she protested. “But… I guess it did stop me from finding your book. Sorry.”

In a moment of impulsive pride, Bill almost went to grab the shrunken books out of his hat and show them off. But he remembered just in time: if the kid found out he had a shrink pen, she’d know he’d been sneaking around the shack, and all his plans would be toast. “…YEAH,” he said with affected disappointment. “I COULDN’T FIND IT ANYWHERE EITHER.”

“Well, hey, Dipper’s not expecting me home yet,” she said. “We’ll have plenty of time to go find it now!”

Bill blinked. “WAIT, WHAT—”

“C’mon, let’s go!” she chirped, beckoning him to follow her back across the lot. “We should hurry while the place is still empty!”

“HOLD ON!” he said. “DID YOU… I MEAN, IS THAT WHY YOU TOLD PINETREE TO HEAD BACK FIRST? SO WE COULD KEEP LOOKING FOR THE BOOK?”

“Yeah, duh! That’s what we came here for!” she said with a grin. “I told you we’d find it for you, and we will. This place can’t hide it from us forever!” Between her proud, boisterous tone and the determined grin on her face, you’d think she was about to fight a dragon with a magic sword or something. Not walk into a dusty building.

…This is just ridiculous, Bill thought as he trudged across the lot behind her. It was stupid to tell Pinetree to leave first. She just made herself look even more suspicious, and inconvenienced them both, AND forced Bill to walk right back into that stupid library he’d JUST escaped from. And for what? Some dumb kid’s book? Ridiculous. No matter how "thoughtful" and “nice” it must have seemed in her head, in practice it just made her look like a complete idiot.

And that was all Bill was thinking through the whole ordeal that followed. Walking back through the place, hiding the Missing books behind the kid’s back for her to “stumble upon” minutes later, waiting in the shadows while she checked them out one by one, sitting in the bike basket with the bulky, uncomfortable box set squishing him against the edges as she prepared to sherpa him back to the house. He was only thinking about how dumb she looked. How much of a strategic misplay that “kind gesture” really was. Nothing else.

Interrupting his thoughts— thought, singular— Mabel tapped him on the shoulder. “You got something on your face,” she said, pointing to her lip.

Bill blinked, touched his face, and flinched as he felt something furry just above his bow tie. A memory returned with a rush of embarrassment, and he ripped the fake mustache off his face. That stupid thing had been there the whole time… he prayed to every god he knew that he really hadn’t been seen by anyone.

The mustache stuck to his hand when he tried to fling it away, and Mabel spent a good two minutes just watching him struggle to shake it loose before deigning to pluck it off his hand. “You’re welcome,” she said to his withering glare, and then the bike jolted into motion. At long last, they left the library parking lot behind them.

—

Bill’s relief was short-lived. Within just a couple minutes on the road, he was already wondering how he’d possibly survive the whole ride back while being crushed into the corner of the basket by a massive box set of books. Why did human authors have to be so damn long-winded?? Surely no story warranted this much blathering. Least of all this one; the way things had gone in the first book, he’d assumed every character would be dead inside three more chapters. He just wedged himself tightly against the wall of the basket and hoped the bike ride would end as soon as possible.

As if fate had just pounced on a chance to be annoying, the sky split with a blinding flash and a deafening roar. Jolting with shock, Mabel wrenched the handlebars back and the bike’s tires screeched against the pavement, and suddenly she, Bill, and the books were all flat on the ground.

“Sorry!!” she squeaked as Bill picked himself up. He wanted to gripe at her just for some stress relief, but before he could even get his bearings the bike was back upright, all the books were thrown back into the basket and she was hauling him to his feet.

“WHAT JUST HAPPENED?” he shouted instead. “DID SOMEBODY THROW A GRENADE OR SOMETHING?!”

“No, I think it’s just the…”

Before she could finish, the dark clouds above them opened up and a driving downpour started.

“…Storm coming back!!” Mabel finished with a shriek, diving to shield the books with her sweater. “Ughh, why now?!”

“JUST DRIVE!” Bill tried to climb into the basket again as the rain bore down harder and harder by the second. “GET US SOMEWHERE WITH A ROOF!”

