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#best ford
rmspeltzfarm · 5 months
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2019 Ford Ranger Pickup Review
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ghostlyarchaeologist · 4 months
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"I don't think you're gonna do it. You didn't kill the man responsible for your son's death."
Leverage S04E18 The Last Dam Job.
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linusbenjamin · 6 months
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19 years ago today, Oceanic Flight 815 crashed.
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wingedog · 5 months
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Wait why’re we crying whats happening
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technovillain · 10 months
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had a gravity falls rewatch at the beginning of last year :]
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gin-juice-tonic · 6 months
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Oh yeah, we got names and junk
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thejitterbug · 1 year
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Full circle moment for indy and short round 🥹
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hqbits · 9 days
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i am once again spreading my transfem ford propaganda w some screenshot edits!!!!! including some more lil personal headcanons
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tazmiilly · 2 months
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I have a problem with overacheving rn in school, can you do something with Ford and Fidds taking a little break in collage because they deserve a lil treat
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i think one of the only things ford ever did in college that wasnt school work was play ddmd lol. but at least hes got his buddy.
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en-wheelz-me · 6 months
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Leverage 2x14 - "The Three Strikes Job"
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ckret2 · 3 months
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Chapter 31 of human Bill grudgingly enduring being the Pines' prisoner because the Henchmaniacs won't take his call: Summerween night! Everyone gets ridiculous costumes!
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The Summerween Trickster's buddies are attempting to resurrect him. Robbie's making a music video. Bill's attempting to woo Ford back into friendship, to terrify Dipper with cursed knowledge, and to recover his dignity from THE most gentle chastising imaginable, and he only succeeds in 1 out of 3 of these endeavors:
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It's not this one. He's just gotta process these emotions while wearing that stupid wig.
####
Soos was putting the final touches on his cosplay (the suave and mysterious Masked Guy In A Suit, love interest of the heroine from the classic anime Teenage Planetary Soldier Girls) when he heard the phone ring in the office. "Hold on, I'll get it!" He hurried downstairs, ducked under a construction paper chain Mabel had strung over the door, picked up the phone, and said, "Hello?"
A mysterious voice droned, "The sun sets a deep blood red."
"Oh, no thanks, we don't want any." Soos hung up, sighed happily, and said, "Ah, Summerween. Always brings out the weirdos."
"Hey Soos!" Mabel ducked into the doorway. "Where's the candy bowl?"
"Oh, hey Hambone. It's in my bedroom." He put on a stage whisper. "I put it in there so Bill couldn't steal it."
"Thanks Soos!" She ran upstairs.
Dipper and Bill waited downstairs, the tension thick between them (on Dipper's side, anyway; Bill—watching a black-and-white horror movie, sipping at a can of cider, and brooding over going to voicemail—didn't notice). Dipper was waiting by the door in a folding chair; but he kept glancing toward Bill in the living room. When the silence got too much to bear, he asked, "Okay, what are you dressed as?"
Bill was wearing a brown bedsheet toga (the most historically-accurate part of his costume); a cheap wig of a teased mullet that had ended up mostly red with yellow streaks, forming a plume of hair right over his head and then a long straight tail he'd draped over his shoulder; and a bunch of paper faux-Greek homes taped all around the hem of his toga, forming a ring around his calves.
"And are those my sandals?" Dipper asked.
"Take it up with Mabel, she loaned them on your behalf," Bill said. "I'm not telling my costume. You have to guess it."
"Seriously?" Dipper sighed. It had to be a god, gods towered over their mortals' temples. What god would wear brown? "I don't know—Demeter?"
"What? No. Do I seem like the Demeter type? Pathetic." Bill waved off his guess. As Mabel ran downstairs, Bill said, "Hey, Shooting Star, you haven't made your official guess yet."
Without hesitation, Mabel said, "A time-traveling hair metal singer touring the Roman Empire and trying to find a way home before his hair dye runs out."
"Wrong, but I would love to live in the world you've dreamed up." He meandered into the entryway to join Mabel as she plopped down in the second chair by the door.
Dipper screwed up his face. "Are you helping us answer the door?"
"No, you're helping me answer the door. I'm cursed, remember?" Bill leaned over Mabel's shoulder, dug into the candy bowl, and popped a lollipop in his mouth. "But you're not getting rid of me, if that's what you're asking."
Soos headed to the door, cape billowing dramatically behind him. "Hey dudes. Hey Bill." He paused in the door, studying Bill. "Hey! Is that a Bobo the Uncouth Berserker cosplay?"
Bill blinked. "Who?"
"Bobo the Uncouth Berserker! You've gotta read Bobo. He's this primitive hero descended from lost Lemuria who goes on daring adventures through the lush impenetrable jungles of Central Europe. He's got this comic that was so popular it spawned an anime, which got an American movie adaptation, which formed the basis of a second comic continuity that isn't as critically acclaimed as the original but has drawn in a lot of new fans... and..." Soos petered out. "You're not Bobo, are you."
Bill shook his head. "Thanks for playing."
"Aw." Soos's shoulders slumped. "Anyway—me and Melody are gonna be at the cosplay contest at the theater. I'll keep my phone on in case of monsters."
"We'll be fine!" Mabel said. "Go have fun!"
"You too!" With a dramatic flourish of his cape, Soos disappeared into the night.
Bill watched Soos go enviously. He could have been given a human body that looked that good in a suit and top hat, but was he? No. It wasn't fair. And Soos didn't even wear the right hat size.
Dipper glanced sideways at Bill. "Hey. Is... Lemuria real?"
"Not anymore." Bill perked up as Stan passed by, dressed like Frankenstein's monster. "Hey, Stanley! You haven't guessed yet. What am I?"
Stan surveyed him. "White columned buildings, Statue of Liberty dress, and a red clown wig. I dunno, the American government?"
Bill squawked in laughter. "That's my favorite wrong answer so far. I like you, Stanley." He fished a chocolate bar out of the bowl and held it out.
