Cross Crisis (A Interconnected, Multicross Short Story Collection) Crossover (2024)

A/N: Special thanks to @Ziel

Jesse found herself in the Astral Plane. She blinked as her sight adjusted to the great white void, but something was different. The absence of the black pyramid floating upside down in the sky was to be expected at this nebulous region of the Astral Plane. And Polaris's presence was muted as usual, making her hard to hear. But she had adjusted to that difference given all the instances where the Board yanked her for what was probably training. Honestly she may "understand" what they were saying, but that didn't mean she understood them. It took her a moment to properly pinpoint what was different. A piano was playing, and someone was singing along to it. It was a weird sensation to become aware of something that you were already hearing. Like falling asleep to the radio or a podcast, the sounds mingled with your thoughts and, upon waking up, took a moment to untangle.

"Keep smiling through

Just like you always do

'Til the blue skies drive the dark clouds far away

So will you please say 'Hello' to the folks that I know,"

On and on it went, like a broken record or a desperate mantra.

Jesse shook her head and glanced at the ground, frowning at the further differences that were accumulating. Normally the ground was composed of floating cubic and rectangular towers that manifested from out of nowhere. The ground, right now, was made up of triangles, overlapping and criss-crossing each other. It was all sharp, uneven edges even at the very center. She took a step and heard a crackle, like stepping on dead leaves and glass shards.

The Astral Plane worked on its own rules: the way forward would make itself known.

But further ground didn't manifest as she worked her way to the edge. She paced to the two other sides of the triangular ground and nothing popped into view. It was tempting to panic at the prospect of being stranded her, but the Service Weapon in her hand was steady and she too was steady. Jesse stepped to the bottom edge and peered over. There was a huge yellow surface several stories down, vast like a desert but far, far flatter.

A single breath was all that she took before she stepped off the edge.

She fell like a dropped dagger, picking up speed that would have soon see her go splat! If it weren't for her ability to levitate slowing her descent, she wouldn't have taken such a risky move. Once she floated downwards, there would be no upwards momentum. She could have expediated the process by just flat out dropping, but she took her time. These strange circ*mstances warranted no less than strigent caution. The singing and the piano got even louder, nearly deafening as though she was in front of speakers at a sold-out concert. She wanted to clamp her hands over her ears, but kept them firmly at her side, willing away gravity's ever present caress.

Nearing the ground, she saw lines that divided the ground into brickwork. It was a far cry from the usual material of the Astral Plane: which was so artificial that it couldn't even be called as such. It would imply that something understandable (or something that somewhat understood humans) had built it. But the brickwork was different, implying… something. The song stopped the second her feet touched the ground, and she settled two hands into a grip on the Service Weapon. The silence was so absolute that she couldn't even hear the sound of her footsteps.

Looking around, she could see that even this surface had edges. Four, this time. It hinted at a return to form, perhaps, despite the strange color. Jesse could pontificate all she wanted, but it would mean little unless she did something. The only way to fight against the unknown was to take control. She had no clue, no guide, and an unknown enemy. The unknown couldn't be shot at or fought at.

The only thing she could control was her actions. She picked a direction and began stalking toward it. At this distance, she switched the Service Weapon to its Pierce form with the flick of her wrist. The jumble of black cubes turned into sharp plates that floated in the shape of an X around the barrel. Better for anything that came at her from a distance.

But as she neared the edge, she flicked her wrist again and the Service Weapon went into its Shatter form. It turned into something more stout with two jumbles of cubes on both sides. Good for cutting anything down that got the jump on her. Once more, she looked over the edge, expecting to see more platforms for her to make her way down. Instead, she saw more brickwork slope inward before fading from view. Frowning, she took the long circuit around the square, confirming that the same type of slope existed on all sides. With all this information confirmed, it wasn't hard to visual the shape of this new object.

A pyramid… inverted almost like the Board, but why was she atop it?

"Got it all wrong, kid! You're the one upside down!"

She wanted to say that gravity suddenly switched on her. It would be easier to explain than the fact that her entire experience upon arriving here was viewed through a glass darkly. She had been too focused on her own assumptions. It was like Wile E. Coyote walking on air until he looked down and then just dropped.

And she too followed in similar vein.

She threw out her arms to freeze herself in place before she could fall down at what had been up for her just seconds ago. Much like realizing you were the wrong side up underwater, she set aside the disorientation and focused on righting herself. But unlike potentially drowning, she could not break surface. All she could do was float slowly above the empty void. As far as she could tell, she could maintain her levitation indefinitely, but she could only drift down, down, down. Evading through the air only worked in quick bursts, and against something of this size, there was no guarantees. The pyramid now floated upright before, looming and large before her. It spun around, revealing a huge eye and a tiny black hat at the top of the pyramid. The voice that came from it was odd, like it carried an echo that distorted itself into something else.

"You look funny like that! Like a worm dangling on the hook!" It laughed. "Ah, what the heck! I'll give you a hand!"

A thin (relative to the pyramid's size), black limb popped up from one of the pyramid's side and launched toward her with sudden speed. Jesse moved back instinctively, but there was only so much speed to be had like this. A palm unfolded beneath her and she stubbornly persisted, unsure if this was a trap or not. Slowly, but surely, she had to give and Jesse now stood on this thing's hand.

"What… who are you?" she asked.

"Me? I'm your new boss!"

"You're not the Board."

"Those guys? Boring! Zero fun. The whole point of everything is to have fun! And I know you did, going through it all with that peashooter. Don't be ashamed! I have fun too!"

She did want to be part of this frightening, wondrous, and terrifying world. There was no unseeing what was behind the poster on the wall, after all. The hole underneath, and all that entailed the "real" world. Not everyone was ready, but she had spent most of her life knowing the truth. And now she lived it. To call it "fun" would be a gross misunderstanding. There was a sense of "rightness" and "completeness" that came with this.

"I mean, really! I'd be a way better boss than those old fogeys clogging up this plane."

