Gravity Falls: No Strings On Me

Chapter Five

"Stan has been recuperating since the boat trip in his own way." Ford replied sheepishly, "I hardly have seen much of him myself since we got back. But he'll be around later tonight for the party, I'll make sure of it. What we need to do right now is focus on helping Dipper gain more control over this power. Unfortunately, I don't think anything I have here in the lab or anywhere in the Shack is going to help. We will either need new material to make something, or help Dipper learn how to tap into whatever it is that helped pull him out of the vortex. It would certainly help if we knew exactly where this power was coming from and how it manifests, you weren't exactly specific when you first told us."
Mabel suddenly gained an interest in her snow boots, Wendy started trying to read a nearby poster that Stan had hung in the 70s, and Dipper started rubbing the back of his neck.
"Well don't everyone start answering at once!" Ford huffed indignantly before crossing his arms, his extra pinky fingers tapping nervously on his sleeves, and leaning against the wall in front of the elevator.
"It started with Bill." Dipper began quietly, "During the 'Sock Opera Incident', which I think I filled you in on with my additions to Journal 3, Bill possessed my body leaving me to have to inhabit a sock puppet for awhile. Whatever he did while in my body left behind a bit of power that eventually harbored its own entity, an amalgam of me and Bill - his power and knowledge coupled with my knowledge of how to defeat him and what I had learned about supernatural sciences on my own. While I was unconscious in the last few days, I had a bit of an epiphany - I was able to defeat this dark reflection of myself and even get Bill out of my head for good. This showed me something I wished I hadn't known: whatever this power is doing, or was doing, is also drawing on Dippers from other realities."
The room went hyper-silent as everyone began to grasp what Dipper had just said.
"You mean..." Ford started with the slightest bit of fear in his voice, "You mean Bill's power inside you is tapping into the multiverse?"
"Not just the multiverse," Dipper began in reply, "Each and every Dipper that has ever or could ever exist, even if they go by another name or live another life."
"Are any of them going all 'All-Star Superman' like you just were?" Mabel asked.
Everyone looked at her confused, even Dipper.
"What? I like a good dying hero story..." Mabel explained.
"Uh, no, none of them - to my knowledge - are exhibiting the same power as me." Dipper replied.
"Have any of them dealt with Bill as much as we have?" Wendy asked.
"I'm not sure," Dipper answered, "But for their sake's, I hope not."
"So what can we do?" Mabel asked, "Bill's taken Who-Knows hostage, Dipper's only a few seconds away from going full Goku, the town isn't gonna let us ask them for help, and now we have every other Dipper looking at us going 'Can you turn the light off bro?' What are we supposed to do?!"
"Okay, Mabel, I think we need to take a few deep breaths," Ford began as he handed her a paper bag to breathe into, "But she is right. We need some sort of game plan if you're going back out there, and we need to figure out who Bill is using to resurrect himself."
"Ford," Wendy started as she stood up, "What aren't you telling us?"
Mabel and Dipper both turned to Ford who had one of the best poker faces in the family but still couldn't keep his face from going pale or flush at inopportune times. Currently, he was nearing the same shade as the sheet that had been covering Dipper on the gurney.
"I don't know what you're getting at." Ford replied.
"Ford, I've gotten really good at recognizing when people are hiding something from me," Wendy began, "Doctors, my dad, my extended family, my teachers all thought they were protecting me and my brothers when all they did was teach us how to recognize when people were lying to us. So I'm only gonna ask one more time, what aren't you telling us?"
Ford looked to Mabel and Dipper for backup, but both were equally confused about what Ford wasn't telling them. After a deep breath, Ford leaned against the desk.
"I honestly have no idea where Stan is." Ford started, "Ever since we got back from our globe-trotting, he's been distant, more closed off than he's ever been in our lives - even when he was on his own, before he took over the Shack, he'd at least try to communicate every once in a while. This... This has been different. It's almost as if--"
"He's a different person?" Dipper asked to finish Ford's thought.
Ford nodded, at a loss for words.