Stan grunted in disapproval, but accepted the candy. "If any of you need me, I'm gonna be up on the roof, terrifying kids." He held up a boombox and a cassette that said "Spooky Sound Effects of Halloween". "If you hear screaming children, don't worry: that means I'm winning."
"Where's your brother?" Bill asked.
"Avoiding you." Stan passed through the living room and left.
Bill's shoulders slumped; but he just dug into the candy bowl for more chocolate. Then the first trick-or-treater knocked on the door, and Dipper jumped up in relief to answer it.
The shack didn't attract quite as many trick-or-treaters as the houses closer to the center of town, but they got a steady stream of children, and more than they'd gotten the year before. Between visitors, Bill dug into their candy stock, gleefully ignoring Dipper's complaints. After the fourth or fifth visitor, Dipper and Mabel realized that Bill was covering up the amount of candy he'd pilfered by meticulously re-folding the empty wrappers and putting them back in the bowl.
"It's fair play," Bill said. He untwisted one end of a Twisty Roll tube, squeezed out the candy, blew into the wrapper to re-inflate it, and twisted the end shut again. "The kids are trick-or-treating, right? Sometimes they get treats and sometimes they get tricks."
"Come on, seriously?" Dipper said. "Even for you this is low. You're literally taking candy from babies."
"The babies are trying to take candy from us. I have no sympathy." With the precision of an origami master, Bill refolded a paper fruit chew wrapper into a box and dropped it back into the bowl.
"They're supposed to take candy from us, that's how the holiday works." Dipper looked at Mabel for support.
But she was holding up an empty 3 Fencers wrapper and squeezing it lightly between her fingers. "Wow. How did you make the wrapper puffy again? It's so convincing."
Bill shot Dipper a nasty smile, then turned to Mabel and said magnanimously, "I'll teach you everything I know." He twirled a glue stick between his fingers.
Another trick-or-treater knocked, and Dipper answered.
"Trick or treat! Please give us the worst candy you have."
Mabel blinked, leaning around Dipper to see who was outside. "Wait, what?"
Outside stood a purple-furred monster with a dozen limbs from a dozen different creatures. He gasped in surprise. "Ohhh, twin costumes! That's so cute! What are you two, haunted dolls?"
Dipper took a surprised step back. "Limby Jimmy?"
The monster was silent a moment, taken aback. He took off a bear mask he'd made out of a paper plate. "Is it that obvious?"
Mabel asked, "Have we...?"
Dipper said, "Oh! Sorry—Mabel, this is Limby Jimmy, I ran into him last year in the Crawlspace under town when I was trying to get your face back—"
Helpfully, Bill threw in, "He's Gravity Falls' most accomplished arms dealer. And legs dealer, and tails dealer, and ears dealer..."
"Limby, this is my sister Mabel. Actually, I don't know if I ever introduced myself—"
Limby Jimmy cut in, "Ohhh, yeah, I remember you! You're Troll Boy, right?"
Dipper winced. "It's—it's Dipper, actually." He paused. "Wow. We meet a lot of weird people."
"Nice to meet you, Jimmy!" Mabel held out a hand. After a moment of thought, Jimmy elected to shake it with a tentacle and a dog's paw.
"What are you doing up here?" Dipper asked. "Is Summerween the one night of the year that Gravity Falls' monsters can walk among humans without fear?"
"Oh no, I'm terrified. I wouldn't be out here if I wasn't collecting donations," Jimmy said.
"Donations?"
Jimmy hesitated, then lowered his voice. "You've been in the Crawlspace, so, you and your sister are cool, but is the lady...?" He wiggled a hoof toward Bill.
Coolly, Bill said, "I'm actually an ancient interdimensional energy being cursed to wear a human form."
Dipper and Mabel flinched in alarm and rounded on Bill, hissing, "Bill!" "Shhh!"
Ignoring them, Bill said, "So, continue."
"Oh," Jimmy said brightly. "That's all right then, yuk yuk." He wiggled his multitude of right arms. "I don't know if you humans have heard yet, but the Summerween Trickster got eaten to death last summer! It's really sad!"
Dipper and Mabel, who had watched as he was eaten to death, stayed quiet.
"But probably happy for him?" Jimmy mused. "Since I think that's what he wanted? But it's sad for the rest of his poker group, we all miss him! So I'm out here with Doug—"
"Who?" Dipper asked, looking around the porch for a second monster.
"Oh, he's back there." Jimmy pointed toward a tree at the edge of the clearing around the Mystery Shack. The tree chittered unnervingly. "We're going around collecting donations to resurrect the Trickster! Or... re-summon him? Or however this works. We never really asked him how he came to exist, it seemed rude."
"Naturally," Bill said. "You can't just ask a freak what made him so freaky. It's a sensitive topic."
"Right! You understand," Jimmy said. "Anyway, we need a lot of crappy candy!" He looked at their bowl. "Which pieces have the kids been ignoring this year?"
Mabel had started bouncing on the balls of her dusty Victorian ghost shoes; and the moment she had a turn to speak, she squealed in excitement. "You're the Summerween Trickster's friend! That's perfect! Stay here, I'll be right back!" She shoved the candy bowl into Bill's arms and zoomed up the stairs. "I've got some stuff for him!"
Bill looked at the bowl, looked at the stairs, shoved the candy in Dipper's arms, and followed Mabel. "Hey, Shooting Star? What are you doing?"
Her voice drifted down the stairs: "Getting a donation! I'll be just a minute!"
"Hold on, you're actually helping that guy?" Bill laughed. "Why?" He climbed high enough to poke his head above the attic floor  and lowered his voice so Jimmy couldn't hear. "I wasn't paying that much attention last Summerween, but I got the impression from your little costume store brawl that the Trickster was trying to kill you kids. Am I missing something?"
"I mean, yeah, he was—but he was in a really bad place back then, that doesn't mean he deserves to be dead for it. And now he knows someone out there wants to eat him, so maybe he'll be less insecure and evil." Mabel laughed, "Anyway, the Trickster isn't that bad! He didn't try to kill me half as hard as you did!"
Bill froze a couple of steps from the top of the stairs. He didn't move for a few seconds; and then wordlessly, he slunk back downstairs.