Directors and the Board seemed to have fluctuating relationships. Northmoor was too obsessed with them, effectively intertwining them into the very DNA of the Bureau. Whereas Trench ended up dead, most likely due to the Board's own influence. Jesse was somewhere in the middle. The Board was a known quantity, yes, but she knew that its motives wouldn't always line up with hers. She wouldn't follow them blindly, but she took heed of what they said. In the end, what mattered more was that she trusted them more than she trusted this new thing before her. The train of events that led her here was suspect. The stars had seemingly aligned for her to take up Directorship. But she had Polaris, been greeted by a friendly janitor, had a clear enemy. There was a logic… connections that led her to the FBC. Here? It was akin to investigating what went bump in the night, only to find out that it was something knocking to draw you out.

Everything felt fishy, but there was nothing to properly seize upon to throw back as an accusation.

Jesse thought back on its introduction and the ensuing conversation. Something didn't really add up…

"You read my thoughts," she said loud.

"And how could I not? What part of the Astral Plane don't you get? It'd be ruder to ignore it."

Jesse shook her head. "Enough. What happened to the Board? Did you call me here just for, what, a social chat?"

It laughed again. Clearly this new thing wanted her here. Drew her in. And for what? That was the million dollar question.

"Infinity is pretty big, kid. Big enough for another infinity, and that means it's big enough for me after everything. There it gets messy. Now I do like a good mess, but not when it buries me under it. Gotta make some room for me, and if I have to throw out the babies for the bathwater, then that's what I gotta do."

"You're replacing the Board."

"That's what I said! Gee, are you simple or something?"

But that wasn't what she meant. Not entirely. This new comprehension made her see what this new thing truly meant. Former was an entity that, as far as Jesse could tell, wanted to make some sort of Board equivalent. But this one wanted to replace the Board, overwriting it like replacing a computer file with a similarly named one. Except the data contained might be entirely different from what came before.

"And you need me."

"Not just you. Don't flatter yourself, Custodian, but yes. You, the gun, the sounds in your head you call a friend. You can help complete my hostile takeover."

"Why should I?"

"I can cure your brother." That drew her up short. Stole the breath right from her lungs. Her vision narrowed, and the world with it until it was only her, the pyramid, and the mental image of Dylan. It was too good to be true. She knew such scams and weasel words that promised the world, but delivered nothing. She'd give a lot for Dylan. If it meant putting herself in harm's way, she'd do it in a heartbeat, no matter the odds.

But not everything.

Jesse was in control of the Bureau, giving her responsibility over the lives under her. The moment she started spending them carelessly, to stop caring about the human cost, was the moment she started repeating the past sins of the Bureau. Not today, and not ever if she had anything to say about it. She didn't know how much the new thing could hear her thoughts, but she tried to keep her head clear.

Tried to buy time.

"This is all such a… momentous decision. It's one that I need to confer with my subordinates."

"You know you're not the only one I'm pitching this offer to." Out of intuition, Jesse focused on that strange echo. ".ot reffo siht gnihctip m'I eno ylno eht ton er'uoy wonk uoY"

It wasn't an echo… it was the same voice just reversed.

Oh no, I think I can see where this is going.

She turned around to see a huge, reflective surface spanning the entirety of what she could see. A reversed image of herself, of the pyramid was staring back at her. Except the pyramid, in place of an eye, was a huge mouth that laughed silently. Her reflection… esseJ raised a hand and mockingly waved, before esseJ stepped out of the surface which rippled in her wake.

"Thought I dealt with you," Jesse said, Service Weapon at her side.

".nwod aedi doog a peek t'naC" esseJ replied, her own weapon at the opposite side.

There was so many factors to worry about. Jesse wondered why the new thing didn't just crush her or toss her out into the Astral Plane, but she couldn't afford to be distracted. The two women stared each other down, waiting for the other to make the first move.

Then, almost simultaneously, they drew their guns.

But one was quicker than the other.

***

"Great Uncle Ford! I'm picking up some strange readings over here!"

"Well done, Dipper!"

Dipper Pine's doo-dad had beeped and pinged furiously, flashing lights accompanying it all. He turned around and waved a hand at his grunkle. The older man hopped over a dune, a similar looking device in his hands. Ford adjusted his glasses as he surveyed the area. He tweaked a few dials on his, and stalked around the sand. Muttering under his breath, he took out several pegs and a roll of string. Meticulously, he marked down the affected area.

"Gotta make sure we don't accidentally step into it."

"What did we find?" Dipper asked.

"I have no idea!"

"Exciting!" he agreed.

He adjusted Wendy's old hat, and sighed contently. This was the life. It was almost like taking up Ford's apprenticeship offer, but he wouldn't and couldn't uproot his whole life. Sure he didn't get to explore the strange and weird full time, and had to suffer through the tribulations of high school, but he wasn't alone. And if he was, then he wouldn't be for long. Even though Mabel and Grunkle Stan liked to go off when Grunkle Ford and him chased after a particularly thin lead, they were still here. And if they weren't, then it was just a matter of waiting.

These were the summers and vacations worth waiting for.

Grunkle Ford knelt down by the string barrier, pulled a pen out of his coat, and tossed it into the area. It disappeared for a split second before being spat back out in Ford's face. He just grinned at the confirmation his little test gave him. Dipper pulled out a notepad and flipped to a blank page. He hadn't yet found the right book to have as his own journal yet, but Dipper knew that when he found the right one.

"Any idea?"

"Well, I've narrowed down the type of weird it is: dimensional-spatial. Or at least what it should be."

"Ooooh."

Dipper flipped back a few pages. "So, is it a portal?"

"Nope. It wouldn't have spat the pen back into my face." Ford picked up the pen and tossed it back again. This time it was spat back up, bonking off Ford's head. He turned around and used the pen to point out the subtle distortions in the area. "Imagine two spaces that rub against one another. That's what it is, at the very heart of it, even if though most dimensions are so far that it can't just naturally create that friction. Which is where magic and technology come in, to bridge the gap. Though sometimes it's not needed. Like the mindscape is all around us, or quite literally inside our head. It brushes up against everything and we sorta slip into it. But that's beside the point. Anyway, that friction can tear, and we get portals."

