"What," Dipper prompted, after Bill was about to tell him what he was going to do for their deal. The tears on his face were now dry and they felt sticky whenever he blinked. He didn't care enough to bother wiping it away because he didn't want to miss hearing what he had to do—the safety of his family depended on it.
"Get up first," Bill chirped. "Let's take a little stroll through the labyrinth."
With a sigh, Dipper straightened out his clothes and ignored the sting of the healing burns of his arm. He hoped it wouldn't scar over. Over the summer, he had gotten a couple of scars here and there from falling on his knees and stupid stuff like that. Burn scars all over his arms would be a very unwelcome change.
As he walked back toward the entrance, he saw a few returning animals peeking out from the underbrush since the previous commotion interrupted their little maybe-hallucination-animal business. He inwardly apologized, even though he didn't have to. They weren't real, although it sure felt and looked real. The feeling of that deer gently sniffing his hand still lingered, albeit what happened with the fire. He was surprised it was still there and the harsh fire hadn't snuffed the tingling feeling.
"Alright, Pine Tree, let's cut to the chase," Bill resumed as they arrived back in the maze. Dipper mentally prepared himself. "I need you to go back to the Mystery Shack and get the equation from Ford to me."
The world stopped.
In a sense, anyway.
"You can't be serious." But he knew he was. Dipper knew about Bill's weird obsession with power and world domination and he has seen and read and heard about what he'd done to gain it. People had gone mad: McGucket's face flashed in his head. People have died, he was sure.
"As a heart attack, kid!"
"Can't...can't I do something else?" Dipper pleaded, rushing forward to stop in front of Bill. "There must be something else I could do!"
Bill's eye flashed in warning. "No. You made a deal with me and you will do as I say. That's final. If you have such a problem with it, kiss your family's safety goodbye forever!"
Dipper flinched and let Bill go around him. Bill was right; there was no use in arguing. Bill would sever the deal in a heartbeat and would even find another way to get the equation somehow. Distasteful ways.
"Oh, one more thing," Bill added without turning back, "Meet me by the stairs that lead down here after you get something to eat. You're going to train."
Dipper waited until he was alone before he muttered, "Train." He couldn't believe that something like this was even happening to him. He said the word again, and even pinched himself, just to see that he wasn't dreaming, but he was still there at the bottom of the Fearamid (some chaos god's castle), after he exited the room at the end of the hall (which was some weird hallucination that felt real; there were deer that could touch him and everything), and not excluding the part he just got turned into a demon (a demon) last night, all the while during an apocalypse (with monsters and general weirdness), ultimately whilst he lived in the "sleepy" town called Gravity Falls (don't need to explain that one there).
He tried to mourn his life for a moment.
Boys his age should not have to worry about fighting monsters and dream demons and the apocalypse (okay, that last one makes more sense). 13-year-old boys like him should worry about the dreaded and anxiety-inducing first day of school, of worrying about bullies, about not very discreetly hiding a certain uninvited, treacherous thing during class at random, being excited for high school, thinking about girls, and just the promising future in general.
YOU ARE READING
Oak Tree | REWRITE
Fanfiction"Wait!" Dipper shouted. Bill's eye color turned normal but his stare was murderous and he loosened his hold. Bill put a free hand to the side of his eye as if it were an ear and said, "Sorry, what was that, Pine Tree? You said something?" Dipper fr...