Dipper watched as Bill, face beet red, trudged into the living room. "Hey. What's Mabel...?"
"How should I know." Bill curled up on the couch, picked up the can of cider he'd been drinking earlier, shotgunned it, and glowered at the horror movie on TV.
Dipper considered Bill—all alone in the living room and not doing anything important—and considered Mabel, upstairs; and said, "Hey, Jimmy. Do you mind waiting out here until Mabel gets back."
"Sure! I don't have any plans." Jimmy rocked back on his many heels.
"Cool. Thanks." Dipper shut the door.
He sidled oh so very casually into the living room and leaned against the TV. "Guess it's just the two of us right now."
Bill's gaze didn't waver from the TV. "Terrific counting skills, Troll Boy." He popped open another cider can.
Dipper grit his teeth. Let it go. "Sooo! You're from the second dimension, huh? What's that like?" (His voice cracked embarrassingly on "that.") "Just—just curious. Making friendly conversation. Caaasual conversation." He flashed a pair of finger guns at Bill, to underscore just how casual he was. "Yyyep." Witness the junior paranormal investigator in action.
Bill turned the cold, empty eyes of a killer on Dipper. He took a long, slow sip from his cider. And he asked himself: what can I say that will make this stupid boy regret ever daring to speak to me?
Bill smiled. "Yeah. Sure. Okay," he said. "You wanna know what it's like? Have you ever read the Allegory of the Cave?"
Dipper hesitated. "By... Plato?"
"That one. You know—ignorance is like being a prisoner chained in a cave, watching shadow puppets being cast on a wall, and thinking they're reality; and having knowledge is like being outside the cave in the sunlight, seeing the real shapes that are casting the shadows—"
"I have read it, actually," Dipper said, a tad defensively. "It was for extra credit in—"
"English class, I know."
Dipper frowned; but he soldiered on. "So... living in the second dimension is like being chained in a cave, staring at the shadows on the wall, and thinking that's reality? Bleak."
Bill laughed so loudly that Dipper started. "Wow, you're so dumb! Use your brain, kid: it's the second dimension. You're not the prisoner: you're the shadow on the wall." Bill's lip curled in a sneer, "An illusion in somebody else's allegory. And the only one who can see the cave's exit... is you. That's what the second dimension is like!" He laughed again. It sounded forced.
"Oh," Dipper mumbled. He tried to wrap his head around the idea of being a living metaphor for ignorance. "Sounds... pretty bad?"
"Awful," Bill agreed. "Doesn't hold a candle to what your dimension has going on, though."
"Wh... why, what's going on in the third dimension?"
Bill gave him a malicious smile, and Dipper had the sinking feeling he'd just walked into an obvious trap. "You idiot, you still think you're in the third dimension? Really?"
Was that a trick question? What answer was Bill looking for? What could this be if not the third dimension? "Nnooo?"
"Wow. I can really see why you're a straight-A's honors student," Bill said. "You're so good at figuring out what answer the test wants and regurgitating it—even if you don't actually understand it at all." He heaved himself back to his feet; and Dipper was sure there was something threatening in the movement—something that reminded Dipper that he was talking to a dangerously unstable extinction level event precariously packed into an unsteady human body. "Although copying the year of the Louisiana Purchase off of Brandon's test in fifth grade  probably didn't hurt, did it."
Dipper's stomach dropped. The secret shame buried beneath the foundation of his honors roll-worthy record. Pull that out and his entire academic career came toppling down. He'd get kicked out of the honors classes. He'd go to jail. Was cheating against the law? "H... how did—?"
"What year was the Louisiana Purchase?"
Dipper's brain immediately went blank. He was silent, trapped in the paralyzing intensity of Bill's gaze. After several terrifying seconds, he croaked, "1803?" and hoped he was right.
"Attaboy. Too bad you couldn't have learned that a little sooner, isn't it?" As he spoke, Bill had closed in on Dipper until he'd backed him into the corner behind the TV set, filling Dipper's exit route with one hand on the TV and the other on the wall. "But we were talking about dimensions, weren't we! Whaddaya like to read, kid," Bill asked too casually, "do you like cosmic horror? Do you know what real 'cosmic horror' is?"
Dipper regretted this conversation completely.
"It's having an eyeball on the inside of your body, and seeing another dimension through it. And ohoho, I think you'd be amazed at the things I can see from here—"
Dipper got the distinct impression that if he didn't get out of this conversation, he would only hear things he'd be telling his therapist about for months. "Cool! Good talk, man. Hey Mabel?" (That was an absolutely humiliating voice crack.) "How's it going?"
A pause. "I think I need help!"
"Coming!" Dipper ran behind the TV to escape Bill and gratefully bolted upstairs.
The kid had caved so fast. And Bill had only just been getting started. He smirked, sat, and turned back to the movie.
A moment later, Mabel and Dipper came back downstairs, carrying four bulging plastic grocery bags. Mabel set one by her feet, opened the door, and shoved the first bag into Jimmy's arms. "Here! You can give these to the Trickster!" She shoved over the second bag.
Jimmy stumbled back under the weight. "Whoa there! What is this?"
"Candy chalk-hearts! I completely bought out the leftovers after Valentine's Day," Mabel said. "I wanted to make sure that if we met the Trickster again, I could let him know he's loved and appreciated as the terrifying avatar of spooky holiday spirit that he is! And that I also respect that he's made out of gross candy nobody likes to eat." She picked up a chalk-heart box and waved it in Jimmy's face. "So here's a gross candy that expresses love! See, the little hearts say things like 'You smell nice' and 'I heart ur face,' but they taste like if dehydration was a flavor."
Dipper handed his bags to Jimmy. "Wait—Mabel, that's why you got all these? You've been planning to help the Trickster since February? I thought you were gonna build a chalk-heart house or something."
"Oooh, that's such a good idea. I should do that next year!" To Jimmy, she said, "I was gonna give these to him personally, but if he's still dead, I guess you can add it to his candy sacrifice pile or whatever? And make sure he gets this!" She handed Jimmy a store bought Shimmery Twinkleheart Valentine's card. It read, "I BELIEVE in our friendship! Happy Valentine's Day!" Mabel had scratched out "Valentine's" and written "Summerween".
