Chapter 6
Dipper began to look through Bill’s journal on his way towards the school’s exit. It was mostly encoded in different ciphers, because of course it was, and Dipper was fairly certain the crazy triangle actually made up an alphabet to write some of the stuff in but the parts that were actually written in plain English didn’t make much sense either. There was, for example, a section labeled ‘The Meaning Of Life’ which was one page completely covered in complex looking calculations with a small detailed drawing of a happy looking Bill in one of the bottom corners pointing proudly at the solution, which was, apparently, 42. There was also a five page long section devoted entirely to describing the different types of silly straws. Other sections Bill hadn’t written in a cipher, or his weird made-up alphabet included a list of things in his ‘Weirdness Collection’, which Dipper hastily skipped past after reading the first two sentences, some crazy conspiracies the triangle had made up, mostly centered around something called ‘Big Math’, and some random thoughts in the margins here and there. There were also some pages completely full of drawings, which were actually very good. There were some drawings of just Bill, some of Lisa, some of a starling, and some of all three of them together. Dipper continued to flip through the journal as he exited the school and began walking towards the large gates at the edge of the school grounds, when he got jolted out of his reading by running into something. He paused and looked up to see Ford, with Stan close behind him.
“Great Uncle Ford,” he stammered. “You got here quickly.”
Dipper looked back down at the journal before holding it out to Ford.
“Here,” he said excitedly. “It’s Bill’s journal. I managed to get it from him a couple of minutes ago.”
Ford eagerly took the journal and started flipping through it quickly. After a few minutes, he paused to read and looked back up at Dipper.
“You didn’t read about all the stuff in this ‘Weirdness Collection’ of his, did you?” he asked, looking greatly disturbed and sounding very concerned.
“I skipped past that after reading those first two sentences about the 12-legged spider,” Dipper told him.
Ford looked greatly relieved by that answer.
“Don’t read any more of that section,” he told Dipper before going back to reading.
Dipper was definitely reading more about that later now, but he hid his crossed fingers behind his back as he responded.
“Ok, Great Uncle Ford,” he said.
“What sortta stuff does that crazy nacho have in his collection thingy that got you so disturbed, Ford?” Stan asked, leaning over Ford’s shoulder to read, and muttering a few of the words quietly. “’Newspaper clippings about a chicken that survived getting its head cut off’? That isn’t possible, no way.”
Ford shot him an annoyed look. And Dipper was rethinking his earlier decision about reading that section.
“Where is he now?” Ford said, looking back down to continue reading.
“Um, last I saw him was when I took his journal,” Dipper answered. “He was on one of the banisters next to the stairways then. Come to think of it, it’s a bit odd he didn’t try to chase me down for stealing his journal.”
“Can you take us there?” Ford asked.
Dipper nodded and began leading the way back to where he had last seen Bill. On the walk there, they heard a lot of whispering between the other students about someone falling down the stairwell, and Dipper was starting to get a very bad feeling that only got worse when he arrived at the banister he had found Bill on and saw that it was empty. The three of them stopped there.
“This is the last place I saw him,” he told his Grunkles, pointing to the banister.
“But where could he have gone?” Ford muttered.
“I don’t know, why don’t you use some sort of sciency triangle-detector thing?” Stan said sarcastically.
“Oh, I had nearly forgotten about that,” Ford said, pulling out what looked like and incredibly high-tech metal detector out of his coat.
Bill woke up again a while after he had taken the potion Madam Pomfrey had given him. He was very groggy, but at least his top corner wasn’t hurting anymore. He was about to fall back to sleep when he heard some sort of commotion. It sounded like someone was trying to get in to see him, but Madam Pomfrey was trying to get whoever it was to come back later. A few seconds later, Bill heard rapid footsteps approaching his bed, so he closed his eye, settled back, and tried to look like he was asleep.
“Quit the games, Cipher, I know you’re awake,” said a very familiar, very angry sounding voice Bill was fairly certain he’d never heard before in his life.
He opened his eye to see an elderly man with fluffy grey hair pointing a metal detector at him. A few seconds after that, Bill noticed that the man had six fingers on both hands instead of five. Then Bill noticed that the Paranoid Ravenclaw was approaching him from the other side of the bed holding a large sack. Well, that wasn’t at all concerning. Bill glanced between the two of them, not sure which one to focus his attention on and saw that the old six-fingered one had his journal. He got to his feet rather unsteadily and was reaching for his journal to get it back when the Paranoid Ravenclaw scooped him up into the sack. Bill immediately started thrashing around and yelling as loudly as he could, he even forced himself to turn red like when he was angry to try to burn his way out of the bag, but nothing worked. Eventually, they got wherever it was they were taking him and dropped the sack, which caused Bill to land on his top corner and even though the potion had mostly covered the pain, his corner was very tender, and the impact caused him to scream in pain. He quickly stifled his scream and laid as still as he could, breathing heavily and whimpering quietly.
