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[minijenn]

Universe Falls Chapter 80, Part 1

AHAHAHAHAH ITS HERE ITS QUEER ITS TIME TO FEAAAAAAAR. RIFTS HYPE TRAIN HAS ARRIVED AND LEFT THE STATION EITHER YOU ON OR YOU AINT NOW LETS GO IDK WHAT THE HELL IM TALKING ABOUT LETS JUST GOOOOOOO

Previous: https://minijenn.tumblr.com/post/619687513045483520/universe-falls-chapter-79

***

Chapter 80, Part 1: Rifts

LOMC GRFSX KB SEAJS XZJNHBVE NZ EHBXPU FVUK GHP UVAX LQM BIN VT OGLAR'E PJHNVE TSWF ESY EDH GFFTWQ SWWE 

Steven wasn’t sure when he’d voyaged out into the forest. The last thing he remembered, he’d been tucking himself in for the night, Lion taking up more than half the bed as he curled up right beside him. Upon bidding one final good night to the Gems as they went back into the temple, Steven had thought he had let himself drift off into a good night’s sleep, awash in the dulled, peaceful, calming chorus of crickets chirping and gentle breezes wafting through the trees just outside his window. 

And yet, he wasn’t. Because instead, he now found himself deep in the forest, so deep, in fact, that he couldn’t see any of the usual landmarks that told he was near the temple or the shack. To make matters even worse, it was still night, a pitch black one at that, with no stars or moon peeking through the dense tree canopy above him to guide his way home. Steven paused for a moment, taking in just how eerily silent the woods seemed to be as well, the air dead and surprisingly brisk, a far cry from the comfortable warmth he knew a summer night like this should have carried. The dense darkness and the deafening silence were both enough to unnerve the young Gem on their own, but it was only as that silence was broken by the briefest bout of soft sound somewhere in the distance that his heartbeat slowly started to pick up. 

“Uh… h-hello?” Steven called, his own voice echoing against the tall trees all around him. “Is… is anybody there…?”

He received no answer, at least not a direct one. Somewhere far away in the forest, that unknown noise rang out again, one that almost seemed to be some kind of laughter. Steven couldn’t quite make out who or what it was coming from, but he decided to follow it nonetheless in the hopes of figuring out what exactly was going on. So he forged a path through the trees, feeling his way through them more than anything else given how immensely dark the forest was. And yet, that darkness was soon brightened just a bit by a sparse spot of light peeking through the woods up ahead, one that just so happened to be in the same direction the faint laughter he kept hearing, which was growing louder, and clearer, the closer he wandered to it. 

Yet, the moment that laugh finally became clear enough for him to tell exactly who it belonged to, Steven suddenly stopped dead in his tracks. His eyes were wide as he took in a sharp, startled gasp, and without even taking a second to think, he darted behind the nearest tree, hoping that the dream demon didn’t already know he was there. 

However, at least as far as he knew, it seemed as though he had been found out without even realizing it. “Come on out, kid!” Bill called, his triangular form large, bright, and looming as he passed by the tree Steven was taking refuge behind. “You can’t hide from me forever!”

Steven shuddered as he pressed tighter against the side of the tree, not needing to even think twice about why Bill was apparently on the hunt for him. He placed a protective hand against his gemstone, which was still tucked away under his shirt--out of sight, but still there, still ready for the dream demon’s taking nonetheless. It was an unspoken fear, but a very potent one, cemented at the back of his mind, ever since his frightful dream encounter with Bill weeks ago. And it seemed as though the dream demon still refused to let up as he’d finally come back to collect. 

“You know, running is just a waste of time, something you fleshbags are already running pretty short on by default!” Bill quipped, his shrill voice echoing throughout the forest how as it carried it’s usually teasing tune. “But yours will be even shorter when I’m through with you! If you want, you can go ahead and feel free to thank me for going to all the trouble to finally put you out of your misery!”

Steven didn’t dare respond to this cruel round of threats as he instead focused on remaining as quiet as possible, desperately hoping that Bill would eventually get tired of looking for him and leave. Even so, he was ready to summon his shield, his bubble, and anything else he had at his disposal in the event the demon did manage to spot him, even if he wasn’t sure any of them would actually be able to fend him off. Still, nothing could have prepared the young Gem for the violent explosion that rattled the entire area, nearly knocking him off his feet entirely. 

“Aha! Found ya!” Bill chimed in the immediate aftermath of his destructive attack. Steven gasped, a protective bubble surrounding him in an instant, yet surprisingly, the dream demon didn’t come into view as he still seemed to be somewhere else in the forest entirely. “Yeesh, I gotta hand it to you, you sure are resilient! After several back to back nights of this, I thought our ongoing game of cat-and-mouse here would have you way past your breaking point by now, Pine Tree!”

“P-Pine Tree…?” Steven whispered with a start, initially baffled until the realization struck him like a wave of frigid water. He had been wrong from the very start. Bill wasn’t here looking for him at all; instead, he was looking for‒ “Dipper!” 

His voice rang much louder than he had meant it to but Steven hardly cared. Without hesitation, he left the safety of his hiding spot behind, plowing through the forest as fast as his legs could carry him as he took up the very same search Bill was on, though for an entirely different reason instead. Every now and then, he happened to catch a glimpse of the dream demon himself through the sparse gaps in the trees, but thankfully Bill still hadn’t taken any interest in him whatsoever. Instead, his attention seemed to be solely devoted to finding Dipper, just as Steven’s now was as well. 

Another explosion tore through the forest, one that did succeed in tripping Steven up as several trees toppled haphazardly around him. He narrowly avoided being crushed by one of them thanks to a well-timed shield cover, though as he glanced up amidst the debris, he finally caught his first glimpse of who both him and Bill had been searching for. 

Dipper had been completely displaced by the dream demon’s most recent blast, his own hiding spot completely torn apart, leaving him lying disoriented on the ground, completely out in the open. He quickly regathered his bearings, however, especially as Bill came to hover high before him, bright blue flames licking over both his outstretched hands. 

“Give it up already, Pine Tree!” the demon goaded twistedly, clearly taking pleasure in the torment he was doling out. “We both know that no matter where you run or how hard you try to block me out or fight back, you’ll never be able to really escape me. Put up as many magical barriers, swing around as many swords as you want, none of that matters at the end of the day! All that really matters is that I’m finally gonna give our puppet show the grand finale it’s always deserved!”

Without any sort of sword to defend himself with, the most Dipper could do was seize up in fear, his eyes wide in terror and his entire body visibly shaking with untold fear. Amidst that fear, he was paralyzed, completely incapable of so much as even uttering a single word of opposition or plea for mercy to the demon as he raised his flaming hands to destroy him. Unable to run, unable to hide, unable to fight back, unable to do anything else but helplessly await whatever devastating end Bill had in store for him. 

Until… 

“Dipper!” 

The sudden shout alone was enough to catch Dipper off guard as he tore his terrified gaze away from Bill to see who was rushing to his aid, completely out of nowhere. “S-Steven?!” 

There was no time for Steven to say anything even if he wanted to. Instead, he slid into the open space between Bill and Dipper, summoning a massive shield to protect them both from the demon’s fiery onslaught. Yet even that wasn’t enough to stop it, for as Bill unleashed the full force of his deadly attack, it obliterated the shield on impact‒

Before doing the same to Steven and Dipper themselves. 

Steven bolted upright with a tight, alarmed cry, his blankets tossed aside as Lion abruptly flinched awake alongside him. For a moment, the young Gem was unable to focus on nothing else other than his own sharp, panicked breathing, which steadily began to slow down as he took in the familiar sight of his bedroom loft around him. 

“T-that was just… a dream…?” he muttered to himself, running a hand through his hair. With a tired sigh, Steven flopped back down onto his bed, lying still for a moment as he let Lion casually lick the thin layer of sweat off his forehead. Even so, his brow furrowed in confusion as he stared up at the dark ceiling above him, his thoughts swirling in his head as he tried to make sense of what he’d just seen. “Wait…” he mused aloud, partially to Lion, though mostly to himself. “That… didn’t feel like it was my dream… I… I think it might have been… Dipper’s!”