"In all my dealings with the strange and supernatural," Ford began, "I don't recall any sort of possession quite like this, and I once ran across two brothers destined to be possessed by Satan and the archangel Michael."
"It's because it's Bill." Dipper replied, "He's been reaccumulating power for the past five years, and he's been slowly chipping away at Stan's mental defenses. A blast from the memory ray isn't gonna work this time. It's gonna have to be his own power that takes him out - preferably before he brings on Weirdmageddon 2: Paranormal Boogaloo"
"But how are we going to get Bill in position for you to take him on?" Wendy asked.
Everyone looked at each other, expecting someone to have an answer, but nothing had ever been easy or predictable when dealing with Bill.
Before anyone could react, the elevator dinged and a breathless Soos stepped into the lab.
"Dudes, you all better...come up to see this." Soos said between breaths, "Also...Stan's probably not gonna like...what just happened to the front yard."
Everyone made for the elevator, all fitting in with a squeeze, then spilling out and stampeding for the porch door. The cloaked figure was back, one arm engulfed in yellow fire, the other holding a wicked looking knife that had brass knuckles fuzed with the handle. The knife's blade was covered with something that kept glinting a neon green when the rising sunlight caught it.
"Hello again, Pinetree." The figure said in Bill's voice, "I was kinda hoping for Blue, but beggars can't be choosers."
"Blue isn't here anymore," Dipper replied, "At least, not in one piece."
The figure titled their head under the cloak's hood.
"Not gonna lie, Pinetree," Bill's voice began, "I'm actually impressed. Here I thought I'd have to pull him out of you like a gutted salmon."
"Where's my uncle?" Dipper asked, thoroughly fed up with Bill's games.
"Ah-ah-ah," Bill's voice replied as it waged the knife blade like a finger, "I need him for just a little bit longer before whatever's left of him is all yours."
Dipper felt his arms light up with blue energy sparking off bolts of lightning before he had fully formed his plan. He willed his body to form into energy, then vibrate at just the right speed, before running at full speed towards the figure and charging hands-first into their head.
<====+====>
Dipper found himself in an odd place to say the least. The atmosphere was constantly glitching through phases of pure white, the interior of the Shack, and Weirdmageddon-torn Gravity Falls. The only constant was a doorway; its appearance kept changing, but it was always in the same place.
Stepping to the doorway, Dipper slowly grabbed the knob, turned, and pulled back the door. The "room" was what Dipper imagined Ford & Stan's childhood beach to be like - calm waves, a swing-set nearby, the first iteration of the Stan-O-War beached off to the side. With no door in this room, Dipper was surprised to hear a voice behind him.
"Are you looking for someone?" A child's voice asked before Dipper turned to its source.
A young boy with glasses, a black jacket, and six fingers on each hand was standing where the previous doorway had been.
"I'm looking for someone in trouble," Dipper answered as he knelt down, "But I'm trying to be quiet about it because they could get hurt if I'm not careful."
"I can show you the way," Young Ford started, "But you'll have to keep going on your own."
"A way is all I need, thanks." Dipper said before standing and following the boy down the beach.
They came to a cave that had once been boarded up, but had been recently broken into and had something or someone dragged into it.
"The pyramid took him in there." Young Ford said as he pointed to the cave.
"Thanks again, friend." Dipper said as he ducked down and stepped into the cave.
The darkness only lasted a few seconds before the cave gave way to the end of an alleyway. The street stretching out on either side was covered in puddles as rain continued to fall. The building on the other side of the street flashed a fortune teller sign in the window, and looked generally run down.
Dipper ran across the street and banged his fist on the front door. After a few seconds, a large man with a thick mustache, semi-dark sunglasses, a fedora and a tan suit with pinstripes answered the door.
"Can I help you?" The man asked gruffly.
"I'm trying to get in touch with your son." Dipper answered as he tried to shield himself from the rain
"Which one?" A woman asked loudly from inside, "The genius or the disappointment?"
"The one that's dying as his brain is slowly turned to fuel for a megalomaniac Dorito hellbent on making my life miserable." Dipper replied.
The man took a deep breath before answering.
"Head upstairs, second door on the right." The man said before moving to let Dipper into the house.