"I feel like this is a lead up to something."

"And right you are! Poke a hole in a reality where the laws of physics are different? You need one heck of a finger to cross those boundaries. So there is bit of a barrier. Obviously, it doesn't apply for all portals. Why you could pop a portal to an ocean and flood a place for a quick distraction." Ford chuckled as if he had firsthand experience of such a thing.

"But this wouldn't be a dimensional-spatial portal would it?"

"Not exactly. There is a lot of minutiae to cover if we want to go over all the classifications over possible portals."

"Another day then."

Dipper hid his disappointment and eagerness well. He did like all this build-up, but Grunkle Ford had yet to actually explain what was wrong with this portal. Ford brought up tears between two separate dimensions as a key example. Point A to Point B. But why would Ford mention the mindscape? Most of Ford's, and Dipper's to a smaller extent, experiences in that place were wrapped up in dealing with Bill. And Dipper tried not to think too hard about Bill Cipher. At the very least, it was a poignant example. But… how did this relate to portals? What could it mean? Bill had wanted full access to the physical world, which required the portal under the Mystery Shack and later the rift…

The fact of the matter was that such endeavors took too much effort. And yet here was a portal that seemed to fit in within such parameters.

"So, it's a portal to a place that overlaps our reality like the mindscape."

"Astute!" Ford beamed with pride. "Think of it like a skin tag, or perhaps even a snag in fabric. It's something that could overlap with ours. It's like Schrodinger's cat, to use a really hackneyed explanation. It is both is and isn't. A sort of delicate equilibrium. Left unattended, it could go one of two ways. One, it either goes away on its own. Two, it replaces whatever it was overlapping."

"That sounds kinda bad."

Ford shrugged. "Depends on what's replacing it. And it depends where it's coming from. It could be nothing. You ever return to a place and it looks different? Occasionally that's just the world changing rather than life itself."

"How do we make it go away?"

"Well…" Ford tapped the pen against his chin. "We can try just tossing stuff into it to break the equilibrium and reset our spatial-dimensional rules back to normal, but that's risky if it isn't a natural occurrence. If this was done on purpose, then there has to be an anchor, but such a prospect is fleeting. If it hasn't merged by now then whatever is supposed to be an anchor isn't working. At that point, any other elements in the vicinity would further the unentanglement."

"But we won't know more unless we peek through."

Ford certainly wouldn't let Dipper just hop on in –– not without the proper safety precautions. He would have been far more lenient in Gravity Falls, having extensive knowledge about the oddities in that town. That little incident involving the UFO notwithstanding.

"And most of the equipment isn't on the boat…"

The boat that Grunkles Stan and Ford spent most of their time on was docked nearby, but everyone had unloaded most of the equipment from the Stan-o'-War II into the car. The car that Stan and Mabel took to peruse while Dipper and Ford investigated strange readings. Stan and Mabel hadn't gone too far. In fact, they could still see the car parked far off in the distance. By the time they walked here and back, lugging the equipment back, the portal could have disappeared.

"So… what should we do?" Dipper asked.

"I doubt anything too exciting is happening on the other side. The portal is too small for that. Not unless this is just one of many." Ford laughed. "But what are the odds on that?"

***

Jesse shot first, clipping esseJ in the shoulder, but her mirror counterpart was expecting that. esseJ threw out her hand and telekinetically shoved Jesse off the hand. The force had disorientated her and the fall into the white void didn't help matters. It took her a moment to fixate on something steady. For whatever reason, that long limb of the pyramid hadn't moved an inch. Once she knew what was up and what was down did she levitate once more. A burning shot fired toward her and Jesse immediately evaded to the right with a dash. There was only so much strength she could put into her powers before she needed a moment to recover.

Another dash, another narrow miss.

She drifted down for a few seconds before her feet touched upon a triangular sheet. Jesse looked around, seeing more of those sheets shedding in the void. Sensing danger, Jesse leapt toward one that looked like about to fall. An explosive blast destroyed the previous platform as Jesse landed on another platform. This narrow escaped for three more platforms.

The more she moved, the more of those black flakes started to appear from the sky like leaves off a tree in autumn. Unlike the clean and precise rectangular towers of before, where it seemed like the structures were being revealed to her, it looked like the Astral Plane was peeling off a thin layer of paint. Those flakes of paint served as temporary stepping stones. She started to wind her way upwards, the leaves increasing in intensity and frequency.

Right up until esseJ got smart.

She fired another one of those explosive shots at a platform ahead of her. Jesse levitated, but saw another blast incoming. She summoned a shield made up of that shattered platform, Jesse survived the blast at the trade off of plummeting downwards without the ability to recover.

"No!"

***

Bill Cipher Laughed at Jesse's plight of flight as she disappeared out of the Astral Plane.

"That's that. Looks like you got the job, kid! Congrats!"

He really wanted to move around, smash stuff up, and invert someone's skeleton in celebration, but his current position was tenuous. If he exerted himself too much, he'd be displaced and back he would go to the place he went after he got erased out of Stanley's mind. It was just his luck that his invocation manifested into this. The entire incantation, at the end, was just desperation.

But now it was time to complete the evocation.

esseJ harrumphed at him. ".derettam ti nehw reh naht redliw saw I .now I esruoc fO"

The audacity on this girl.

He liked her already.

"Alright, alright," he drawled, "Let's get you confirmed as Director so you can confirm me as the Board of this place."

"?taht od I od woh dnA""

Bill flicked out a second limb, flexing it off to the side with exaggerated biceps before he snapped those fingers.

"Now give me a nice and snappy palindrome. Something reeeal memorable."

esseJ just gave him a flat look.

"Do kids these days know anything?" He narrowed his eye and enunciated the next word slowly as though she was daft. "Palindroooome."

The flat look continued. When he could, the first thing he was going to do was hollow out her insides and use her like a puppet.

"You only speak backwards for the real important stuff. And I can't have you yapping like that before I'm fixated as the Board in the Astral Plane."

She rolled her eyes, but still spoke.

"!now si raw a ,ris ,woN" The Astral Plane stuttered for a moment, but he could it hear loud and clear. "Now, sir, a war is won!"