Choked up, Jimmy said, "Oh—wow. That's the nicest thing anyone's done for us all night. I'm sure the Trickster will really appreciate it when he's not dead anymore."
Dipper was a little more vengeful. Dipper didn't want to do anything for one of the many guys that had tried to kill them last year. But, on the other hand, Mabel had just gone all in on this, and Jimmy seemed nice enough, so... Dipper sighed. Whatever, it was Summerween and this was a trick-or-treater. "Hey," he picked up the candy bowl. "There's really only one bag of good candy in here. The bottom of the bowl is filled with after-dinner mints our great uncle's been stealing from restaurants for the last six months. The Trickster would probably love that, right?"
"Aww—thanks so much, you guys! We'll have the poker group back together in no time!" Jimmy dug past the good candy and started scooping mints into his bag. "Oh—since I'm here, can I ask about our other poker buddy? Do either of you know Mr. What's-His-Face? He disappeared around the time you were visiting the Crawlspace, maybe one of you saw something? Any information would be helpful." Jimmy looked at them with weird, plus-shaped, but very hopeful eyes. "Between the Trickster's death and Whatsis disappearing, the local paranormal community's been hit hard. Especially us guys in their friend group. I'm—I'm not gonna lie," Jimmy heaved a sigh, "It's been a really hard year."
Dipper and Mabel, who were directly and personally at fault for Mr. What's-His-Face's disappearance and knew he was frozen in stasis in Ford's bunker at that very moment, exchanged a look and came to a silent agreement.
"Nope, don't know anything," Mabel said.
"Sorry, buddy," Dipper said.
Like the Summerween Trickster, Mr. What's-His-Face was a weird faceless shapeshifty monster that had tried to kill them. But they felt like that was where the similarities ended.
By the time of the Trickster's death, Mabel and Dipper had realized that his deepest inner longing was to be called good enough to eat. Mr. What's-His-Face's deepest inner longing was to steal innocent people's faces. If Mabel and Dipper helped resurrect the Trickster, he'd probably go back to ensuring everyone displayed sufficient holiday spirit, while hopefully mellowing out about eating people now that he'd been consumed once. On the other hand, if Mabel and Dipper helped free Mr. What's-His-Face, he'd probably just keep stealing faces.
And on top of all that, they could help resurrect the Trickster without admitting they knew the guy who ate him. They couldn't really lead Jimmy to Mr. What's-His-Face without admitting their great uncle was keeping him captive. And that would be a problem for the whole family.
"Oh," Jimmy said. "Okay, that's fine. Thanks for all your help. You know where to reach us if you hear anything."
Mabel shook her head. Dipper nodded. "Yeah, we'll let you know."
Jimmy hopped off the porch, shouted, "Hey Doug, can you help me carry these?" and chucked a couple of bags of chalk-hearts toward the tree line. Dipper and Mabel stared. Nothing emerged to pick the bags up.
They shut the door.
"Man," Dipper said. "We kinda devastated the paranormal poker group last summer, didn't we?"
"Yeah." Mabel sucked in a breath between her teeth. "Wow. Feels... kinda bad."
Dipper offered her the candy bowl. "Drown our feelings in chocolate?"
"Please."
They grabbed a piece of candy each, tore open the wrappers—and frowned. Mabel stomped a foot. "Dang it—Bill!"
"Hm?"
"How many of these wrappers are empty?!"
Bill poked his head out of the living room and said, smugly, "Like candy from a baby!"
####
A knock, and Dipper opened the door. "Wendy! Hey! Good timing—"
"Hey." Wendy lowered her voice. "Quick question—this is super important—is Goldie here?"
"Uh—yeah, why—?"
"Yello?" Bill carefully wove his way out of the living room, already less steady on his feet than when he'd sat down. "I heard my name, who's summoning me?"
Wendy pointed over the twins at Bill and turned to shout into the dark, "Ladies and gentlemen! I present to you! Live and in person... Toga Lady!"
A half dozen teenagers immediately went bananas. Hooting and hollering and cheering and whistling: "To-ga! To-ga! To-ga!"
Bill's entire face lit up. Without missing a beat, he pushed past the baffled twins out onto the porch and spread his arms wide, basking in the cheering. "That's right, keep it coming! Worship me! I'm the greatest!"
"Yes!" Robbie pumped a fist in the air. "The legends were true!" Nate immediately added, "The prophecy! The prophecy!" Tambry snapped photos of Toga Lady's fresh look as fast as her phone could save them, muttering, "Everyone's gonna flip when they find out you're still in town."
Wendy waited, grinning, until her friends' faux hysterics had died down. "Okay—okay, after getting you hyped up, I should probably say that Toga Lady is actually Toga Guy." She glanced questioningly at Bill. "I think?"
"Eh, I'm not picky."
"Anyway this is Goldie, he was stuck in another dimension for thirty years, it's crazy, and now he's like my illegal backup cashier. He actually... doesn't usually wear togas?"
Bill laughed. "If you can't wear a bedsheet on Summerween, when can you?"
Lee said, "Thompson wore a bedsheet to homecoming."
"Hey."
Bill pointed at Thompson. "A man of impeccable fashion! I like it!" Thompson gave him a look of eternal gratitude.
"And Goldie, this is the gang! That's Thompson, he's the guy with the van; Robbie and Tambry, they're like, gender-swapped versions of each other, they even share their hair dye..."
As Wendy did introductions, Mabel whispered to Dipper, "Did you know she was gonna introduce Goldie to everyone?"
"No! This is bad, I told her not to trust him..."
Bill was responding to a question, "No, no, you've gotta guess, I'm making everyone guess!"
The teens considered the question. Robbie offered first, "Punk caveman?"
"Nope!"
Hesitantly, Thompson tried, "Nero fiddling over the burning of Rome?" He winced when Lee laughed.
"I like where your head's at, but no! I can't fiddle."
"The gremlin king from Huge Maze?" Tambry said.