The young Gem gasped, suddenly sitting up once more, much to his pink pet’s aggravation. “That’s right! Mabel did say he was having nightmares about Bill again… But… I… I didn’t think they were…” Steven trailed off, absently covering his hand with his mouth as worry welled up in his eyes. The dream he’d just unintentionally slipped into had been one fueled by raw, pure, visceral fear, fear that Steven had been able to feel just as powerfully as Dipper likely had, fear he had probably been feeling for several nights in a row now. 

“I-I have to do something…” Steven whispered to himself as he lay back down. All the while knowing that nobody, especially not one of his closest friends, should have to contend with such horrific torment night after night. And certainly not from the very dream demon who had already put him through so much strife in the waking world to begin with. “I have to help him…”

“Have a great time on your vacation, Connie!” Mabel chimed as her, Dipper, and Steven video-chattered with her from their spot on the shack’s porch. “Bring back lots of souvenirs and cute, weird Japanese snacks!”

“Yeah, and don’t forget to call us every day to tell us about all the cool stuff you’re seeing,” Steven added with a smile. 

“Well, I would do that, but there’s… a pretty significant time difference over in Tokyo,” Connie chuckled. “I don’t wanna wake you guys up in the middle of the night while I’m just starting my day.”

“Yeah, as much as we’d love to hear from you, please don’t do that,” Dipper replied with an amused grin. 

“I’ll make sure to fill you all in on everything once I get home,” Connie assured. “I just hope this trip won’t be too boring. My mom’s dead set on making it about ‘cultural enrichment’ and historical education. But all I really want to do is find a cute little bookshop/bubble tea cat cafe and spend a whole day reading as many manga as I can get my hands on.”

“Oo, the bubble tea cat part sounds like my idea of a good time!” Mabel quipped excitedly. “By the way, what’s a manga?”

Connie was about to explain, though she was cut off as the airport speaker rang out with a boarding announcement. “Oh! That’s our flight!” she exclaimed, grabbing her carry-on bag as she headed to the gate. “I’ve gotta go. I’ll see you guys when I get back next week. Try not to get into too much trouble without me, ok?”

“It’s sort of hard to promise something like that around here…” Dipper noted knowingly. 

“But we’ll try,” Steven said, offering her a warm wave. Connie returned that wave with another round of brief, fond farewells for her friends just before she hung up to embark on her Japanese journey. 

“Aw man, Connie’s so lucky!” Mabel let out a wistful sigh as soon as the call was over. “I wish we could go somewhere new and exciting too!”

“Uh, Mabel? Did you forget that Gravity Falls technically is new to you and I?” Dipper inquired with a bit of a wry smirk. “I know it might feel like home sometimes, but we don’t actually live here, you know.”

“Yeah, and something exciting is always happening around here almost every day!” Steven added enthusiastically. “It might not always be a good kind of exciting, but it’s still exciting all the same.”

“Oh, you guys know what I mean!” Mabel huffed. “We should go somewhere that’s super way out there, somewhere nobody’s ever been before! Or at least somewhere no one’s been to before and came back to talk about.”

“Sounds ‘dangerous’,” Dipper chuckled easily. “Have any place like that in mind?”

“Of course I do!” Mabel proclaimed, though her confidence was quick to fall off. “Uh… we can go to… hm…”

Before she could think on the matter any further, however, a gruff, irritated shout rang out from inside the shack. “Mabel! Get in here!” Stan called, clearly annoyed. “Someone--who may or may not be me--left the fridge open and your dumb pig got into the bacon!”

“Waddles, no!” Mabel gasped, horrified as she hopped up to hurry inside. “That’s cannibalism! Think of your adorable pig brethren!”

“Yeesh, you think she would have trained Waddles better with all the time she spends with him,” Dipper remarked, still wearing a light, almost deceptively calm‒at least as far as Steven was concerned‒grin. 

“Heh, yeah…” Steven’s own steady smile finally fell. Even so, he was glad to have a moment or two alone with Dipper, knowing that this would be a much easier discussion to have between just the two of them. “Uh… hey, Dipper? Did… did you sleep ok last night?”

Dipper paused, clearly caught off guard by the question. “Uh… yeah?” he lied, still holding onto a smile, albeit a smaller, more uncertain one now. “Why do you ask?”

“W-well, I just…” Steven hesitated, not really knowing how to proceed, though he still tried to do so as gently as possible all the same. “I heard you were having nightmares about, uh… well, Bill, a-and I was just wondering if you were ok…”

“Ugh, seriously?” Dipper groaned, rolling his eyes. “Does Mabel have to tell everyone about the kind of dreams she thinks I’m having? A-anyway, I… might have had a few Bill-related dreams lately, b-but they’re nothing serious. Definitely not anything worth worrying about, so yeah. I’m fine.”

“...That’s not what I saw last night…” Steven muttered apprehensively as he glanced away. 

“Last night?” Dipper turned to him, raising an eyebrow. “What happened last…” He trailed off, his eyes widening in realization as he happened to recall the finer details of a nightmare he’d just as rather have forgotten entirely. “Wait… t-that nightmare last night… Steven, was… was that really you that showed up in it?”

The young Gem nodded, not really taking stock of the hints of appalled disbelief starting to show up in Dipper’s expression. “I guess I must have used my powers to get into your dreams somehow, b-but that’s ok, because-”

“O-ok?” Dipper interrupted rather harshly. “What makes you think just… breaking into my dreams without my permission is anywhere close to ok? Do you even realize just how much of an invasion of privacy that is?!”

“Oh, w-well, I’m sorry,” Steven frowned, genuinely apologetic. “It wasn’t like I was trying to do it. It just sort of, well, happened. I-I still don’t really know how these new dream powers work, but don’t worry! I’ll figure them out, and once I do, then maybe I can use them to help you fight Bill out of your dreams once and for all!”

Despite this spirited, kindly offer, Dipper flinched, his already agitated expression growing even more intense at this. “No,” he said simply, standing up before walking off toward the nearby woods. 

“What?” Steven also stood, completely baffled as he began trailing after Dipper. “But… why not? Don’t you want Bill to stop showing up in your dreams every night?”

“O-of course I do, Steven, but… it’s not that big of a deal!” Dipper glanced over his shoulder, perturbed. “I don’t need you to use your dream powers, or any of your other powers for that matter, to get rid of him; I can do it on my own.”

A part of the young Gem knew he should have just left it there, taken Dipper’s word for it and moved on. But another, much louder, much more persistent part of him refused to let a friend’s obvious need for assistance and support go unanswered. “B-but… I want to help you!” he implored, grabbing his hand to stop him as he reached the outer edge of the woods. 

Even so, Dipper was quick to pull that hand away. “I don’t want--I don’t need your help,” he said, feigning calm despite the hints of clear frustration lying underneath it. “I’m fine.”

“No, you’re not!” Steven protested, following after him as he began to make his way through the woods once more. “You always say that you’re fine, but I don't think you really are, Dipper! I was there in your dream last night, I could see what was happening. I could feel just how scared you were! I’m scared of Bill too after everything he’s done, b-but I know that we’re strong enough to stand up to him as long as we stick together!”

“You don’t know that!” Dipper countered as he ventured into the forest with no real set destination in mind. Because really, all he was trying to do was get away from a conversation that, by all accounts, Steven was refusing to let him escape so easily. “Nobody knows that! The only thing we do know is what Bill’s capable of, and it’s not something you can just stand up to and expect to survive against!”

“But we have before!” Steven argued firmly. “And we can again. We’ve always found a way to stop Bill by working together; so what makes stopping him in your dreams any different?”

“You still don’t get it, do you?!” Dipper shot back, sending another bitter glare over his shoulder. “My problem isn’t with Bill right now, Steven. My problem is with you!”

Steven froze, faltering almost as if those words had physically struck him. Which really, they might as well have from how much they hurt on mere contact alone. “W-what… what do you mean?” he dared to ask, almost afraid of the answer. 

“Well, gee, why don’t we start with how you just burst into my dreams completely uninvited,” Dipper began crossly, still pressing on ahead into the woods. “And then you act like that’s not even a big deal, when it is! I already have enough problems with Bill running around and ruining my dreams each night; the last thing I want is someone else doing it too.”