"Excellent! Now we just gotta change your name so reality itself will recognize you as Jesse Faden."

"The better Jesse Faden, you mean."

Oh, that scamp. Bill couldn't stay mad at those mildly sociopathic mannerisms. He would hollow out someone else, then. He tried to just think esseJ as Jesse, but he couldn't… not yet. It seemed like the OG Jesse was still alive.

For now.

"Looks like you still got a copy to delete."

"I can take her."

"Just remember to be quick about it. The longer this drags on, the sooner I get knocked out of the Astral Plane and back into that nebulous nothing." His eye flashed red. "And I'll drag you with me."

esseJ shrugged. What a model employee he had.

Before he could dole out anymore sticks and carrots, the Astral Plane shimmered with a resonance that spiraled and spiraled.

"Speak of the devil. She's coming back for seconds!"

***

A strange red-headed woman landed out of the portal and into the sand. Ford immediately stepped in front of Dipper and drew his gun. She had tumbled and rolled back onto her feet, instinctively pointing her gun at the biggest threat: him. Then her eyes fell upon Dipper.

"I'd rather not do anything in front of the kid."

"And what were you gonna do if the kid wasn't here?" Ford asked.

"Maybe go for a disabling shot? Honestly my weapon is only out because yours is."

Ford lowered his gun an inch. The woman mirrored the action. Slowly, but surely the two of them had their guns at their side. She flicked the weapon into nothingness, scattering into shapes and black cubes. He took a mental note of that as he holstered his gun back underneath his coat. Now that she registered them as non-threats, she turned back to the invisible point.

"What is this? A Control Point? But we're not in the Oldest House?" she said, aloud. The woman nodded to herself as if something had been confirmed. "It does feel abnormal… temporary… and it feels like the Board left something for me here."

Dipper tugged at Ford's coat. "What do you think she is doing?"

"Looks like she's communing with the portal, accessing properties with senses we don't have on hand."

She raised her hands over the portal, at what she called the Control Point. He took out his energy recorder, adjusted the settings, and then made sure to capture whatever could be recorded. The strange gun manifested into her arms. This time a four-pronged hook made of cubes floated over a barrel, a string of three cubes floating between them.

"A grapple gun? Huh…" She looked back at them. "If you'll excuse me… I gotta fight an evil pyramid."

Dipper's eyes narrowed and then widened.

"Wait, do you mean Bill Cipher?" he shouted.

But the woman was already gone.

***

She did hear him, but could not respond, having already stepped back into the Astral Plane. Jesse slapped a hand to her forehead. "Oh, that was the Bill Mabel mentioned! It all seems so obvious in retrospect."

Jesse didn't have much time to dwell on that revelation, having realized she was above Bill and esseJ. And they noticed too, an explosive blast breaking apart the platform beneath her. There was plenty of those platforms floating scattered haphazardly through the void. With the distance between each of them, it would have been either nearly impossible or far too close to levitate to each one. Add in esseJ providing suppressing fire, Jesse would have flat out been unable to maneuver before falling into the Astral Plane again. And she had a feeling that she wouldn't be lucky like she did with that beach.

But that was before she unlocked the Grapple function for the Service Weapon.

As she fell, Jesse aimed the gun at a platform and fired. The huge hook was slowly than most of the Service Weapon's projectible, but it was still remarkably quick. It pierced through and Jesse suddenly stopped falling down in mid-air, instead swinging toward the platform. The three black cubes floated between Jesse and her target, floating on an invisible string.

Then she was yanked up towards it, launching from the edge, and she capitalized on that. On and on, this dance went. She fired a shot, zipped toward it, and then used the momentum to fuel her levitation to the next. Speed was now on her side, denying esseJ's main advantage of area deniability. Jesse circled around the pyramid, giving her a moment to breathe as she took cover behind Bill Cipher.

"Stop her! What am I paying you for?"

Idly, she wondered why esseJ didn't copy the Grapple mode yet, but she could feel like everything was at a crossroads. The enemy had committed to this course of action and couldn't undo it. Not uneasily. And the more she moved, the more those sheets started turned rectangular. More solid… more like the Astral Plane that she was familiar with.

She rounded around the pyramid and spied esseJ still below her. Whereas esseJ was standing on Bill's palm, Jesse was surrounded by structures that she could pull upon. She seized a sizable chunk and launched it at the palm. esseJ tried blocking with a shield, but the projectile struck before it could be fully formed. And Jesse didn't let up. Again and again, she pounded her with telekinetic chunks.

"Hey! Watch the hand!"

esseJ fell off the edge, unable to endure the onslaught. She fell with both arms outstretched, as if pleased by this turn of events. Jesse couldn't afford to let her doppelganger run around and aimed her Grapple at her falling form. It grabbed on tight to esseJ's chest and Jesse had to brace her feet as the grapple retracted. She swung it around so that esseJ was slammed into a nearby wall on this platform. esseJ left a sizable indent and collapsed onto the ground. Jesse didn't let her mirror counterpart recover and switched to the Pierce mode, firing several shots into esseJ. She tanked the first few until she shattered into sharp mists that curled and cut the surface before fading away. Behind her the pyramid floated up, looming over her. The yellow color was washing away, showing streaks of black underneath.

"Is it too late to convince you of anything? No? Then eat this!"

He raised an oversized fist and let it fall toward her.

She shot a grapple to the side, zipping away as it crushed the platform to bits. More rectangular platforms formed, providing her a nice pseudo-catwalk to sprint down. Jesse sprinted frantically pace as Bill destroyed the ground behind her.

"You know I was planning on taking this nice and slow! I can wait! Wait an eternity and a half!" The next blow sent a shockwave that swept Jesse off her feet. She tumbled into the ground which greeted her with scrapped hands and bruises, as Jesse refused to stop because any moment of stillness would lead to her demise. Through the aches and huffing gasps for breath, Jesse quickly recovered and continued running before another blow came. "Can and have. Time means nothing to me. Not since that big baby died. But this whole place knows I ain't around from these parts! Can't really act out without getting kicked out. I don't belong here. But I will soon enough."