“I can’t steer in this!” she said, not budging. Her arms were locked tight around the basket, shielding the contents with her body. “And I can’t let these books get ruined! If I get another black mark on my library card, I’ll get banned from another—“ she stopped herself, suddenly bright red.

“GO ON,” Bill said innocently, hoping she couldn’t tell he was grinning.

She slumped her head over the basket. “Just get the umbrella out of the trunk, okay??”

Bill was about to ask what was in it for him, just for the principle of the thing if nothing else. Maybe haggle her into telling the rest of that story and giving him some blackmail material. But another spine-clattering thunderclap shook him back to his senses. He’d already been stranded outside in a storm once, and that was more than enough for one lifetime.

He was elbow-deep in the overcrowded trunk full of Baby’s First Metaphysical Survival Supplies before he finally grasped the umbrella handle. With a flourish, he put it over his shoulder and turned back to the kid. She was still huddled over the bike basket, but as he approached he saw the cell phone pressed to her face, ineffectually shielded with her hands and a curtain of hair. His eye widened as he heard the end of her conversation: “That’s awesome! Thanks, Grunkle Stan— okay, see you in a minute!”

Impulsively, Bill lunged for the phone, but it was too late. As Mabel yanked it away, he saw the “call ended” on the screen. “Are you nuts?!” she hissed, jumping away from him.

“YOU SAID YOU’D KEEP ME AWAY FROM HIM!” Bill roared. “THAT WAS THE DEAL!”

“I said I’d keep them from seeing you,” she shot back, pulling the phone away as he made another grab for it. “And I will! They’ll have me put the bike in the trunk, just stay in the basket and—”

“NO. CALL HIM BACK AND SAY YOU GOT ANOTHER RIDE.” He grabbed her sleeve and growled the words straight into her face. “NOW.”

A shock of pain in his eye socket sent him flying backwards. He screeched, pressing his eyelids shut, back flat against the soaked grass. When he sat up and wrenched his eye back open, he was staring at the point of the umbrella he’d just been holding. Mabel had snatched it away and jabbed him in the eye with it, and now she was brandishing it like a sword. The glare on her face didn’t quite conceal her fear.

Part of him wanted to grab that umbrella out of her hands and jam it right through her torso. Just end this whole miserable, humiliating game right here and now. But that wasn’t the planning part of him, he knew. That wasn’t the reasonable part. That was the fun, chaotic, reckless part he’d get to let out once his powers were back and it was time for fun again. Until then, he had to keep it locked down.

He closed his eye and took some deep, calming breaths. He was putting up with all this for a reason. The kid was the only ally he had right now.

“SORRY,” he said, as convincingly as possible. “LOOK, I’M SORRY. I LOST MY COOL FOR A SECOND.”

She looked suspicious, but her death grip on the umbrella started to relax. “You don’t get to yell at me,” she said, her shaky voice trying to sound grave. “That’s not how this is gonna work.”

“I KNOW,” he said. “IT WON’T HAPPEN AGAIN, OKAY? I SWEAR.” He held up a hand, as trusting a gesture as he could stand to make. “TRUCE?”

Her doubtful glare lingered for a second, but then she sighed and reached down. She grasped his wrist— not his hand, pointedly— and hauled him to his feet.

“PHEW,” he said, wiping his brow theatrically. “ANOTHER INCH OF RAIN AND I’D’VE DROWNED DOWN THERE.”

She couldn’t quite hold back a smile. “The wind’s picking up, too. You might fly away like a kite if I try to bike in this.”

Bill shuddered. “OH GOD. DON’T EVEN JOKE ABOUT THAT.”

She’d already relaxed enough to unfurl the umbrella and motion him under the canopy, angling it to shield the book-filled bike basket too. “So, hear me out. We tie a really long rope between you and the handlebars…”

“OKAY!! NEW SUBJECT!” he chirped. “SAY, YOU’VE HEARD OF MKULTRA, RIGHT? IT TURNS OUT..."

Another thunderclap hit like a punch to both eardrums. Bill almost toppled over, stopped by a quick grab from Mabel. She looked almost as shaken up. She started to say something to him, but her eyes locked on something behind him and she turned stark white. As lightning bolts danced across the clouds, Bill turned to follow her gaze.