The living room was decked in '60s decor and reeked of cigars and rum. The woman he had heard sat on the couch next to a rotary phone wearing a silky red dress with her gray-streaked black hair partially done up. Pictures hung on the walls of the couple, Ford at different ages, and a few of Stan. Unfortunately, some photos had Stan folded, cut, or burned out of the shot.
Moving to climb upward, Dipper felt the stairs were sagging, and the only doorway upstairs in decent shape was the one Dipper had to walk through. With a squeak of the knob, and a creek of the hinges, the door opened to the control room for the portal under the Shack before Ford had come back through.
The controls were all dim, the Journals were all opened to the portal schematic, but all of the ciphered text was changed to memories and quotes from Stan's life. The portal itself in the other room had a ring around it mirroring the Cipher Wheel that was lit up, but the center only sparked occasionally as if it wasn't getting enough power. There was someone chained in front of the portal, but no sign of Bill.
Dipper walked out to the person chained up, then took a step back when he saw them up close. It was Stan, but he had been brutally beaten and bruised.
"Dipper?" Stan asked as Dipper looked at the chains for a way to break them, "How are you--?"
"Don't worry about it," Dipper replied as he grabbed at the chains on Stans right, "I gotta get you outta here."
"I'd really rather you didn't, Pinetree." Bill's voice boomed from overhead.
Dipper turned around to see Bill floating down from somewhere in the rafters, blocking the way back into the control room. He was at gigantic size, and if Dipper didn't fully focus on him, he seemed to be three-dimensional.
"And I'd really rather you be dead and not take my uncle hostage," Dipper retorted, "Yet here we are."
"And how'd you do that exactly?" Bill asked before turning to the portal, "Let's look into that, shall we?"
With a wave of his hand, Bill fired up the portal and began using it like a surveillance camera to see what was happening outside of Stan's body from multiple angles. Behind Dipper, Stan groaned in pain as arcs of yellow lightning shot up the chains and into his body, then back down the other side.
"Oh wow," Bill chuckled, "You charged in head-first, and now you're rooting around in Stan's melon in this moment in time to do...what exactly?"
"Get you out of here and on to an even playing field." Dipper replied as he walked around Bill and reached one hand behind him and felt his fingers wrap around cold metal.
"Oh-ho-ho," Bill started while he turned to keep his eye on Dipper, "No dice, kid. I've gotten quite comfy after all these years."
"I was afraid you'd say something like that," Dipper said coming to a stop with Bill hovering between Stan and the portal, "Which is why I grabbed this."
With all his strength, and with a charge of blue flame and lightning, Dipper threw Stan's knife from outside into the very tip of Bill's forehead. Whatever the blade had been dipped in supercharged Dipper's energy and continued the knife's path like a rocket, dragging Bill with it, through the portal and out of Stan's mind.
Thunder boomed as Stan screamed in pain in front of Dipper, then the portal dimmed, the room faded away and Dipper found himself and a slumped-over Stan in the living room of the Shack.
Dipper stepped to Stan to help him up, only to see him pushing himself up on one elbow before croaking, "Destroy. That. Triangle!!" Dipper nodded before igniting his fists in fire and blasting out the front door of Stan's Mind-Palace Shack.
<====+====>
Dipper found himself back in the moment of his fists connecting with the Cipher Wheel Cloak as time began to speed back up. He passed through Stan's body like a ghost, dragging Bill by the shoulders and bringing the cloak along with him. Throwing Bill into the treeline, Dipper slid to a stop as the energy faded off his body and back into his fingertips.
"Stan!" Ford yelled as he and Soos ran to help him up off the ground where he was now lying prone in his Mr. Mystery suit minus the fez and eyepatch.
"Don't worry...about me." Stan groaned as they helped him stand, "Help...the kid."
Just as Soos and Ford got Stan to the porch, Mabel and Wendy got to Dipper as the skies began changing to red and thunder began to boom.
"What do you need us to do?" Mabel asked.
"Grab the cart and one of the cars," Dipper answered, "Evacuate the town. If they refuse to leave, point to the skies."