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thelegion2017-03-18 03:52 pm
legionnpcs) wrote in thelegion2017-03-18 03:52 pm
Legionnaire Legacies: Dipper Pines [video]
[cw: Dipper's canon is supernatural/horror, so this LL contains everything from zombies (including eye gore), to petrified thrones of human agony, to implications of suicide, to tooth gore, to blood...waterfalls. If you have a specific horror squick you want to try to avoid, but want to read, PM me (Korel) and I'll let you know if it's in here.]
[The Legion World staff maintains a feed of all Legion-related media so Legionnaires can be kept abreast of any reporting that's done on them. Two women appear on the screen, sitting at a desk, their appearances altered by glam filters so that one is all pink hair and skin and sparkles, and the other is all in blues. They look pretty flashy and tacky but this is the future. Reporters don't exist anymore; they're "personalities" now.]
Shellee: I'm Shellee Star! [That would be the pink one. ]
Tammee: And I'm Tammee Tim! [That would be the blue one.]
Shellee: Welcome to another installment of Legion Watch: Legionnaire Legacies. In this episode, we're focusing on one of the youngest Legionnaires, a teenager who has inspired controversy with his actions in Murderworld, and has caused many to be intrigued about his possible origins. Tonight, we'll focus on a Legionnaire whose motivations are as mysterious as his callsign: Dipper Pines, aka Captain Mystery!
Tammee: Now we must warn the audience that some of the content you're about to see is deeply disturbing. Content includes violence and...the only term we can use for it is "apocalyptic" imagery. Children especially may find the following content upsetting. Viewer discretion is advised.
Shellee: Captain Mystery's origins were simple enough. Idyllic, even. Dipper was born with the birth name Mason Pines, fraternal twins with his sister Mabel -- who many in the audience likely remember having served a tenure in the Legion herself as the hero "Lady Mabelton." Nicknamed Dipper due to his distinctive birthmark, shaped like an Earth constellation, he had a relatively normal 21st century childhood, filled with the usual ups and downs of growing up.
[Happy scenes flash by of Dipper and his twin sister, seemingly endlessly at play together, at various ages. They're both chubby cheeked and clearly not shy about taking advantage how cute people think twins are, judging from a brief shot of them trick-or-treating in coordinating salt-and-pepper-shaker costumes.]
[But when they're shown with other children, one thing is abundantly clear: Dipper had very few friends beyond his sister. A scene on the playground, with them at age 7, shows Dipper timidly trying to join in on some kind of pretend game, hovering around the edges of a group of kids as they work out what they're doing. Mabel's off with a gaggle of girls in the background making friendship bracelets, too far away to hear what's going on.]
Pigtailed girl: [She points to each of the other kids as she talks.] Okay, I'll be the pink megamorph, Hannah will be the purple megamorph, Dustin will be blue, Zachary will be green, and Brandon will be red!
[Little Dipper clearly has a hard time to talking to the other kids. His words are stuttery, in a way that suggests less that he has an actual stutter and more that he's just very, very shy, afraid to speak up to people. It's a far cry from how he is in the present.]
Dipper: But...then what -- what am I supposed to be?
Pigtailed Girl: Oh. You're still here. Um, I guess Zeta 17.
Dipper: Well...but he's kind of...lame? I mean, doesn't he just...just stay in Master Blordo's base, like -- the whole time?
Dustin: That's why he's perfect for you, Dipper, since you're not coming with us.
[The kids start laughing and run away to start playing in a wooded part of the playground, leaving Dipper standing there with his hands balled into fists. They can be still be heard talking about him as their voices get fainter.]
Zachary: He's so weird.
Hannah: And why does he have those gross lines on his head?
[Dipper hovers there locked in place in that way kids are when they know they're not welcome to follow along, but feel like they don't have anywhere else to go. He pulls his hair down over his forehead, blushing with embarrassment.]
[Then he looks over at Mabel, like he's tempted to go over to her, but he's hesitant to. She clearly seems to be having fun without him, doing stuff that involves beads and glitter, and even her smiling and waving isn't enough to draw him over. After giving her a wan smile back, he opts to go over near a tree to sit alone and take out a book. For just a moment, he glances off at where the other kids are playing without him, and then raises his book higher to hide how his eyes are watering.]
Shellee: Unlike his more sociable sister, Dipper had difficulty making friends. Always being the odd one out led to him developing an interest in all things weird.
[A montage passes, showing various scenes of Dipper on the playground. He wears a baseball cap or beanie now in all of them, covering his birth mark, and he's always in the same position, perched somewhere with his back to a tree or piece of playground equipment, reading a variety of different books.]
[The covers that flash by have illustrations of fantasy lands, spaceships, alien planets, UFOS, ghosts, vampires, and other supernatural creatures, and they have titles like "Aliens???" "Scary Stories With Illustrations That Shouldn't Be In a Kids Book," "Dragon-Wranglers of the Mountains of Earth, Ice, and Flames," and "101 Totally True, Not Made Up Or Embellished Hauntings."]
[Mabel shows up in some of the scenes, sometimes poking him for attention, sometimes taking his book out of his hands to try to force him to come play with her. In a few, she's back to back with him, working on coloring books or reading books with sparkly covers that almost absolutely have pony princesses in them. The scenery behind them changes to show different seasons, and Dipper's age progresses.]
Shellee: In the hopes of giving them a memorable summer outdoors and a chance to bond even more, their parents sent them away for the summer to visit their Great Uncle Stanford in a small, mysterious town in Roadkill County, Oregon...[Her voice hushes slightly] Gravity Falls.
[Tinkly mystical-sounding music (that sounds at least slightly like this) plays, as the twins are shown getting off the bus with their luggage. After the bus pulls away, they're left on a lonely road surrounded by ancient pines. Wind blows through the trees and the camera very briefly catches the dark silhouette of a strange little humanoid creature peering at them through the branches, then disappearing into the leaves.]
Tammee: Though they didn't know it at the time, the Pines twins had walked into a place filled with the paranormal creatures and anomalies that Dipper had only read about.
[The outside of the Mystery Shack is shown. Then the gift shop inside, where Dipper and Mabel stand near an older man in a suit and fez, Stanford Pines. Wendy, a bored-looking teenage girl in a green flannel short and earflap hat sits at the counter at the register with her boots up on it, reading a magazine, and Soos, a heavyset handyman with a baseball cap and a question-mark t-shirt fixes something nearby.]
Tammee: It wasn't long before the twins were drawn into the town's many secrets.
[Stan holds up a bunch of signs.]
Grunkle Stan: All right, all right, look alive, people. I need someone to go hammer up these signs in the spooky part of the forest. All right, let's make it... eenie, meenie, miney... [points at Dipper] you.
Dipper: Aw, what? Grunkle Stan, whenever I'm in those woods, I feel like I'm being watched.
Grunkle Stan: Ugh, this again.
Dipper: I'm telling you, something weird is going on in this town. Just today, my mosquito bites spelled out "BEWARE." [He holds out his arm, where the bites do look at least somewhat like the word.]
Grunkle Stan: That says "BEWARB." [Dipper scratches his arm awkwardly.] Look, kid, the whole "monsters in the forest" thing is just local legend, drummed up by guys like me to sell merch to guys like that. [He points to a customer, a sweaty man that laughs while poking at a Stan bobblehead.] So quit being so paranoid!
[The scene cuts to a foggy forest, with the trees getting blown by a whistling breeze. Dipper walks along, hammering up advertisements that point towards the Mystery Shack.]
Dipper: Ugh, Grunkle Stan. Nobody ever believes anything I say.
[He starts to hammer a nail on another tree trunk, but for some reason, it makes a metallic sound. His face scrunching up in confusion and curiosity, he taps the tree with the hammer, and it echoes again. Dipper finds and opens a secret door, revealing a mechanical box with two control switches on top. After Dipper hits one of the switches, a trap door opens, revealing a hole in the ground behind him.]
Dipper: What the...?
[The tinkly mysterious music cues up again as he looks inside the hole and finds a red, bound leather book, with a golden six-fingered hand on the front that bears the number 3. Picking it up out of the secret chamber and looking around to make sure he's still alone, he dusts it off and examines it, then starts reading to himself:]
Dipper: "It's hard to believe it's been six years since I began studying the strange and wondrous secrets of Gravity Falls, Oregon." [He flips through the pages, which have cryptic writing and drawings of strange and terrifying monsters.] What is all this? [He stops at a page that has "TRUST NO ONE" almost carved into it.] "Unfortunately, my suspicions have been confirmed. I'm being watched. I must hide this book before he finds it. Remember: in Gravity Falls there is no one you can trust." [He closes the journal] No one you can trust...
Mabel: [Jumps up from behind a log] HALLO!
[Dipper screams shrilly.]
Mabel: What'cha readin', some nerd thing?
Dipper: [Hides journal behind back.] Uh, uh, it’s nothing!
Mabel: "Uh, uh, it’s nothing!" [Laughs] What? Are you actually not gonna show me?
Dipper: Uhhh... [He comes to a decision.] Let's go somewhere private.
[In the living room of the Mystery Shack, Dipper waves the book around excitedly.]
Dipper: It's amazing! Grunkle Stan said I was being paranoid, but according to this book, Gravity Falls has this secret dark side.
Mabel: Whoa! Shut. Up!
Dipper: And get this! After a certain point, the pages just.. stop, like the guy who was writing it... mysteriously disappeared.
Shellee: It wasn't long before Dipper and his sister were pulled even deeper into the town's mysterious underbelly. Some of the oddities of Gravity Falls that they faced were horrors beyond all imagination.
[There is a montage of monsters. In one clip, Dipper, wearing a dapper little suit, stands near Pacifica, a blonde girl in a purple dress, in the den of a mansion. Stuffed taxidermy animal heads decorate the walls, and their eyes start to glow, as blood pours out of their mouths, noses, and eyes. They chant over and over:]
Heads: Ancient sins...ancient sins...ancient sins...