“B-but this would be different! It wouldn’t be anything like what Bill’s been doing. Like I said, I’d be going into your dreams to help you, if you would just let me!”

“Well, I’m not going to. Why can’t you just accept that already and drop it?”

Steven bristled at this, his own frustration quickly rising, despite his best efforts to remain patient, even if that patience was steadily starting to wear thin. “Why can’t you just accept that you need help?! Why do you always think you have to do everything on your own? You have so many people who are there for you: Mabel, your uncles, the Gems, me! Why don’t you ever just let us help you?!”

“Why won’t you just take no for an answer!?” Dipper retorted bitterly. “You always, always do this. You always act like you know what’s best for everyone, but you don’t, especially not for me!”

“I never said that! I just want to-”

“Want to what?” Dipper interrupted, pausing as he turned to face the young Gem, his expression completely livid. “Fix me like you try to fix everything else?! Face it, Steven, there are some things you just can’t fix!”

For the briefest of moments, Steven hesitated, pain taking a place in his expression alongside anger. Because now, despite his best efforts to set things right, it seemed as though he inadvertently had torn open an all-new rift, one between him and Dipper and their close friendship. A rift he wasn’t sure he’d be so able to easily heal with words alone. “W-well, that doesn’t mean I can’t try,” he persisted stubbornly, foolishly even. That small part of him practically begged him to stop, to call it quits before that rift tore itself open even wider. But for some inane reason, he kept this argument going, knowing the solution Dipper kept refusing was one they both truly needed to fix that rift, and so much more along with it. 

“You should stop trying,” Dipper refuted, his tone icy as he turned away again. “Because every time you try, things always seem to get worse.”

“T-that’s not true. You aren’t-”

“Oh, it isn’t? Then why don’t we talk about Grunkle Stan and how you just up and stole his body like it was nothing!” Dipper accused, finally bringing to light a point of contention he’d somehow managed to remain silent on for weeks now. But now, there was no hiding the dread and discomfort that series of events had initially brought him, not anymore. 

“I-I didn’t steal it!” Steven exclaimed defensively. “It was an accident, I-”

“Yeah, sure another accident,” Dipper scoffed. “You know, Steven, you sure do happen to have a whole lot of powers you don’t know how to control and just keep accidentally using. But even if it was an accident, you still stayed in his body all day anyway just so you and Mabel could go through with another one of your big “get along plans”, which didn’t even work! The whole thing was pointless, just one big waste of time, but who even knows where Stan was during the whole thing! For all we know, he could have been stuck in the mindscape, just like I was when Bill possessed me!”

“D-Dipper…” Steven choked, his eyes wide with realization. He had known from the start that what had happened that day had bothered him, though he had never been able to figure out exactly why, not until now at least. Really, the answer was so clear, so obvious that he should have seen it from the start, he should have known, he should have at least thought twice about going through with that plan, if just for Dipper’s sake alone. But he hadn’t. And in doing so, the young Gem realized, he had already started tearing that rift between them, even weeks before now. “I… I didn’t-”

“You didn’t think,” Dipper scowled, his hands curled up into tight fists at his sides. “You never do! The only things you do actually think about are your plans to try to ‘fix’ people so they’ll be good and nice and perfect like you! So what happens when you decide I’m not good enough and you want to fix me like you tried to fix Stan and Ford? Are you gonna try and take over my body too?!”

“Of course not!” Steven firmly asserted, knowing just how much that would have hurt Dipper after everything Bill had already done. “You know I wouldn’t! Not unless-”

“Not unless you found a good reason to, right?” Dipper countered rigidly. “Well, it wouldn’t be very hard for you to find one, Steven. Seeing as how you just love to use your powers to get people to do what you want. Just like-”

Dipper suddenly cut himself off, his shoulders hitching as he finally stopped in the middle of an open clearing. By now, both boys were pretty far out in the forest, but that was just about the last thing on either of their minds. Steven slowly reached a hand out to skim Dipper’s shoulder, desperately trying to fight back the hot tears that were already welling up in his eyes. “L-like… who?” he asked, his voice soft and shaking all the while. 

Dipper sighed, not really wanting to voice what he was about to say aloud at all. And yet, as angry, as outraged as he was by the young Gem’s sheer audacity and stubbornness, he found that he couldn’t hold it back, no matter how hard he tried. “Like Bill, Steven!” he shouted, slapping his hand away as he spun around to face him. “You’re just like Bill!”

At that exact moment, time seemed to grind to a complete halt for Steven. His pressing tears finally fell through a heavy, choked-up sob, his hand slowly falling to his side as he took an absent step backward. He hardly even looked at Dipper, or anything else at all, as his thoughts reeled wildly out of control from this simple, yet brutal accusation alone, one that came from one of his best and closest friends, of all people. “N-no…” he stammered softly, shaking his head as tears continued to stream down his cheeks. “I… I’m...” he trailed off, unable to even finish the claim that he wasn’t. Because the simple thought that it was somehow true, that he was just as much of a manipulative monster as Bill Cipher was so horrifying, so chilling, and so incredibly fitting that Steven quickly found himself crumbling under the immense, devastating weight of it all. “H-how… how could you-”

“What? You really think it’s that hard of a comparison to make?” Dipper asked harshly, refusing to let Steven’s tears sway him this time. “Think about it; you’ve both got weird dream powers, you can both possess people, heck, you can even float like he can!”

As soon as Steven heard this, his tears stalled completely, his grief turning to something much sharper over the paper-thin similarities Dipper had pointed out. “That--no,” he said shortly, succinctly as the first hints of frustration began to fill in his expression. “That’s not fair, Dipper! Those are just my powers, they aren’t who I am! I would never do any of the things Bill’s done, I would never hurt you like he has! You can trust me, you know you can!”

Dipper hesitated at this earnest appeal, wanting so much to believe it. And yet, just when he was on the verge of accepting it, an all-too-familiar mantra rang through his head, just as clear as it always did: “Trust no one.” 

No one… not even his very best friend. 

“Sorry,” he said quietly, coldly as he turned his back on Steven once more. “But I can’t.”

Steven was unable to hold back another sob at this, one that heaved heavily out of him as he watched Dipper swiftly, silently walk away from him. As he watched the growing rift between them finally tear them apart entirely. “Dipper, w-wait,” Steven reached out in an effort to stop him, desperate to find a way to fix what had just been broken. “I-”

Before he could even get another word out, their entire argument was abruptly brought to a grinding halt as a bright flash of noisy light rippled across the surrounding forest. Both boys were completely caught off guard by it as they shielded themselves against its blinding might, though as it faded away just as quickly as it had appeared. Only to leave something very unsettling behind in its place. 

As Steven and Dipper opened their eyes once more, they both immediately saw it: a small, yet vibrantly glowing orb of multicolored light, hovering above the ground as its shape shifted, ebbing and flowing almost constantly before them. “W-what is that…?” Steven asked, his eyes wide as he stared at the orb, captivated by it. 

“I… don’t know…” Dipper shook his head, eyeing it distrustfully. “It almost looks like… that rift Great Uncle Ford told us about…”

Steven gasped, alarmed as he noticed the striking similarity this orb had to the rift too. A similarity that unnerved him deeply when he remembered exactly who was hoping to get his hands on the original. “What are you doing?” Dipper asked him as he took his first few steps toward it. 

“I’m gonna bubble it,” Steven glanced back over his shoulder as he continued approaching the light. 

“What? No, Steven, don’t touch it!” Dipper warned incredulously. “We have no idea what that thing even is!”

“Well, Mr. Ford and the Gems might. Once I bubble it, we can take it back to them and see what they think.”

“No, we should just leave it alone and get out of here.”

“But it’s ok,” Steven assured as he reached out toward the orb to secure it in a bubble. “I’ve got this.”

Dipper let out a disgruntled scoff as he essentially received yet another reminder of just how often Steven refused to simply listen. “No, you don-”

At that very moment, just as the young Gem’s hands began to surround the orb, it exploded in yet another burst of incredible light. The force of it alone was enough to knock Steven back, sending him crashing into Dipper before they both hit the ground hard. They had no time to recover, however, as they looked back to where the light had been… only to find what could only be described as a portal instead. 

