Gravitational Phantoms

Chapter Twenty

Holy cow, you guys! This story is almost over! I started this because I wanted to try my hand at fanfiction, and now look at it! I thought that nobody would ever read this story, because there are so many better ones out there. Thank you. Thank you for choosing to read this one.

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Bill felt the powerful energy surging through his body. This was even better than Pine Tree's pathetic skin. This was power. The Halfa hadn't even managed to unlock his full potential before making the deal. 

The demon knew that the body had limits. But what he didn't know was that they were fast approaching.

He had, while still settling in to the new fleshsuit, used telekinesis. That was an incredibly advanced ghost power, one that Danny (when in his own body) still hadn't developed. Then he had fired several powerful ectoblasts and used cryokinesis. 

Danny's body was close to collapsing.

The energy that Bill was making was draining the strength of his vessel, and if the demon wasn't going to conserve his power, than getting the real Danny back wouldn't be very hard.

Ford assessed all of this as he shooed that girl, the one Mabel was friends with (Grenda, right?), into the trees. He thought about how much energy it would take to use up the last of Bill's.

He thought about how many people were probably still trapped in the rubble of the mall.

He thought about the way that Bill's (Danny's) eyes were still glowing with triumph, even as the rest of his body started to fade from exhaustion.

Stanford Pines thought about a lot of things.

But not one of them was his brother.

He couldn't-he wouldn't think of Stanley as dead. He had only just gotten him back; he wasn't losing him again. He hadn't lost him again. Ford couldn't accept it.

For once in his life, Stanford Pines refused to believe in the facts.

Wendy yanked a tall plank of wood off of the top of a collapsed building. Soos, who had recently joined them, grabbed the one beneath it. They lifted out that creepy puppet kid (who was sobbing over the ripped bodies of said puppets) and sent him on his way.

Wendy didn't know how exactly Stan had died. Although she had her suspicions that Danny had watched the whole thing, the way that Dipper had explained how he saw Bill attack his sister.

But Soos didn't even know that his boss (although he was practically the man's son at this point; Soos at least saw him as a father figure) was dead. And Wendy had no idea how to tell him.

Dipper and Mabel worked as a team. They were twins, after all, so it was only natural. Mabel used her grappling hook to pull them out of the way of debris or energy, and Dipper searched for trapped townsfolk.

Mabel was trying to keep her mind off of it, but her brain kept replaying the scene. Stray tears were still leaking down her face, and her eyes were slightly blurry. That made it a bit more difficult to get everything under control as she protected her brother and any of the people that they found. She repeated a mantra in her head; I won't lose any more family. I won't lose any more family.

Danny was trying to distract Bill, but it didn't seem to be working. Just as he was about to throw himself into the path of another ectoblast (even though they just went right through him as if he were mist) when a loud echoing crack echoes through the air.

Bill-Danny grinned. His eyes seemed to glow brighter. "You hear that, DP? That's the sound of me breaking an era's worth of magical stone."

Danny looked around. He couldn't afford to worry about that now. Where was Wendy? Ford? Soos? The twins?

A flicker of movement caught his eye. Dipper was saying something in Mabel's ear, far beneath them on the ground. Her eyes went wide, and Danny's enhanced eyesight could see her shocked expression from here. She punched Dipper lightly on the shoulder, then gestured for him to lead the way.

And then, to Danny's surprise, they started to climb up the ruins of a building next to them. 

Danny's body swivels it's head to face them, and the actual ghost boy shuddered at it's creepiness. "What do you two want? To be the next to die?"

They both flinch back slightly and wince. Dipper lifts his chin. "No. But I would like to make a deal."

Immediately, all of the power stops pulsating in the air. Bill turns the rest of Danny's body to face them and lowers himself to their eye level in the air. "Oh really?"

"Yes." This time it's Mabel that speaks. "But it's more of a gamble, really."

Danny feels a twinge of surprise and slight betrayal. They are gambling with his soul, as if he is money or something that you could just give away easily. maybe he is.

Dipper takes a step forward, almost falling off the edge of where he's standing. He reaches into the pocket of the navy vest that he's wearing, and pulls out two things.

One is a die. It has too many sides for Danny to count, and he's pretty sure that he can see the number 38 on one of the facets. It's blue in color, with white numbers. Danny isn't exactly sure how Dipper thinks that it's going to help.

The other thing looks a bit more... promising. It's a glass orb secured on a pedestal, with black and yellow markings that Danny is pretty sure mean that Dipper shouldn't be handling it. But the inside is where it gets interesting.

There were shapes swirling around inside of it, each one filled with stars. The tiny voids held an aura of power around them, and Danny felt the faint tingling sense that he got when he was in the Ghost Zone. 

For some reason, the teen was drawn to it like a moth to a flame. But he knew that if his fingers so much as brushed that rift into space, he would never be able to return to earth.

"Dipper, are you crazy?!" Someone shouted from the ground. Danny saw that Ford was staring up at them. "Do you know what you're doing?!"

The male twin ignored him and spoke the words that would decide the fate of Danny's enitre future, entire life.

"If this die lands on a 13, you'll have to release Danny and go back to where you came from. But if it lands on anything else..." he paused. "We'll give you the dimensional rift and allow you to do whatever you want with Gravity Falls."