Mabel piped up, "No, but the wig came from a gremlin king costume and I appreciate you for recognizing that!" Tambry nodded in cool approval.
Bill dispensed of Lee, Nate, and Wendy's guesses—Greek Christmas tree, that one guy who keeps painting burning banks, and hair metal Hades—before Robbie loudly cleared his throat to cut in. "Anyway, would love to stay and chat, but we've gotta move if we wanna be in position before sunset. Dipper, Mabel, you ready?"
"Ready to ghost it up!" Mabel said, squeezing around Bill with Dipper onto the porch.
Robbie surveyed their makeup—deathly white skin, ashen grey lips, and dark circles around their eye sockets. "Yeah, that's pretty good. Could use a little color, maybe. Like bloody tears?" He turned toward Tambry.
She said, "I think I've got some red eyeliner."
"'In position'?" Bill asked, giving Dipper and Mabel a questioning look.
Wendy said, "We're helping Robbie film this music video tonight."
"We're the creepy ghost twins!" Mabel announced proudly. "We get to sing the chorus."
Robbie said, "Yeah, the song's about childhood and growing up, but like, with ghosts? Because once you've grown up, your childhood is all dead? It's metal, but introspective. I'm calling the genre 'intrometal.'" He flipped his bangs dramatically. "It's a super deep song. Metaphorical layers."
"Oh yeah?" Bill stared Robbie down. "Sing some of it."
Robbie blinked. "Oh. Yeah, okay uh, I haven't warmed up my voice but, the hook is like—" He pantomimed playing a guitar and whisper-screamed, "'BABY DOLLS! BASKET BALLS! BASKET CASE! HUMAN RACE!' Like that."
Bill nodded slowly, face expressionless. "Ah, yeah, I see. Really deep stuff. Makes you think."
"Thanks." Robbie looked at Dipper and Mabel. "Anyway, if we're gonna get any footage in the graveyard before the jack-o'-melons start burning out, we've gotta move. Let's go, Creepy Ghost Twins."
"Wait, you're going out?" Bill asked Mabel. "Like out-out? Leaving me here? By myself? On Summerween?"
"Wh—yeah, we're only handing out candy for half the night," Mabel said. "I told you that."
"No you didn't!"
"Yes I did!"
"When?"
Mabel thought. "No I didn't," she admitted. "Sorry!"
Wendy punched Bill's arm. "Sorry to steal them. We'll be back in a couple of hours," she said. "Or you could come help—?"
"No!" Dipper and Mabel both shoved Bill back into the house before he could accept. Dipper said, "You've gotta—guard the house." Mabel added, "And hand out candy!"
"Right," Bill said flatly. "Yes. That. Ha."
"See you later!" Mabel said, and then shut the door in his face.
The last thing he heard was Wendy explaining to her friends, "He's on house arrest for, like, academic plagiarism and war crimes or something..." and then they were gone.
Bill's shoulders slumped. Well, now what? He couldn't celebrate a holiday by himself. What was the point of wearing a costume if no one sees you in it. He picked up a piece of candy, discovered it was one of his decoys, and picked up another. 
Someone knocked on the door.
"Yeah, yeah," Bill sighed. He picked up the candy bowl, turned toward the door, and paused. Ah. Right. What was he supposed to do with this impenetrable portal-blocking slab of wood.
Who was left in the house? Stan on the roof, Ford in the basement, Abuelita probably already in bed... were any of them worth harassing to help him answer the door? Maybe Stan, he'd gotten all dressed up, he liked the holiday even if he didn't like Bill—
The trick-or-treater knocked more insistently.
Or. Or.
He could pick up the bowl, peer out the small window in the door, and make direct eye contact with the children outside while he ate candy.
As a piece of mid-tier chocolate melted on his tongue, he saw three trick-or-treaters' faces fall as their faith in a kind, caring universe died. He grinned at them and ate another chocolate.
Oh yeah. He grabbed the rest of his cider from the living room and set up post next to the door. This would keep him entertained the rest of the night.
####
He made seven small children cry.
####
Stan watched from his post on the roof as yet another sobbing kid ran away from the shack. "HA! Gottem! Sucker!" He affectionately patted his boombox. "Creepy ghoulish laughter, you never disappoint! Terrifying moochers since 1989!" He paused the cassette and rewound it a few seconds to replay the best part.
He heard a scraping sound above him, and looked up just in time to see Ford sliding down the roof to join him. "Oh, hey! I didn't think we'd see you again tonight."
"Mabel made me promise to celebrate Summerween a little."
"Good for her!"
Stan had already claimed the sun lounger, so Ford brushed some dust and leaves off the roof's cooler and sat. "So, what are we doing? Scaring trick-or-treaters?"
"Yep. This year I'm taking a more atmospheric approach." He gestured at his boombox, which by now was playing haunting organ music. "Nothing like screaming zombies and rattling chains from nowhere to freak out the kids."
Ford nodded. "Psychological torment. I approve."
"Not quite as good as getting to see the terror in their eyes, but." Stan shrugged. "Bill was hanging out with the kids. I didn't want to put up with him."
"Mm. There's a reason I was spending the holiday in the basement."
"Heh. Well, there's always Halloween."
They were silent for a moment, listening as the cassette moved on from organ music to werewolf howls. Stan asked, "Think we'll be rid of him by then? I know we were hoping to be done with him before the Fourth of July—but since I haven't heard anything lately, I figure you hit a roadblock."
Ford winced. "Guilty as charged." He was still relearning how to keep other people in the loop. Even Stan. "You're right. I have a weapon that can destroy him, but I can't find a fuel source without restarting the portal. I'm hoping Fiddleford will come up with a solution I haven't."
Stan nodded. Ford had told him he was getting Fiddleford involved; even as reluctant as Ford was to admit how little progress he'd made, he wasn't going to tell someone outside the family about Bill without letting Stan know. "Any breakthroughs on his end?"
####
During the credits between episodes of the retired samurai period drama (most recently, the samurai had been asked to use his sword to help cut flowers for a bouquet), Fiddleford leaned over and whispered to Ford, "So I've been a-lookin' at those blueprints you left me."