Just above the tree line across the road, a strobing, pulsing mass of light was racing through the woods. It moved in flashes, wild zig-zags too fast to follow, only discernible by the sizzling streaks of lightning they left hanging in the air, and everywhere it moved, the darkest clouds above surged after it, like metal shavings clinging to a magnet. The lightning in the sky pulsed in time with its movements, reaching searing fingers after it as it passed by.

An overpowering ozone smell filled the air as the thing drew closer. Bill’s eye flashed to glance at Mabel; she was holding perfectly motionless under the umbrella, eyes locked on the thing, some ancient prey instinct kicking in. He did his best to follow her lead. Still, as the living mass of storm crossed the road just dozens of feet away, filling his lungs with the smell of hurricanes and house fires, Bill knew it could see them. He could just barely catch the instant it paused at the forest’s edge to glance at them.

In that instant, the searingly bright light at the heart of the electrical cell burned the shape of a creature into Bill’s cornea. As he blinked, he could see it clear as day. A tiny, nimble silhouette with a long wire-thin tail and a narrowed eye that glowed even in the afterimage, like a pinhole-sized window to the sun.

And then the thing flashed across the road, leapt back into the forest, and was gone. The storm followed it, the lightning and thunder quieting, leaving the rain and wind as the only sounds. Bill, Mabel, and every creature in the forest around them all stood still for a while, stunned into silence.

Bill knew exactly what it was. There was no mistaking something like that. It wasn't a thunderbird, but just as he'd come to expect, the universe had granted his wish by offering something even worse.

“GODDAMMIT,” he whispered.

Mabel turned to him, hearing his tone and visibly exploding with questions. But before she could open her mouth, the sound of an approaching motor rattled through the silence. Lightning fast, she shoved him into the bike trunk and slammed the lid. “Hey guys!!” She shouted over his squawk of protest.

Bill clammed up at the sound of a car pulling up beside them. A window rolled down, and an insufferable, familiar, gravelly voice shouted over the rain. “How ‘bout this weather, huh?”

That was bad enough. But then there was another voice. Another excruciatingly familiar gravelly old voice in the car, the car Bill was about to be loaded into and trapped inside with no escape, bound into silence and forced to listen.

Mabel had become best friends with Tate McGucket’s new dog in under a week. She knew she would eventually, but still, that was record time. And with all the old friends she’d been tirelessly catching up with in her first few days back in Gravity Falls, she was both proud and preemptively exhausted to have added a new friend to the list already.

It helped that Scout Cottonball McGucket was the absolute sweetest puppy she’d ever met (a puppy that was taller than her on two legs was a puppy nonetheless). She was one of those huge fluffy white dogs– a Great Pyranese, Dipper had said– and her heart was just as soft and sweet and cuddly as the rest of her. Hence “Cottonball”, the unauthorized middle name Mabel had secretly given her. The plan was to get it to stick so well that by the time Tate found out about it, it would be impossible to get rid of it.

So when she cycled by the lake and saw Tate out in the rain that afternoon, and managed to wrangle out of him that Scout was missing , of course she was going to help look. Total no-brainer. Her search-and-rescue strategy of biking along the treeline at a snail pace while whistling and calling Scout’s name wasn’t exactly sophisticated, but before long she caught a lucky break. She started hearing a weird noise through the rain, a distant but piercing screech. At first she assumed it was a red fox or maybe a mountain lion screaming its head off somewhere in the woods, and tried to steer clear of it. But then a series of powerful barks joined it– Scout’s beautiful voice!-- and Mabel’s self-preservation fled. No way was some wailing overgrown house cat gonna hurt her new friend on her watch!

She swerved toward the noise, yelling for Scout, and soon a shape barrelled toward her out of the darkness. She was only terrified for a split second, but then she saw its wagging tail and leapt off her bike to give the dog a massive hug. Scout jumped and wagged and danced around joyfully as Mabel scrubbed her hands all through her thick coat. “You’re okay!” she cheered as Scout nuzzled her face. “We were all so worried, young lady… aww, I can’t stay mad at you! Maybe just– oof–” she shoved Scout’s massive paws off her shoulders and tried to wipe the muddy pawprints off her sweater before they soaked into the wool. “Maybe just settle down a little– whoa! Hey! Oh, you’re such a silly–”

“YOU.”