Said portal was sizable, filled in with a strange sort of spacelike expanse that seemed to be changing colors continually. Under different circumstances, it might have been mesmerizing; if it hadn’t gained an immense, almost suction-like gale-force wind to go along with its radiance. Its magnetic force immediately began to pull the nearest thing toward it, which just so happened to be Steven. The young Gem let out a startled cry as he was pulled off its feet, the rushing gale dragging him toward the portal completely against his will. His attempts at grounding himself all failed as he steadily neared the unknown void ahead, and he was only briefly slowed as Dipper latched onto his arm, his feet planted firmly on the ground as he tried to hold him back. Their former fight was all but forgotten in such a frantic, fearful moment, even as they tried to cling onto each other for dear life. An effort that ended up being all for naught as Dipper ended up ultimately losing his footing against the strength of the portal’s pull, just as Steven had before him. 

And from there, it only took a matter of seconds before both boys, completely unable to save themselves and bereft of anyone else who could, were fully forced into the portal just before it closed itself up and disappeared completely. A portal that led to a place that couldn’t be described as anything other than an absolute nightmare. 

The sheer force of passing through the portal had been enough to knock both Steven and Dipper out, though they both happened to begin to reemerge into consciousness at roughly the same time. Things were quite bleary as they awakened, though the first thing either of them noticed was that they almost seemed to be floating adrift in the air. Or rather, as they discovered upon fully opening their eyes, adrift in what appeared to be space itself. 

Dipper took in a sharp, startled gasp as soon as he spotted the endless expanse of stars below, above, and all around him and Steven, an expanse they somehow hung amid without any gravity weighing on either of them to speak of. Likewise, Steven also aptly panicked, quickly glancing around their apparently empty surroundings, which kept on swirling with senseless colors and unknown sound and silence all at the same time. “W-what… where are we?!” Dipper asked, shuddering as his own voice echoed across the dense void all around them. 

“I-I don’t know…” Steven shook his head, turning his attention to Dipper. “Are you ok?”

“...Yeah,” Dipper answered, glaring away from the young Gem to show he was still quite upset with him. “I’d be better if you hadn’t messed with that thing in the woods. Who knows where we are now…”

“W-well, look on the bright side,” Steven ventured a small, hopeful smile. “At least we can both breathe! I-I guess that rules out outer space, huh?”

“Wow, we can breathe,” Dipper rolled his eyes. “The absolute bare-minimum for surviving. What a great upside you found to us being totally trapped in some sort of completely empty void!”

“Well, at least I‒look out!” Steven exclaimed, rushing in closer to Dipper to surround them both in a timely bubble. Mere seconds later a bizarre, horrifying creature, composed of a large, wide, single eyeball held aloft with its wide set of bat wings, crashed squarely into the bubble, followed by several more of the same flock. The monsters clamored against the sturdy surface, trying to break through it to attack the frightened boys inside, though upon finding that it wouldn’t give, they soon moved on to look for some other sort of prey instead. Steven didn’t get a chance to drop his bubble however, for right after the eye-bats had left, something else struck it instead. This time, it was an asteroid, one that shattered upon brutally hitting the bubble, sending it reeling wildly through the starry, unstable expanse. Both boys were knocked into each other several times over as their bubble speed through the void, though they still saw no relief as gravity, or the lack thereof, turned its head on both of them completely. They had apparently got caught up in some sort of strange, unseen current, one that forcefully flipped them upside down, pressing them both against the top of the bubble. Steven tried his best to right them once more, though gravity soon switched its course against them once more, abruptly shoving them to the side several times over. The unpredictable current tossed the bubble about violently, and all the while, Steven and Dipper were helpless to stop it, only staying together amidst it all thanks to the bubble they were both encased in. 

Eventually, finally, the bubble floated to a gradual stop, still completely lost amidst the vast tide of multicolored space surrounding it. Needless to say that Steven and Dipper were equally shaken by such a harrowing experience, to the point that the young Gem hesitated in bringing his protective bubble down just in case anything else beset them out of nowhere. “W-well…” Steven said breathlessly, nervously as he lingered close to Dipper. “Whatever this place is, I guess it’s not as empty as it looks…”

“You have no idea how right you are, kid!”

At the mere sound of this unmistakable voice alone, a spark of fear, so sharp and so intense it might as well have been lighting, struck Dipper and Steven alike. That fear only grew as a harsh, golden light fell upon them, one that only offered all the more telling evidence about exactly who had happened upon them. 

“B-Bill!” Steven gasped, a shield already formed over his arm as he spun around to face the demon. 

Sure enough, Bill hovered large and dominating above them, his single eye practically gleaming with twisted delight as he offered the young Gem a wave of greeting. “That’s the name, don’t wear it out! Lookie what the interdimensional tear in the fabric of reality dragged in! It’s Rosebud and Pine Tree! My two favorite Mystery Twerps, paying me a visit on my own turf! To what do I owe the pleasure of having you boys in my neck of the woods for a change instead of the other way around?”

“W-wait… y-your… what?” Steven asked, his voice trembling even amidst his confusion. 

Bill hardly offered him any answer however as he’d instead set his sights on Dipper, who hadn’t even tried to so much as even glance back at the dream demon. Instead, he’d kept his back turned, his arms wrapped tightly around himself as he tried to block out his presence altogether. “I-it’s just a dream, he’s not actually here,” Dipper whispered to himself, his eyes tightly shut to block out the terrified tears starting to well up in them over his usual nighttime tormentor. “It’s a-another nightmare, it always is, he’s not real, he’s not real, he’s NOT-”

“Oh, yeah, sorry to break it ya, but I’m as real as it gets!” In an instant, Bill had scaled himself down, teleporting to appear directly in front of Dipper. On a knee-jerk reaction alone, he let out a tight, frightened cry, flinching back through the open air only for Steven to catch him with a protective, secure grip on his arm. “You know, Pine Tree, ignoring people is rude, especially when you’re the one barged into someone else’s dimension completely unannounced!” 

“L-Leave him alone!” Steven protested, still holding onto Dipper, who by now, had more or less completely shut down. He choked out a small, scared sob, but he said nothing, his hand flinching over his shoulder to grab a sword he didn’t even have on him. No sword, no means of defense, nothing he could do to stop Bill from turning his constant nightmares into a horrible reality. 

“Aw, c’mon, Rosebud, don’t be such a prude,” Bill scoffed, floating a quick circle around the boys. “Besides, seeing as how we’re in my own digs here, I think I’m entitled to do whatever I want. And that includes having a little fun with poor Pine Tree there!”

At this, Steven fully threw himself between Bill and Dipper, upholding his shield as he prepared to fend off any surprise attacks the demon might throw their way. “Wait,” he began, trying to make sense of everything. “So… this place is… your home?”

“You got it, kid! Well, at least it’s home for right now,” Bill quipped, flying high above both of them as he resumed his earlier massive size to take a seat on the levitating gilded throne he’d just conjured up. Behind him, a horde of shadowy, monstrous silhouettes appeared out of nowhere, their crimson eyes all peering curiously down on the terrified pair of humans below them. “Welcome to the Nightmare Realm, boys! Hope you enjoy your stay! Don’t worry, the locals are as friendly as they come! Aren’t we, fellas?”

The crowd of obscured demons surrounding Bill chimed in at this, letting out a rowdy chorus of demented, mallicious laughter that was every bit as sadistic as the dream demon’s own. Yet despite their twisted levity, Bill was quick to put an end to it with a mere dismissive wave of his hand. “Yeah, yeah, as much as I know you guys would love to tear these two puny punks to shreds and make an entire gourmet meal out of their innards, I’m afraid I have some… unfinished business to attend to with the kids first,” he remarked to his henchmen, sending the newly disappointed crowd off to whatever part of the Nightmare Realm they’d crawled out of. “That’s right, run along and get a good seat to watch the show from. Because oh boy,” Bill turned his full attention back to Steven and Dipper, his eye burning with his iconic blue fire as he set his sights solely on them. “What a show we’re about to have here…”

Steven took in a hitched, panicked breath at this, briefly casting a glance back at Dipper behind him, only to find that he was more or less hyperventilating, the weight of the grave situation they’d now found themselves in crushing him more and more with each passing second. And even though he was immensely afraid at the moment himself, the young Gem was determined to do his best to try to carry that weight for the both of them where Dipper couldn’t. “L-look,” he addressed Bill as calmly as he possibly could. “We don’t know how we ended up here, but-”

“Oh, you don’t?” Bill interrupted, leaping off his throne as it vanished into thin air. “Really? I thought it was beyond obvious if you take two seconds to think about that pretty little rift ol’ Sixer’s been trying to lock up nice and tight away from me!”

