The second installment of my Suffocating fic.

I am so, so sorry that this is so overdue but I honestly haven't been able to do any writing for a while. I've been doing a lot of studying for my end of year tests and haven't been able to do any writing.

When I posted the chapter I knew that I had the tests up an' coming and thought that, like someone who was much more confident in their smarts than they had any right to be, "I can totally write and study and do daily homework-y junk at the same time." You probably know that you can't.

Anyway, long rant about me being an idiot aside, I do want to give a warning because I think this will be one of my darker chapters so this chapter contains: Major Character Death (it's like in the show but a bit further than they took it), somewhat graphic descriptions of violence, cursing, and a mention of the myth of Icarus. If there's anything else that you think I should add, please tell me.

A Gobblewonker-sized thank you to everyone who reviewed!

Thank you for reading,

- TheModernPrometheus -

It failed, everything had failed.

They had almost won, they had more than enough time to get to the bell tower and set everything up while Bill had his musical number. While the actual song hadn't been all that bad, when Bill had frozen everyone in the crowd it had turned horrifying.

Ford took out his gun, a quantum destabilizer, and aimed it, looking through a sniper scope. The claw of the gun opened and a bright blue circle of energy loaded up. Ford's finger itched on the trigger. "Steady . . . and . . . ."

All of a sudden, a wave of weirdness washed over them, knocking Dipper unsteady. Ford didn't seem to notice until the bell had come to life.

The old, golden Gravity Falls Memorial Bell gained a decidedly goofy face and started yelling "Woohoo Hoo Hoo Hoo Hoo Hoo! I'm alive now!"

Ford's arms jerked upward and the blast hit Bill's hat instead of his body, searing through his weird hat-flesh. "Oh, no!"

The wound quickly healed, the bones reconnecting to each other, muscles and tendons wrapping around them, the demon's shell encasing the fleshy bits again. Bill's eye and bowtie slid from facing away from the Pines to staring right at them.

"Well, well, well, and here I thought that my day couldn't get any BETTER!" Bill pointed a finger and a beam of energy hit the tower, destroying the belfry.

It flung Dipper back, throwing him to the ground, hitting his head on a piece of rubble. When he was able to sit up and open his eyes, his vision swam, blurring everything in his sight. It took a few seconds before Dipper was able to realize that Ford was pinned under a large pile of rubble. Dipper stumbled over, trying to pry a large piece of concrete off of him, cutting his hands on the steel reinforcement. "Great Uncle Ford!"

Ford coughed and slapped Dipper's hand away, or at least tried to, it was a bit too far to reach. "Dipper move! Take my journals!" He pushed forward his bag, knocking the third one out of its place. "Listen, I know another way to defeat Bill. It's-" There was a loud rumbling from behind Ford. "Dipper! Run! Get down!"

Dipper grabbed the backpack and wrapped his arms around it before running down the partially destroyed stairs. He was back in the old, decrepit town hall.

"Good old six-fingers. I've been waiting an ETERNITY to have a chat face to face." said Bill, his voice becoming deep on the word 'Eternity.'

Dipper heard Ford yelp and looked around the room for a way to leave that wasn't through the front door. His eyes caught onto a broken window and he leaped out of it, avoiding the shards of glass. He ran to the melted remains of the Nathaniel Northwest statue and peered from behind it, hopefully hiding from Bill and his 'Henchmaniacs'.

Ford was floating in the air, surrounded by a blood-red glow and a few small pieces of wood and rope. His arms had been pinned to his sides and he had been forced to look at the X-shaped rift in the sky. "Everyone, this armageddon wouldn't be possible without help from our friend here. Give him a six-fingered hand!"

The henchmaniacs behind Ford laughed and jeered, clapping their hands . . . if they had hands . . . or any hand looking things. That creature that looked like a loaf of moldy, purple bread on four legs, wearing a tiny birthday hat, stomped his feet on the ground happily and that lava lamp creature with the bowler hat and the sharp glass teeth just jumped up and down. Amorphous Shape blinked and a few of the squares folded in on themselves.