She recognized the voice right away. Part of her brain had never stopped hearing it. Her head turned toward it against her will, and standing there in the woods, staring her down, was exactly what she was most afraid to see.

Bill Cipher. The triangle guy who almost killed the entire world last time she’d been here. The monster who tricked her into helping him almost tear her family apart. The thing that had almost scared her into not coming back this year, into abandoning this place and the people she loved so much, out of fear that she’d somehow mess it all up again. The single worst thing that had ever happened to her. He was standing right in front of her. The streaks of mud and bruising, bloody gashes all over his face (body? surface?) made him look like he’d just clawed his way straight out of Hell, and the look in his eye seemed to say that he’d done it just to tear her apart with his bare hands.

She was dreaming. She had to be dreaming. Please, please let her be dreaming. Let her wake up…

Then he started talking, and she realized something was off.

“YYYOUUU DIDTHIISSSS,” was all she could really make out. He was saying lots more stuff, but the words were blurring together, so clumsy and slurred that it didn’t even sound like language. He started trying to walk toward her– walk , like on the ground , which she’d never seen him do in his triangle form. And he was barely managing it. Every raindrop that hit him seemed to be weighing him down as he approached, oozing blood— weird silver blood with an eye-melting rainbow sheen— from countless gashes on his arms and legs, and even between the brick things on his body/face. The finger gun he was holding out seemed like it was supposed to be aiming at her, but his whole arm was shaking more than the leaves in the summer storm. He trailed off speaking— the only other thing she’d caught was “I WON’T”— and his eye locked on her face. His eye was bloodshot, pink, shiny and sticky, like a wad of chewed gum. It looked horribly painful. Everything about him looked painful.

As she stared, his pupil shrank to a tiny point. His eye turned bright red, and the redness spread out into his bricks— scales?— like a fire burning behind drywall. For a second she thought he was about to turn into that giant crimson nightmare pyramid he’d shapeshifted into last year, and she almost turned and ran as he let out a scream and started to run at her…

…and fell on his face.

Mabel and Scout stood there, staring in silence, as Bill Cipher laid face-down and motionless in the mud. The woods were still filled with the low roar of rain, but somehow Mabel felt a heavy silence crushing her lungs.

Once her heart had stopped beating so fast, she risked a step toward him. Scout made a soft rumble of warning, but let her approach. Bill gave absolutely no sign that he knew she was there as she drew closer, until she was standing right beside him, close enough to see the gold scales on his back heaving rhythmically up and down. Slow, labored breathing. Had she ever seen him breathe before? She didn’t think he even did that. At least not normally. But from the looks of it, this was hardly a normal day for him. He really did look awful. One of his arms was a bloody mess, leather skin all ragged and torn. He probably had Scout to thank for that. She gave the dog an affectionate scratch behind her ear.

But the torn-up arm was far from his only injury. And she didn’t know how to tell health from illness in… whatever he was… but she was pretty sure he was usually a much brighter shade of yellow than this. He looked drained of color.

After several seconds of nothing happening, she noticed a big, durable-looking stick lying at the base of a nearby tree. She retrieved it, and after a few deep breaths and a bit of hyping herself up– “if he was gonna jump up and grab you he could have done it by now” -- she held out the stick and gave him a slight but purposeful nudge.

Nothing. He just barely twitched enough to show he was still alive. He was totally out cold.

She was getting concerned. That was a new experience, feeling concern for Bill. He’d done so much terrible stuff, but still… was she watching a man die? Or a triangle, rather? Was she about to see a triangle die?

A voice in the distance cut through the rain. Mabel jumped back and held the stick like a baseball bat on reflex. Then she recognized it, just as Scout’s tail started wagging. It was Tate McGucket’s voice. “Mabel? Scout? Is that you out there?”