“Get out of the bag, Cipher,” said the voice Bill now knew belonged to the old six-fingered man.
Bill didn’t particularly want to know what those two were planning to do to him when he left the bag, so he stayed right where he was. After a few seconds, someone grabbed the bottom of the sack and shook him out onto the top of a desk. He, once again, landed on his top corner, but this time he managed to stifle the pained scream much faster.
“Why aren’t you dead?” Six-Fingers said, glaring down at him.
Bill looked around the empty classroom they were in and saw that along with him, Six-Fingers, and the Paranoid Ravenclaw, there was also Grappling Hook and another old man who looked exactly like Six-Fingers, but with the normal number of fingers on his hands.
“Who are you people?” Bill asked.
His question only seemed to make Six-Fingers even angrier than he already was. The other three members of what Bill could only imagine was some sort of weird twin cult looked confused.
“You …. don’t remember us?” Grappling Hook asked.
“Don’t listen to him,” Six-Fingers snapped. “He knows very well who we are. Drop the act, Cipher. You won’t trick me again.”
“What act?” Bill asked, increasingly confused by this conversation.
“You know very well ‘what act’,” Six-Fingers replied.
Six-Fingers had gotten pretty close to the desk Bill was on during the conversation and Bill couldn’t help but notice how soft and fluffy the guy’s hair looked. He almost reached up to pet it, but then it occurred to him he should probably ask first.
“Your hair looks so floofy, can I pet it?” he asked.
Six-Fingers stumbled back away from the desk, glaring at Bill with a rather disgusted expression only to have Grappling Hook come up and start ruffling his hair.
“He’s right,” she said excitedly. “It’s all grunkely old man soft!”
Six-Fingers gently pushed her away and then approached the desk again, all while glaring at Bill.
“Tell all the lies you want, Cipher,” he growled. “I will never fall for your manipulations ever again.”
Bill looked around at the other three people again, hoping for some form of assistance.
“Wait a minute, how did you two get here so quickly?” Grappling Hook asked Six-Fingers. “I thought Grunkle Stan got banned from riding on airplanes.”
The two older twins suddenly had a very uncomfortable looking expressions and Six-Fingers adjusted his coat in what was probably supposed to be an inconspicuous way, but actually ended up drawing Bill’s attention to a high-tech looking gun the man had in a holster at his waist.
“Ummm,” Stan said uncertainly. “We …. convinced the pilots Ford would do a better job.”
Mabel wasn’t as excited about the Bill-napping as the rest of her family was. Sure, he was a pointy jerk and deserved some form of punishment for almost destroying the universe, but she was quite happy with not bothering him if he didn’t bother them. She just wanted to leave all the stuff from last summer behind and never think about it again, which was very hard when the isosceles monster happened to be in the same room as her. And then the little triangle had to go and make everything even worse by pretending not to remember any of it. She didn’t know why he would want to pretend that, but Grunkle Ford knew Bill better than the rest of them did, and if he said that the evil triangle was lying, then the evil triangle was lying. But then Bill looked around the room with exactly the same expression that Mabel had seen on Grunkle Stan’s face when they had found him in the clearing after ….. well never mind all that. Back when they had thought that Stan would be gone forever, leaving behind a stranger that looked and sounded exactly like him. The moment Mabel saw that expression on Bill’s, for lack of a better term, face, she knew he wasn’t lying, that he actually couldn’t remember them. That she and her family were pretty much tormenting a complete stranger who just so happened to look and sound like their greatest enemy. So, she did the only thing she could think of doing in that situation, she ignored Grunkle Ford’s protests, went up to the desk, and scooped Bill up into a big hug.
Bill wasn’t completely sure what to think about the whole hugging thing, but he was very much in favor of the sweater. He definitely needs to find one somewhere for burrowing purposes. After a few seconds, he was outside of the wonderful sweater cave and back on the desk.
“Ok,” Six-Fingers said, apparently in response to something Bill hadn’t heard. “But even if he doesn’t remember us, we have to ask him some questions to determine exactly how much he has forgotten. Tell me, Cipher, does the name Gravity Falls mean anything to you?”
Bill was about to say ‘no’ when he was suddenly absorbed in a memory, like when Lisa asked him about where he was from.
A lone ship, far from its home planet, running out of fuel and crashing through the forests and cliffs of an otherwise normal piece of land.
A middle-aged man wearing robes of animal skins, setting his work ablaze before turning to an unseen foe. He screamed his hatred in a long dead tongue even as he himself caught fire and the other villagers began to flee.
A young scientist, desperate for answers, finding a long-forgotten cave with an ancient ritual painted on its walls.
The same young man, drinking tea and laughing at something his Muse had said.
