#bipper got punched in that last one

[gummidon]

Bipper art dump

[spookysummersmores]

Mind Heist - Chapter 5

Word count: 2,791

Author's note: What's this? Two chapters posted within the span of a week? I'm on a roll! xD 

It's time for an epic dreamscape battle, boys and girls! I had a total BLAST writing this chapter because my portions of the dreamscape battle gave me the chance to just let my imagination run WILD! :D 

A HUGE thank you to @ichipine  for their ADORABLE contributions to the whole chapter, ESPECIALLY the combat tactic ideas for the battle scene! ❤

Also, @choc-chip-pancakes! There's one part of this chapter that I think you'll REALLY enjoy...heehee...

Thanks again for all your support, and I hope you enjoy! Chapter 6 coming soon! ^-^

Bill suddenly appeared above the puppet arachnid, looking very pleased with himself. "Well! What do we have here? I see you've met my friend!" he said gleefully, petting the horrid creature as if it were a dog.

Mabel continued to cling onto Dipper, unsure of what to say or do, but silently attempting to come up with a plan. Dipper, terrified as he was, mustered up the courage to say something.

"A-alright, Bill...this is getting old. Just get out of my head! There's no way I'm giving you whatever it is you want! I'll...I'll..."

His voice trailed off as he tried his best to come up with a plan of his own. A million thoughts were running through his head, but nothing was coherent. Though he didn't FEEL sick inside his dreamscape, the sickness coursing through him was corrupting and scrambling his thought process.

The woods continued to grow darker. The flashlights no longer seemed to be doing any good. Even Bill's eerie golden glow seemed to have dimmed, but Bill paid no mind. He was too busy enjoying himself.

"Not so easy facing me when your own body temperature is betraying you, huh, Pine Tree? Whaddya got? I DARE you to try something," Bill taunted, sounding awfully smug.

"Aw, shut up and leave Dipper alone! YOU...dare YOURSELF to do something!" Mabel shot back. She wasn't particularly good at crafting insults, but she had at least tried. Her own mind had gone blank, and she, too, was starting to panic. She worriedly looked over at Dipper and whispered to him. "Any ideas? There has to be SOMETHING we can use against him..."

"Nnngh, I'm trying...I know there's something we've never tried, but...I don't remember..." He silently tried to get his thoughts in order, but of course, every anxious musing was echoed back to him by the environment he stood in, and Bill heard it all.

'What the heck? Since when can't I think of a plan?! What are we gonna do, THINK, you've got to think of SOMETHING before-'

Bill was thoroughly enjoying every second. "You know, Pine Tree, you've made ME realize something. NOW I remember why you were the first body I'd invaded in 30 years...because immortals HAVE no weaknesses!" he said, laughing evilly to himself.

Even though she knew it wouldn't do any good, the normally pacifistic Mabel was ready to punch Bill's lights out.

Just as she raised her little fists and prepared to try, Dipper reached his limit.

"Aaaaah...get OUT of my THOUGHTS!" he cried out.

The shout echoed through the nightmarish woods, bringing everything to a halt and clearing the encroaching black mist from the area. At the same time, a golden cage appeared around Bill, trapping him inside. The hideous puppet creature grew apprehensive and darted off to parts unknown.

"WHAT the-? Are you KIDDING me?! THIS again?" Bill cried out angrily.

Dipper gasped. "Wha...what did I just do? All I did was think of..."

"Wait...Dipper, that's it!" A huge smile returned to Mabel's face. "Just think of anything and it'll happen! Just like we did in Grunkle Stan's head!"

Dipper gasps. "YES! We'll have more time to formulate a plan that way! How...how did I forget that?" he said, pretty annoyed with himself. The fight to save Stan's mind from Bill's clutches had been one of the most memorable experiences of the whole summer. Mabel patted his shoulder.

"LOOK. AT. THAT..."

Before either twin could do anything else, Bill shapeshifted into a stick and floated right between the bars.

"The mortal children still think they can beat me with kitten fists and laser eyes!" Bill said. "Look, if it's a fight you want, by all means - step up and fight! That way, I'll just get to DESTROY YOU FASTER!"

"You'll never destroy us, you weirdo!" As Mabel spoke, she thought up paper lanterns in a variety of colors, and they appeared in the air all around the three of them, illuminating the gloomy area with a soft, almost angelic glow. "Not when we've got MINDSCAPE MAGIC!"