Jesse's sprint started to bend to the left, the ground slowly circling around the pyramid. And her intuition told her that this was all she was going to get: this little floating loop around the pyramid. A road to nowhere.

He laughed. "Because time is mine right now!"

She looked over to the left, seeing yet another comically muscled arm raised in the air. Jesse prepared to zip backwards, but instead there was a single, booming snap.

Then everything went still. The debris that she was kicking up with every step froze in midair. She stuttered too, time slowing around her before Polaris surged around her like they were claiming a control point. The moment broke, she regained movement just in time to stand before the rising Pyramid.

Bill Cipher, now sporting two thin arms and a dangling pair of legs on the bottom, shone a red spotlight on her, fractals swirling within it.

"It's about to get really weird, Custodian!"

That was when a swarm of teeth shot toward her.

She drew a shield around herself, the idea of stone pulling itself from the ether and around her, but the teeth ducked and weaved through her shield, losing none of their impact. Jesse threw out her hands to cover her face, as the teeth overtook her. They mostly just pelted her, though some of them struck with such force that they may as well have bit her.

And it just didn't stop. Her feet started to slide and no matter how hard she fought, Jesse was being pushed toward the edge. She evaded to the right, carried by the momentum of her powers, but she could only go so far.

"Surprise!"

A giant finger flicked her off the edge, breaking through her shield styrofoam.

Before today, she had little options for recovery after a fall. All she had was evading or levitating right before the splat to survive, but Jesse had the grapple gun. With a sure shot, Jesse swung underneath the ring, which provided her sizable cover. She pulled the trigger again, now propelled toward her destination. She launched upwards and dashed through the air toward Bill.

The huge eye blinked and became a huge mouth. Rings of sharpened teeth circled around the orifice. It sucked in air with her along with it and she just didn't have enough energy to dash back onto the platform. But she fired backwards, the grapple connecting to steady ground. It was not enough as the suction just kept on with implacable strength, her arm screaming in its socket as she fought to hold on. Her fingers were just beginning to give when she recovered enough for another dash. She pushed herself with her power, the grapple shortening with each burst. Bill flipped the script, suddenly blowing out an immense wind that sent her crashing forward.

She smashed back down to what passed for solid earth, face first. The world blackened and swam crazily, her breath pushed from her chest as it took all she had not to pass out. Jesse spat blood, rolling onto her back. With a hiss, Polaris's resonance crackled in the Astral Plane, and Jesse lifted her hand, chunks of stone floating behind her. Three of the largest pieces she could scoop up, and she sent it flying toward the eye with all the force she mustered.

They bounced off the eye, a shield shimmering around it.

"Sorry, everybody goes for the eye. You're that not special."

"Special enough for you to want my help for whatever you're planning."

"Yeah, well, maybe I don't want to be part of your crummy piece of infinite existence anymore. But I'll get my share of the pie before I'm kicked out. Let me start with a big slice!" He raised a hand, slim and sharp as any blade, and brought it down. She dodged out of the way, a little sluggish this time. "Consider this an unskippable cutscene where you lose. It's only a matter of time, and time is mine!"

Jesse tapped her thumb against the Service Weapon, quickly running through her options. She got out of here the first time, albeit by accident. She turned her back on Bill Cipher, jumped off the platform, and let herself plummet. Only for her to loop back skywards, above Bill, and fell toward the platform. She was familiar with these sort of loops, necessitating a ritual of sorts to break the pattern, but there didn't seem to be anything she could work with here.

"There is nothing you can do!"

***

Ford took note of the portal suddenly becoming smaller, but intensely more visible. It had already become less after that woman interacted with it. Something was happening, something maybe mad. Ford ran through the possibilities while absentmindedly keeping a six-fingered grip on Dipper's shoulder. The portal could still fluctuate. He was leaning just a bit too closely toward the portal. Ford was just applying what he learned from his own eager and youthful experiences. The joys of intergenerational knowledge –– standing on the shoulders of giants, as the saying went. And Dipper learned much from his journal. Both the good and the bad. He didn't want to a repeat of his paranoia spilling out of control to happen again.

He had spent the last five minutes reassuring Dipper that it couldn't possibly be Bill Cipher. His own reassurance came in the form of the Memory Gun in his coat. Albeit in pieces. Its destruction by Mabel was more symbolic than anything else. It wouldn't take much to fix it. Though Ford harbored some doubt about that, because of Bill's place of entrapment: the mindscape. At least it could be some… other iteration of Bill. Ideas were troublesome like that. The problem was that they sometimes were copied or repeated without properly understanding them, because they were "good enough to come back." Maybe it meant that Bill, or some semblance of him, would be easier to defeat by that strange woman. But that was all speculation. For all he knew, Ford was actually wrong and it was really Bill Cipher. He would need hard data to even begin thinking about forming a hypothesis.

That was the best and worst part of mysteries: the fact that you might never have all the facts.

"I think there is immense energy being thrown around on the other side of the portal," he observed.

"Shouldn't that cause the portal to collapse?" Dipper asked, pen circling the air in thought. "You did say that any sort of movement during the process should undo it."

"Yes, it should have… space touching foreign space is like that like a skittish cat."

Ford was missing a key component here, somewhere. There was a key component that he wasn't looking at. It was like he could see the shape of the problem, but not the details. Like shadows on the wall. He just needed to turn toward the light.

"Time," he said, aloud.

"Time?" Dipper repeated.

"That's why the energy hasn't switched off the portal. It stopped right before it could. There's a time differential at play here."

"So… it should be over, but it hasn't happened yet on this end," Dipper shook his head. "Man, time stuff feels like it's gonna hurt my head if I think about it too hard."

"You know I had a colleague, charitable as that description is, that hates 'time stuff.' Absolutely refused to explain it to me. I only have scraps and bits, as it wasn't really my main focus." He paused. "Then again, that colleague was a drunken wreck, so who knows if he actually knows anything about time. I certainly don't."

"So what should we do?"