[The fire in the fireplace flares up and the blackened skeleton of a man bursts out of it, still burning. As ghostly flesh forms over the bones, Dipper and the girl run and hide under a pool table. The skeleton turns into the form of a ghostly lumberjack, with a missing eye, an ax stuck in his skull, and a beard made of blue flames.]
Ghost: I smell a Northwest! Come out, come out, wherever you are...
[Where they hide under the pool table, they see the ghost dragging a ghostly axe on the floor, breaking up the floorboards as he goes.]
[The scene shifts again, showing scary threat after scary threat trying to chase or kill Dipper and his sister, and sometimes their Grunkle and friends. Living wax sculptures roll their eyes back into their heads and advance upon the twins. A shapeshifter takes on a ghastly, buglike, monsterified form of Dipper and his sister conjoined together, screeches, and runs after them. A monster with long limbs, a smiley face mask, and a massive bloated form runs after Soos' truck as he tries to drive the twins and their friends Candy and Grenda away from it. A floating, living island with a twisted face bites the rowboat Mabel and Dipper are rowing in, causing them to fall overboard. Terrifying possessed animatronics lunge at them. An animatronic bear corners Dipper against against an arcade game.]
Animatronic Bear: I'm going to eat your face like pizza!
[There's still more. The montage of horror just. Keeps. Going.]
[Dipper, wearing a loincloth and carrying a spear, stands before a magical bear creature that has multiple heads and clawed legs. Horrible rotten zombies, their eyeballs either glowing or half falling out of their eye sockets (there is no in-between), stagger through the Mystery Shack. One of them grabs Dipper by the arm and raises him in the air as it prepares to bite him in front of a terrified Mabel.]
Dipper: Aaah! No! Mabel, I'm sorry!
Mabel: DIPPER!
Tammee: But the worst monster of them all was a dream demon, trying to worm his way into the material universe: Bill Cipher.
[Gideon, a strange chubby boy in a blue suit, with a bouffant hairdo, sits in a clearing, with a summoning circle scratched into the ground, and a picture of Grunkle Stan in the center with the eyes crossed out with marker. Mabel and Soos watch him from the bushes, clearly alarmed, as he chants:]
Gideon: Egassem sdrawkcab. egassem sdrawkcab. Egassem sdrawkcab! Egassem sdrawkcab! Egassem sdrawkcab!
[The entire world turns black and white, and wildlife pauses in midair. Yellow flames burn in the shape of a triangle above Gideon and a demonic being appears, black at first, and then yellow. It's clearly a being not of this Earth, a flat little thing that doesn't belong in a 3-dimensional world. It laughs a giddy laugh that doesn't sound all that different from the way the Joker laughed while trying to burn Cargg's capitol city to the ground.]
Bill Cipher: Oh, oh, Gravity Falls! It is good to be back. Name's Bill Cipher, and I take it you're some kind of living ventriloquist dummy? Ha ha! I'm just kidding, I know who you are, Gideon!
Gideon: W-what are you? H-how do you know my name?
Bill Cipher: Oh, I know lots of things! [Images flash on his body like it's a movie screen, showing various cryptic locations.] L͟O̶̜T̮̲̣̙̼̕S̪͡ ͍̮̞̪͚͔̹O͖̙͠F̱͠ ̤̙̥̲͖͓̩T̡͚̳͔̺H̦̟̮̩͢I̸̯͖͍͎̞̯̦N̮͉͙̘͕͍ͅG̪̜̞͓S̤̼̝.
[Bill's body returns to its normal yellow.]
Bill Cipher: Hey, look what I can do! [He gestures toward a deer, and the deer's teeth rip out of its mouth and fly into his hand. He drops the teeth into Gideon's palm like a gift.] Deer teeth! For you, kid!
Gideon: [yelps and drops them.] You're insane!
Bill Cipher: Sure I am! What's your point?
Shellee: Bill terrorized the Pines family, even going so far as to invade Stan Pines' dreams. A being that depended heavily on demonic bargains, he even made Dipper fall for his tricks, due to Dipper's desperation to discover the identity of the author of Journal Number Three, and to uncover the many undiscovered secrets of Gravity Falls.
[Dipper sits in one of the attic rooms, typing away at an ancient, battered laptop. The room is all lit up in red from the light coming in through the stained glass window. There are boxes and boxes of sock puppets all over for some reason.]
Dipper: Passwords. Passwords. Mabel. Is. Useless. [Yawns.] Oh, man...
Computer: TOO MANY FAILED ENTRIES. INITIATE DATA ERASE IN FIVE MINUTES.
Dipper: No! Noonono! I'm gonna lose everything?! I only have one more try?!
[The world turns black and white the way it did when Bill appeared for Gideon, and Bill appears in the attic.]
Bill Cipher: Well, well, well. Someone's looking desperate!
Dipper: I thought I told you to leave me alone.
Bill Cipher: I can help you, kid. [His hand lights up with blame flames.] You just need to hear out my demands.
Dipper: Uh, what crazy thing do you want anyway? To eat my soul? To rip out my teeth?! Are you gonna replace my eyes with baby heads or something?!
Bill Cipher: Yeesh, kid, relax. All I want is a puppet!
Dipper: A puppet? What are you playing at?
Bill Cipher: Everyone loves puppets. And it looks to me that you've got a surplus.
Dipper: I don't know, man. Mabel worked really hard on these.
Bill Cipher: Seems to me one little puppet is a small price to pay to learn all the secrets of the universe!
Bill Cipher: Besides, what's your sister done for you, lately? How many times have you sacrificed for her, huh? And when has she ever returned the favor? [On Bill's body, several scenes flash to past times where Dipper is clearly reluctantly doing something for Mabel.]
[Dipper looks outside at Mabel playing with her friends, and at the computer, which now has 30 seconds on the clock.]
Bill Cipher: [His single eye briefly transforms into a clock.] Tick tock, kid.
[Bill reaches for Dipper and his hand lights on fire again, the blue flames crackling ominously.]
Dipper: Ughh, just one puppet? Fine! [He clasps Bill's hand.] So what puppet are you gonna pick, anyway?
Bill Cipher: Hmm, let's see. Eenie meenie miney... Y͖̻̻̦̞͕̬O̡͉̹̥U͍̱̬̼̮̝̕!
[Bill pulls hard, there's a sickening ripping sound, and the video changes, because the filming methods involved had to be altered to even capture Dipper afterward. Now he's only visible as a dim outline floating in the air, insubstantial, like he's barely clinging to existence.]
[For all instants and purposes, he's a ghost.]
Dipper: Huh? [Horror quickly descends over him as he realizes what's happened. He puts a hand through his own stomach.] This can't be happening! What did you do to my body?!
[That's when Dipper's body rises from the floor without him in it, grinning a grin that looks like it might break his mouth. Bill speaks with Dipper's voice, but the cadence and tone of his voice makes his identity clear. The "camera" captures his eyes at just the right angle to briefly show a strange yellow glare and altered pupils.]
Bill Cipher: Sorry, kid but you're my puppet, now! AAHAHAHA! [He throws the laptop to floor and steps on it, shattering it.] AHAHAHA!
Dipper: Oh my gosh, this can't be happening. This can't be happening!
Bill Cipher: [He stumbles around in Dipper's body, cackling, and stops in front of a mirror.] Man, it has been so long since I've inhabited a body. [He slaps himself in the face.] Woo! [He slaps himself again.] Woo! Haha! Pain is hilarious! And two eyes? This thing's deluxe!
Dipper: I don't understand! Why are you doing this?! I thought we had a deal!
Bill Cipher: Look kid, you've been getting way too close to figuring out some major answers. I've got big plans coming and I don't need you getting in my way. Destroying that laptop was a cinch. Now I just need to destroy your journal. Race ya' to the bottom of the stairs!
[Bill tips backward and throws Dipper's body down the stairs carelessly, as if he wants it to get battered and broken.]
Tammee: Even despite Bill's many defeats, he left an indelible impression of terror on Dipper and his family.
[An exhausted Dipper, wearing a strange black preacher's costume, leans on Mabel as she helps him into Grunkle Stan's car.]
Mabel: Wow, Bill really did a number on your body while he was joyriding in it.
Dipper: Practically the first thing he did with it was throw it down the stairs.
Mabel: Ouch.
Dipper: But he's gone now, and I bet I'd have to cut another deal for him to get into it again so --
[Dipper spots something on the floor of the car and picks it up. A zoom in on the screen shows that it's a note, written in chicken scratch handwriting. The note is in English and a translation caption in Interlac shows on the screen. Dipper's eyes widen as he reads it.]
Mabel: [Looks up from buckling her seatbelt.] What'cha got there?
Dipper: [Quickly crumbles it up and shoves it in his pocket.] N-nothing. It's nothing. Just trash.
[But the expression on his face as he looks out the car window is deeply troubled.]
Tammee: Eventually, answers came from unexpected places. Dipper and Mabel's great-uncle Stanford turned out to not be who he seemed.
[Dipper and Mabel are panicking in the dim light of a study as they dig through a box full of Fake IDs and newspaper clippings. All the IDs have pictures of what is clearly a younger Stan.]
Mabel: What? What is all this? "Stetson Pinefield?"
Dipper: "Hal Forrester?" "Andrew '8-Ball' Alcatraz?" These are fake IDs, Mabel! You wouldn't need these unless you were trying to hide your real identity!
Mabel: But why would Stan do that? [She picks a newspaper clipping out of the box. The giant headline reads "STAN PINES DEAD" and the picture of a twisted car wreck is under it.]
Dipper: WHAT?! "Stan Pines Dead"?!
Mabel: "Foul play suspected in Pines' death." Fiery car crash, brakes cut...by who?!
Dipper: [Picks out another clipping that shows a picture of Stan.] "Unnamed grifter at large?" Why would they call him unnamed? Unless Stan --
[He turns to look at Mabel with a look of pure horror on his face, and her own expression mirrors it.]
Mabel: -- Isn't --
[Both look up at a portrait of Stan on the wall.]
Both: -- Stan?!