"Awwwww, isn't that cute!" Bill retorted in the most condescending tone possible. "Thanks for making things easier on ME, Shooting Star!" He snapped his fingers, and hundreds of knives and blades materialized. With a flick of his wrist, they went hurtling toward the twins.

The twins both dodged in unison, and custom shields decorated to each twin's liking appeared in their hands simultaneously, affectively deflecting the spears. They popped up from behind their shields and looked at each other in amazement, then gave each other finger guns and said, "NICE!"

Suddenly, FORKS, of all things - selected as a weapon by Bill because of their significance during the Bipper incident - came shooting at the young twins like bullets, and they had just a second to dodge them.

"Forks? REALLY?" Dipper said in frustration. Bill cackled in response.

Dipper emerged from behind his shield. A proton pack, not unlike the ones he'd seen in ghost-hunting flicks he'd loved since he was a small fry, materialized in his hand, and the laser beams that he shot from it not only disintegrated the fork missiles, but also punched holes directly through Bill's body, leaving him looking more like a piece of Swiss cheese than the evil nacho he usually was.

The Mystery Twins stifled their laughter. "Huh...what do you know? Works on DEMONS just as well as it does on ghosts," Dipper cracked.

Bill shrieked with anger as the gaping holes in his form filled back in. Then, his ribbon-like arm morphed into a lasso, and he hurled it straight at Dipper.

"AAH!" the twins yelped in unison. Within a split second, Mabel pushed Dipper behind her, rolled them both out of the reach of the arm rope, and jumped to her feet in order to shield him. "Oh, NO, you don't!" she cried as she thought up a stuffed animal cannon and started rapid-firing teddy bear bombs at the demon.

Bill didn't even have a chance to resist before he was buried underneath an explosion of pastel-colored fluff. "UGH! The POLYESTER CUTENESS! How don't humans consider this TORTURE?" was the muffled cry that rose up from underneath the pile.

Mabel's only response was a raspberry.

Meanwhile, as Bill struggled to escape from the plush bullets being fired at him, Dipper conjured up his most prized 'Dungeons, Dungeons, and More Dungeons' creation - a weapon that had the powers of a standard sword, a mace, and a lightsaber combined. While Bill's back was turned, he went in for what he was sure would be the perfect sneak attack.

At that moment, the plushies surrounding Bill turned to ash, and he rose from the pile to deflect Dipper's sword with his own arm just as it was about to strike him.

The two engaged in a brief sword fight. On and on it seemed to go, the clanking of metal ringing through the forest like a school bell. Dipper lasted a lot longer than Bill had expected him to, but soon, Dipper found himself struggling to keep up with Bill. It was strange; he'd never felt so drained inside of his DREAMSCAPE before...

It was clear to Mabel that Dipper was beginning to lose, and so she quickly came up with a plan. She ditched the plushie cannon and conjured up a small, crystalline, star-shaped compact. It was fortunate that she did, for just as it appeared in her hand, she saw Bill knock Dipper's prized sword out of his hand.

Dipper ran to retrieve it, but quick as lightning, Bill snatched it up and held it to Dipper's throat, to Mabel's horror.

"NO!"

In an instant, Mabel clapped the center button twice as if the compact were a castanet, placed it around her neck, and let the device do its work. This caught Bill's attention before he could harm the boy in his grasp, and so he and Dipper both watched as Mabel was instantly consumed by clouds of galaxy-print magic. In just a second, her clothes transformed into the fluffy, lace-trimmed, multicolored uniform of a witch apprentice straight out of a Saturday morning magical-girl anime.

"Alright, Bill...no more games!" she cried out as she stood bravely before the deranged demon. She summoned her wand, a handle resembling a pink-and-white peppermint stick with a rainbow-beaded star topper that matched her compact. "In the name of the stars above...prepare to be punished!" she cried out in true magical-girl fashion. Then, she couldn't help but grin. "YES! I've ALWAYS WANTED to say that!"

Bill dropped Dipper and laughed in response. "What is this, Halloween?! What's that eyestrain-inducing piece of plastic going to do?"

"Ohhh, just...THIS." Mabel twirled around and thrust her arms into the air as she cried out, "Valentine Conversation Heart...ATTACK!"

Her magic wand produced a pink stream of glitter and light, filled with tiny pastel candy hearts, that smacked Bill right in the face.