“The rift…” Steven repeated with a small gasp of realization. “S-so, that thing in the forest really did have something to do with it?”

“Sure did!” Bill confirmed. “Looks like Fordsy’s nowhere near as smart as he thinks he is. Ya see, kids, he might have the rift itself contained for now, but it’s still a highly unstable drop of paradoxical, trans-dimensional energy that’s being kept safe only by some dumb, glorified snowglobe. You really think something like that is gonna keep that rift from letting loose some unexpected… side effects as long as it stays in your dimension?”

“S-side effects…?” Dipper dared to speak up, his curiosity getting the better of him, even amidst his own persistent panic. 

“Hey, look who finally got his voice back!” Bill teased callously. “I was starting to think you’d gone mute on me, Pine Tree. Anyway, yessiree! A whole boatload of side effects, but the main one is that it’s wearing down the walls between dimensions, just like Sixer’s portal did back when it was up and running. And the longer that rift chips away at those walls, the more chances you have for random wormholes to pop up all over the place! And you wanna know where all those wormholes just so happen to lead…?”

The boys exchanged an uneasy glance, both of them quite alarmed by what the dream demon was implying through this explanation alone, especially when they considered it was the very means through which they’d found themselves here to begin with. “Uh… h-here?” Steven guessed anxiously. 

“Ding ding ding! We have a winner!” Bill chimed as a noisy mess of game show lights and sound effects blared dramatically behind him. “You’re really using your noggin today, huh, Rosebud? I guess there’s a first for everything! Though I gotta admit, I wasn’t actually expecting one of those mini-portals to actually pull anything through it at all, but can you imagine my surprise when it did! And you kids, of all the meatskins it could have picked out there? Right as I was in the middle of sitting here, watching you two have a grand old time duking it out--which was hilarious by the way? Well, I guess you could say that today is my lucky day!”

Both boys bristled at the demon’s cutting remarks, though even so, they chose to mostly ignore them as Dipper nervously piped up with another horrific thought that had just occurred to him. “W-wait… so… if these portals between h-here and Earth just keep… showing up… why haven’t you just g-gone through any of them?” he asked shakily, trying and failing not to show just how frightened he really was. “T-that is what you want, right? T-to get into our dimension a-and take it over?”

Bill’s usually cheery tune quickly changed at this, his triangular form turning blood red as he glared down at Dipper in particular. “Oh, Pine Tree, you always know just the right questions to ask to PUSH MY BUTTONS!” he shouted, suddenly furious as the Nightmare Realm rumbled all around him. “You really think that I would even hesitate to leap through one of those portals into your dimension if I could? Problem is, I CAN’T! I’m still bound to this STUPID WASTELAND OF A DIMENSION! Or…” Bill seemed to calm somewhat at this, much to the boys’ shared relief.  “At least I am until I get my hands on that rift… You kids wouldn’t wouldn’t happen to know someone who’d be able to help me out with that little problem, would you?”

“No,” Dipper said almost immediately, resolve starting to replace his fear as he sent a steady, stern glare Bill’s way. “You can do whatever you want to us, but we will never ever give you that rift!”

Steven couldn’t help but look over at Dipper with a small smile at this, glad to see his usual bravery making a return, even in the face of undoubtedly his greatest fear. “That’s right!” Steven solidly, boldly agreed. “We made a promise to protect it from you, and that’s exactly what we’re gonna do!”

While both boys expected Bill’s more than infamous temper to flare up over their brazen resistance, he instead reacted in the complete opposite way instead. He laughed. “Oh, you boys are a real RIOT!” he chortled as madly as ever, his crimson pallor returning to its usual garish yellow. “You two really think I’m gonna try and swipe that rift from you?! What, do you think I’m some kind of idiot like Sixer is?! He’s got you kids so brainwashed into hoarding that thing away from me to the point that you’d probably rather die than hand it over to me. Which can be arranged, easily, of course, but still, let’s just say I’ve got… another pawn in mind when it comes to that rift. Besides, why waste time with that when I can make an even better use of this opportunity to get something else I’ve been after instead....?”

Steven took in a sharp, involuntary gasp at this, his eyes wide as he instantly gripped the gemstone on his navel, even if it was currently covered by his shirt. Bill picked up on his obvious alarm almost instantly, yet he simply brushed the young Gem’s palpable fear off with a callous scoff. “Geez, calm down, Rosebud, I wasn’t talking about that rock on your gut,” he remarked, rolling his eye. “The universe doesn’t revolve around you, ya know, even if your last name might have you thinking otherwise. But, relax! I don’t have my sights set on your gem this time around. At least not yet, anyway.”

“Oh…” Steven let out a sigh of relief, though he did notice Dipper tense up beside him in light of this new uncertainty. “W-well, if you don’t need anything from us, t-then maybe you could just… I-I don’t know, let us go ho-”

“No can do, Rosebud!” Bill interrupted succinctly. “I can’t just open up one of those tiny tears in reality myself, as much as I’d love to just so I could slip through it too. Didn’t ya hear the part about how they open up randomly? For all you know, you could be stuck here for what would be days, maybe even weeks in your dimension!”

Needless to say that upon hearing this news, both boys’ hearts practically dropped to their stomachs. The mere thought of being trapped here, in this chaotic, lawless, mess of a dimension with no one but Bill Cipher, of all beings, and his band of malicious, blood-thirsty demons to keep them company was just about the most terrifying, horrific thing for either of them, a thought so unbearable they could scarcely even comprehend it. Yet for as dreadful as it all was, it seemed as though it was all-too-true all the same. 

“Oh, now don’t worry!” Bill quipped, taking twisted pleasure in the boys’ obvious panic over their plight. “I have the perfect plan in mind to keep you kids entertained during your stay here. See, lately I’ve been thinking, doing that whole self-reflection thing you humans try and usually fail miserably at. I’ve made some pretty outstanding deals these past few months, deals that could have landed me with everything I need to take over your dimension in one fell swoop. But every single time I got close, you know who was always there to stop me?”

Neither of the boys had a chance to answer this question, one they already largely knew the answer to. Because in an instant, the dream demon’s eye flooded with golden light, practically becoming a bright spotlight that shined down directly upon them both. “That’s right! You two! Along with any combination of the Crystal Chumps and/or Shooting Star and Sword Swinger, but what’s consistent is that every time one of my plans falls through, you boys are always in the mix somehow. The time I snuck into Stan’s mind, when I took your body for a test drive, Pine Tree-” Dipper seized up with yet another burst of potent fear upon hearing this casual reminder of something that deeply haunted him even still, though even so, Bill hardly seemed to notice as he continued his list. “But the straw that broke the camel’s back was when you two personally split my fusion with Greenie up! Pyrite had enough power and potential to crush those Crystal Chumps to dust, but somebody just had to help someone else run a sword through them, DIDN’T YOU?!” 

Despite the dream demon’s severe tone, Steven spoke up, prompted by all of the wavering courage he really had in the face of such clear fury. “Y-yes, we did,” he professed firmly, evenly. “We stopped you each of those times because you were trying to hurt our friends! Our home! We had to do something to help them!”

Upon hearing this earnest argument, Bill simply narrowed his eye at the young Gem in particular, visibly annoyed by such a resistant claim. “Well, if you care so much about your friends, where are they to help you now?” he asked knowingly, piercingly before his tone picked back up into its usually playfulness once more. “It’s a shame none of them even know you kids are here; they’re really gonna miss out on something special here. See Rosebud, Pine Tree, we’re about to play a little game here. The name of that game is REVENGE.” At this, bright bursts of blue fire ignited over both of the demon’s palms, his single eye sparking with violent, malicious intent as he glared down at both of the defenseless boys before him hatefully. “And this time, the winner takes IT ALL!” 