Shellee: After the real Stanford Pines fell through a dimensional portal that he'd built in the basement thirty years before, his criminal twin Stanley faked his own death and stole his brother's identity, toiling away for thirty years to find a way to bring the real Stanford back.
[Dipper, Mabel, and Soos stand with Grunkle Stan in a cavernous basement that looks completely wrecked. A giant triangular device lies broken, but a blue portal still swirls inside despite it. The tinkly mysterious music plays as a man walks through the portal wearing a long, billowing trenchcoat, his eyes covered with goggles, his face covered with a scarf. His clothes are patched and worn, like he's some sort of rugged interdimensional wanderer. Seeing a Journal like Dipper's, labeled with a 1, on the ground, he bends down and places a six-fingered hand on the golden six-fingered design on its front, then picks it up and puts it in the pocket his trench-coat.]
Dipper: Wh-what? Who is that?
Grunkle Stan: The author of the journals...
[The man takes off the goggles and pulls down the scarf, revealing...Stan. He looks just like Grunkle Stan.]
Grunkle Stan: My brother.
Shellee: The real Stanford Pines, Ford for short, quickly drew Dipper into his quest to stop Bill Cipher once and for all, unintentionally driving a wedge between Dipper and his sister.
[Dipper and Ford stand in a wrecked study that has strange iconography of Bill on the walls. Ford holds a little glass snowglobe-like sphere in his hand. A twisting, shifting vortex made of stars swirls inside it.]
Ford: All he needs to do is get his hands on this rift. To Bill it's just a game, but to us, it would mean the end of our world.
[In another shot, Dipper and Ford move around inside a derelict alien spaceship, searching for something among the wreckage.]
Ford: Dipper, I've been thinking. I'm getting too old to investigate Gravity Falls on my own. I need to train an apprentice to help me fight monsters, solve mysteries, and protect this town. And I think I--I'd like to keep it in the family.
Dipper: What are you saying?
Ford: I've read your additions to my journal and I'm impressed with your potential. What would you say to staying in Gravity Falls after the summer ends and becoming my apprentice?
[In their attic room in the Mystery Shack, Mabel looks distraught.]
Dipper: I won't be gone forever, okay? I'll still visit you at home, and we'll chat online; we'll make it work.
Mabel: I don't want it to work. I just wish summer could last forever.
[Dipper walks over to her, kneeling down behind her and putting his hand on her arm.]
Dipper: But it can't, Mabel. Look, things aren't gonna stay frozen this way. It's part of growing up. Things change. Summer...ends.
[Mabel yells, lunges away, and runs away crying.]
Dipper: Ah! [He falls over on his face, since he was leaning on her to stay up.] Mabel, wait! I didn't mean it like that! Mabel, come back!
Shellee: Unfortunately, the apocalypse couldn't be stopped. The portal wound up being unleashed, and Bill Cipher started to spread his madness over Gravity Falls.
[There's an explosion and a column of light shoots up over the forest. Dipper and Ford run out of the Mystery Shack to see the sky rip open. The tears form a giant cross-cross in the sky, and bright, ugly colors filter through, swirling in unnatural patterns. It looks like the sky is bleeding neon.]
Ford: We're too late! It's the end of the world. The rift is shattered. Bill's world is spilling into ours and every minute his powers grow stronger.
Dipper: Mabel! The rift must have cracked inside her backpack. She must be in danger. I have to go find her. [He runs and calls into a walkie talkie.] Mabel! Come in, Mabel! Mabel!
Ford: [He stops Dipper.] Dipper. Listen to me. We can find your sister soon, but first we have to stop Bill. If we can blast him back through the rift he came out of, we just might be able to stop him before his weirdness spreads across the entire globe.
Dipper: Are you sure defeating Bill is even possible?
[Ford kneels down to face him.]
Ford: No. I'm not sure. But being a hero means fighting back even when it seems impossible. Will you follow me?
[A look of pure determination comes over Dipper's face.]
Dipper: To the ends of the Earth.
Ford: Good. Because that's where we're heading.
Shellee: But Ford's attempt at defeating Bill failed.
[Bill Cipher, now giant-sized, floats near the gaggle of eldritch beings that are his posse. Ford, petrified into gold, his face frozen in an expression of horror, is in Bill's hand.]
Dipper: That's enough! Hand over my uncle! Or else!
[Dipper holds up Journal 3 threateningly.]
Bill Cipher: Now isn't. This. [He flies up to Dipper and expands to an even more massive size until his eye is even bigger than Dipper.] I̫N͉̰ͅT͙͕͎͇̭̮̘E̯̹͚̣̻̞̼R̻̬͇͓E͖̫͙ͅS͍͚̘͉͉͔̰TI̧̘͖̻̖͕͖N̵͙͉̩̪̼Ģ͉̞̣͚͔.
Bill Cipher: My old puppet is back for an encore. You think you can stop me? Go ahead, Pine Tree, show me what you've got.
Dipper: I...uh... I... uh...
[Dipper flips frantically through the journal and shines a blacklight on the page with Bill. The Journal says, unhelpfully, "IF HE GAINS PHYSICAL FORM THEN ALL IS LOST!"]
Bill Cipher: "I, UM, I." Do it, kid. Do some brilliant thing that takes me down right now! Whattaya got, Pine Tree? Everyone's waiting. DO IT!
[All Dipper has is his anger.]
Dipper: Augh! BILL! [He leaps at Bill and tries to punch him, tries to punch an immortal, all-powerful monster from outside of time and space. It goes about as well as can be expected. His fist hits a force field, and he's blown backwards into a tree, where he slides to the ground, groaning, all three Journals falling out of the pockets of his vest.]
[Battered and bruised, Dipper still crawls and tries to reach for the Journals, but Bill levitates them into the air.]
Bill Cipher: That's right. Don't be a hero, kid. [He waves the petrified Ford.] This is what happens to heroes in my world!
[The Journals burn and fall to the ground, curling into ash, as Dipper looks on helplessly.]
Dipper: NO! THE JOURNALS!
Bill Cipher: Not much of a threat now, are you?
Tammee: Dipper found himself alone in the face of the apocalypse, unable to find his family or friends, left without even the journals.
[The video cuts to sweeping panoramics of the devastation. A giant, otherworldly black pyramid hovers in the sky under the tear in reality. Fires burn and columns of smoke rise in the air from countless places. Inhuman creatures can be heard running through the streets, laughing terrible mocking laughs, and terrified screams occasionally echo through the town.]
[Under the bleeding sky, bubbles of pure madness float through the air; one floats down, causing a man to pass through it, and when he comes out the other side, he screams a chilling scream and starts ripping off his clothes. The town's water tower comes to life, grows teeth, and starts marching around on its metal legs, screeching. The eyes of a giant statue of a lumberjack glow and it starts swinging its ax and destroying buildings. A waterfall near the town turns into blood and starts flowing upside down into a black void. A Cthulhu-like squid monster can be seen moving slowly between buildings. There's also a...thing floating around. Whatever that is. ]
[Giant eyes with bat-wings fly through the skies, zapping townspeople, turning them to stone, and carrying them off. The footage shows where they're taken -- to be added to a massive throne, as big as a house, in the Fearamid. The throne is made up entirely of their forms, all of their faces frozen in rictus expressions of terror.]
[For a moment, the scene lingers on a ruined street, showing a building torn in half and a car that looks melted. Bags of trash and a twisted, broken stop sign rest against some rubble. It seems like a random shot at first, but then it becomes clear that the focus is still on the subject of the special when an exhausted Dipper pushes his way out from under the trash bags. Either he was sleeping there or cowering in fear -- and both are terrible prospects. One of the eyebats searches near him and he hops over a fence to escape it, pressing his back against the fence on the other side until the eyebat flies away.]
[His clothes are torn and filthy, and all of his exposed skin is filthier. His body is covered in bruises and cuts and scrapes. The bruises on his face are particularly nasty and he has blood smeared on his cheek from cuts and abrasions that are now scabbed over. His lips are chapped like he's dehydrated and his hands tremble as he gets out his walkie talkie.]
Dipper: Mabel, it's me. So far I've eluded capture but I haven't been able to find you or Stan anywhere. I don't know if you can hear me, but wherever you are, whatever happens, I'm going to find you.
Shellee: Some think that heroes are made by a single defining moment, but the truth is that they're made by many smaller moments, and Dipper Pines is no exception to the rule.
[The music swells and shows a montage of heroic moments that led up to this one. One of them takes place on a dangerously narrow railway bridge between two mountains. A giant robot designed to look like Gideon has Mabel captured in its hand. Dipper runs and jumps, screaming a wild scream, off a cliff into a drop that has to be at least 50 feet up. He breaks through the glass eye of the robot into the cockpit, where he starts fist-fighting Gideon.]
Dipper: Let go of my sister!
[In another shot, the lumberjack ghost appears again, lunging at the blonde girl in a purple dress from earlier.]
Lumberjack Ghost: Prepare to die, Northwest!
[The ghost raises his ax and Dipper lunges in front of her, holding a silver mirror that sucks the ghost inside. The force of it knocks him and the girl back through a window that shatters.]
[In a cave full of minotaur-like creatures, the manotaurs, Dipper throws the same spear of steel and bone he was carrying in a past clip with the bear-creature, into the ground. He stands before Leaderaur, the biggest and most intimidating manotaur of them all, who looms over him.]
Dipper: I'm not gonna do it!
Leaderaur: You were told! The price of manhood is the multi-bear's head!
Dipper: Listen, Leaderaur, alright? You too, Testosteraur, Pituitaur, and...I don't know, whatever your name is. B-Beardy.
Beardy: It's Beardy.
Dipper: You keep telling me that being a man means doing all these tasks, and being aggro all the time? But I'm starting to think that stuff's malarkey!
[The manotaurs gasp.]
Dipper: You heard me! Malarkey! So maybe I don't have muscles, or hair in certain places, annnd...sure, when a girly pop song comes on the radio, sometimes, I leave it on! 'Cause dang it, top 40 hits are in the top 40 for a reason! They're catchy!
Chutzpar: Destructor...what are you saying?