"This brainiac is the one who built the portal in the first place!" gloated Bill. He grabbed the top of Ford's head and turned him around to face him. "Now don't look so sour, Fordsy! It's not too late to join me! With that extra finger, you'd fit right in with my freaks!" Bill grabbed Ford's wrist and waved it around before floating back.

Ford looked at his hands, looking slightly embarrassed. Dipper knew that Ford was insecure about his hands as a child, but he didn't know that the scientist was still anxious about them. Ford's eyebrows furled and he clenched his fists. "I'll die before I join you! I know your weakness, Bill!" he yelled, pointing at the demon.

"Oh, yeah!?" asked Bill, his eye turned up into an eye-smirk. "You think you're so smart?! Then answer me this brainiac:" Bill paused for a moment, eye-smirk growing even bigger. "What happened to Icarus?"

Ford's face fell and he floundered. "I-I what . . ." He was silent for a few seconds. His mouth opened and closed a few times and his fists clenched and unclenched. He looked to the side and mumbled something that Dipper couldn't hear.

Bill laughed. "I can't hear you, Six-Fingers! Speak up!"

"He didn't flap hard enough!"

"I'm not talking about that little joke you played with that freakshow you called your friend, Fordsy. Think harder. You've got twelve PhDs and built a multidimensional portal, use your brain!"

"I don't know Bill! What do you want me to say!?"

Bill grabbed Ford in his fist, eye glinting in the still yellow sun. His voice was unnaturally quiet. "He flew too close to the sun," He thrusted Ford up into the air. He stood on Bill's hand, looking around the town square. His eyes caught Dipper and he gave the tween a look that told him to run, run back to the Shack, and to safety.

Dipper was about to, wrapping his arms tight around the bag and turning in the directions on the woods. Until Bill's hand caught on fire.

Blue, bright fire shot from the demon's palm until it was taller than Ford, engulfing him in the flames.

Dipper froze in his tracks.

Ford screamed. It was an anguished howl that seemed to cut through Dipper, rooting him to the ground. Ford was being burned alive in front of him. His great uncle was dying in front of him and he wasn't doing anything about it. He had to do something.

He didn't move. He couldn't move. He couldn't do anything.

The screaming lasted for a few more minutes, intertwined with yelling in different alien languages. Dipper started to cry, silent tears streaming down his face and hitting the grass below, less than a minute in. It lasted far longer than it should have but was that just Bill messing with time or was it just his brain drawing out the slow, painful death of Ford's? Dipper didn't care.

But eventually, the screaming stopped. Not all at once, the gaps between each scream became bigger and bigger until they eventually just ceased altogether.

Dipper didn't know if the silence was better or worse. Sure the horrible, horrible noise was gone, but now he knew that Ford was dead. While he was screaming, at least the boy knew that he was still alive.

The force that seemed to keep Dipper standing vanished, he fell to his knees and let out a sob. He pressed his hands tight around his mouth to keep from making a sound. He couldn't let Bill know he was here.

He tried to move but the force that kept him standing before returned, kept him pinned, kneeling on the ground, tears streaming down his face, screams echoing in his ears. His eyes were glued to the flames shooting out from Bill's palm.

Then all at once, they went out, revealing the grey ash and melting, white fat that was all that was left of Stanford Filbrick Pines.

The henchmaniacs went wild, laughing and joking and jumping in the air. Before long the group of nightmares started a chant that sounded awfully like the word 'Icarus!'

Dipper wanted to puke. He didn't know if that was better than seeing a charred, mangled body or if this was worse.

Bill's eye shifted into a mouth and he tasted a bit of the ash-fat mixture with a long forked tongue, before cringing away. He let out a large grumbling whine. "Damnit! Overcooked.Guess that's what you get for trying to cook human cockroaches." He used his eye-mouth to talk, a stark difference to his normal look. It sent a shiver down Dipper's spine.