Ford dusted his the sand off his gloves. "Normally I would just jump in, then jump out to tell you to jump in with me. But if we wanna keep your parents on board for these summer trips, then a measure of caution is warranted."

"Awwwww," Dipper groaned in frustration. "I mean, what's the worst that can happen?"

That was when the portal yawned and enveloped them both.

In what seemed like in the blink of an eye, Ford found himself in a dark void, with pooling shadow at his feet. At the very least, it seemed solid enough.

"Dipper?" he called out.

And a voice answered in the darkness.

In Japanese of all things.

Ford took a moment to recollect what little rusty Japanese he knew. Most of which was for deciphering foreign texts that he couldn't bother waiting for it to be translated.

"Welcome to my Guided Imagery Experience. Exercise three: 'Good Ideas for Troubled Minds.' My name is Dr. Yoshimi Tokui. Trust my words. I'm here for you. Close your eyes, open your mind, and find yourself on ––"

The words seemed to buzz around his ears like insects, rattling against the metal plate in his head. He tuned them out and picked a direction to walk in, but the monologue started to become deafening. Out of exasperation than anything else, he tried swatting them away as though he could tangibly touch sound. Silence suddenly followed.

"Now that was a good idea. Keep that in mind. But it did not work. Will you try it again?"

Ford let his hands fall to his side, observed the void he found himself in, and then picked a direction. That was when his face nearly smacked into something. He backed away, seeing a floating word exclaiming one thing, and one thing only.

Listen

He reached out to touch it. It was like mushy snow, crumbling away upon contact, but he still swatted his hands around to accelerate the process. His hands started to feel funny. A little wet, a little thin places. His gloves were unraveling, messy tears pulling at the split fabric. Underneath his hands were covered in small cuts, most of which could have been from paper.

But a few drew a tiny amount of blood.

"Ideas come and go. When they come back, you have to make sure if they are worth keeping or worth changing. Now, try again. See the object before you, waiting for you and your input."

Listen

The word had reformed again. Ford huffed, but decided to play ball. He would have rather solved it the first go around, but he learned from his mistakes about being too hasty. Most of the time.

He reached out and grasped the word in his hand.

"Good! Feel the weight of this idea. It is practically purring for you to make it into a good idea."

Well, he wouldn't call it exactly purring. More like intensely vibrating. Shapeless as sound. He turned it around in his hands, giving it shape by feel with his eyes turned away. When he felt the desired shape in his hands, his eyes fell upon it. In his hands was now a key, made of weathered brass and with two prongs at the end like a set of buck teeth. It was almost comical in its cliched form, but Ford knew that symbolism played a big part in weirdness. He, without hesitation, pressed it forward into the air and turned as if he had a lock before him. A blinding light gulped the key, spreading like a fire. It enveloped Ford who didn't even have enough time to cry out. But it didn't burn. It was not a fire; it was a sky

A sky full of stars, sans void.

Brilliant, bright, and strange lights.

"You see brilliant lights, a nexus of all the ideas that aren't quite there. Each of them old, each of them new. You can tell by their luminosity. One calls out for you. You know which one."

The weird one. Its flames danced downwards, magic and weirdness. He cupped it in his hands, marveling at its wonder. The more he stared into it, the deeper he peered. There were even stars within it. The world, the universe demanded exploration. He would never know it all, but that did little to dampen his enthusiasm.

It reminded him of Gravity Falls of all things.

"It is like a place you once called home. You can't go home again. The idea of home changes, but you can't go back to what it used to be. Never get too wrapped up in trying to make something new into something old."

He knew what to do. Ford let it go, letting it go back to that sky on fire, but he would never ever forget it.

"This concludes my guided imagery therapy. You are now approved by Dr. Yoshi Tokui to explore the next type of existence you find yourself in."

Ford jolted as if he waking from a dream. His eyes opened, and he realized his body was laying prone on a metal surface. Ford tried to sit up, only to hit his head really hard on something hard.

"Yowch! That smarts!" He paused. "Oh wait. The kids aren't around."

He inhaled. "Motherf*cker!"

With that curse properly expressed, he rubbed his head before pushing out with his hands. The lid easily opened up and Ford stepped out. Despite the aggravation on his cranium, he was feeling more relaxed than before.

"That guided imagery stuff worked better than I thought." He looked back at the human-shaped tube behind him. There were several more in the room. It took him a moment to identify what they were: sensory deprivation chambers. A smaller model, admittedly. It looked like whoever designed this room went for quantity rather than quality. It did explain why that guided imagery had such a potent effect though.

"Dipper?" he called out.

He pulled out his gun, creeping toward the one next to his. Ford knocked on it, heard mumbling within it, and prepared to spring it open. He did so with one hand, keeping a steady aim as he did. Then he quickly lowered it, flicking on the safety, when he saw who was laying down inside. Dipper was laying down, arms wrapped around himself. There were kissy noises being made. He sighed and picked up Dipper by his vest.

That seemed to snap his nephew out of his daze. He blinked owlishly before staring at Ford at eye level.

"Grunkle Ford! There was a Japanese voice and an interpreter talking about love and other weird stuff. And then there was, uh, uh, a monster trying to suck my face off." He tried to keep his face straight, but there was a slight blush to his cheeks.

"Dipper. I was a teenager too."

"Ew ew ew!"

"Now now, we'll have a talk about this sort of stuff later."

Dipper was waving his hands frantically. "Grunkle Stan already gave me that type of talk!"

"Technically," he also added under his breath.

"That's good! But I think we need to talk about the supernatural side of things. You know, incubi, succubi, and the like, and the prerequisite protections you have to take if they ever try to dally with you."

"Um, um, where are we, Grunkle Ford?" Dipper quickly asked, clearly eager about changing the subject.

"Don't know. Isn't it exciting?"

He set Dipper down. Ford looked at the door, then at the gun in his hand, and Dipper's currently empty hands. The weight of the Memory Gun's part sank heavily within his coat's pockets. If Bill was really back, would their little trick work again?

Most assuredly not.