Dipper: I'm saying the Multi-bear is a really nice guy. And you're bunch of jerks if you want me to cut off his head!
Leaderaur: [Stands up and smacks the spear away in rage, looming over Dipper. He roars in his face with enough force to blow his hair back, baring jagged teeth.] Kill the multi-bear or never be a man!
[Dipper lifts his chin, furrows his brows, and puffs out his chest. Despite being only tiny a fraction of his size, he refuses to back down.
Dipper: Then I guess I'll never be a man.
[The scene cuts back to the apocalypse. Dipper and Wendy sit on a roof, looking out at the devastation, drinking what could be the last sodas on Earth. They're not trying to hide, like they feel like hiding doesn't even matter anymore.]
Wendy: The end of the world. Man. Those death metal album covers got it shockingly right.
Dipper: You know, I used to think I could get out of anything, but this? The journals are destroyed, Ford is captured, and I can't find my family anywhere. Bill said it himself, there's no room for heroes out here. [His head hangs.] We lost.
Wendy: Look, dude, it's not over yet. You've beaten Bill twice before, why is this time any different?
Dipper: 'Cause then I had Mabel.
Wendy: Then you need to get Mabel back. Look, this summer, I've seen some amazing things, but nothing as amazing as you and your sister. I don't know if it's dumb luck or yin and yang, or whatever, but when you two work together, there's like nothing you two can't accomplish. You just need to make up, and team up, and save the universe.
Dipper: But how will I ever find her?
[A monster eats a billboard, revealing a glowing, pink energy bubble, far off in the distance, where the forests have been swept and burned away. It's chained to the ground with massive chains like it's some kind of magical prison. A shooting star is emblazoned on it.]
Dipper: The shooting star from Mabel's sweater! She's in there. I know it.
Tammee: His tenacity proved to be strong enough to help him free his sister, and the two of them rallied the town together.
[In the Mystery Shack, the survivors have gathered together, human and supernatural creature alike. They stand around a TV, and all of them are clearly distraught from what they've just viewed.]
Pacifica: Oh no, my parents are bad but even they don't deserve to be turned into stone!
[The town sheriff drops to his knees, tearing at his shirt and weeping.]
Sheriff Blubs: Curse you, Bill! Why must you take everything we love?!
[All of the survivors stand there looking hopeless, and some of them even start crying.]
[That's when Mabel climbs onto the Multi-bear's body, above the crowd, and speaks to them all.]
Mabel: Guys, don't you see? Our friends need us, but we can only save them if we fight back! [She pulls Dipper up to join her and they stand on Multi-bear's head, holding hands.]
Dipper: Mabel is right! Bill wants us to run and hide. He wants us to think he's invincible. But Ford told me before he was captured that he knows Bill's secret weakness.
[The refugees all perk up and start muttering.]
Wendy: Weakness?
Dipper: Now, if we band together, if we combine all of our strength, our smarts, our...whatever Toby has...
[A nebbish-looking man with catfish whiskers, wearing clothes that look like they were looted from a Hot Topic, chimes up.]
Toby: Various rashes!
Dipper: ...then we just might be able to rescue Ford, learn Bill's weakness, and save Gravity Falls!
[The group cheers, and the show cuts to them all working together, building...something. The scene cuts to the Fearamid. The Mystery Shack, now transformed into a giant mecha, fights giant demons outside it, as a heavy metal theme plays. A brief cut shows Dipper steering in the cockpit and the other survivors all working various parts of the Shacktron.]
[The next scene is inside the Fearamid. Dipper and Mabel get ready to take on Bill by themselves.]
Dipper: Save yourselves. Run! We'll take care of Bill!
Ford: What? That's a suicide mission!
Dipper: [grins a defiant grin.] Trust us. We've beat him before...
Mabel ...and we'll beat him again! [She fist bumps Dipper.] Hey! Bill! Come and get us, you pointy jerk!
[Bill growls, as Dipper and Mabel run off into the Fearamid. Before leaving, Mabel blows a raspberry. The scene lingers on the grunkles.]
Ford: What? No! It's too dangerous!
[Ford and Stan start to run after Dipper and Mabel, but Bill imprisons them in a cage of light.]
Bill Cipher: Not so fast. You two wait here!
[He turns red and grows six arms, and grows even bigger in size, turning into a monstrous abomination with far too many teeth.]
Bill Cipher: I've got some children I need to make into C͚̘͙̱̠̰O̳͈̲ͅŖṔ̣Ş̲̻̞̲͉E͏̤̩̤S̮͓̻̟̥̞͠. S͚͔̣̮̠̩͇͢E̝̦̦̲̥͜E͍̘̰ͅ ̙̬͖͟YA̟̙̦͓̻͟'̰͍̺̦ ̭̜̥̗̻̠͈R̫̻͕͟E͎A͙͙̫L̵̙͕͙̹̮ ̮S̥͙̝O̺̖̫̩͙OṈ̶͚̖͚.
[The grunkles both bang their fists on the bars.]
Grunkle Stan: No! Wait! No! No! Oh, what do we do? What do we do?!
Ford: Kids!
[Dipper and Mabel run through the twisted chambers of the Fearamid, with Bill loping after them, using his many arms to pull himself along, like a spider chasing its prey.]
Bill Cipher: When I get my hands on you kids, I'm gonna disassemble your molecules!
[There's a brief chase where the two work together to keep escaping him, but it doesn't last. It cuts to him grabbing the twins and bringing them back to where Ford and Stan are imprisoned.]
Bill Cipher: Alright, Ford. Time's up. I've got the kids. I think I'm gonna kill one of 'em now just for the heck of it! [His eye starts flipping back and forth between the pine tree symbol on Dipper's hat and the shooting star on Mabel's sweater. The symbols project a sinister red light over the twins, as they struggle desperately to escape his grip.] Eenie! Meenie! Miney -- [The eye settles on the shooting star and Dipper and Mabel look up at him in horror, their struggles ceasing.] ...Y̢̫̗̯͔͎͇ͅOU͚͎̱̳̻͕̲̕--!
[He raises his other hand and is about to snap his fingers --]
Ford: Wait! I surrender.
Tammee: Dipper and Mabel's distraction bought their great-uncles valuable time to set up a trap to destroy Bill with a memory alteration device. Bill wanted knowledge from Ford's mind that would allow his invasion to go global, but due to precautions he'd taken to shield his thoughts, the memory device wouldn't work on Ford's brain. So the two brothers switched clothes and Stanley took on his brother's identity one last time, to trick Bill into entering a mind where he could be erased.
[Gravity Falls is shown being restored. Stanley, dressed like Stanford, kneels on the ground, dazed, as the giant rift over the town pulls the Fearamid apart, piece by piece. All the demonic creatures and monsters are sucked up into it, screaming in alarm. Objects animated into life change back into normal objects again, the burned down forests turn green and alive, and all the damaged property restores itself to as good as new.]
Shellee: With summer's end, only one thing was left for the twins to do -- go back home and face the unknown: high school.
[Sentimental music plays. Stan, Ford, Wendy, Soos, and Mabel's friends Candy and Grenda, stand at the bus stop and say their goodbyes. Stan is wearing a sweater that was obviously knitted by Mabel.]
Wendy: [Kneels next to Dipper.] Hey, you mean a lot to me, man.
[She holds out her fist for a fistbump and Dipper fistbumps her.]
Dipper: You, too.
[Wendy steals Dipper's baseball cap and replaces it with her earflap hat, putting Dipper's hat on her own head.]
Wendy: Something to remember me by. [She hands Dipper a letter.] Oh, and this. Read it the next time you miss Gravity Falls.
[The bus pulls up and the sign changes from "Gravity Falls" to "California."]
Bus Driver: Last bus leaving Gravity Falls. All aboard.
[The shot cuts to the twins saying goodbye to their Grunkle Stan. His voice is choked up when he speaks to them.]
Stan: Kids, you knuckleheads were nothin' but a nuisance and I'm glad to be rid of ya.
[The scene cuts to a short montage showing Stan and the twins over the summer. In one scene, the twins toss water balloons at Stan where he sits on the porch with a soda, soaking him and making him laugh. In another, he's got them both in a headlock and all three of them are laughing. In yet another still, Mabel hands him a knitted sash with the words "Our Hero" on it. In the flashback, Stan starts tearing up and sniffling.]
Dipper: Grunkle Stan, are you crying?
Grunkle Stan: I got campaign confetti in my eye! [He puts on the sash and starts leading them out of the living room.] Come on, kids, want to go vandalize Mayor Tyler's mansion?
Mabel: YAY!
Dipper: YAY! Vandalism!
[It cuts back to the bus stop, and Mabel and Dipper run into his arms to hug him. Stan hugs them back tightly and all three of them get teary-eyed. Mabel gently pats the little tassel on his fez.
Mabel: We'll miss you too, Grunkle Stan.
[With that, Mabel and Dipper turn towards the bus and hesitate in front of the door.]
Dipper: Ready to head into the unknown?
Mabel: Nope. [She takes a breath.] Let's do it.
[They get on the bus and it starts driving away. Their grunkles and their friends run alongside it, shouting their farewells, and Mabel and Dipper shout them back. Even after the bus leaves their grunkles and friends behind, it briefly passes by some of the magical creatures that they befriended, too, like the Multi-bear and what appear to be several gnomes, who all wave fondly from the side of the road.]
[As the mysterious music plays, empty roads and forests sweep by. Mabel falls asleep, leaning against Dipper's side.]
Tammee: So who is Captain Mystery? Clearly, his cheerful enthusiasm for petty crime says something about his character. After Murderworld, some even say he's a murderer, amoral and deranged, a young villain in the making. But others, like the people of Gravity Falls, would almost certainly insist he's a hero -- albeit one just as strange and enigmatic as the mysterious town he left behind.
[On the bus, as the pine trees fly past, Dipper finally pulls out the envelope Wendy gave him and opens it. Inside is a piece of paper signed by their grunkles and all their friends in Gravity Falls.]
[He smiles.]