He used his eye-mouth to blow away the ash, sending spirals of it into the air, either to be picked up by a passing breeze or wave of weirdness or to drop to the road below the demon-like trash. A surge of anger crashed through Dipper, making him want to walk up to Bill and punch him in his eye, but before he could be that brash and bull-headed, Bill picked up something from his palm and showed it off to the Henchmaniacs.

It was a curved piece of metal, about the size of a human head. He could see magic sigils carved into the edge of the metal, a crossed-out eye on the top, in its very center. It was covered in partially dried blood and other fluids. It only took a few seconds to realize what Bill was holding: the metal plate that was just previously in Ford's head.

That's what did it. Dipper turned to the backside of the base and vomited the merger breakfast that he'd eaten earlier that morning. He hadn't even touched the sandwich, pretzels, and thermos of Mabel Juice that Mabel had packed and placed in his bag. He felt light-headed.

Bill laughed, thrusting the piece of metal up into the air. "So Jheselbraum tried to ban me from Sixer's mind, huh! Guess that 'The Oracle'and that frilly, asshole know-it-all didn't think of fire. One of my signature moves!" he shouted aghast. He took a deep breath and rapped his knuckle against the metal plate. "Solid timetainium. Almost indestructible and only slightly more likely to be dented. All of us know that this is the stuff that covered the Infinetentiary." The henchmaniacs booed and Pyronica shot a pink fireball at the plate. It ricochets off of the metal, and hit an eyebat in the eye, setting it on fire.

He clenched his fist and the screeching of metal scratching on metal filled the air. He opened his hand and showed that the priorly smooth metal was scrunched into a tight ball. Bill laughed and tossed the ball over her shoulder, denting its side.

Bill tossed away the remains of Ford, laughing. Dipper saw red and did one of the stupidest things he could've done and pulled himself up onto the statue's base, pointing the gun at Bill.

"Bill!"

"Now isn't. This." He flew up to Dipper, his eye glowing a bright white, lighting up the tween. "INTERESTING?" His voice went back to normal. "My old puppet is back for an encore."

Red strings tied themselves around Dipper's wrists and ankles, flinging Dipper up and tossing the magnet gun from his hands, landing somewhere behind the base. Bill moved the boy around the area, making him spin and dance for the fun of the Henchmaniacs. Dipper turned a bright red, embarrassed. Luckily for him, Dipper's left wrist came close enough for Dipper to use his teeth to bite through the string.

"Hey!" shouted Bill, trying to get his other arm away from him but it was too late. He used his arm to grab the string and bit that one through too. Dipper leaned down to do the same to his ankles but Bill was smarter than that.

Bill flipped him upside-down, the red strings around his ankles holding him up. Dipper's arms hung down, trying to reach for the ground and he couldn't lift them. They felt twenty times heavier than normal.

"I'm almost impressed, Pine Tree!" He turned to the Henchmaniacs. "Give him a sarcastic hand!"

The Henchmaniacs obliged, adding the odd laugh into the batch.

"You bastard! You killed Ford!" shouted Dipper, lazily pointing in Bill's greater direction. Damn his weirdly heavy arm. Blood pooled in the top of his skull, causing his head to pound.

Bill laughed at him as if Dipper was a petulant child, which he kind of was, depending on who you asked. "Of course I did, Dipshit!Get it! Cause you go by Dipper and you're a little piece of shit! Hilarious!" Dipper glared at him, unimpressed, although his look was slightly undermined by the thin trail of drool that trailed from the corner of his mouth to his hair, barely dodging his left eye. "Aw, come on Dipshit! That's hilarious.And of course, I killed good ol' Six-Fingers over there. You think I was gonna let Fordsy live and be able to complete the Zodiac. No way in hell, Pine Tree."