"And...?"
"And I've constructicated a power adaptor. Just jimmy out the fuel tank, swap it for the adaptor's cord, and you can power that weapon by pluggin' it into the wall! It'll just drain all the power from the town for a few seconds, that's all."
"Fiddleford, that's amazing—"
"Now, hold on. There's bad news," Fiddleford said. "Try as I might, I can't quite get it to draw enough power to activate those energy-destroying features what you'd need to disintegrate Bill. It'll work like a powerful laser, but nothin' else."
Ford sighed. "It's a starting point, I suppose."
"I'll send you home with the adaptor anyway. Never know when you'll need a big laser."
"Very true. Do you have any promising leads on other alternative fuels?"
Fiddleford shook his head. "It's the NowUSeeitNowUDontium or nothing. But I've got a hunch we could synthesize it under lab conditions. I'll letcha know in a few days."
And then the next episode started, and they dropped the conversation.
####
Ford let out a heavy sigh. "He's only had a partial success so far. But I'm hopeful he's on the right track."
"So, if he's working on this weapon, what are you doing?"
"Waiting, mostly. I don't know what else I can do."
Stan frowned. "What—that's it? You've been downstairs all day every day—if you're not figuring out how to destroy him, what are you doing?"
"Passing time somewhere I can be on call if he gets up to something—but I don't have to look at him," Ford said wryly. "And—as long as I'm waiting to hear back from Fiddleford, I've been... picking apart that list of spells Bill gave me. To see if any of them are tricks or traps."
Stan couldn't say he was surprised. That was his workaholic brother. A pamphlet of demon magic was like catnip to him. If anything, Stan was almost glad Ford had that letter to distract him. Over the past year...
Well, Ford was fine on land—when he temporarily had a mystery to solve, an adventure to pursue, an anomaly to study, a distraction to fill his time—but at sea, when his mind was unoccupied, he was listless. He had books he didn't read, field notes he didn't enter into his journal, games he didn't play. He fed himself and exercised and did chores around the ship like a robot programmed to take care of itself, and he stared out at the sea.
Last summer, Ford hadn't seemed happy but he'd seemed alive. Tired and angry, but alive. But after Weirdmageddon, a light in his eyes went out. Stan didn't know if it was the end of summer, or guilt over the memory gun, or the gap between finishing a thirty-year-long quest and discovering the next one. All Stan knew was the light hadn't come back on until the moment Bill Cipher, clad in a new body and a purple cartoon bedsheet, tried to cave Ford's skull in.
Ever since they were children, Ford had had a tendency to develop obsessions. It was somehow simultaneously both what made him most interesting and what made him boring. Depended on the obsession. But these all-consuming interests had always tended to last a few months, at most a year; and he'd never seemed to be without one, much less for nine months. Stan had no idea what carrying a single obsession for three decades might have done to Ford's mind.
Stan was glad something had woken Ford back up, and he worried that losing that focal point again might leave Ford permanently adrift. But another part of him worried that, this time, Ford wouldn't let the object of his obsession go. He tended to collect things related to his obsessions.
But then, he usually tended to like his obsessions. He hadn't seemed bothered to burn the contents of his creepy Bill shrine last summer. Ford wouldn't do anything stupid, Stan told himself. Ford hated Bill. "So? Were any of the spells traps?"
"Not... so far, no." Ford sounded irritated by this.
Stan shrugged. "Makes sense. He's trying to butter us up. If that idiot thinks being nice to us for a week or two is gonna make up for the years of grief he's given us—"
A loud rattle-clattering below made them both start. Stan sat bolt upright. "What the—?"
Ford inched to the edge of the dormer roof, knelt down, and leaned over the edge just far enough to see the window.
Bill's face was pressed to the glass, eye rolled up toward the roofline. He grinned in surprised delight and shouted through the glass, "HEY, STANFORD! What are you doing up here?! I thought you were downstairs!"
"Ugh." Ford turned to grimace at Stan. "Speak of the devil."
Bill pounded on the glass again. "Hey, Sixer! SIXER! Open the window!"
"Why?"
"I wanna talk!"
"No."
"Come ooon, the kids ditched me and I'm bored! There's no one in the house to talk to! The old lady's asleep and Stanley's on the roof, so—" He abruptly fell silent, squinting with deep suspicion at Ford-who-should-be-in-the-basement kneeling on the-roof-where-Stan-should-be, and said, "Wait. Are you Stanley right now? Show me your hand."
Ford did not. "Go away, Bill." He left the edge of the roof for his cooler seat.
"Get back here!" The pounding redoubled. "I don't care which Stan you are! If you don't wanna talk, I can always go wake up Dolores!"
Ford looked at Stan. "Mrs. Ramirez's name is Dolores?" He had gotten used to everyone calling her Abuelita.
Stan stomped on the roof, "Shaddup!"
Bill did not shaddup. "Come ooon!"
Stan sighed in defeat and heaved himself to his feet. "If he keeps that racket up he's gonna break that window, never mind that hex you put on him." When they'd taken out the original Bill-shaped window, Stan had replaced it with the cheapest window he could find. He didn't think it was very durable. "How much trouble can he get in with one open window twenty feet above the ground and both of us watching him?"
Ford Frowned.
"Don't gimme that look. Do you want to pay for a broken window?" Stan flipped through his keys for his key-shaped emergency lock pick, leaned over the edge of the roof, and wedged the pick into the window frame. The latch popped open. Lucky this window was so cheap, that wouldn't have worked on one with deluxe features like "airtight weatherstripping" or "a properly-fitting frame." Stan swung open the window. "Okay, you have our attention. Now what's the fastest way we can get rid of you?"
Bill clumsily climbed out to sit on the windowsill with his legs in the shack, and leaned back so he could see up onto the roof. "Hiya Fo—" He lost his balance, flailed, and yelped as he toppled backwards.
Stan and Ford lunged forward to seize an arm each. Stan snapped, "What are you doing, you maniac?!"
Bill stared up at them both in wide-eyed amazement. "You do like me."