"Whoa!" Dipper stood watching in awe, laughing a bit, as he pulled himself to his feet. There was Bill, being beaten up by what looked like a giant stream of cotton candy.

But it didn't last long.

Bill soon retaliated with a stream of hellish-red liquid fire.

Mabel stood her ground and pushed back against the dark magic for as long as she could, but to her dismay, her magical beam of candy hearts began to melt under the heat of Bill's lava blast. She struggled to keep the magic from fizzling out, but Bill's blast was starting to push her backward, and she was beginning to lose her footing.

"MABEL!" Dipper cried out in fear.

"DIPPER! How are we gonna lose him?!" Mabel responded, sounding rather frightened herself.

Dipper thought for a second. Then...lightbulb!

(No, a lightbulb actually appeared.)

He couldn't help but laugh. "I always thought that only happened in cartoons. Cool!" Then he yelled to Bill in order to get his attention. "Hey, BILL! Try THIS on for size!" He pulled what appeared to be a simple red and white ball out of his pocket.

"HA! If your SISTER'S toys aren't stopping me, what makes you think an oversized fishing bobber is gonna help?" Bill scoffed as he effortlessly continued blasting at Mabel's wand without even looking.

"Well... I think the friend IN this oversized fishing bobber juuust might..."

Suddenly, Dipper's normal hat and vest transformed into that of a decorated Monstermon master. He held the shiny little plastic capsule out in front of him...and...

"Torkomon, I choose YOU!"

He tossed the ball out in front of him as far as he could. As it hit the ground, out of the strange ball came a shiny turtle creature whose shell seemed to be made out of volcanic rock.

"Torkomon...use Smoke and Mirrors!"

Suddenly, Bill was blindsided - literally - by a giant cloud of thick white smoke.

Bill instantly ceased fire and screamed. "AAAAAAH! COME ON! I JUST got laser correction done on this eye!"

Mabel, too, ceased fire and cheered. "Alright, Dipper! Let's get out of here while he's distracted!" She took Dipper's hand, and with Bill caught in smoke, the two of them made their escape. As they ran, Dipper scooped up the little tortoise creature and perched it atop his shoulder as if it were a parrot.

As the twins exited the forest, they gasped at the sight that laid before them. The overgrown nightmare roots were completely out of control. There were at least 50 of them now, and several had inched so far out that they were merely 20 or so feet from the mind library.

"Ohhhh, jeez...now I see what you were talking about..." Dipper said, shuddering at the sight. "This...can't be good...Bill must be trying to make my own nightmares consume my mind!"

"Then there's definitely no time to waste. Come on!" Mabel used her wand and summoned a 'rainbow sugar bomb' to clear a path before them as they ran.

"That...is pretty awesome," Dipper admitted with a laugh. "I underestimated those weird anime things Candy got you into."

"Toldja they were just as good as comic book superheroes!" Mabel teased, just slightly. Then it was her turn to admit something. "Guess I underestimated Monstermon, too! You are one CRAZY POWERFUL little cutie!" she cooed as she cupped the turtle's little head in her hands. "You ready to come up with a plan, bro-bro?"

"Oh, yeah, I-" Dipper pulled her to a stop, just briefly. "Wait. That smoke's...probably not gonna last long enough for us to get back and...put a plan into motion. Maybe I should-"

"Nah, nah, it's okay! Leave it to Mabel," Mabel responded, taking notice of how oddly out-of-breath Dipper seemed to be. (She had to wonder how it was even possible to BE out of breath in a DREAM.) She quickly thought up another diversion. "Done!"

"What'd you do?" Dipper questioned. He hadn't seen anything appear.

"Ohhhh, let's just say Bill's gonna find himself in a pretty...STICKY situation!" Mabel joked, giggling afterward.

"Pffff, you're such a dork..." Dipper said, playfully punching her in the arm as they picked up their pace.

The twins hastily made it back to the now-well-illuminated mind library and headed to the top floor as quickly as they could. They soon arrived in front of the top-secret Journal 3 section of the library - a small room with an ornate door covered in encrypted messages and adorned with one giant combination lock.

"Okay...this one I keep under lock and key...for obvious reasons." He spun the letter slots to the correct combination - S-U-R-W-R-Q-S-D-F-N - and the twins worked together to push the door open before quickly relocking it behind them. Inside the tiny room was a set of file cabinets containing all of the journal pages Dipper had managed to memorize - archives.