The same man again, yellow eyed and manic grinned, laughing as he picked and poked at his eye until it bled.
The scientist’s friend becoming suspicious and paranoid, sinking into madness as he tried to forget his woes.
And oh the test had come, he was almost free, he could taste it on his tongue, feel it in his veins, but no, nononono, the scientist’s friend had fallen head first in and seen the truth behind his work.
The scientist yelling at him, calling him a monster, but he still thought of him as a Muse, he couldn’t help it, and then he too fell into the portal.
The scientist’s brother blamed himself for this and stayed for thirty long boring to watch years, attempting to fix the portal.
A pair of twins came for a boring vacation and found more secrets than they had thought possible.
A young child, latest in a long line of people who had promised to protect an artifact of great danger, breaks the ancient deal for a chance at fame.
The same child shaking his hand with a nervous grin.
The twins who had come for vacation did what few others had done, they thwarted him in the Mindscape.
One of the twins, too close to important secrets, shaking his hand for the solutions he couldn’t find.
And oh it was wonderful to feel things again after so long. He had forgotten how hilarious pain was.
Once again, the twins thwarted his plans.
He was beginning to hate those two.
One of the twins, alone in the woods and desperate for a little more summer, makes a mistake that will haunt her forever.
AT LAST, HE WAS FREE! HE HAD A PHYSICAL FORM AGAIN! EVERYTHING WAS HIS AND HIS ALONE, FOR HE ALONE WAS GOD!
THWARTED AGAIN! HOW?! EVERYTHING WAS HIS! That was how it was supposed to be! Nothing standing in his way as he partied this dimension all the way down to hell!
It was just a bubble; it should be easy enough to pop.
Apparently not.
One last deal, and the universe was his.
Probably should have counted the fingers though.
A small room in a small house, an old man playing paddleball in a recliner.
Blue fire everywhere.
Unbelievable pain.
Darkness.
Bill blinked his eye a few times and looked at them. He was feeling cold and shivery all over and his top corner was sore. The others looked at him with confused, and actually rather concerned expressions.
Stanford wasn’t sure what was happening. Right after he said ‘Gravity Falls’, Bill’s eye had rolled back into his shape and his usual yellow was replaced with images flashing past faster than human eyes could follow. After at least twenty minutes of this, his eye rolled back into its proper position and his color returned to a bright yellow.
“Great Uncle Ford, what was that?” Dipper asked nervously.
“Bill’s memories, I think,” Stanford responded.
The small triangle was looking at them with a thoroughly confused expression.
“?gnihtemos ksa annog uoy t’nereW” Bill said.
Stanford looked at Bill more closely at that gibberish and noticed that some fresh blood was leaking through the bandage on his top corner. He had so many more questions he wanted answers to now, the main one being how did Bill forget a question that had only been asked a few minutes before?
“Bill,” Stanford said, making sure he had the triangle’s attention. “If you can’t remember anything about yourself, how do you know your name?”
“eman ym em dlot ltoloxa tep s’asiL,” Bill mumbled.
Stanford’s eyes widened at that. He had only heard of the Axolotl once during his travels and what he had heard made it sound like an incredibly powerful entity. He made a mental note to try to find Lisa to ask her some questions.
“I think he should probably go back to Madam Pomfrey now,” he said.
“But, uoy were annog ask em gnihtemos” Bill said.
“Yes, yes, we can talk later,” he said. “Preferably when your words are coming out the right way around.”
Bill wasn’t sure of how Six-Fingers was figuring out what he was trying to say. But he didn’t get much time to ponder that before Grappling Hook came back over to him and held her arms out towards him. He tried to stand up, but immediately flopped over backwards again. Grappling Hook very gently picked him up and held him close to her sweater before they started heading back towards the hospital wing. Bill snuggled up as close to the soft yarn as he could get, enjoying its texture.
“tfos yrev ,sretaews ekil I” he mumbled.
Grappling Hook looked down at him with a confused expression.
“He says that he likes your sweater and that it’s very soft,” Six-Fingers translated.
He was walking alongside Grappling Hook and shooting Bill very suspicious glances every few seconds, but he seems to mostly believe that Bill has lost his memories. Bill, for his part, was still incredibly confused as to how Six-Fingers was able to translate his attempts at speaking. Eventually, they made it back to the hospital wing and Grappling Hook put him back on his bed while Six-Finger’s twin kept Madam Pomfrey distracted. After putting him down on the bed, Grappling Hook looked down at her sweater.
“Eww, triangle slobber,” she said. “Guess I have to burn this one now.”
Bill made a quiet noise of complaint and reached towards the sweater.
“Ugh, ok,” she said. “Keep it.”
With that, she took the sweater off from over her tank top and tossed it at Bill, who immediately latched onto it and held it close to his bricks before falling asleep shortly afterwards.