“It’s us! Hi!” Mabel chirped, then realized her mistake. Leading Tate toward Bill would almost definitely end with somebody dying. And whoever it ended up being, she just really didn’t want to see that. With a few more quick, anxious nudges, she managed to shove Bill most of the way under a nearby bush just as Tate’s flashlight beam swept through the trees to find them. Scout took off running toward it and Mabel quickly followed, snagging the handlebars of her bike along the way. She arrived in time to see Tate grinning and ruffling Scout’s furry face as she stood with her paws on his chest. He looked up to see Mabel and quickly shoved the dog off him. “I keep tellin’ you not to jump like that, girl!” he said sternly.

“She must’ve run off chasing something,” Mabel offered as casually as possible. “But she ran up as soon as she heard me! She’s a good puppy!”

“Wish she minded me half that well,” he grumbled, patting Scout on the head. “Good on you for findin’ her, Mabel. I really can’t thank you enough–”

“You don’t have to thank me!” Mabel said, shooing the thought away with her hands. “I’m always happy to help out a friend!” Scout gave a quiet, appreciative “boof” as she scratched her ear.

“Let me drive you back home, then,” Tate said. “You shouldn’t be biking in this rain anyway. ‘Specially once it gets dark.”

Mabel shot an involuntary glance at the bushes behind her. If she left now, she might not find this same spot again. And if she lost track of Bill, if she went home not knowing if he was still out there somewhere, or if he might follow her…

“...Well, the others aren’t expecting me back ‘til eight,” she said slowly. That was true; she’d been out cycling well past sunset most nights since she and Dipper arrived. Ever since she’d gotten really into biking in the fall, she’d been eager to try out the trails in Gravity Falls, and now she was getting as much use out of them as she could. The Grunkles were cool with it. They both figured a girl who’d helped fight off a paranormal apocalypse could handle herself in the dark woods for an hour or two. And they were right, she thought proudly. She’d gotten really fast on her bike in the past few months. She could probably outspeed a grizzly bear with ease. Those guys were way too big and bulky to pedal well.

“Plus, I think the rain’s supposed to let up soon,” she continued. “Would it be okay if I just hung around the bait shop for a little bit, and then biked home after?”

“Sure thing,” Tate said, looking grateful for something to offer. “I’ll tell the missus to put some tea on. Scout, heel.” He clicked his fingers, and Scout followed close beside him as he headed back to the house.

Mabel waited until his back was turned. Then she picked up the stick again and drove it hard into the ground, at the base of the bush that hid Bill. Backing up a bit, making sure it would stay upright, she nodded to herself. It would work well enough as a landmark.

“I’ll come back later,” she whispered under her breath as she trailed behind Tate and Scout. “If he’s gone, I’ll run home and tell Dipper and the Grunkles. And if he’s dead, then… problem solved. I think.”

And if this is all a trick? Some cynical part of her brain piped up. If he’s luring you back into some kind of trap, then what? You gonna fall for it like last time?

“No,” she whispered back through gritted teeth. “Not again.”

One hand wandered to the cupholder on her bike that held her grappling hook. Fingers resting on its handle, she followed the others out of the woods.

The sun had fully hidden behind the horizon by the time Mabel left. The rain had lightened to a gentle mist, barely noticeable really, and she hadn’t wanted to stay out too late. So once she’d finished her tea (augmented with all the spare sugar packets Mrs. McGucket had claimed to own), she’d said goodbye to Scout and her humans and set out for home. She sent a quick text to Dipper on the way out, letting him know she’d be a little bit late getting back. Just got sidetracked, sorry, nothing to worry about.

But there was something to worry about. She saw the stick loom out of the darkness as she cycled up. The rain had almost washed it out of the ground, leaving it standing crooked. The sharp, jutting angle reminded her of that picture Dipper showed her once of a nuclear waste dump or something, where they’d put some scary black spikes in a desert to try and scare people away. “This place is best shunned and left uninhabited”.

She shouldn’t be doing this. This was so stupid. It didn’t make any sense to get closer.

But she was already standing over the bush. She wrenched the stick out of the ground and gripped it like a sword. She held it at arm’s length and pushed aside the foliage, reaching back for the grappling hook in her pocket with her other hand.

The dim light glinted off something shiny and yellow. She drew back a step, instinctive, but the shape didn’t jump at her. It didn’t move at all. Bill Cipher was still exactly where she’d left him.