Stan made a noise of disgust, let go, and wiped his hands on his pants like Bill had cooties.
Ford said, "We like you trapped in that body and not free to cause the apocalypse."
"I heard 'we like you'!"
"Shut up." Ford managed to haul Bill back upright. (Touching Bill felt wrong—all soft flesh and skin and the suggestion of bones underneath. Even when looking right at Bill's human body, Ford still expected him to feel like heavy shadows and heatless flames.) From this close, Bill reeked of cider. "Just how much have you had to drink?"
"Not so much I won't remember whatever you say in the morning, so be nice to me!" Bill laughed. He leaned back, this time hanging by one hand off the window frame to precariously maintain his balance, and grinned up at Ford. "So! The least fun person in the house has finally emerged from his lair? And you didn't even come into the house to join in the Summerween festivities! 'All work and no play'..."
Ford had to crouch at the edge of the roof, hovering nearby in case Bill lost his balance again. "I wanted to participate in Summerween, actually. It just so happens that the last person I'd ever spend a holiday with is in the house."
"Listen, Stanford. I know you're holing up in your study for days on end just to hurt me. But let's be honest, you're hurting yourself more! When's the last time you saw the sunlight! Look at how pale you're getting, you look like a vampire."
Stiffly, Ford said, "It's costume makeup. That's my vampire costume." Stan laughed.
"It what." Bill flipped up his eyepatch and squinted blearily at Ford's face.
Wordlessly, Ford bared his teeth to show off his plastic vampire teeth.
"Oh." Somewhat deflated, Bill said, "Nice work, it's convincing."
"Thanks," Ford said grudgingly. Giving in to his curiosity, he gestured toward Bill's (somewhat disheveled) reddish-yellow wig. "What are you."
"Oh!" Bill perked back up. "You've got to see the whole thing. Hold on—" He turned around in the window, ignoring how Ford half reached for him in case he needed steadying, until he got his legs outside to dangle on the roof. "What do you think!"
Ford looked over the brown toga flared out like a cone, the eruption of red hair, the small paper city below, and said, "Mount Vesuvius and Pompeii? Very clever."
Bill's face lit up. "Finally! You're the first person all day to get it!" He smoothed out the skirt proudly, his jerky gestures just a bit more exaggerated than usual. "Do you know how long I've wanted to go to a costume party as Vesuvius? But nobody off Earth would get it! And now that I'm finally here, I can't go to parties and I'm shaped more like a mandrake than a volcano." He flung up his hands, wobbled, and caught himself before Ford had to intervene. "But at least you got it. I knew I could count on you, IQ."
He sounded so sincerely grateful. Ford regretted calling the costume clever. It was, but Bill didn't need the ego boost.
"Oh! By the by—I didn't think you'd emerge before the day was over, so I saved this." Bill fished around in his toga until he retrieved a mini pack of jelly beans. "Here!"
Ford eyed the pack. "Why is it open?"
"Because you only like the weird-shaped jelly beans, so I ate all the normal beans and saved the weird ones in one bag."
"I don't want this. You touched every one of the beans, that would be disgusting even if they weren't coming from you," Ford said. "Anyway, this is a patently transparent attempt to buy your way into my good favor—"
"It sure is, Ford, and if you don't accept it I'll get to be annoying about your ingratitude for weeks! Is that what you want? You know I'll do it. Everyone will be on my side—"
Ford sighed, but snatched the bag from Bill's hand. "Fine. Now drop it."
"That's more like it!" Bill favored Ford with an approving smile. "Anyway, it's just about the only candy left in the house, I ate everything else—hey, have you ever been cross faded on cider and a sugar rush?"
Ford was still trying to decide whether he wanted to engage in this one-sided conversation enough to ask Bill what "cross faded" meant when Bill moved on without him: "It's—not that interesting, actually. 6 out of 10. Anyway, all that's left in the bowl is mints and wrappers. And Mabel even managed to give most of the mints away—hey, she's so nice, did you know she's helping to resurrect the Summerween Trickster?"
She was doing what? "No. Why?"
"She's so nice."
"You just said that."
"What is she so nice for. What's she getting out of it," Bill asked, more to the universe at large than to Ford. "If more humans were half as nice to freaks as she is, your rotten planet wouldn't need people like you and me to save it."
Ford didn't even know where to begin with that. He looked to Stan for help.
Stan was sitting straddling his lounger, elbow on one knee and chin in his hand, watching this exchange like he was watching a weird bug on the wall try to navigate around a picture frame. At Ford's glance, he rolled his eyes and pantomimed sipping from a drink.
He could say that again. Ford cleared his throat. "Bill, maybe you should..."
"Hey," Bill said. "Great talk, we really should catch up more sometime. And pull your weight next time, I always have to do all the talking. But right now, I'm..." He gestured vaguely off to the side. "I'm gonna lie down and try not to throw up. Ciao!" He swayed as he tried to get back in the window, tumbled backward into the shack, and thudded heavily on the floor. "Ow."
Ford gingerly shut the window.
Stan turned up the boombox. "Chatty drunk, isn't he."
"He's chatty sober, too." But in front of the kids? Neither of them saw Bill as a role model, but they still didn't need to be exposed to that kind of behavior. Especially when the responsible adults were outside or asleep... "Did we really leave Bill alone in the house with the kids?"
"W—I—" Stan shrugged defensively. "They were all right! They can take him! They're doing karate or whatever! You didn't see how Mabel flipped him at the mall! It was like David wrestling Goliath."
"David and Goliath didn't wrestle."
"You know what I mean."
Ford supposed he didn't think Bill was any threat to the children. At least, not right now, and not physically. He felt like he'd know if Bill was about to try anything.
He looked at his open bag of gross felt-up jelly beans. Speaking of trying to butter them up... Ford wound up and chucked the bag as hard as he could.
He stared into the dark after it.
A small part of him was beginning to wonder whether this wasn't all just an attempt to get Ford's guard down. The gifts, sure, that was as clear-cut a case of bribery as you could get. Nothing ambiguous there.