Tammee: After all, not many would look at the prospect of returning to where they'd faced the apocalypse with a smile.
Shellee: For more Legion action, be sure to keep tuning in! This is Shellee Star!
Tammee: And Tammee Tim!
Both: And this was Legionnaire Legacies!
[The Legion World staff maintains a feed of all Legion-related media so Legionnaires can be kept abreast of any reporting that's done on them. Two women appear on the screen, sitting at a desk, their appearances altered by glam filters so that one is all pink hair and skin and sparkles, and the other is all in blues. They look pretty flashy and tacky but this is the future. Reporters don't exist anymore; they're "personalities" now.]
Shellee: I'm Shellee Star! [That would be the pink one. ]
Tammee: And I'm Tammee Tim! [That would be the blue one.]
Shellee: Welcome to another installment of Legion Watch: Legionnaire Legacies. In this episode, we're focusing on one of the youngest Legionnaires, a teenager who has inspired controversy with his actions in Murderworld, and has caused many to be intrigued about his possible origins. Tonight, we'll focus on a Legionnaire whose motivations are as mysterious as his callsign: Dipper Pines, aka Captain Mystery!
Tammee: Now we must warn the audience that some of the content you're about to see is deeply disturbing. Content includes violence and...the only term we can use for it is "apocalyptic" imagery. Children especially may find the following content upsetting. Viewer discretion is advised.
Shellee: Captain Mystery's origins were simple enough. Idyllic, even. Dipper was born with the birth name Mason Pines, fraternal twins with his sister Mabel -- who many in the audience likely remember having served a tenure in the Legion herself as the hero "Lady Mabelton." Nicknamed Dipper due to his distinctive birthmark, shaped like an Earth constellation, he had a relatively normal 21st century childhood, filled with the usual ups and downs of growing up.
[Happy scenes flash by of Dipper and his twin sister, seemingly endlessly at play together, at various ages. They're both chubby cheeked and clearly not shy about taking advantage how cute people think twins are, judging from a brief shot of them trick-or-treating in coordinating salt-and-pepper-shaker costumes.]
[But when they're shown with other children, one thing is abundantly clear: Dipper had very few friends beyond his sister. A scene on the playground, with them at age 7, shows Dipper timidly trying to join in on some kind of pretend game, hovering around the edges of a group of kids as they work out what they're doing. Mabel's off with a gaggle of girls in the background making friendship bracelets, too far away to hear what's going on.]
Pigtailed girl: [She points to each of the other kids as she talks.] Okay, I'll be the pink megamorph, Hannah will be the purple megamorph, Dustin will be blue, Zachary will be green, and Brandon will be red!
[Little Dipper clearly has a hard time to talking to the other kids. His words are stuttery, in a way that suggests less that he has an actual stutter and more that he's just very, very shy, afraid to speak up to people. It's a far cry from how he is in the present.]
Dipper: But...then what -- what am I supposed to be?
Pigtailed Girl: Oh. You're still here. Um, I guess Zeta 17.
Dipper: Well...but he's kind of...lame? I mean, doesn't he just...just stay in Master Blordo's base, like -- the whole time?
Dustin: That's why he's perfect for you, Dipper, since you're not coming with us.
[The kids start laughing and run away to start playing in a wooded part of the playground, leaving Dipper standing there with his hands balled into fists. They can be still be heard talking about him as their voices get fainter.]
Zachary: He's so weird.
Hannah: And why does he have those gross lines on his head?
[Dipper hovers there locked in place in that way kids are when they know they're not welcome to follow along, but feel like they don't have anywhere else to go. He pulls his hair down over his forehead, blushing with embarrassment.]
[Then he looks over at Mabel, like he's tempted to go over to her, but he's hesitant to. She clearly seems to be having fun without him, doing stuff that involves beads and glitter, and even her smiling and waving isn't enough to draw him over. After giving her a wan smile back, he opts to go over near a tree to sit alone and take out a book. For just a moment, he glances off at where the other kids are playing without him, and then raises his book higher to hide how his eyes are watering.]
Shellee: Unlike his more sociable sister, Dipper had difficulty making friends. Always being the odd one out led to him developing an interest in all things weird.
[A montage passes, showing various scenes of Dipper on the playground. He wears a baseball cap or beanie now in all of them, covering his birth mark, and he's always in the same position, perched somewhere with his back to a tree or piece of playground equipment, reading a variety of different books.]
[The covers that flash by have illustrations of fantasy lands, spaceships, alien planets, UFOS, ghosts, vampires, and other supernatural creatures, and they have titles like "Aliens???" "Scary Stories With Illustrations That Shouldn't Be In a Kids Book," "Dragon-Wranglers of the Mountains of Earth, Ice, and Flames," and "101 Totally True, Not Made Up Or Embellished Hauntings."]
[Mabel shows up in some of the scenes, sometimes poking him for attention, sometimes taking his book out of his hands to try to force him to come play with her. In a few, she's back to back with him, working on coloring books or reading books with sparkly covers that almost absolutely have pony princesses in them. The scenery behind them changes to show different seasons, and Dipper's age progresses.]
Shellee: In the hopes of giving them a memorable summer outdoors and a chance to bond even more, their parents sent them away for the summer to visit their Great Uncle Stanford in a small, mysterious town in Roadkill County, Oregon...[Her voice hushes slightly] Gravity Falls.
[Tinkly mystical-sounding music (that sounds at least slightly like this) plays, as the twins are shown getting off the bus with their luggage. After the bus pulls away, they're left on a lonely road surrounded by ancient pines. Wind blows through the trees and the camera very briefly catches the dark silhouette of a strange little humanoid creature peering at them through the branches, then disappearing into the leaves.]
Tammee: Though they didn't know it at the time, the Pines twins had walked into a place filled with the paranormal creatures and anomalies that Dipper had only read about.
[The outside of the Mystery Shack is shown. Then the gift shop inside, where Dipper and Mabel stand near an older man in a suit and fez, Stanford Pines. Wendy, a bored-looking teenage girl in a green flannel short and earflap hat sits at the counter at the register with her boots up on it, reading a magazine, and Soos, a heavyset handyman with a baseball cap and a question-mark t-shirt fixes something nearby.]
Tammee: It wasn't long before the twins were drawn into the town's many secrets.
[Stan holds up a bunch of signs.]
Grunkle Stan: All right, all right, look alive, people. I need someone to go hammer up these signs in the spooky part of the forest. All right, let's make it... eenie, meenie, miney... [points at Dipper] you.
Dipper: Aw, what? Grunkle Stan, whenever I'm in those woods, I feel like I'm being watched.
Grunkle Stan: Ugh, this again.
Dipper: I'm telling you, something weird is going on in this town. Just today, my mosquito bites spelled out "BEWARE." [He holds out his arm, where the bites do look at least somewhat like the word.]
Grunkle Stan: That says "BEWARB." [Dipper scratches his arm awkwardly.] Look, kid, the whole "monsters in the forest" thing is just local legend, drummed up by guys like me to sell merch to guys like that. [He points to a customer, a sweaty man that laughs while poking at a Stan bobblehead.] So quit being so paranoid!
[The scene cuts to a foggy forest, with the trees getting blown by a whistling breeze. Dipper walks along, hammering up advertisements that point towards the Mystery Shack.]
Dipper: Ugh, Grunkle Stan. Nobody ever believes anything I say.
[He starts to hammer a nail on another tree trunk, but for some reason, it makes a metallic sound. His face scrunching up in confusion and curiosity, he taps the tree with the hammer, and it echoes again. Dipper finds and opens a secret door, revealing a mechanical box with two control switches on top. After Dipper hits one of the switches, a trap door opens, revealing a hole in the ground behind him.]
Dipper: What the...?
[The tinkly mysterious music cues up again as he looks inside the hole and finds a red, bound leather book, with a golden six-fingered hand on the front that bears the number 3. Picking it up out of the secret chamber and looking around to make sure he's still alone, he dusts it off and examines it, then starts reading to himself:]
Dipper: "It's hard to believe it's been six years since I began studying the strange and wondrous secrets of Gravity Falls, Oregon." [He flips through the pages, which have cryptic writing and drawings of strange and terrifying monsters.] What is all this? [He stops at a page that has "TRUST NO ONE" almost carved into it.] "Unfortunately, my suspicions have been confirmed. I'm being watched. I must hide this book before he finds it. Remember: in Gravity Falls there is no one you can trust." [He closes the journal] No one you can trust...
Mabel: [Jumps up from behind a log] HALLO!
[Dipper screams shrilly.]
Mabel: What'cha readin', some nerd thing?
Dipper: [Hides journal behind back.] Uh, uh, it’s nothing!
Mabel: "Uh, uh, it’s nothing!" [Laughs] What? Are you actually not gonna show me?
Dipper: Uhhh... [He comes to a decision.] Let's go somewhere private.
[In the living room of the Mystery Shack, Dipper waves the book around excitedly.]
Dipper: It's amazing! Grunkle Stan said I was being paranoid, but according to this book, Gravity Falls has this secret dark side.
Mabel: Whoa! Shut. Up!
Dipper: And get this! After a certain point, the pages just.. stop, like the guy who was writing it... mysteriously disappeared.
Shellee: It wasn't long before Dipper and his sister were pulled even deeper into the town's mysterious underbelly. Some of the oddities of Gravity Falls that they faced were horrors beyond all imagination.
[There is a montage of monsters. In one clip, Dipper, wearing a dapper little suit, stands near Pacifica, a blonde girl in a purple dress, in the den of a mansion. Stuffed taxidermy animal heads decorate the walls, and their eyes start to glow, as blood pours out of their mouths, noses, and eyes. They chant over and over:]
Heads: Ancient sins...ancient sins...ancient sins...
[The fire in the fireplace flares up and the blackened skeleton of a man bursts out of it, still burning. As ghostly flesh forms over the bones, Dipper and the girl run and hide under a pool table. The skeleton turns into the form of a ghostly lumberjack, with a missing eye, an ax stuck in his skull, and a beard made of blue flames.]