Did he actually die? She felt her chest tighten, which was stupid. It was good if he was dead. He was already supposed to be dead. She should be thrilled to think he might have died under that bush, all his threats left unfulfilled.

Did I just walk away while he was dying?

Her hand was shaking. She tried to draw the stick back, but it bumped against one of his arms as it went.

It twitched. The fist clenched and drew back in toward the body. Mabel almost bit through her tongue from flinching too hard, but there was no further movement.

He was alive. Barely.

Mabel’s chest was so tight, it felt like she couldn’t breathe. This was the worst case scenario. He wasn’t gone somewhere. He didn’t jump up and scare her and at least provide some clue about what was going on. And he wasn’t dead. But he probably would be in a few hours. And there was nobody in the world who would ever possibly help. Nobody who even could, except her.

This was so STUPID. You already helped him once, Mabel. Remember? You helped him almost kill your whole family. You really wanna go another round?

But thinking about just walking away made her feel sick. She’d never just walked away from something that was dying before. How many wasps had she fished out of pools in her life? How many times had her parents scolded her for bringing wounded squirrels and raccoons inside? Those were bad ideas too. “Trash the house and get stung” ideas. But the wasps and squirrels and raccoons all lived. If she hadn’t done that stupid thing, they would have died. Not helping had never even felt like an option.

“He already died once before,” she whispered to the angry voice in her head. “He might come back again, someplace else, and cause a bunch more problems we don’t even know about until it’s too late.” She popped open the little wicker trunk on the back of her bike and pulled out her emergency picnic blanket. “Maybe if I, like, put him somewhere secure. And keep a good close eye on him. And then when he wakes up, I can get some answers here.”

The angry voice wasn’t convinced by her rationalizations. It kept yelling about how stupid she was as she draped the blanket over Bill, then gingerly lifted him, using the blanket like gloves, too scared to touch him directly. He weighed practically nothing; about the same as a large picture frame. The voice kept berating her as she shoved him into the bike’s front basket– no way was she putting him in the trunk and pedaling all the way home with her back to him. The front basket was just big enough that, with the blanket over him, he looked like a misshapen, mostly unsuspicious lump. She biked along the side of the road, eyes flickering back and forth between the basket and the pavement ahead, for the whole ride home. The voice was still at it by the time she leaned her bike against the wall of the Mystery Shack, but the louder and meaner it got, the less inclined she felt to listen to its advice. She knew this was a dumb idea. But she’d come this far, and there were no other good options.

They’d discovered, like, six new secret rooms since Grunkle Ford first made it back home. Some of them even he had forgotten about. There was one in the basement that she and Dipper had taken to calling “Gay Baby Jail”, because they’d started a habit of banishing defeated board game opponents down there. Also because it was small, cramped, almost empty, and only had one tiny, high window into the backyard, which for some reason had bars on it.

For all these reasons, it was the perfect habitat for Bill. There was a bathroom in the back, and they’d spruced the room up with a beanbag chair and one of those empty wooden chests from the gift shop, just to tie the room together. He’d be fine in there. Probably.

It was easy to sneak in the back door and down to the basement. Dipper, Stan and Ford were all chatting in the kitchen, working on dinner. It smelled like something was on fire, but she still really wished she was in there with them. This was to keep them safe, she reminded herself as she eased open the door to Gay Baby Jail.

She turned the blanket bundle upside down and dumped Bill out onto the beanbag chair. He was still out cold, lying there in a pile of noodly limbs, but at least he was still breathing. She dropped the blanket on top of him and backed away.

Looking him over, she frowned. A small bite wound on his arm was still oozing silver blood. It would ruin the beanbag chair pretty soon. She sighed and started digging through her pockets.

Gingerly, with as few fingers as possible, she pressed a sky blue band-aid over the wound. “You didn’t earn that,” she whispered. “That’s for practical reasons only.”

With one last look around the room, she jabbed a finger at him. “I’ll be back,” she said, practicing her Interrogation Voice. “And when you wake up, I want answers, Geometry Boy.”

Bill stayed asleep. Mabel shut the door, locked it, tested the lock. It held strong.