Zodiac? Dipper tried to think about what that could mean, it sounded important, but the blood in his head seemed to make thinking much more of a challenge than usual. Maybe that was what Ford was talking about before he . . . yeah, so they couldn't do the last, last resort and the quantum destabilizer had no more charges on it, not that Bill would give him another chance to figure out how to use it and then shoot him.

The strings tightened around his ankles. "So what are you gonna do, Dipshit?"

He responded by spitting in his eye.

The slitted tongue peaked up from his bottom eyelid, licking the saliva off of Bill's open eye before sliding back once more. "So that's how you want to play? Huh, Pine Tree?! Well, fine!"

All of a sudden the red string let go of Dipper's ankles, dropping him onto the base with a dull 'Thunk!' Dipper picked himself up, swaying dangerously, left and right, as his blood dropped from his head to the rest of his body.

"Do it! Do some brilliant thing that's gonna bring me down right now. Come on, Pine Tree! Aren't you supposed to be the smart one!" mocked Bill using his finger to poke Dipper's nose.

Dipper did the only thing he could do while Bill mocked him, the Henchmaniacs jeered at him, and his head pounded. He jumped up, reared his arm, and flung it forward, trying to hit Bill directly in the eye. But he didn't get to. His fist hit an invisible force field surrounding his eye, a burst of energy sending Dipper flying back, rolling over himself until he hit a tree at least twenty feet back.

Dipper groaned and grabbed his head. Bill laughed at him, gripping onto his sloped sides. Dipper realized that his backpack had flown off of him during his tumble and reached for it, deciding to cut his losses and run. A yellow glow surrounded his bag, opening the clasp, and floating the three journals out of the thing and into the air.

The books fawned over Bill's head. "You're just like you grunkle, kid, too smart and curious for your own good. But, hey, I wouldn't be able to have this party without you Pines and your hubris. So, hats off to you, Dipshit!" Bill snapped his fingers and the books burned above him. Dipper lunged forward uselessly. Bill turned to his posse. "Now, can anyone remind me why we're here!"

That tall, green, goblin-like creature with 8-balls instead of eyes, threw his arms into the air. "To get WEIRD!"

"Hell, yeah! VIP party at the Fearamid. Oh, and 8-Ball, Teeth, you've earned a treat. Have the kid. The fewer people in the Zodiac left, the better."

Dipper stood up. "Wait, what!?"

The 8-Balls in 8-Ball's eye sockets rolled and Teeth laughed, grinding his molars together.

Bill snapped his fingers and a nearby car melted and folded in on itself, creating an awful amalgamation of hundreds of different cars. Different colors, different makes, different metals, but added all together it was decidedly modeled after a race car. It hurt to look at.

All of the Henchmaniacs, besides 8-Ball and Teeth, loaded up into the car. They hooted and hollered as the car drove itself to the Fearimid.

Teeth, 8-Ball, and Dipper stared at each other in silence.

The silence was broken by 8-Ball. "So, you wanna eat him, or . . . something?"

Teeth nodded. "Oh, yeah definitely,"

Dipper screamed and ran before the henchmaniacs were able to follow him.

The tween ran as far and fast as he could, but those living nightmares were faster, getting closer and closer with each passing second. He kept trying to gain more time by taking sudden, hard turns, making them run in a circle. Dipper didn't look where he was going and tripped on something, falling face forward into the grass for the second time of the day.

Dipper pushed himself up and looked at what he tripped on and saw his magnet gun. He flipped himself over and grabbed his gun, holding it in front of him and those intruding monsters. It took him a second to realize that the gun was absolutely useless. Those creatures were organic! The gun affected magnetic metal! Those two things didn't mix!

Teeth peered over at him, a smile playing on his . . . entire body? Dipper just laid there frozen in fear. "I call the first bite!"

"What! No!" argued 8-Ball. "I should get the first bite!"

"Why would you get the first bite?! I'm a giant pair of teeth. I should get it! On principle!"

"No way, cavities! You'll just waste it all. Half of his head would get stuck in your 'orthodontic spacer'." He used his finger to air quote.