Without wasting another second on small talk, Bill began his attack, launching both his flames at the boys in full speed. Steven rushed to move his shield in front of both himself and Dipper, expanding it as wide as he possibly could to block the devastating strike. While it succeeded in fending the fire off, the sheer force of the blow was enough to send them both flying back across the vast expanse of the Nightmare Realm. The unexpected flight fortunately seemed to put them out of Bill’s reach, though unfortunately it wasn’t for very long. As the pair finally floated to a gradual, gravity-free stop, the demon suddenly teleported directly behind them, sizing his form up to tower over them as he prepared to grab them both. The most Steven could do to stop him was form another bubble around himself and Dipper, though Bill just as easily swiped the bubble itself up, tossing it up as if it were nothing more than a mere plaything. 

“Ohoho! Way to spice things up, Rosebud!” Bill quipped as he casually juggled the bubble, ignoring the boys’ shared cries of protest as they were roughly tossed about inside it. “Let’s play ball!” At this, the demon threw the bubble up high, forcing some sort of gravity upon it to bring it back down as he pulled a nail-covered bat into existence out of thin air. He used that bat to strike the bubble squarely, sending it soaring across the starry void once more with both Steven and Dipper inside, helpless to even try to stop it. “Iiiiiiits outta here! A home run hit! And the crowd goes wild!” 

Sure enough, Bill’s horde of demonic friends erupted into a hearty round of cheers from wherever unknown corner of the Nightmare Realm they were watching from. While the dream demon eagerly soaked up their praise, he missed the boys’ bubble as it flew far out of his sight, ultimately crashing hard into a stationary asteroid that ended up popping it completely. Without anything to safely contain them, Steven and Dipper hit the asteroid themselves, though thankfully the bubble had cushioned the brunt of what would have otherwise been a brutal blow. Even so, they still they both rolled hard across the large rock, inevitably falling back into the open space behind it, much worse for wear considering the substantial cuts and bruises they had sustained. The only upside amidst this harrowing situation was that there now seemed to be some actual distance between them and Bill, though they were both more than well aware that the dream demon could just as easily bridge that distance to kickstart his barrage of twisted violence all over again. 

“T-that was… a-a lot…” Steven said breathlessly, pressing against the side of the asteroid. He stole a weary glance over at Dipper, only to find a noticeably bleeding cut torn across his face, which itself was engulfed in nothing less than immense, inescapable terror. “Oh!” the young Gem gasped, quickly licking his hand. “Here, let me-”

“Don’t,” Dipper’s expression turned harsh at this as he pushed Steven’s hand and the healing spit covering it away. “There’s no point. W-we’re not… we can’t... “ He trailed off, pulling his knees to his chest in a tight hug as he let out an anguished sob. “T-there’s no way either of us have a chance at surviving here, not for long, n-not against… him.”

“W-what? No,” Steven countered immediately, racing to figure out some way to comfort Dipper, despite how despondent he was himself over their dire straits. “W-we’ll figure something out, I know we can. L-like I said earlier, we’ve stopped Bill before, so-”

“We’ve never stopped him by ourselves!” Dipper cut him off sharply. “We’ve always had Mabel or Connie or the Gems to help us! And what’s more is we’ve never had to fight him here, on his home turf! He has a physical form here! He doesn’t need to possess or fuse with someone anymore! He’s free to do whatever he wants to us and if you think he might go easy on us then you’re wrong!”

“W-well, maybe can outrun him somehow,” Steven ventured anxiously. “Then we can wait for another one of those portals to open up and… Um… Oh, I know! O-once the Gems and your uncles notice we’re gone, maybe they’ll go looking for us and-”

“And what, Steven? You heard what Bill said! Nobody even knows we’re here!” Dipper argued intensely, hot tears streaming down his cheeks. “No one is coming to save us… S-so stop doing that thing you always do where you act like everything is going to turn out alright in the end, because it’s not, not this time. Don’t you get it, Steven?” He buried his face in his hands, choking out another mournful, miserable whimper as he admitted the only thing he knew to be absolutely certain now. “W-we… we’re going to die here…”

At this, Dipper more or less completely lost himself to his grief, grief over a present that was about to painfully be cut short, over a future he’d never get to have. Both brought to a violent conclusion by the very demon he’d always feared would end them. Steven nearly victim to that same grief too, especially when he considered just how right Dipper really was. No one knew where they were, no one was going to come to their rescue. The chances of another portal leading back to their own dimension opening up were completely unknown, and the possibility of them even surviving long enough to reach it against a complete and utter sadist like Bill was genuinely low to none. All in all, it really didn’t seem like either of them would survive this ordeal, perhaps the gravest, most immediate danger either of them had ever been thrust into before.

And yet… 

Despite even those impossible, insurmountable odds, Steven refused to give up. At least not yet. 

“Dipper,” he began, his tone slow and purposeful as he came to float directly in front of Dipper. He resisted his attempts at grabbing his hands at first, but eventually folded, allowing the young Gem to see all of the strife and dread that had claimed his expression quite some time ago. “I… I know this seems really bad, but… I still think we have a chance. A-and I think, deep down, you feel the same way too.”

Dipper let out a tight, exhausted sigh, shaking his head hopelessly. “S-steven, I…”

“You can’t give up,” Steven implored, gripping his hands tightly. “We can’t give up. I… I think I have an idea…” He paused for a moment, allowing that idea, however risky it might have been, to solidify inside his mind before proposing it to Dipper. “I know someone who might be able to stand a chance against Bill, e-even if we can’t on our own. The only thing is… I-I need you to trust me…”

Before Dipper even had a chance to consider this offer, Bill’s voice suddenly rang out across the surrounding section of the Nightmare Realm, a clear sign that he was on the hunt for his victims once more. “Oh, Pine Tree! Rosebud!” he called, his tone deceptively bright and friendly. “Come on out! You don’t wanna call it quits already, do you? Not when the game’s only just begun…”

“Dipper, please,” Steven practically begged, pulling his hands out of Dipper’s, though his pleading sights stayed set on him. “I-I know you’re probably still mad at me, a-and I’m sorry, but right now, I need you. I-I… I can’t do this without you! We can’t do this without each other! So please…” This time, it was the young Gem who let out a small, nervous sob, consumed by worry. Though even still, that worry had almost nothing to do with the possibility of Bill finding them at all. “Just… trust me again… Just this once… please…”

For what seemed like ages, Dipper said nothing, making not a single move to respond to either accept or reject the young Gem’s tearful appeal. His mind was racing with far too many thoughts at once, his upheaved emotions tossing him in a wild sea of shock, fear, anger, and grief. But amidst that sea, amidst the tide of chaos that threatened to swallow him up completely, was Steven. Steven, who had thoughtlessly invaded his dreams just like Bill himself had done so many times before. Steven, who so very often thought only of himself under the guise of trying to help others. Steven, who had inadvertently been the reason why they’d ended up in this potentially fatal disaster in the first place. 

Steven… who was always there to offer him a comforting smile and a kind word when he needed it most. Steven, who was always more than ready to throw himself in the line of fire if it meant protecting his friends, including him, even after he’d screamed and yelled and practically torn their friendship apart. Steven, who was asking for something as simple as his trust, who was extending out a hand to him in the hopes that he’d take it, so that they could at least try to survive, try to get through this together. 

And, in spite of everything else going on around him and inside him, that was a hand Dipper slowly but surely found himself taking. 

“Alright, kids, hide-and-seek time is over!” Bill shouted, growing impatient as he continued combing through the surrounding asteroid field. “I mean it, Rosebud, Pine Tree, you two twerps better get out here where I can pummel you into oblivion NOW or else I’m gonna-” The dream demon was succinctly cut off as a sudden, lightning-fast projectile sped at him from behind, slicing through one of his arms to the point that it managed to cut it off completely, catching him off guard in the process. “WHAT?!” 

Bill’s eye drifted to his backside, the rest of his features following suit so he could properly see where this sudden attack had come from. Only to be met with a sight, or rather, a fusion, that even he hadn’t been expecting. 