He needed to find it a new purpose. Something beyond the Society of the Blind Eye's malicious ignorance to forget everything that troubled them. Right now, he could think of a better purpose for the device. Barring some additional modifications to adjust its purpose. It was rudimentary fixing the Memory Gun and even more so to tweak some of its settings. He took out the pieces, some tools, and got to work. Dipper watched eagerly, but had a curious if cautious look once he realized what it was.

Ford flipped it in his hand, feeling out the weight and the grip, and then held it out by the barrel to Dipper.

"Can't have you explore an unknown place without some protection. Don't worry, I changed its primary function. It won't erase memories, but it will scramble them. You'll be remembering eating breakfast at dinner at some kid's birthday party when you were five, but you're also supposed to be in high school.. The sudden mixup should be enough to knock out most people. Nothing a good nap won't fix. Probably."

He wasn't about to hand Dipper a wholly lethal weapon. Not until he was eighteen.

Dipper took it eagerly, keeping it pointed down. He felt a moment of pride and strange nostalgia, when Dipper pointed that very same gun at him, prepared to erase Bill if he was inside Ford's head.

Let's just hope that whoever inhabits this place doesn't have metal plates in their skulls like I do.

Ford led the way toward the exit, noting the brutalist architecture. It was every office space that possibly existed. Barring the current oddities, he couldn't help but think this might have been his future: working at a place that looked like this.

No strangeness, no weirdness.

Despite everything, Ford had ended up just fine after Stan's mistake. There was old regret there, because Stan would have stuck by him. He would have stood steadfast with Ford, done so much more than Ford's original plan of sending him off with one of his journals. Maybe they could have prevented Weirdmageddon, so many years of frustrated and turbulent emotions… All these what-ifs were as insubstantial as an idea.

But life as it was now….

He wouldn't change it for the world.

Ford kicked down the doors up ahead, and immediately had to zap someone down. He only had enough time to glance at the knocked out man before a beam shot by his side, toward a nearby pillar. A man with an assault rifle had popped up, and Dipper had expertly struck him down.

"Excellent shot, Dipper!"

He spun around slowly, drinking in al the details. The men were armed and in uniform, wearing helmets, and body armor.

There were racks full of equipment, desks, and window walls. It seemed like a cross between a bunker, a workplace, and an armory. In the middle of it all, was a strange structure that looked like a bunch of stone blocks of varying sizes matched up into an absurdist structure without any particular rhyme or reason. Strings and pins connected photos on the surface of the structure. All of them were (words) At the very least, this whole place looked to be an interesting place to work at. A helpful little board informed them that this was the Atlas. It also mentioned the Oldest House, and had the logo of a governmental agency called the Federal Bureau of Control. It was easy to connect the dots. This was the Atlas, they were in a place called the Oldest House, and it was under control by said Bureau. He never heard of the Federal Bureau of Control in any dimension he had been in.

He looked up seeing a second floor, then the floating bodies above. There was a chanting coming from them. Indecipherable. Yet on a loop. Dipper already took out his tape recorder, pressed a button, and held it above his head. He waited for one loop to finish, then held it to his ear and played it back to confirm.

Then he reversed the playback and Ford's heart sank, his mind racing.

"A-X-O-L-O-T-L, my time has come to burn! I invoke the ancient power that I may return! A-X-O-L-O-T-L, my time has come to burn! I invoke the ancient power that I may return! A-X-O-L-O-T-L, my time has come to burn! I invoke the ancient power that I may return ––"

"That's Bill's voice," he said quietly.

Everything started to shape up and make sense in his head. Only in the shapes of shadows, though. Greater details were escaping him. He approached one of the unconscious bodies, pried open one of their eyes. They were tinged yellow and with slitted pupils. Clearly, they were possessed by Bill, but the demon wouldn't have invested so little of himself. As far as Ford knew, Bill could only possess one person at a time.

That knowledge alone had sent him spiraling in paranoia… but if Bill could start to possess multiple people?

No, no…. he had to focus.

Bill had been erased. He may have been invulnerable and nearly all powerful in their world, but he went back as a mental abstraction when he got tricked into Stan's mind. That final invocation though… should have painted a clearer picture.

It shouldn't have done this. Did it go out of control?

Yet he tried returning, as only a creature of the mind could. Ideas…

All those little pieces had to form into something. He mentioned multiple portals, but he wasn't viewing them the right way. Perhaps they were just like that as a byproduct. What did that woman call the portal?

A Control Point.

He needed more information, and something past the Atlas. A feeling of surety of all things..

"Dipper, examine the Atlas. I have go check something out."

A circle had been clearly marked with equipment surrounding it. More on intuition than anything else, he guessed that this was another Control Point. He tinkered with the devices around it, determining that it was designed to keep localized space from shifting. It could have been a portal too, but that wasn't the main purpose. Portals of the type they encountered were two pieces of foreign spaces touching each other.

Anchors.

This was an anchor.

That was the endpoint. It had to be. Whatever reality they were in, Bill couldn't pull off what he had done in Gravity Falls. Not without the work to create a portal that could handle his entrance into reality, but he had to have circumvented this somehow. Weird attracted weird, hence the two of them here, but what about Bill? Perhaps being erased meant that he really couldn't do what he did last time.

Still he couldn't properly describe it.

Until the word came to him.

Stabilization.

Space replacing space as its own. That had to have been his plan. He was stabilizing himself in this new reality. Ford had initially speculated that the first portal had multiple points of intersection, but what if they were all anchors? Maybe it was just happenstance that one was a portal.

There had been hard evidence to confirm his hypothesis.

"Grunkle Ford? I think I found something. Just gotta pull it out."

"Go ahead!"

Even though the board beneath the Atlas advised not to touch the thing, Ford trusted in Dipper's instincts. The structure shifted and the room shifted. Not violently, but like it was stretching after a long nap and it settled peacefully. Dipper sprinted up to Ford, brandishing what might have been a perfectly triangular potato chip.

Ford scowled at it, instantly connecting it to Bill, but what was more important was the effect it had on the Control Point. It was shimmered in response to the triangle that had been implanted in the Atlas, yellow and chaotic. Sound that bordered on sight. Resonance. Now there was a field of study he had been brushing up on.