Ghost: I smell a Northwest! Come out, come out, wherever you are...
[Where they hide under the pool table, they see the ghost dragging a ghostly axe on the floor, breaking up the floorboards as he goes.]
[The scene shifts again, showing scary threat after scary threat trying to chase or kill Dipper and his sister, and sometimes their Grunkle and friends. Living wax sculptures roll their eyes back into their heads and advance upon the twins. A shapeshifter takes on a ghastly, buglike, monsterified form of Dipper and his sister conjoined together, screeches, and runs after them. A monster with long limbs, a smiley face mask, and a massive bloated form runs after Soos' truck as he tries to drive the twins and their friends Candy and Grenda away from it. A floating, living island with a twisted face bites the rowboat Mabel and Dipper are rowing in, causing them to fall overboard. Terrifying possessed animatronics lunge at them. An animatronic bear corners Dipper against against an arcade game.]
Animatronic Bear: I'm going to eat your face like pizza!
[There's still more. The montage of horror just. Keeps. Going.]
[Dipper, wearing a loincloth and carrying a spear, stands before a magical bear creature that has multiple heads and clawed legs. Horrible rotten zombies, their eyeballs either glowing or half falling out of their eye sockets (there is no in-between), stagger through the Mystery Shack. One of them grabs Dipper by the arm and raises him in the air as it prepares to bite him in front of a terrified Mabel.]
Dipper: Aaah! No! Mabel, I'm sorry!
Mabel: DIPPER!
Tammee: But the worst monster of them all was a dream demon, trying to worm his way into the material universe: Bill Cipher.
[Gideon, a strange chubby boy in a blue suit, with a bouffant hairdo, sits in a clearing, with a summoning circle scratched into the ground, and a picture of Grunkle Stan in the center with the eyes crossed out with marker. Mabel and Soos watch him from the bushes, clearly alarmed, as he chants:]
Gideon: Egassem sdrawkcab. egassem sdrawkcab. Egassem sdrawkcab! Egassem sdrawkcab! Egassem sdrawkcab!
[The entire world turns black and white, and wildlife pauses in midair. Yellow flames burn in the shape of a triangle above Gideon and a demonic being appears, black at first, and then yellow. It's clearly a being not of this Earth, a flat little thing that doesn't belong in a 3-dimensional world. It laughs a giddy laugh that doesn't sound all that different from the way the Joker laughed while trying to burn Cargg's capitol city to the ground.]
Bill Cipher: Oh, oh, Gravity Falls! It is good to be back. Name's Bill Cipher, and I take it you're some kind of living ventriloquist dummy? Ha ha! I'm just kidding, I know who you are, Gideon!
Gideon: W-what are you? H-how do you know my name?
Bill Cipher: Oh, I know lots of things! [Images flash on his body like it's a movie screen, showing various cryptic locations.] L͟O̶̜T̮̲̣̙̼̕S̪͡ ͍̮̞̪͚͔̹O͖̙͠F̱͠ ̤̙̥̲͖͓̩T̡͚̳͔̺H̦̟̮̩͢I̸̯͖͍͎̞̯̦N̮͉͙̘͕͍ͅG̪̜̞͓S̤̼̝.
[Bill's body returns to its normal yellow.]
Bill Cipher: Hey, look what I can do! [He gestures toward a deer, and the deer's teeth rip out of its mouth and fly into his hand. He drops the teeth into Gideon's palm like a gift.] Deer teeth! For you, kid!
Gideon: [yelps and drops them.] You're insane!
Bill Cipher: Sure I am! What's your point?
Shellee: Bill terrorized the Pines family, even going so far as to invade Stan Pines' dreams. A being that depended heavily on demonic bargains, he even made Dipper fall for his tricks, due to Dipper's desperation to discover the identity of the author of Journal Number Three, and to uncover the many undiscovered secrets of Gravity Falls.
[Dipper sits in one of the attic rooms, typing away at an ancient, battered laptop. The room is all lit up in red from the light coming in through the stained glass window. There are boxes and boxes of sock puppets all over for some reason.]
Dipper: Passwords. Passwords. Mabel. Is. Useless. [Yawns.] Oh, man...
Computer: TOO MANY FAILED ENTRIES. INITIATE DATA ERASE IN FIVE MINUTES.
Dipper: No! Noonono! I'm gonna lose everything?! I only have one more try?!
[The world turns black and white the way it did when Bill appeared for Gideon, and Bill appears in the attic.]
Bill Cipher: Well, well, well. Someone's looking desperate!
Dipper: I thought I told you to leave me alone.
Bill Cipher: I can help you, kid. [His hand lights up with blame flames.] You just need to hear out my demands.
Dipper: Uh, what crazy thing do you want anyway? To eat my soul? To rip out my teeth?! Are you gonna replace my eyes with baby heads or something?!
Bill Cipher: Yeesh, kid, relax. All I want is a puppet!
Dipper: A puppet? What are you playing at?
Bill Cipher: Everyone loves puppets. And it looks to me that you've got a surplus.
Dipper: I don't know, man. Mabel worked really hard on these.
Bill Cipher: Seems to me one little puppet is a small price to pay to learn all the secrets of the universe!
Bill Cipher: Besides, what's your sister done for you, lately? How many times have you sacrificed for her, huh? And when has she ever returned the favor? [On Bill's body, several scenes flash to past times where Dipper is clearly reluctantly doing something for Mabel.]
[Dipper looks outside at Mabel playing with her friends, and at the computer, which now has 30 seconds on the clock.]
Bill Cipher: [His single eye briefly transforms into a clock.] Tick tock, kid.
[Bill reaches for Dipper and his hand lights on fire again, the blue flames crackling ominously.]
Dipper: Ughh, just one puppet? Fine! [He clasps Bill's hand.] So what puppet are you gonna pick, anyway?
Bill Cipher: Hmm, let's see. Eenie meenie miney... Y͖̻̻̦̞͕̬O̡͉̹̥U͍̱̬̼̮̝̕!
[Bill pulls hard, there's a sickening ripping sound, and the video changes, because the filming methods involved had to be altered to even capture Dipper afterward. Now he's only visible as a dim outline floating in the air, insubstantial, like he's barely clinging to existence.]
[For all instants and purposes, he's a ghost.]
Dipper: Huh? [Horror quickly descends over him as he realizes what's happened. He puts a hand through his own stomach.] This can't be happening! What did you do to my body?!
[That's when Dipper's body rises from the floor without him in it, grinning a grin that looks like it might break his mouth. Bill speaks with Dipper's voice, but the cadence and tone of his voice makes his identity clear. The "camera" captures his eyes at just the right angle to briefly show a strange yellow glare and altered pupils.]
Bill Cipher: Sorry, kid but you're my puppet, now! AAHAHAHA! [He throws the laptop to floor and steps on it, shattering it.] AHAHAHA!
Dipper: Oh my gosh, this can't be happening. This can't be happening!
Bill Cipher: [He stumbles around in Dipper's body, cackling, and stops in front of a mirror.] Man, it has been so long since I've inhabited a body. [He slaps himself in the face.] Woo! [He slaps himself again.] Woo! Haha! Pain is hilarious! And two eyes? This thing's deluxe!
Dipper: I don't understand! Why are you doing this?! I thought we had a deal!
Bill Cipher: Look kid, you've been getting way too close to figuring out some major answers. I've got big plans coming and I don't need you getting in my way. Destroying that laptop was a cinch. Now I just need to destroy your journal. Race ya' to the bottom of the stairs!
[Bill tips backward and throws Dipper's body down the stairs carelessly, as if he wants it to get battered and broken.]
Tammee: Even despite Bill's many defeats, he left an indelible impression of terror on Dipper and his family.
[An exhausted Dipper, wearing a strange black preacher's costume, leans on Mabel as she helps him into Grunkle Stan's car.]
Mabel: Wow, Bill really did a number on your body while he was joyriding in it.
Dipper: Practically the first thing he did with it was throw it down the stairs.
Mabel: Ouch.
Dipper: But he's gone now, and I bet I'd have to cut another deal for him to get into it again so --
[Dipper spots something on the floor of the car and picks it up. A zoom in on the screen shows that it's a note, written in chicken scratch handwriting. The note is in English and a translation caption in Interlac shows on the screen. Dipper's eyes widen as he reads it.]
Mabel: [Looks up from buckling her seatbelt.] What'cha got there?
Dipper: [Quickly crumbles it up and shoves it in his pocket.] N-nothing. It's nothing. Just trash.
[But the expression on his face as he looks out the car window is deeply troubled.]
Tammee: Eventually, answers came from unexpected places. Dipper and Mabel's great-uncle Stanford turned out to not be who he seemed.
[Dipper and Mabel are panicking in the dim light of a study as they dig through a box full of Fake IDs and newspaper clippings. All the IDs have pictures of what is clearly a younger Stan.]
Mabel: What? What is all this? "Stetson Pinefield?"
Dipper: "Hal Forrester?" "Andrew '8-Ball' Alcatraz?" These are fake IDs, Mabel! You wouldn't need these unless you were trying to hide your real identity!
Mabel: But why would Stan do that? [She picks a newspaper clipping out of the box. The giant headline reads "STAN PINES DEAD" and the picture of a twisted car wreck is under it.]
Dipper: WHAT?! "Stan Pines Dead"?!
Mabel: "Foul play suspected in Pines' death." Fiery car crash, brakes cut...by who?!
Dipper: [Picks out another clipping that shows a picture of Stan.] "Unnamed grifter at large?" Why would they call him unnamed? Unless Stan --
[He turns to look at Mabel with a look of pure horror on his face, and her own expression mirrors it.]
Mabel: -- Isn't --
[Both look up at a portrait of Stan on the wall.]
Both: -- Stan?!
Shellee: After the real Stanford Pines fell through a dimensional portal that he'd built in the basement thirty years before, his criminal twin Stanley faked his own death and stole his brother's identity, toiling away for thirty years to find a way to bring the real Stanford back.