"Alright...now let's see...there's a spell I happened to see in the journal once, but it was only visible under a blacklight. A crystal demon trap that'll incapacitate and banish an evil entity for an extended period of time. It's a quick fix, but at least it's something, and we won't have to worry about him for a while...hopefully..." He sighed. "Hoping I even HAVE the whole thing in here...I don't have the whole journal memorized verbatim. Yet." He cleared his throat nervously. 'One of my, uh...summer goals."

Mabel couldn't help but giggle, just a little, at how nerdy that sounded, but she shut up when Dipper shot her a tired look that seemed to say, "Really?"

"Right. Well, if it's in here somewhere, we should probably start looking for it," Mabel said with a smile. "Let's get searching!"

The twins conjured up blacklights and began rummaging through the archives, trying to find it. At first, neither of them have much luck, but soon...

"Oh, oh, look! I think I found it!" Mabel skipped back over to Dipper, a frayed journal entry in her hand containing text written in a strange symbol cipher. "When you put the light on it, the top of the page says it's about a demon trap, but almost the whole rest looks kinda...Latin-ish...I think...?"

Dipper clicked his blacklight on over it and grinned. "Haha, YES! This is it! And from the looks of it, it's all here!" he whisper-yelled. He highfived her. "Nice!"

Wasting no time, they sneakily left and relocked the journal room, then hid themselves behind a bookcase in the "creature encounters" section of the next floor down so they could read over the spell and plan their attack.

Dipper was relieved to be able to sit down. "Okay...so...according to this...in order to create the trap, we first need...crystals. Three of them. Like the ones drawn here."

"Got it!" Mabel thought them up, and they manifested in her hands. "Daaaang...if we didn't need these, they would SO be perfect for earrings..." she said dreamily.

Dipper just shook his head and tried not to laugh. "Only you. Now...we need to arrange them in a...triangular trinity pattern. Huh, that's...actually a pretty fitting design for a Bill trap. So then if we could just find something to attach them-"

Before he could finish his sentence...two arms phased THROUGH THE WALL behind them without them knowing, and one hand was clapped over each twin's eyes.

Mabel giggled. "Nice try, Dipper, but..." Her smile faded once she realized it was most definitely not Dipper.

"M-Mabel?" he stammered, not knowing she'd already figured out that something wasn't right. "That's not-"

"Who's up for a game of GUESS WHO?" boomed a third voice, the last two words being spoken in a sinister bass tone.

The sound of despicably evil laughter soon filled the small chambers as the twins found themselves being pulled through the wall and into the main hall of the mind library.

[spookysummersmores]

Mind Heist - Chapter 4

Word count: 3,255

Author's note: Hey there! So sorry that it took me so long to get this chapter out; life got in the way, and once I actually did find the time to work on it, it turned out that this one required quite a bit of editing, mainly because there was some entirely new material I had to write in that was not in the original RP this was based on. All in all, it took approximately 3 days to finish editing this beast...lmao.

Not gonna lie...I got a little bit emotional writing one new part of this. Not to the point that I cried, but...my heart went out to the twins. You'll see why when you read, because you may find yourself engaging in a little game of 'Spot That Parallel'! ;w;

I certainly hope you enjoy, and I apologize again for the wait! Chapter 5 is coming soon!

Please don't tag any ships.

(Just a word of warning: there is some scary imagery and a detailed description of the affects of anxiety on Dipper, so if you need me to tag any specific trigger, by all means, please let me know!)

As Mabel approached the left wing of the third floor - mainly containing memories regarding Dipper's elementary school experiences - she noticed that all had suddenly gone silent. It was almost as if all sound, save for her own tiny footsteps, had been sucked out of the room. Her heart began to beat faster, and she quickened her pace briefly.

Then, something caused her to stop in her tracks. She thought she heard something - something minute and distant, something she couldn't quite make out - but she wasn't sure.

"Dipper...?" she called out meekly. "Where are you..?"

She continued tiptoeing up through various floors of the library, being sure to keep on the lookout for Dipper. Still no sign of him.

And then came the noise once again. Soft and indistinguishable as the sound was...call it twin instinct if you will, but Mabel knew it must have been significant.

Anger bubbled up inside her. "Bill! Wherever you are...what did you do with Dipper?!" she yelled out, her voice ringing through the unsettlingly quiet halls.