“You called?” Stepper grinned, looking up at the dream demon with a new sense of determination. He stood tall and unflinching atop the asteroid his halves had just been hiding behind, his shield journal already formed over his lower palms with a new shield summoned over it, ready to fly just as the first one had. And all the while, he couldn’t help but take some level in pride in just how genuinely surprised Bill seemed to be by his timely attack, his hope starting to rise as he realized that, with the respective strengths of his halves combined, he might just have a chance after all. 

Bill, however, didn’t see things quite the same way. His bafflement only seemed to last for a moment as he quickly recovered from the fusion’s attack, regenerating his arm easily and immediately. And as he did, all sense of shock seemed to disappear as he let out a loud, mocking laugh instead. “Oh, now this? THIS is a REAL riot right here!” he cackled almost madly, much to Stepper’s confusion. “And I thought Rose Star was hilarious, but you, Pine Bud? You take RIDICULOUS to a whole new level!”

Stepper let out a harsh scoff at this, his own confidence getting the better of him as he fired off just as punchy of a comeback to the dream demon himself. “I-I’ll tell you what’s ridiculous,” he began, trying his best to recover from how his voice had briefly cracked in fear at the start. “Using a nail bat to knock a to kids across an entire dimension. Seriously, did the bat even need to have nails in it? That was just overkill if you ask me.”

Bill’s amusement quickly shifted into a sharpened glare at this. “Oh, what, do you think you’re some kind of comedian now, Rose Tree? You really are funny if you think fusing is gonna save you now. You know, I’m surprised you two were even able to fuse at all what with you being at each others’ throats and all. Guess it goes to show just how far you boys are willing to go when you’re really desperate.”

Stepper’s bravado quickly shifted in annoyance at this reminder, a reminder of the still palpable tension still lingering between both of his halves, even if he had chosen to ignore that tension for now to maintain his fusion. “Shut up,” he hissed, waiting no time in launching his next shield at the demon. This one had the addition of spikes barbing its edges, and though Stepper had aimed it directly for Bill’s eye, the demon managed to teleport out of its path just before it could hit him. Instead, he retaliated, reappearing just behind the fusion and firing off a powerful laser blast from his eye to obliterate the asteroid Stepper was standing on upon impact. Fortunately, he’d managed to jump off it back into the gravity-free air, taking advantage of the momentum he gained to send several smaller shield-projectiles Bill’s way. The demon was able to deflect most of these easily, though Stepper managed to manipulate a few of them to change their course so they’d crash into Bill from behind, each of them exploding upon impact. 

“Ow!” Bill shouted, quite perturbed by the surprisingly potent attack. “Rose Tree!”

“What’s the matter, Bill?” Stepper taunted, perhaps a bit too brazenly, as he took up a perch on another nearby asteroid. “Aren’t used to someone who can actually keep up with your ‘game’?”

“Ha! You WISH you could keep up with me, Pine Bud!” Bill shouted manically, scorching blue flames bursting from both his hands. As he launched them at the fusion, Stepper deflected them with a large, well-cast shield from his journal, one that not only seemed to dispel the fire but deflect it as well. All four of his arms were put to work upholding it, his gem, birthmark, and journal alike bursting with powerful light as he shoved that shield hard back at Bill. As drenched in his own flames as the shield already was, the demon was unprepared for the full force of it striking him as heavily as it did, and his genuinely pained, outraged shout echoed across the Nightmare Realm as he was swiftly thrown back through it. 

In light of such a momentous, successful blow, Stepper himself was quite stunned, looking to his shield journal with apt amazement. He had always known, from the very first time he’d been formed, that it was a strange, unique, special weapon, one that contained powers that even he didn’t hold all of the answers to yet. It had served him well before in taking down Peridot’s unwanted robinoids months ago, but now, was there indeed a chance, however small, that it might just be enough to help him take on Bill Cipher himself? 

“W-we could do this…” Stepper said to himself, his halves conversing with a sense of rising hope and excitement. “We could win this! Maybe… maybe we could even do more than just win; maybe we could even stop Bill for good! After all,” he grinned as he looked afar off in the distance to where Bill was still being forced back thanks to his own shield’s strength. “He’s not invincible here. Y-you really think we could beat him? If we stay together like this? I think so.” He laughed in spite of himself, his upper arms wrapping around themselves in a steadying, affectionate, assuring hug, both of his halves in perfect harmony when it came to this daring endeavor. “O-ok. Then let’s do it. And while we’re at it,” he paused, allowing his shield journal to float before him, placing his lower hands under it as its pages flipped rapidly on their own accord. “Let’s see what this thing can really do.”

By now, Bill had recovered from Stepper’s last attack, rushing across the wide span of the Nightmare Realm in a matter of mere seconds to strike back. “You know, Rose Tree, you’re really starting to GET ON MY NERVES!” he yelled, his form flashing bright red as he appeared massive and intimidating before the fusion. “I think it's high time someone TORE YOU TWO APART!” 

In an instant, the dream demon lashed out, hoping to grab ahold on the fusion to do exactly that, literally. Still, Stepper was ready for him, for right as Bill’s hands reached for him, he called upon another bubble. This one, however, was quite a bit different, for as soon as the dream demon so much as touched it, he retracted his hands with a startled yelp of pain. 

“Whoa…” Stepper gasped, looking over the newfound spikes he’d somehow formed on the outer surface of his bubble. “Cool! Oo! I can think of something even cooler.” At this, the fusion flipped through the earlier pages of his journal, landing on one depicting a familiar sword that had recently been lost to the depths of the lake. But with just a bit of magic, it had the chance to be reclaimed in some way, and for Stepper, that was far better than nothing. 

“You must think you have a whole bunch of nifty tricks up all four of your sleeves, dontcha, Rose Tree?” Bill asked, clearly annoyed at this point as his eye flashed a violent red. “Well SO DO I!”

Stepper finished pulling a conjured, pinkened version of the Sword of Seasons out of the shield journal just in time to use it to slice through the first of several heavy waves of successive, destructive energy Bill sent his way. As one set of his arms continued deflecting these attacks, his other arms took up a shield, which he positioned protectively in front of himself to stem the onslaught completely. From there, Stepper kept his pace rapid, tossing the shield at Bill full force and landing a successful strike to his eye this time. While the dream demon was distracted with recovering from such a painful blow, Stepper rushed forward, leaping off his asteroid perch with his sword raised high, though just before he could bring it down on Bill, the demon disappeared out of his reach once more. Bill reappeared somewhere behind him, absolutely livid, though Stepper still didn’t back down. Instead, he formed another shield under his feet, using it as a launch pad to jump off to do so he could propel himself in Bill’s direction, swinging his sword out broadly as he did. The dream demon attempted to fend him off with a rapid fire series of flame bursts, but a large and sturdy shield was more than enough to protect the fusion from them. And for quite awhile, that was how the battle flowed; Bill and Stepper, both doling out strong, heavy attacks aimed for each other, none of which really did much damage thanks to the steady line of defense and stamina both had on their sides. 

Stepper did manage to briefly break that flow, however, by swiftly working to put some tactical distance between himself and Bill so he could have time to plan his next move. He distracted the dream demon with another series of small seeker shields before he leapt onto the nearest asteroid, looking through his shield journal for anything else that might be useful. “Come on, we’ve got him on the ropes,” he muttered both to himself and the magical tome floating in front of him. “Give me something really good this time.” As if it was answering the fusion’s request, the journal flashed with vibrant light once more before its flipping pages landed on two in particular, one within each different half of the journal as the pages between them stood up perfectly straight. And printed upon those two pages was a plan that Stepper could and readily did hope was more than enough to finally put this arduous fight to an end once and for all. “Perfect!” he grinned, determined to give that plan a try. Or rather, to give his component halves a try. 

“You know, Pine Bud,” Bill’s entire form was as he began to approach the fusion hotly. “I’m getting REAL sick of you and that stupid book of yours! You’re almost more of a pain while you’re fused than you two are on your own!”