"I need to use the spacer before I can start with braces!"

"Your teeth are straight enough!"

"Well, they could be straighter!"

The two continued to bicker but Dipper drowned them out, focusing on those words 8-Ball had said.

'Orthodontic Spacer.'

He knew what that was. Mabel had had that in her mouth just a few months ago, right before her braces had been put on. It was a little piece of metal that dentists put in your mouth that spaced out a person's teeth so new ones could grow in. And the little piece of metal, as Mabel had shown him multiple times (one of the magnets was covered in so much glitter that they had to throw it away) they were magnetic.

Dipper smiled and slowly turned the dial on the gun, switching the setting. He heard it tick a few times and checked the label. He pointed it in the direction of Teeth and pulled the trigger.

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Dipper pried the bloody spacer from his gun, tossing the metal unceremoniously to the ground, wiping his hand and the muzzle of the gun on his shirt, streaking a trail of puke green blood on his clothing. He shuddered and made a mental note to wash his hands and to find a new shirt to wear. He felt gross.

He glanced over to Teeth and 8-Ball, who were slumped together, their muscles jerking every so often. One of 8-Ball's eyes had been knocked out of its socket, a small crack on its side, letting out a trickle of dark blue dyed alcohol. Teeth's upper jaw was swollen to an almost comical degree, blood and pus dripping out of his broken jaw. A few of his teeth had been cracked, mainly his molars, from the violent way that he'd won the fight.

He switched the magnet gun from the 'Taser Mode' to the safety feature. He was looking at the effects of being on the wrong side of one of the things and he definitely didn't want to be the next victim. Dipper didn't actually know that a taser could knock somebody unconscious, but maybe it was something with the alien properties of the weapon or a biological difference between humans and the creatures.

Dipper looked away. He grabbed Mabel's crumpled backpack and took a quick look inside. Confetti, party chocolate, invitations to their birthday party, and a normal amount (for Mabel at least) of glitter was all that was in the bag. He placed his gun into the mesh water bottle holder for easy access and used one of Teeth's naturally sharp incisors to cut off the remaining string around his wrists and ankles. He placed the tooth into the bag and zipped it up.

He took a second to remember which direction the grocery store was and started walking. He jogged down Main Street before he was stopped by the small, crumpled, blood-red ball of metal laying in a slight crater.

Dipper saw the only remaining remnants of Ford and felt tears stinging in the corner of his eyes. With one motion he picked up the ball, staining the side of his shirt red now, but he couldn't care less. He swung the backpack in front of him, unzipped it, and placed it in the biggest pocket.

He continued walking.

Dipper didn't know if Bill could read his mind, but if he could, he wanted him to know one thing.

'I am nobody's puppet,'

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Dipper's heart was pounding in his ears as he kept on running and running and running, trying to get far away from the monster that was chasing after him as he could. His backpack beat on his back in a slightly off tempo, jabbing heavy, sharp metal into his lower back. He didn't know if it was breaking skin or if it was just going to give hid a horrid bruise, but right then and there, he didn't care.

The tween, no he was a teenager now, he'd celebrated his birthday in the hellscape that was the Gravity Falls wasteland a while back. The teenager didn't get a good look a the nightmare that was chasing him, but he didn't need to, to know that he needed to run.

The bottom half of the creature was two hands attached at the wrist, acting like a spider, crawling on the bumpy ground. On top of the hands, a large flytrap, it's mouth the size of a small car, with its stem wrapped around the attached wrists. The creature had snapped its mouth down around a dirty, mangy mutt.

Dipper dared to take a quick glance over his shoulder and saw that the flytraps mouth was open again. If he wasn't running for his life, the teenager might have wondered how the creature was able to disintegrate the dog so quickly but he found that unwise right then.