She certainly didn't want to talk to Bill if she didn't have to. He deeply and truly frightened her, especially after the 'Bipper' incident...and after all, she had just beaten him within an inch of his life just a few short weeks before then, so there was another reason she wasn't exactly comfortable facing him.

But she had no choice, and she didn't care.

Not with Dipper's life on the line.

Not when Bill had made clear to her weeks earlier exactly what he wanted to do to Dipper.

She was soon surrounded by the sound of Bill's maniacal laughter. It echoed all around her, bounced off of every wall and up and down each and every staircase, so that it felt as if twenty Bills were there with her in one room, closing in on her.

No actual answer to her inquiry came, though. He was taunting her.

Mabel became a bit scared then...and though she had certainly punched the lights (and sometimes rainbow barf) out of dozens of anomalies on her own before, Bill included, she admittedly felt a bit more vulnerable than usual without her twin at her side.

She swallowed her fear, however, and spoke up again.

"Bill...where's Dipper?" she asked for a second time.

Bill suddenly popped up in front of her, startling her. "Y'know, for someone who says she loves fun, you're not much for games!" he said as he spun his cane around his finger. Before she had a chance to do or say anything, he wrapped an arm tightly around her shoulders as if to trap her and began monologuing. "Let's think of this as...hide-and-seek, shall we? But don't worry...something tells me you're about to figure out your brother's hiding spot right...about...NOW!"

Suddenly, through Bill's cackling, off to the right of her, but far beyond the walls of the library...she heard a sound that nearly made her heart stop.

Her hunch about the distant noise had been right.

It was Dipper screaming for help.

"Help! Someone...MABEL!"

Mabel gasped. "DIPPER!" As Bill popped back out of view and freed her, she ran outside as fast as her legs could carry her, and she started bolting after the sound of Dipper's cries for help, letting them be her guide. "Dipper! Dipper, I'm coming!"

She wasn't particularly worried about watching her step in the process - that is, until she tripped over something and fell flat on her face.

"OW! What the fridge-"

Mabel paused to look at the object that caused her fall - a long, crooked, jet-black tree root. It seemed to be slinking along the ground as a snake would, and she noticed that, though the end of it was right under her nose, the rest of it was trailing along the ground before her. As she pulled herself to her feet, her eyes trailed upward...and what she saw about 20 feet ahead of her was the deep, foreboding, black-as-pitch forest it had come from. She stared worriedly at the deep dark woods before her, then glanced back down at the stray root at her feet and cocked her head at the sight.

She noticed that it almost seemed to be...trying to reach out and touch the mind library several hundred feet away. And it was something that certainly didn't seem to have a place in the library.

She didn't have much time to think about that, though.

It then started to move.

"AAH!" Quickly, Mabel thought of an ax not unlike Wendy's and attempted to chop off the branches that were trying to snake their way around her ankles. "DIE, you weird little tree fingers! Eat ax blade!"

Every time she lopped off a branch, two more, longer and more contorted, sprouted up in its place. Then, three more roots began to creep into view - much shorter ones, but they were growing longer with each passing minute.

Mabel happened to notice out of the corner of her eye that they seemed to be taking shape at times. In fact, she could have sworn that one took the form of...the clown from Hannah Fitz's second-grade birthday party?

That...sure took Mabel by surprise. 'What on Earth would it be doing in Dipper's dreamscape, though?' she thought. 'He stopped having nightmares about that guy like...a BAJILLION years ago, and-'

The Mystery Twin gears in Mabel's head began to turn. "Nightmares...nightmares! Wait a sec...!" she wondered aloud as she continued to hack away at the monstrosity beneath her. "If the big library's...mostly just got Dipper's NICE dreams in it - HA, nice try, sucker! - then...this must be..." Her eyes grew wider. "His real bad ones...all the stuff he's SCARED of! Aaaah, and Bill's got him STUCK in there!"

Quickly, she used the ax blade to cut the remaining brambles away from her limbs, vaulted over another before it could ensnare her, and conjured up a bunch of sentient scrapbooking scissors. They began to snip away at the roots as fast as they could so they wouldn't reach the library, but even that was only doing so much good.

"Good enough for now!" she cried as she ran toward the forest. "Dipper, here I come!"

Mabel couldn't help but wonder what exactly those rogue roots planned to do if they did manage to reach the library. If Dipper was stuck in the forest, then what the heck did they want to leave the forest for?

