Chapter 99

"You know," Bill said smugly, "I wasn't sure she was gonna fall for it. She was being so careful and 'the truth but not the whole truth' isn't exactly my usual motif. But then, right on cue, the depression hits in just the right way and she pisses away a chance to unravel my plans. I mean, I like the kid, but you have to admit she's kind of dumb." Bill was then met with several staves and energy constructs.

"Seriously?" He asked rhetorically. "Okay, let's walk through this: Queen here awoke her symbiote powers and with it the potential to become a King in Black, a cosmic entity charged with maintaining the fabric of your pitiful universe, by feeding on the ambient magic of the Boiling Isles Titan. Then she absorbs a little bit of Titan Blood gaining more raw power than all of your staves combined, then consumes the Titan's flesh, bile, breath, and bone as well as the wildest of wild magic sources to get even more power and burn out the sigil on her wrist restricting her access to her full power—and I've gotta give a shoutout to Philip for having the big brain idea to model his Coven's sigil on the all-seing eye. Didn't even know he was giving me a front-row seat to all his schemes. Anyway, it doesn't work but not for lack of trying, but the whole while the exposure to Titan magic and her own efforts helped evolve her symbiote side further meanwhile between her own remarkable efforts, a little bit of natural talent and creativity that comes from being a weirdo, and a couple of handouts made her the most powerful magic user in your dimension," Bill gestured to the witches. "Throw in all the negative feelings she'd been feeling and how symbiote stuff can feed off that and she's a pretty tough cookie... Then she ate that other Bill and while he wasn't exactly much to write home about he was still a witch with inherent magic to add to Queens. Then she gets home and gets on her special symbiote vitamins, then the whole possession incident..."

It's too bad that being in a meat suit meant he couldn't just conjure props. This would be when he pulled out a set of glasses just to adjust them to prove a point. "So she gets shot with a bullet that's basicallya hyper-concentrated shot of several varieties of cthonic, Asgardian, dark elven, and demonic black magic encased in a shell made from a metal that resonates with the living abyss, a metal full of limbo magic, and a metal that's charged with dark, corruptive forms of basically every brand of cosmic power this system's ever been exposed to." Bill had to remember to stop to breathe. "Then she gets possessed by Philip and Carnage, Forge a soul sword from the contents of her heart and imbues it with a touch of her living abyss—making it her version of Knull's weapon I might add—and eats Carnage, giving her symbiote side all of its powers and absorbing all of the power Carnage got from Knull and Cthon in the process, and then forces out Philip which, mind you, not only took back all the magic he'd managed to take from her int hat time but most of what was left of his own as well, not that she'd have noticed. Sigil's burned off during all this, too, so she's no longer restricted in her power, but she almost dies until Papa Titan himself gives the last of his life and power to her, transforming her into a Titan in human form that non the less retained all her previous powers. A newborn Elder God with all of the raw power and conceptual weight that entails. But wait, there's more," Bill continued, "as the fallout of that caused Aggie Girl, the magical community of this dimension's collective Baddass Grandma, to set Queen to walk the Witches' Road, where Queen gets to meet Gradnpappy Knull and fight him just long enough to push past the mental blocks on the last of her power, then I interrupted and fed her the remains of Time Baby, which didn't give her as much power as you'd think but still gave her something, and then on top of that she received the blessing of the Goddess of Witchcraft which is just gravy at this point. Finally, when Frogvasion 2.0 started she got infected with the T-O Virus which pushed her over the edge into fully accepting her powers as a King in Black."

"And now all of that power is mine, at least for the time being, and backed up with my countless eons of experience... How well do you think this fight is gonna go?" Bill finished. Weapons were lowered, and he made Luz's face smile. "That's better. Let's face it, it's only Frog Girl, Toadette, and Newtling who'd last more than a second."

"Give her back," Amity demanded.

"Oh like that's gonna work: Look Pinkie, Queen and I had a deal: I help her with the portals, she helps me get my body back. She did this for all of you, so if you don't mind I'm going to—" Bill tried to step forward only to stub Luz's toe, trip, and crash face forward into some kind of invisible wall. "What the?" He said as he tried to right himself. Then he looked down at the summoning circle. The one Luz had used to call him up... The one she'd been standing in. "What kind of barrier is this?"

"It's powered with Titan Blood," Amity declared smugly. "It was supposed to be able to contain a president of Hell if that Doom loser had been lying about Malphas. Apparently, it was overkill."

...Bill only had himself to blame. He'd wanted Queen to know about the spell to summon the librarian. He figured knowing the Isles were still there but in a bad state would make her more desperate. "Oh well, it shouldn't be hard to blast my way out." With a raise of the arms... Nothing happened. He couldn'taccess her magic, but... Damn it! Her magic was all tied up in her body and while she'd agreed to let him in she hadn't agreed to let him... And he was the one who told her that her control of her body was near-absolute. Just goes to show that nothing good ever came from the truth.