He just had to break the rhythm it established.

Tossing it up into the air, he shot it to dust and the resonance around the Control Point lessened.

It was working.

But not enough to reclaim the Control Point and deprive Bill of an anchor.

"Is there anything we're missing?"

"The chanting?" Dipper offered.

Ford smacked his head. "Oh, it's so simple."

He turned around, fired three shots at the floating bodies, and they all disappeared into dust. The knocked-out bodies disappeared as well. The resonance around the Control Point finally gave way, melting into nothing.

"We're missing another anchor," Ford said, "We should have gone back to where we were by now, like a rubber band snapping back."

"Maybe we need to step through?"

Ford grabbed a hold of Dipper's shoulder.

The two of them entered the Control Point.

Nothing happened for a second, but that wasn't the case for long.

***

Jesse's advice about pulling the cord three times didn't work out. Mabel proclaimed that they probably opened another door somewhere else, because she definitely heard something open up. After that, Grunkle Stan tried opening the doors out of the motel, but they refused to budge. He took a moment to be sensible, and then tried smashing the window with his elbow. But he could only grunt and huff in pain, as the vibration from it made his whole arm ache. Man, he did not like getting old sometimes. He slipped on brass knuckles, prepared to break through the window.

"Wait." Mabel held out her hands. "I think I'm getting a good idea."

"And that is?"

"We have to break down the right door."

"And which one is that?"

"The door with the yellow triangle. It's off-center, has an ugly logo, and does not match the motel. I think it would let us get away with some creative remodeling."

Stan walked down the hallway, pulled out a crowbar from his jacket.

"Have one from me?"

"Of course!"

He handed her a much smaller crowbar. "Ready to break it down?"

"Born ready!"

Stan tried smashing it through, while Mabel looked over the door. His efforts were met with little success, even as he tried breaking off the doorknob. Mabel nodded to herself, put her mini-crowbar against the border along the frame, and tried prying it off.

"Grunkle Stan, help."

Having no better option, he matched her efforts and started to pry at it. With the both of them at work, they managed to pull it clean off: door, frame, and all. There was nothing but a blank wall underneath. Even though they both saw Jesse go through it. More weird stuff. Ford would get excited about this. Right now, Stan wanted bit of a nap.

They heard the front doors open.

"Come on!" Mabel said, tugging the door with them.

He lifted it up with one hand on his end. They marched out the motel and Mabel pointed it at the road. The little girl was sweating and puffing.

"Throw it there."

Stan was the one that did the effort and he overdid it, accidentally tossing it into the street. Right in front of a speeding car. Mabel winced, expecting to hear a car crash, but the door had shattered into a pile of five-sided triangles, which promptly evaporated.The two of them turned back, only to see the Oceanview Motel gone. They looked at each other, and then shrugged in unison.

"At least we didn't put pay any money," Mabel said.

"Of course not. That would mean a supernatural building got the best of us."

"Feels like we did it a favor."

Stan shrugged. "That means it owes us. Never know when a free motel room will come in handy."

"Well, let's head back, Grunkle Stan. I wanna get something to eat."

***

Something changed in Bill's demeanor, after Jesse survived five whole minutes of Bill trying to kill her. And the Astral Plane flickered, as if it were a lightbulb suffering through a power surge.

"How did three of my anchors get destroyed already? They were scattered across two different existences! How? WHO?"

Time started to resume, more yellow liquid started to drip off the pyramid. Sensing an opening, she rushed forward, firing a grapple at the pyramid itself. Jesse was launched right underneath the huge eye, which burned with a furious red sclera and flashing symbols in the place of a pupil. With one hand still holding the Service Weapon, Jesse raised the other and seized the eye with all her might, yanking it out with telekinetic willpower.

"No, that's my last anchor!"

Bill could only cry out as she held the eye which sprinkled away into mist. More of the yellow brickwork started to wash away and the world started to make sense.

"You pulled the rug right out under me!"

Another burst of brightness and the yellow pyramid was gone, with only an enormous, inverted black pyramid in the sky. The Board was back. She whipped toward them, like the inversion of the feeling of standing between two speeding trains. Off in the distance, a pair of figures were shooting toward her. She recognized them as that duo from the beach, and they were being pulled along an invisible towline same as her.

"We're here to fight Bill!" the boy called out.

"Already took care of him!"

"Wait, how?"

They had already passed by one another, each of them rapidly shrinking in each other's view.

"Tore out his eye!" she shouted, cupping a hand around her mouth.

Jesse suddenly stopped underneath the Board.

<Well done/read Director/Protagonist>

<Status quo restored/written>

"Is that it?" she asked. "Who was that? How can we be sure this won't happen again?"

<Redundant/predictable ideas/plots don't happen twice>

Jesse crossed her arms. "I need something more than that."

<How does a story/thought-form strive/propagate>

<By writing/stealing into another universe/story>

<No more lest the reality/audience finds it annoying/impossible>

<Take satisfaction in this victory/ice cream cone>

<Appearance of normalcy/keeping to canon will occur temporarily>

<You will be paid/rewarded accordingly for overtime/your efforts at a later date/story>

And then she was back in the Oldest House, the cord to the Oceanview Motel beside her. No fanfare. It was as abrupt as any sudden trip to the Astral Plane was. She had dealt with a threat to the Board itself, even though she didn't comprehend the full scope of the enemy. Jesse was the Director, knew more secrets and mysteries than most, but even some things were always going to be obscured from her.

It was something that she had to make peace with. Just like how upon her arrival, the Grapple function just crumbled in a heap and no matter how hard she tried switching back to it, the gun refused to do so. And she had no idea why.

Still, that didn't mean she shouldn't try even though it might turn up nothing. She knew there would be no leads about this entire situation. Jesse relayed all of this to Emily, who was already compiling a report on this entire event. Her agents were already looking into the people she briefly encountered. They would, in the end, find nothing. Gravity Falls did not exist. At least not in this reality.

Just another mystery that she only had a small piece of.

What else was new in her life?

But there would always be other mysteries to deal with.