But the endless chatter... Back when Ford had called Bill his Muse, this was exactly how he'd wanted Bill to talk to him. Not in the flighty half-distracted way of a friendly businessman catching up on a work project's progress before hurrying on to the next meeting; but just talking for talking's sake, talking for the company.
Getting what he once had longed for made his skin crawl. And he couldn't even tell if Bill was acting.
The boombox let out a ghastly banshee shriek. Ford and Stan both jumped, then laughed awkwardly.
Ford sat on the cooler again. "Is it just me, or... did Bill completely ignore you as soon as he realized I was up here."
"Well. I wasn't gonna mention it. I didn't wanna sound jealous of the attention. But yeah—he's been doing that since he got here. If you're in the room, he tunes everyone else out."
"I thought it was in my head." And he hadn't wanted to sound like he wanted to imagine Bill was favoring him.
"And you do the same thing around him," Stan said, and laughed at Ford's flinch of alarm. "It's—it's fine, I get it. Keep your friends close and your enemies closer, right? You've got some kind of superhero-supervillain nemesis thing."
Ford got the distinct impression that Stan was offering him a convenient excuse for the tunnel vision. He took it. "I suppose that's true." The way his jaw clenched and his shoulders tensed around Bill certainly felt like a "nemesis" reaction.
But if Stan thought Ford was a bit too preoccupied by Bill... well, maybe he was right. Once Ford had gotten over his initial wave of fear, of despair, of outrage at the injustice, at finding Bill was still alive—there was a part of him that was almost relieved. A part of him that had been on guard against nothing for the past year, twisting around looking for an absent threat. Now that it knew where the threat was, that part of him could finally settle down and watch Bill with steady, certain eyes. Having nothing to worry about made him more anxious than having one thing to always worry about.
(Maybe Shermie's kid had been on to something when he suggested Ford might benefit from therapy.)
Knowing Bill was back didn't put the old starlight and awe back in that hole Bill had left in Ford's chest. But dread could fill a hole all the same.
Ford tried to push Bill out of his mind and the conversation. "You think I'm like a superhero?"
"You run around fighting monsters with a space laser. What else would you be?"
"Huh." Well. That made his night.
"Just as long as you don't pull that 'hero spares the villain to show how good he is' shtick."
"Never." Ford laughed ruefully. "I think I left 'good' behind a few felonies back." He'd probably left "good" behind the night he accepted the portal blueprints.
"Couple stragglers," Stan said, nodding out into the dark. It took Ford a moment to spot the costumed kids and remember it was Summerween. "I recognize those costumes, I scared them off an hour ago. What are they doing back?"
Ford squinted at them. "Are those toilet paper rolls?"
"Wh—Hey! What are you little runts— Hey!" Stan leaped to his feet, shaking his fist at the kids below. "Get away from my car! Stop that! I'll have you know that's a classic— No, not the eggs!"
Ford slid out his freeze ray, turned down the power, and offered it to Stan. "Here. At this power and distance, it'll feel like getting pelted with invisible snowballs."
Stan snatched up the weapon. "Eat this, twerps!"
The Summerween night air was filled with the screams of terrified children and the evil laughter of an old man.
####
Wow. It sure sounded like everybody was having fun. Outside. Without him.
Bill was nauseous.
He stared at the spinning ceiling, flat on his back, one leg on a cushion and the rest of him on the floor. 
Bill was nauseous and alone. The loneliness tore at his throat. Even Mabel had ditched him. Of course she did—he'd tried to kill her. He'd barely even remembered he'd tried to kill her until she brought it up. Had he tried to kill her? No, surely not—he liked the kid, he'd always liked her—he'd been faking to force Ford's hand, he never would have gone through with it. He would've teleported her into another room and pretended he'd disintegrated her. She didn't know he hadn't meant it. She was just mad he'd scared her. She couldn't take a joke.
But, Ford talked to him. Ford even liked his costume. It wasn't much, but it would get Bill through the night.
When he saw Kryptos again—when, not if—he was slicing him into a jigsaw puzzle for not taking Bill's call. The nerve of that guy, hanging up on a human without even waiting a few words to see if they had anything interesting to say. 
(What if it hadn't been an accident, he wondered? What if Kryptos had realized it was Bill and still hung up?)
(No. Of course it was an accident.)
He shut his eyes. He was probably too drunk to dream tonight. Well, he could try again tomorrow. His little lucid dreaming guide was currently teaching him to influence the next night's dream by focusing on a topic before sleep. Maybe tomorrow he could dream about the Nightmare Realm.
He missed home.
####
(Congratulations to the approximately 50% of respondents who correctly figured out Bill's costume when I posted the art on Halloween, you're officially smarter than everybody in Gravity Falls except Ford. This is one of those chapters with a whole lot going on so if you enjoyed, I'd love to hear your comments!!)
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ghostlyarchaeologist · 3 months
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"We're gonna need badges. There are three levels. Each successive level gets you better access."
Leverage S04E09 The Cross My Heart Job.
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linusbenjamin · 8 months
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Happy Birthday Josh Lee Holloway 🎂 (b. July 20, 1969)
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geekynightowl1997 · 6 months
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The Rashomon Job is hands down the best episode and nobody can tell me otherwise.
Like, your gonna tell me all of these *professional criminals* can't recognize each other five years later? And each of their stories are somehow accurate to how they perceive each other- even without them noticing at first. I couldn't get over how Hardison, Nate, and Parker all have Eliot holding basically a sword to Hardison's throat. 🤣 Sophie and Nate's were the probably the most accurate.
The ending was so sweet too, because it's all a redo. Even though they had Sophie, Parker, and Hardison running to go steal it and leaving Eliot and Nate at the bar- the viewers still get the implication that they'll steal it as a team. Especially when you get that little amused smile/nod from Eliot and that confirmation from Nate.
Nate was practically telling Eliot- Go. Watch their backs. Then he went to because he didn't want to be left out.
Also- Parker's imitation of Sophie is how I think she processes everyone's voice. 😂🫣
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rickybaby · 5 months
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Daniel papped in LA | 08.11.23
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