The most important thing was grabbing Dipper, though, and getting him the heck OUT of there, so that thought was placed on the back burner as quickly as it popped into her head.

Her surroundings grew darker and darker with each step she took. Soon, she could barely even see her own hand in front of her face, and she had no choice but to slow down for a minute. Luckily, she remembered that she'd kept a flashlight nearby her as she'd ventured into Dipper's head, just in case, so all she had to do was think of the metallic pink torch, and it clicked on as it materialized in her hand.

"Don't worry, broseph. I'll get you out of here...somehow."

She took a deep, slightly shaky breath, and she ran headfirst into the abyss.

Meanwhile, Dipper, trying desperately to get untangled from the last few puppet strings around him, was panicking. The soul-piercing, glowing eyes of the creature stared him down as it slowly and deliberately opened its hideous mouth, ready to swallow him whole. He had to shut his own eyes; he couldn't bear to look at it anymore.

"N-no, nonononono...y-you don't wanna eat me!" he cried out nervously as he struggled. "I-I mean, I'm...TERRIBLE at anything athletic; I can't possibly have much muscle or-"

Suddenly, he went silent. Far, far off in the distance...he heard something. But surprisingly, it wasn't something scary that time. It was a familiar sound, a comforting sound...and it was getting closer.

"M...Mabel?"

When he opened his eyes back up, the creature had...disappeared. Perhaps it had been scared off by the sound of an unexpected visitor, but he knew that it couldn't be far. That, or if it was a speedy little monster, it was long gone, and it had selected Mabel as its new target. Neither thought was a particularly comforting one.

"Okay...okay, now's your chance..." he whispered to himself. "Find Mabel; just go find Mabel..."

He struggled once more and finally managed to snap the strings binding his ankle. Picking his flashlight up in one swift motion, he began to seek out his sister.

"Mabel! Mabel, where are you?!" he called out through the darkness. "Can you hear me?!"

The flashlight didn't cut through much of the darkness at a time, but he could at least make sure that was able to see what his feet were treading on. As he ran, he heard the whispers of every anxious, self-conscious little voice that had ever spoken to him in times of stress, along with the occasional creature growl or sinister chuckle, and he was certain that eyeballs were staring him down wherever he went.

Mabel's voice beckoned him again, only this time, the sound was much closer. He could hear the simultaneous fear and relief in her cries. "Dipper! Dipper...I hear you; I'm right here!"

Dipper, heart nearly pounding out of his chest at this point, pushed himself to run faster. "Mabel! I'm coming!"

He jumped, though, then skidded to a halt and spun around. He could have SWORN that he had felt the unfortunately-familiar sensation of something breathing directly down his neck.

Not wanting to expose his back to the unidentified source, he began tiptoeing backwards as slowly as he could, shaking a little, shining his flashlight all the way.

He had no idea that Mabel, too, had felt a similar sensation, and she was literally right behind him.

So he tiptoed backward...and bumped right into her.

Two screams shattered the silence.

Mabel almost lost her balance from being startled so, but caught herself...and relief washed over her when she saw him. "Dipper! Oh my gosh, it's you! Are you okay?!"

The second he saw her, relief flooded Dipper's veins as well. "Mabel!" There were only a few seconds of calm, though, before panic took over. A whispered voice repeated back the words dashing through his mind: 'Wait, you shouldn't trust this right away. It IS her...right? Make sure; you gotta make SURE.' The woods seemed to grow darker and the atmosphere seemed to grow more and more tense the more frightened he became. "It...i-it really is you, right?" His voice shook as he spoke. "You're not, like...like that time Bill morphed into Soos, o-or-"

Mabel was startled. "Whoa, bro, no! No way! Why would you-" She stopped before finishing that sentence. "Oh...right. Spooky nightmare forest. Doi..." She looked at him with concern. "What-"

She then found herself blinded by a sudden ray of light.

"Ow! What the heck, Dip?"

Dipper, who had been standing there pointing his flashlight in her eyes, lowered it, and his face had a look that was both apologetic and thankful at the same time. "They're...they're normal. No weird tint or anything, and...and definitely not yellow..." The relief came back. "Haha...it IS you!" He then pulled her into a tight hug, and though she felt him tremble as he held her, she felt his tensed-up shoulders relax.