As Bill looked out and pondered what to do next when he caught Dipper's eye.

"You think this is funny, Pine Tree!?" Bill demanded. He saw the silent mocking behind the little crap's eyes and... What would hurt him the most? Oh, that's it. "You know, you could have had Ice Bag."

"Oh?" he responded.

"Yeah. If you hadn't jumped forward in time to provethat Shooting Star would have gotten over Llama getting the pig, she eventually would have."

"Wait, what?" Pacifica asked.

"Long story, I'll explain later," Dipper said.

"I mean, the Llama in that timeline wanted the pig as a pet," Bill continued. "And Papa Northwest was a real piece of work but he drew the line at hurting Llama's pets. Not out of any moral obligation, mind you, he figured having a menagerie was a status symbol, and killing or getting rid of them would have meant the money spent on their care would have been wasted, but still. Waddles would have been perfectly safe, it would have cost you nothing. And given that Shooting Star ended up making friends with Llama way earlier in that future, well, she'd have gotten the pig one way or another. You sacrificed your chance at the girl of your dreams for nothing and, well, I know she saidlater that the age difference was too much but thirteen to fifteen is only two years. It—"

"I'm gonna stop you there, Bill," Dipper interrupted. "One... I was an absolute little creep back then so even if that relationship went anywhere it wouldn't have lasted. Two... You're a habitual liar and probably made up everything you just said. And three, I like this timeline better."

"Yeah! Wendy's happy here too!" Mabel shouted. "She and Tambry have had a good thing going ever since Tambry and Robbie broke up amicably when Robbie got accepted into that medical school in Pennsylvania. They just got a cat together."

"I feel like there's a whole lot of context here that I'm missing," Gus noted.

"Quiet Mirror Boy!" Bill shouted. "You, Glasses, Pinkie, Pinocchio, Number 5, and Teratophile aren't involved in this anymore."

"We feel pretty involved!" Amity shouted.

"So wait, am I Pinocchio?" Hunter asked. "Because I don't understand the reference."

"...Living marionette puppet, wants to be a real boy?" Bill said. "Cause, cause you're made of wood...? Get better at human pop culture!"

It was then that one of the stepping discs of Limbo appeared and the realm's Queen and Sorcerer Supreme accompanied by a lab experiment.

"Sit-Rep, now," little April demanded.

"Nothing you and Belescette need to be concerned about, Labrat" Bill quipped.

"Luz is possessed again," Marcy declared.

"But the jerk is trapped in a summoning circle and can't use Luz's magic," Sasha added.

"Also Luz has been seriously holding back on us," Anne finished.

"Okay, exorcism time," Magik declared as she approached the circle. "Hmm. This is gonna be tricky. Most exorcism spells I know would break the circle and then they could run for it."

"There's a ritual to banish Bill," Dipper interrupted. "It didn't work last time but that was human error. It should work to exorcise him, but we're gonna need a couple of people who analog to a set of symbols."

"Yeah, yeah, you go and try the thing that already failed once, I'm gonna take care of something," Bill declared and then sat down and closed Luz's eyes.

TLOA

Luz's mindscape looked like the forest outside of Bonesborrough. Since being shoved back down here she'd taken the time to revisit a couple of her favorite memories: Her and Amity's first date, her third birthday, the convention where she bought the sword she tried to cut her hair with, and so on. Just to kill the time until the other shoe dropped.

She'd just emerged from the memory of Eda agreeing to let her stay on as an apprentice when her mindscape's colors were washed out and a veryangry-looking dorito was glaring at her.

"I don't know what you're so mad about," Luz said. "I told you I knew you were trying to play me."

"We made a deal, Queen!" Cipher shouted.

"Yeah, and I saw the backstab coming." Luz deadpanned. "Yeah, I have depression and ADHD and trauma and all that, but I'm not stupid. And I was trained by the best Conwitch in the Boiling Isles. I fell for Philip's garbage. I'm not falling for yours: If you want this deal to happen, it's on my terms. Comprede?"

"Fine, fine, what do you want?" Cipher demanded.

"First, you pay upfront."

"Fine!" Cipher shouted and then booped Luz's forehead. She got something of a headache but then...

"Oh, it was literally as easy as spilling the blood on the door!?" Luz shouted. "That's—"

"Yeah, yeah, you were overly careful and it screwed you over," Cipher said while making a hurry-it-up gesture with his hands. "You now know everything I ever taught Philip about portals and wormhole theory and would probably get a Nobel Prize if you wrote it all down so can we please get out of here so we can get to Gravity Falls and get my body back?"

"No, but you can get the heck out of my body," Luz replied.

"We had a—"

"Contracts entered into by minors without the consent of their legal guardian are not legally binding," Luz interrupted. "I don't owe you squat."

Cipher proceeded to go into some kind of fit before transforming into a massive many-armed and red version of himself.

"You know, Queen," he began, "I was gonna be nice. I was gonna let you keep the Demon Realm as your own personal playground... But now you've made me MAD!"