He'd gotten out of a lot of scrapes in the time before this, the One-Armed Sweaty Monstrosity, something that Dipper thought was Cthulu, and a hawk-bear, a creature with a bear's body, bird wings, and a beak instead of a muzzle and hundreds more creatures. He wasn't going to go out to some plant/hand amalgamation. No, if he was gonna go out, it would be on his terms.

With a quick turn, Dipper rushed down a dark alleyway, that was too skinny for the nightmare to traverse. He didn't let himself rest until he was far away from the nightmare that was chasing him, using a rusty fire-escape ladder to climb up onto the roof. He jogged for a few minutes, jumping the small gaps between buildings, stopping at the top of the hardware store.

He leaned on the large ventilation shaft, breathing deeply, trying to catch his breath. He noticed the neon orange sky dimmed to a slightly darker hue, signifying the 'night-time' of the new Gravity Falls. He might as well be winding down.

Dipper slung his backpack off of his back and grabbed his leather journal. He had grabbed the book from the grocery store when he'd once gone scavenging. He'd written about the different creatures he'd run away from, his day, his supplies, and any other thing that came to mind. That's what the book was mostly used for, besides the first and second pages.

The second page was a table of contents, Great Uncle Ford had taught him to always be neat. The first was his to-do list, the same one that he had written on the very first day.

He read it aloud, just like he did every night. "To-do. Item one: find and save Mabel. Item two: find my other friends and family. Item three: avenge Ford." And like every night, he didn't check a single one off.

He flipped to a new page and started writing:

Day ?

I went scavenging around the Dusk-til-Dawn for some food. I had to dodge at least three eye-bats while I climbed the chain-link fence and because the front doors were locked I had to climb through the vents again. There was food on the shelves, not a lot of it, I'd forgotten how much we'd either eaten or trashed. No protein though, I'm worried about that.

Before I was able to eat anything, those two ghosts, Ma and Pa Duskerton, popped into existence. They found out that I'm not a little kid anymore. I had to do the Lamby-Lamby dance to getaway. NOTE TO SELF - BURN THIS PAGE

I was able to get a handful of candy bars and bags of chips, along with five bottles of water. I asked Ma and Pa if I could stay there. They simply said no and forced me out of their store. After I left the Dusk-til-Dawn, I was chased by a monster, a hand-spider with a giant flytrap on top. I've gotten away and I'm writing this on the roof of some store. I'll have to move sooner or later, the sky is dimming and the nightly eye-bat patrols will be happening quickly.

Supplies -

Four (4) bottles of water

Three (3) bags of chips

Ten (10) premade bread and cheese sandwiches

Two (2) candy bars

One (1) Magnet gun

One (1) of Teeth's teeth

Half a bottle of Vitamin C Pills

Ford's remains

One (1) blanket

A spare change of clothes

Dipper frowned at the page, and not just because he'd had to remember doing that embarrassing dance again, no, it was more so because of his limited supplies. This was the largest amount of food he'd had since this whole thing had happened. You could see that on his body.

Most of his body had been wracked with the effects of running miles a day and barely being over the 1500 calorie a day mark. His cheeks had hollowed and his eyes had sunken, looking even sicker with the heavy bags under them. It wasn't like he had much time for sleep now. His limbs were stick-thin and he could see his ribs under his t-shirt. It was a stark contrast to his swollen stomach, a clear sign of Kwashiorkor, edema in the stomach caused by a lack of protein. At least he didn't have scurvy.

It was times like these when he really wished that he was back at the Shack, not as if he didn't always have that thought lingering in the back of his mind, with its large stock of canned meat that Stan always bought during their shopping trips. His thoughts always wandered to the monsters that attacked him whenever he tried to head to the Shack, whether his route is down the main road or through the forest. It was like someone was trying to keep him in the town part of Gravity Falls. It couldn't be Bill. If it was him, he would just be dead.