If this had been one of his nightmares, she surely would have turned into bugs, or transformed into the Shapeshifter and tried to eat him...or the ground beneath them would have disappeared, and she would have slipped from his grasp and fallen out of sight...

But she was still there, and she most definitely wasn't there to harm him. It was really HER. He was safe...even if just for a little while.

He was further reassured when he instantly felt her return the hug, and she began to comfort him, like a little mother, just as she did anytime he had a nightmare. "Hey...why're you shaking so bad? I-it's okay, Dipper...don't...don't be scared; I'm not gonna let anything hurt you. You know that..." Her voice was soft and comforting, though it sounded as if she were about to cry.

Once they let each other go, she made him look her straight in the eye. "Seriously, Dipper...are you okay? For reals? Nothing DID hurt you, did it?"

"Y-yeah; don't worry. I'm okay...or at least I THINK I'm okay. Don't know how I'm doing outside of here, though..." Dipper took a second to catch his breath now that his anxiety had begun to subside. "What...what are you...? Are YOU okay? It's super dangerous to come in the mindscape by yourself; there's nobody to look after you in here..."

"I know; I figured...but...I knew something was wrong! I couldn't just wait for help; it's BILL..." Mabel cried. "I made it safely; it's totally fine! You're the one in trouble!" A troubled look crossed her face. "Bill is here somewhere, though. I saw him for just a sec. So I don't know what he wants, or what he's doing with the kooky black tree things that are all over the place outside..."

"Wait a sec, the wha...?" Dipper looked confused for a second. "Y-y'know what? Never mind, we'll get to that when we get to it." He sighed and began to pace about. "I'm not entirely sure what's happening, either...? But...I do know this. Apparently, he's not the one that MADE me sick, but he HAS been giving me nightmares, because he KNEW I'd end up getting sick from not sleeping, and then I'd be weak enough for him to take me over. He wants me to help him with...SOME kind of diabolical plan, but he didn't give me any details...probably because he wants to try and trick me into thinking it's NOT diabolical..." He found himself running out of breath again after rambling like that, and he leaned his head against a tree.

"Whoa! Dial it back a bit, bro..." Mabel patted his shoulder. "This...all of this is cuckoo bonkers. I swear, when I see Bill again, I'm gonna...use him to eat guacamole or somethin'!" After a brief pause, her voice shifted from angry back to reassuring. "Ah...come on. We should definitely get to a better part of the mindscape. This place is giving ME the creeps, too..." She gently took his hand and began to lead him out of the forest.

Dipper nodded a little, trying not to show how scared he was. "Okay...w-we gotta watch our steps, though. Something...something's been following me." There was another moment or two of silence before he spoke up again. "You...you knew how dangerous this was...and you did it anyway. I can't thank you enough for that." He looked down at his feet. "Plus, I'm...really sorry...about earlier. With the...flashlight and all. I-I knew it was you deep down, but with...all this going on, I-"

"Of course, bro! I know you'd do the same for me." Mabel looked back and smiled at him, hoping to bring him some comfort. "And hey...no being mean to yourself! That was totally understandable; I'd FREAK if I ever saw...BIPPER again..." She shuddered at the thought.

The twins began to make their way back the way Mabel came, following the distinctive footprints her pink hightops had made. They quietly tiptoed through the darkness, doing their best to ignore the creatures of the night all around and keeping their eyes out for anything suspicious...or for an exit. They had yet to formulate a plan that would help them deal with Bill once they left.

It wasn't long before the young twins heard growling off in the distance behind them.

Mabel stopped dead in her tracks. "What the heck is that?"

"That must be what's been after me. If we're lucky, y-you won't have to see it for yourself." Dipper said nothing else about the matter, but internally, he began panicking slightly, and he started breathing faster. He hated feeling so vulnerable, but he just couldn't seem to help being anxious.

Mabel did notice how unusually frightened he was, but she made no mention of this. She simply gripped his hand a bit tighter, and the silent gesture seemed to put him a bit more at ease. Suddenly, her face lit up. "Dipper...look!" she whisper-yelled.

They exchanged a look of excitement, and they ran toward the sight.

There was a light at the end of the trail. They'd almost made it.

And yet, as swiftly and quietly as they had walked...they weren't quite fast enough.

In dropped the mysterious, spider-like horror from out of NOWHERE, it seemed, and it released an inhuman screech as the twins clung to each other and screamed in fear.