[Dipper, Mabel, and Soos stand with Grunkle Stan in a cavernous basement that looks completely wrecked. A giant triangular device lies broken, but a blue portal still swirls inside despite it. The tinkly mysterious music plays as a man walks through the portal wearing a long, billowing trenchcoat, his eyes covered with goggles, his face covered with a scarf. His clothes are patched and worn, like he's some sort of rugged interdimensional wanderer. Seeing a Journal like Dipper's, labeled with a 1, on the ground, he bends down and places a six-fingered hand on the golden six-fingered design on its front, then picks it up and puts it in the pocket his trench-coat.]
Dipper: Wh-what? Who is that?
Grunkle Stan: The author of the journals...
[The man takes off the goggles and pulls down the scarf, revealing...Stan. He looks just like Grunkle Stan.]
Grunkle Stan: My brother.
Shellee: The real Stanford Pines, Ford for short, quickly drew Dipper into his quest to stop Bill Cipher once and for all, unintentionally driving a wedge between Dipper and his sister.
[Dipper and Ford stand in a wrecked study that has strange iconography of Bill on the walls. Ford holds a little glass snowglobe-like sphere in his hand. A twisting, shifting vortex made of stars swirls inside it.]
Ford: All he needs to do is get his hands on this rift. To Bill it's just a game, but to us, it would mean the end of our world.
[In another shot, Dipper and Ford move around inside a derelict alien spaceship, searching for something among the wreckage.]
Ford: Dipper, I've been thinking. I'm getting too old to investigate Gravity Falls on my own. I need to train an apprentice to help me fight monsters, solve mysteries, and protect this town. And I think I--I'd like to keep it in the family.
Dipper: What are you saying?
Ford: I've read your additions to my journal and I'm impressed with your potential. What would you say to staying in Gravity Falls after the summer ends and becoming my apprentice?
[In their attic room in the Mystery Shack, Mabel looks distraught.]
Dipper: I won't be gone forever, okay? I'll still visit you at home, and we'll chat online; we'll make it work.
Mabel: I don't want it to work. I just wish summer could last forever.
[Dipper walks over to her, kneeling down behind her and putting his hand on her arm.]
Dipper: But it can't, Mabel. Look, things aren't gonna stay frozen this way. It's part of growing up. Things change. Summer...ends.
[Mabel yells, lunges away, and runs away crying.]
Dipper: Ah! [He falls over on his face, since he was leaning on her to stay up.] Mabel, wait! I didn't mean it like that! Mabel, come back!
Shellee: Unfortunately, the apocalypse couldn't be stopped. The portal wound up being unleashed, and Bill Cipher started to spread his madness over Gravity Falls.
[There's an explosion and a column of light shoots up over the forest. Dipper and Ford run out of the Mystery Shack to see the sky rip open. The tears form a giant cross-cross in the sky, and bright, ugly colors filter through, swirling in unnatural patterns. It looks like the sky is bleeding neon.]
Ford: We're too late! It's the end of the world. The rift is shattered. Bill's world is spilling into ours and every minute his powers grow stronger.
Dipper: Mabel! The rift must have cracked inside her backpack. She must be in danger. I have to go find her. [He runs and calls into a walkie talkie.] Mabel! Come in, Mabel! Mabel!
Ford: [He stops Dipper.] Dipper. Listen to me. We can find your sister soon, but first we have to stop Bill. If we can blast him back through the rift he came out of, we just might be able to stop him before his weirdness spreads across the entire globe.
Dipper: Are you sure defeating Bill is even possible?
[Ford kneels down to face him.]
Ford: No. I'm not sure. But being a hero means fighting back even when it seems impossible. Will you follow me?
[A look of pure determination comes over Dipper's face.]
Dipper: To the ends of the Earth.
Ford: Good. Because that's where we're heading.
Shellee: But Ford's attempt at defeating Bill failed.
[Bill Cipher, now giant-sized, floats near the gaggle of eldritch beings that are his posse. Ford, petrified into gold, his face frozen in an expression of horror, is in Bill's hand.]
Dipper: That's enough! Hand over my uncle! Or else!
[Dipper holds up Journal 3 threateningly.]
Bill Cipher: Now isn't. This. [He flies up to Dipper and expands to an even more massive size until his eye is even bigger than Dipper.] I̫N͉̰ͅT͙͕͎͇̭̮̘E̯̹͚̣̻̞̼R̻̬͇͓E͖̫͙ͅS͍͚̘͉͉͔̰TI̧̘͖̻̖͕͖N̵͙͉̩̪̼Ģ͉̞̣͚͔.
Bill Cipher: My old puppet is back for an encore. You think you can stop me? Go ahead, Pine Tree, show me what you've got.
Dipper: I...uh... I... uh...
[Dipper flips frantically through the journal and shines a blacklight on the page with Bill. The Journal says, unhelpfully, "IF HE GAINS PHYSICAL FORM THEN ALL IS LOST!"]
Bill Cipher: "I, UM, I." Do it, kid. Do some brilliant thing that takes me down right now! Whattaya got, Pine Tree? Everyone's waiting. DO IT!
[All Dipper has is his anger.]
Dipper: Augh! BILL! [He leaps at Bill and tries to punch him, tries to punch an immortal, all-powerful monster from outside of time and space. It goes about as well as can be expected. His fist hits a force field, and he's blown backwards into a tree, where he slides to the ground, groaning, all three Journals falling out of the pockets of his vest.]
[Battered and bruised, Dipper still crawls and tries to reach for the Journals, but Bill levitates them into the air.]
Bill Cipher: That's right. Don't be a hero, kid. [He waves the petrified Ford.] This is what happens to heroes in my world!
[The Journals burn and fall to the ground, curling into ash, as Dipper looks on helplessly.]
Dipper: NO! THE JOURNALS!
Bill Cipher: Not much of a threat now, are you?
Tammee: Dipper found himself alone in the face of the apocalypse, unable to find his family or friends, left without even the journals.
[The video cuts to sweeping panoramics of the devastation. A giant, otherworldly black pyramid hovers in the sky under the tear in reality. Fires burn and columns of smoke rise in the air from countless places. Inhuman creatures can be heard running through the streets, laughing terrible mocking laughs, and terrified screams occasionally echo through the town.]
[Under the bleeding sky, bubbles of pure madness float through the air; one floats down, causing a man to pass through it, and when he comes out the other side, he screams a chilling scream and starts ripping off his clothes. The town's water tower comes to life, grows teeth, and starts marching around on its metal legs, screeching. The eyes of a giant statue of a lumberjack glow and it starts swinging its ax and destroying buildings. A waterfall near the town turns into blood and starts flowing upside down into a black void. A Cthulhu-like squid monster can be seen moving slowly between buildings. There's also a...thing floating around. Whatever that is. ]
[Giant eyes with bat-wings fly through the skies, zapping townspeople, turning them to stone, and carrying them off. The footage shows where they're taken -- to be added to a massive throne, as big as a house, in the Fearamid. The throne is made up entirely of their forms, all of their faces frozen in rictus expressions of terror.]
[For a moment, the scene lingers on a ruined street, showing a building torn in half and a car that looks melted. Bags of trash and a twisted, broken stop sign rest against some rubble. It seems like a random shot at first, but then it becomes clear that the focus is still on the subject of the special when an exhausted Dipper pushes his way out from under the trash bags. Either he was sleeping there or cowering in fear -- and both are terrible prospects. One of the eyebats searches near him and he hops over a fence to escape it, pressing his back against the fence on the other side until the eyebat flies away.]
[His clothes are torn and filthy, and all of his exposed skin is filthier. His body is covered in bruises and cuts and scrapes. The bruises on his face are particularly nasty and he has blood smeared on his cheek from cuts and abrasions that are now scabbed over. His lips are chapped like he's dehydrated and his hands tremble as he gets out his walkie talkie.]
Dipper: Mabel, it's me. So far I've eluded capture but I haven't been able to find you or Stan anywhere. I don't know if you can hear me, but wherever you are, whatever happens, I'm going to find you.
Shellee: Some think that heroes are made by a single defining moment, but the truth is that they're made by many smaller moments, and Dipper Pines is no exception to the rule.
[The music swells and shows a montage of heroic moments that led up to this one. One of them takes place on a dangerously narrow railway bridge between two mountains. A giant robot designed to look like Gideon has Mabel captured in its hand. Dipper runs and jumps, screaming a wild scream, off a cliff into a drop that has to be at least 50 feet up. He breaks through the glass eye of the robot into the cockpit, where he starts fist-fighting Gideon.]
Dipper: Let go of my sister!
[In another shot, the lumberjack ghost appears again, lunging at the blonde girl in a purple dress from earlier.]
Lumberjack Ghost: Prepare to die, Northwest!
[The ghost raises his ax and Dipper lunges in front of her, holding a silver mirror that sucks the ghost inside. The force of it knocks him and the girl back through a window that shatters.]
[In a cave full of minotaur-like creatures, the manotaurs, Dipper throws the same spear of steel and bone he was carrying in a past clip with the bear-creature, into the ground. He stands before Leaderaur, the biggest and most intimidating manotaur of them all, who looms over him.]
Dipper: I'm not gonna do it!
Leaderaur: You were told! The price of manhood is the multi-bear's head!
Dipper: Listen, Leaderaur, alright? You too, Testosteraur, Pituitaur, and...I don't know, whatever your name is. B-Beardy.
Beardy: It's Beardy.
Dipper: You keep telling me that being a man means doing all these tasks, and being aggro all the time? But I'm starting to think that stuff's malarkey!
[The manotaurs gasp.]
Dipper: You heard me! Malarkey! So maybe I don't have muscles, or hair in certain places, annnd...sure, when a girly pop song comes on the radio, sometimes, I leave it on! 'Cause dang it, top 40 hits are in the top 40 for a reason! They're catchy!
Chutzpar: Destructor...what are you saying?
Dipper: I'm saying the Multi-bear is a really nice guy. And you're bunch of jerks if you want me to cut off his head!
Leaderaur: [Stands up and smacks the spear away in rage, looming over Dipper. He roars in his face with enough force to blow his hair back, baring jagged teeth.] Kill the multi-bear or never be a man!