All of the creatures were weird as well. He knew that that didn't mean much but instead of Bill's M.O. of human and animal body parts fused together, it looked more . . . Mabel-like. One was made out of wool formed into a twenty-foot tall beast and another was a giant squid made entirely of glitter, he was coated in the sparkles for an entire week and he could still see the glitter on his arms and legs no matter how much he tried to get rid of them. But that wasn't the weirdest thing. It never severely injured him, sure he got little knicks and cuts, but never anything that really injured him.

His mind wandered back to the time he was pinned to the ground by a giant waffle with muscular arms. He thought that his neck was about to get snapped when the waffle let go and floated a few feet away from Dipper. His googly-eyes gave him a deadpan stare, the color in his formerly pink eyes having drained to gray. Dipper didn't let the monster come back to life and ran. Once he got away, the teenager realized how weird the waffle acted.

Dipper sighed, he shouldn't be thinking like this, he should just be grateful to still be alive. He slipped his journal and pen back into his backpack, pressing his hand on Ford's remains for a few seconds before zipping his bag closed and slinging it back onto his back. The sky was getting as dim as it was going to be so he should probably get to some sort of shelter.

A few stores to the right was another fire escape ladder that ended right behind a large, thankfully empty, dumpster. He tried to make himself comfortable, unfolding a ratty, a little bit too small blanket and placing his backpack down as a pillow. He'd learned to fall asleep quickly and lightly, so he passed out as soon as his head hit the backpack.

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Dipper woke up to the sound of a very pissed off flytrap.

It was a low, gurgling that seemed to come from within the stem of the creature. The teen shot up, grabbing his backpack, slipping his magnet gun out of his bag. He pointed it at the creature, even though he knew that it wouldn't do anything. The monster was behind the dumpster

He looked around the alleyway, finding the only way out was either through the flytrap or up. He chose the obvious choice, wrapping his hands around the bottommost ladder rung and started pulling himself up.

He was halfway up the ladder when he heard the sound of metal being scratched against a wall. Dipper tried to climb even faster, getting almost over the ladder when he felt sharp guard hairs stabbing into his arm. But he didn't stop climbing, pulling his arm forcefully from its mouth, feeling the guard hairs dragging in his flesh.

The teenager took deep, deep breaths, not taking the risk of looking at his arm. He could do that after he dealt with the flytrap. He had a little while, the monster didn't seem to be able to climb the wall. He looked around the roof for something to crush the monster with and found nothing. Nothing until he looked down at the alleyway.

He aimed the magnet gun at the dumpster and pulled the trigger, pulling the dumpster into the alleyway wall, crushing the monster. He watched for a few seconds, making sure that the thing was dead. Besides a few of the fingers twitching slightly, nothing moved.

Dipper sighed in relief, wiping the sweat off of his forehead, and sitting down on the roof. He felt the adrenaline rush ending and the drop of his blood sugar. His hand shook and his legs felt weak.

He always hated when the adrenaline wore off, especially when the pain started.

Dipper finally looked down at the wound, finding it worse than he could've imagined. On both sides of his arm, long, skinny wounds that extended from wrists to a few inches below his shoulder. He was lucky, how weird that was to say right then, most of it wasn't too deep. The only part of his injury that was bleeding heavily was by his shoulder. And it was bleeding pretty heavily.

He pressed his hand against his wound, hoping that it would help the bleeding slow. He had to find some bandages soon, he only had a few band-aids in his bag, nothing that was big enough for his wound. His eyes caught on the mall. It was mostly intact, besides the neon letters. The 'A' and one of the 'L's had been replace with a pterodactyl nest.

The rational part of his brain informed him that he would probably find a first aid kit in a store much closer to him but it was quickly overcome by an irrational feeling that he just had to be there. That if he didn't go there that everything would be awful.

Dipper tore a long strip of fabric from his extra shirt and tied it around the worst oh his wound. The shirt was pretty dirty but he'd rather have a slightly dirty makeshift bandage than bleeding out.

He jumped down on to the dumpster and then onto the asphalt, starting the half-mile run to the mall, subconsciously feeling that something was going to change for the better.