[Dipper lifts his chin, furrows his brows, and puffs out his chest. Despite being only tiny a fraction of his size, he refuses to back down.
Dipper: Then I guess I'll never be a man.
[The scene cuts back to the apocalypse. Dipper and Wendy sit on a roof, looking out at the devastation, drinking what could be the last sodas on Earth. They're not trying to hide, like they feel like hiding doesn't even matter anymore.]
Wendy: The end of the world. Man. Those death metal album covers got it shockingly right.
Dipper: You know, I used to think I could get out of anything, but this? The journals are destroyed, Ford is captured, and I can't find my family anywhere. Bill said it himself, there's no room for heroes out here. [His head hangs.] We lost.
Wendy: Look, dude, it's not over yet. You've beaten Bill twice before, why is this time any different?
Dipper: 'Cause then I had Mabel.
Wendy: Then you need to get Mabel back. Look, this summer, I've seen some amazing things, but nothing as amazing as you and your sister. I don't know if it's dumb luck or yin and yang, or whatever, but when you two work together, there's like nothing you two can't accomplish. You just need to make up, and team up, and save the universe.
Dipper: But how will I ever find her?
[A monster eats a billboard, revealing a glowing, pink energy bubble, far off in the distance, where the forests have been swept and burned away. It's chained to the ground with massive chains like it's some kind of magical prison. A shooting star is emblazoned on it.]
Dipper: The shooting star from Mabel's sweater! She's in there. I know it.
Tammee: His tenacity proved to be strong enough to help him free his sister, and the two of them rallied the town together.
[In the Mystery Shack, the survivors have gathered together, human and supernatural creature alike. They stand around a TV, and all of them are clearly distraught from what they've just viewed.]
Pacifica: Oh no, my parents are bad but even they don't deserve to be turned into stone!
[The town sheriff drops to his knees, tearing at his shirt and weeping.]
Sheriff Blubs: Curse you, Bill! Why must you take everything we love?!
[All of the survivors stand there looking hopeless, and some of them even start crying.]
[That's when Mabel climbs onto the Multi-bear's body, above the crowd, and speaks to them all.]
Mabel: Guys, don't you see? Our friends need us, but we can only save them if we fight back! [She pulls Dipper up to join her and they stand on Multi-bear's head, holding hands.]
Dipper: Mabel is right! Bill wants us to run and hide. He wants us to think he's invincible. But Ford told me before he was captured that he knows Bill's secret weakness.
[The refugees all perk up and start muttering.]
Wendy: Weakness?
Dipper: Now, if we band together, if we combine all of our strength, our smarts, our...whatever Toby has...
[A nebbish-looking man with catfish whiskers, wearing clothes that look like they were looted from a Hot Topic, chimes up.]
Toby: Various rashes!
Dipper: ...then we just might be able to rescue Ford, learn Bill's weakness, and save Gravity Falls!
[The group cheers, and the show cuts to them all working together, building...something. The scene cuts to the Fearamid. The Mystery Shack, now transformed into a giant mecha, fights giant demons outside it, as a heavy metal theme plays. A brief cut shows Dipper steering in the cockpit and the other survivors all working various parts of the Shacktron.]
[The next scene is inside the Fearamid. Dipper and Mabel get ready to take on Bill by themselves.]
Dipper: Save yourselves. Run! We'll take care of Bill!
Ford: What? That's a suicide mission!
Dipper: [grins a defiant grin.] Trust us. We've beat him before...
Mabel ...and we'll beat him again! [She fist bumps Dipper.] Hey! Bill! Come and get us, you pointy jerk!
[Bill growls, as Dipper and Mabel run off into the Fearamid. Before leaving, Mabel blows a raspberry. The scene lingers on the grunkles.]
Ford: What? No! It's too dangerous!
[Ford and Stan start to run after Dipper and Mabel, but Bill imprisons them in a cage of light.]
Bill Cipher: Not so fast. You two wait here!
[He turns red and grows six arms, and grows even bigger in size, turning into a monstrous abomination with far too many teeth.]
Bill Cipher: I've got some children I need to make into C͚̘͙̱̠̰O̳͈̲ͅŖṔ̣Ş̲̻̞̲͉E͏̤̩̤S̮͓̻̟̥̞͠. S͚͔̣̮̠̩͇͢E̝̦̦̲̥͜E͍̘̰ͅ ̙̬͖͟YA̟̙̦͓̻͟'̰͍̺̦ ̭̜̥̗̻̠͈R̫̻͕͟E͎A͙͙̫L̵̙͕͙̹̮ ̮S̥͙̝O̺̖̫̩͙OṈ̶͚̖͚.
[The grunkles both bang their fists on the bars.]
Grunkle Stan: No! Wait! No! No! Oh, what do we do? What do we do?!
Ford: Kids!
[Dipper and Mabel run through the twisted chambers of the Fearamid, with Bill loping after them, using his many arms to pull himself along, like a spider chasing its prey.]
Bill Cipher: When I get my hands on you kids, I'm gonna disassemble your molecules!
[There's a brief chase where the two work together to keep escaping him, but it doesn't last. It cuts to him grabbing the twins and bringing them back to where Ford and Stan are imprisoned.]
Bill Cipher: Alright, Ford. Time's up. I've got the kids. I think I'm gonna kill one of 'em now just for the heck of it! [His eye starts flipping back and forth between the pine tree symbol on Dipper's hat and the shooting star on Mabel's sweater. The symbols project a sinister red light over the twins, as they struggle desperately to escape his grip.] Eenie! Meenie! Miney -- [The eye settles on the shooting star and Dipper and Mabel look up at him in horror, their struggles ceasing.] ...Y̢̫̗̯͔͎͇ͅOU͚͎̱̳̻͕̲̕--!
[He raises his other hand and is about to snap his fingers --]
Ford: Wait! I surrender.
Tammee: Dipper and Mabel's distraction bought their great-uncles valuable time to set up a trap to destroy Bill with a memory alteration device. Bill wanted knowledge from Ford's mind that would allow his invasion to go global, but due to precautions he'd taken to shield his thoughts, the memory device wouldn't work on Ford's brain. So the two brothers switched clothes and Stanley took on his brother's identity one last time, to trick Bill into entering a mind where he could be erased.
[Gravity Falls is shown being restored. Stanley, dressed like Stanford, kneels on the ground, dazed, as the giant rift over the town pulls the Fearamid apart, piece by piece. All the demonic creatures and monsters are sucked up into it, screaming in alarm. Objects animated into life change back into normal objects again, the burned down forests turn green and alive, and all the damaged property restores itself to as good as new.]
Shellee: With summer's end, only one thing was left for the twins to do -- go back home and face the unknown: high school.
[Sentimental music plays. Stan, Ford, Wendy, Soos, and Mabel's friends Candy and Grenda, stand at the bus stop and say their goodbyes. Stan is wearing a sweater that was obviously knitted by Mabel.]
Wendy: [Kneels next to Dipper.] Hey, you mean a lot to me, man.
[She holds out her fist for a fistbump and Dipper fistbumps her.]
Dipper: You, too.
[Wendy steals Dipper's baseball cap and replaces it with her earflap hat, putting Dipper's hat on her own head.]
Wendy: Something to remember me by. [She hands Dipper a letter.] Oh, and this. Read it the next time you miss Gravity Falls.
[The bus pulls up and the sign changes from "Gravity Falls" to "California."]
Bus Driver: Last bus leaving Gravity Falls. All aboard.
[The shot cuts to the twins saying goodbye to their Grunkle Stan. His voice is choked up when he speaks to them.]
Stan: Kids, you knuckleheads were nothin' but a nuisance and I'm glad to be rid of ya.
[The scene cuts to a short montage showing Stan and the twins over the summer. In one scene, the twins toss water balloons at Stan where he sits on the porch with a soda, soaking him and making him laugh. In another, he's got them both in a headlock and all three of them are laughing. In yet another still, Mabel hands him a knitted sash with the words "Our Hero" on it. In the flashback, Stan starts tearing up and sniffling.]
Dipper: Grunkle Stan, are you crying?
Grunkle Stan: I got campaign confetti in my eye! [He puts on the sash and starts leading them out of the living room.] Come on, kids, want to go vandalize Mayor Tyler's mansion?
Mabel: YAY!
Dipper: YAY! Vandalism!
[It cuts back to the bus stop, and Mabel and Dipper run into his arms to hug him. Stan hugs them back tightly and all three of them get teary-eyed. Mabel gently pats the little tassel on his fez.
Mabel: We'll miss you too, Grunkle Stan.
[With that, Mabel and Dipper turn towards the bus and hesitate in front of the door.]
Dipper: Ready to head into the unknown?
Mabel: Nope. [She takes a breath.] Let's do it.
[They get on the bus and it starts driving away. Their grunkles and their friends run alongside it, shouting their farewells, and Mabel and Dipper shout them back. Even after the bus leaves their grunkles and friends behind, it briefly passes by some of the magical creatures that they befriended, too, like the Multi-bear and what appear to be several gnomes, who all wave fondly from the side of the road.]
[As the mysterious music plays, empty roads and forests sweep by. Mabel falls asleep, leaning against Dipper's side.]
Tammee: So who is Captain Mystery? Clearly, his cheerful enthusiasm for petty crime says something about his character. After Murderworld, some even say he's a murderer, amoral and deranged, a young villain in the making. But others, like the people of Gravity Falls, would almost certainly insist he's a hero -- albeit one just as strange and enigmatic as the mysterious town he left behind.
[On the bus, as the pine trees fly past, Dipper finally pulls out the envelope Wendy gave him and opens it. Inside is a piece of paper signed by their grunkles and all their friends in Gravity Falls.]
[He smiles.]
Tammee: After all, not many would look at the prospect of returning to where they'd faced the apocalypse with a smile.
Shellee: For more Legion action, be sure to keep tuning in! This is Shellee Star!
Tammee: And Tammee Tim!
Both: And this was Legionnaire Legacies!