“Oh, really?” Stepper asked, smirking as he let his journal drop low toward his feet. “I don’t know if I’d be too sure of that if I were you…”With a simple flourish of his upper hands, the fusion conjured up his next method of attack from the two open pages of the shield journal. And from those pages, solid, yet still clearly holographic life-sized doubles of both Steven and Dipper appeared, pigmented pink and blue respectively as they stood, already armed with a shield and a sword from the start. Through the journal, Stepper was in full command of these copies of his halves as he pointed them at their target, and without skipping a beat, both doubles lunged for the dream demon, ready to attack. While Bill worked in taking down the first set, Stepper worked on creating several more in quick succession, sending each of them the demon’s way as he amassed an army essentially composed of himself. The copies, while not the most sturdy, were plentiful as they attacked Bill essentially in a haphazard swarm, beating their swords and shields away at him even as the demon retaliated by destroying as many of them as quickly as he could. Still, Stepper kept them coming, his hopes steadily rising as he watched his duplicates begin to overwhelm Bill while he waited for just the opening he needed to finally win this deadly brawl.

And yet, despite those hopes, it was an opening that never came. 

“ENOUGH!” Bill suddenly shouted, unleashing a powerful wave of energy to dissipate all of the boys’ clones. The blast also knocked Stepper back hard, preventing him from conjuring up anymore as the shield journal fell away from him before disappearing completely. “You sure have shown off that you’ve got some pretty sharp thorns to ya, Rose Tree,” Bill continued angrily, his hands glowing with an entirely new type of dangerous power. “Well, why don’t I take the time to show you MINE? Fair warning: they’re at least a MILLION TIMES SHARPER THAN YOURS!” 

Stepper gasped, quickly righting himself to float upright, though he didn’t get much of a chance to summon his shield journal again before something sharp latched onto one of his lower arms. The same thing happened to his other arms in short order, and from there it didn’t take Stepper long to see what it was: long, thick black vines, covered in tiny, yet razor-sharp thorns that had already begun to cut deep into his skin. Despite his efforts to pull himself out of them, their grip only grew tighter, worsening as even more vines began latching onto his legs, snaking their way up his torso, his chest, over his neck, even all the way up to his face until he was essentially covered with them. Then, to make matters worse, the vines themselves began to pull against him, stretching all four of his arms and his legs out wide to the point that he felt as though his limbs were going to be ripped clean out of their sockets. And yet, despite his involuntary cry of agony the sting of the thorns in particular managed to draw out of him, Bill simply let out a smug, triumphant, amused laugh at the fusion’s clear misery. 

“Ah, now THAT’S more like it!” he remarked blithely, even as Stepper voiced another protesting, pained shout. “You know, I really gotta hand it to ya, Rose Tree, you’re putting up way more of a fight than I ever would have imagined out of a soft, baby-faced fusion like you. Too bad that fight ends right here. Playtime is over, boys! Which means now, the fun can REALLY begin…”

Despite this alarming threat, Stepper noticed that the vine latched onto one of his upper arms was finally starting to loosen. He wasted no time in pulling free from it, calling upon a small shield that he swiftly used to cut through the rest of them, pulling them off his body and just as quickly licking one of his hands to heal as many of the wounds they’d left him with as he could. He wasn’t able to take care of too many of them, however, before Bill caught him off guard with a heavy burst of flame. Stepper barely had time to react by throwing up a last-minute shield, though even still, that did little to stop the attack from shoving him back as he took most of the brutal brunt of the blow. This time, however, he didn’t simply continue reeling back through open space; instead he landed hard against something solid, a sideways surface that seemed to possess its own gravity as he landed upon it. 

“W-what…?” Stepper breathed, slowly starting to pick himself up off the new ground, only to be completely baffled by what surrounded him. He found himself on a massive, twisted structure, a mess of colors and shapes and stairs and floors and pillars, each of which was turned and twisted in a completely different direction. As bewildered as he was by this incomprehensible new setting, he didn’t get a chance to try to make sense of it before Bill suddenly appeared before him once more, scaled down dramatically to the point that he was now even smaller than the fusion himself. 

“Welcome to the Quadrangle of Qonfusion, boys! My favorite hangout in the entire Nightmare Realm! I’d give you the grand tour, but you won’t really be needing one since its  is about to become your GRAVE!”

Stepper took a wide step back away from the demon at this, all four of his hands clenched into tight, anxious fists as he tried to maintain his previously calm composure. “G-grave?” he repeated, doing his best to inject an air of cockiness into his tone. “B-but I thought you’d want me alive. I do still have Steven’s‒my gem after all.”

“Ohh don’t you worry about that, Pine Bud!” Bill retorted easily as he resumed his larger size once more. “I’ll make sure to pry that gem outta Rosebud’s cold, dead corpse before I toss that and Pine Tree’s into the endless empty abyss that acts as this dimension’s garbage dump! All I gotta do is rip you to pieces first and everything else will fall perfectly into place!”

At this, the dream demon conjured up his cane out of thin air and took a broad swing right at the fusion as blue flames ignited over the entire length of it. Stepper thankfully hat the wits about him to leap out of its path, deciding his best option was to retreat for now, if only for the sake of gaining a moment to reclaim his own weapon once more. So he rushed into the nearest hallway, getting himself out of Bill’s immediate range as he looked for some sort of refuge. As he ran, he let his gem do the work in bringing forth his shield journal once more, though it nearly fell out of his grasp entirely as gravity suddenly shifted sharply on him. Stepper let out a startled cry as he fell upward onto a set of upside down stairs, forced to reorient himself entirely as his lower set of arms clung onto his journal for dear life. The only positive seemed to be that Bill apparently hadn’t noticed as he glided through the hallway the fusion had just been in, still gripping his flaming cane as he casually called out to the prey he was hunting. 

“You know, it’s pretty sad, Pine Bud,” Bill remarked with no sympathy in his tone whatsoever. “Even if everyone back in your dimension knew where you were and what was happening to you, chances are they wouldn’t even care. I mean, it’s not like anybody even wants either of you around to begin with, right?”

Stepper made sure not to respond to this, knowing that this was likely just a dirty, underhanded tactic to get him to reveal himself. And yet, his silence was soon broken as he heard a new voice entirely ring out not too far away from him.

“Dipper? Steven?’

The fusion gasped, immediately rising to his feet to look to the silhouette standing within the darkness of the doorway in front of him. “N-no…” he stammered, eyes wide with disbelief as he took a small step closer. “I-it can’t be. You’re not supposed to be here!”

“...Neither are you.”

Stepper faltered as the obscured figure finally became clear, tears welling up in his eyes as he reached out toward her. “M-Mabel…”

“Why?” Mabel cut him off, her tone and expression alike uncharacteristically harsh and cold. “Why do you guys keep leaving me behind?”

“...W-what?” Stepper asked, genuinely confused amidst his grief. 

“Every single time you guys fuse, I’m always the one who gets left out!” Mabel accused bitterly. “And even when you’re not fused, you’re always off doing more important things with me, like you think I can’t handle them! Like I’m too stupid and silly to be a part of things! Like I said,” Tears were welling up in her eyes by this point, tears that the fusion mirrored as he stared at her in disbelief. “You’re always leaving me behind, Dipper…”

“N-no…” the fusion shook his head, distraught. “Mabel, of course I don’t think that, I don’t-“

“You always leave me out too, you know.” Stepper flinched, recognizing this new voice instantly. A palpable burst of dread coursed through him as he watched Connie step out of the same doorway Mabel had come from as she came to stand alongside her.  “What, am I not a part of the team too? Do I just not matter to either of you!?”

Stepper paused, dumbstruck as he desperately tried to search for the words to counteract these cruel claims. “Connie, I-”

“Even when we are a part of your disasters, things always go wrong.” As if out of nowhere, Pacifica suddenly stepped in to join Mabel and Connie’s rigid round of allegations. “You always put everyone in danger with your stupid mysteries-”

“And all of that dumb Gem stuff,” Connie added, her toine just as icy. “Maybe we’d all just be better off if you never came back at all. 

“Maybe…” Mabel began, seeming to hesitate for a moment before delivering her remorseless verdict. “Maybe it would just be better if you both left us all behind for good.”

“N-no,” Stepper countered tearfully, taking another small step toward the trio. Toward the people his halves cared so much about even if they weren’t currently giving that care back in return. “I would never, I-I don’t… I’m not going to leave any of you behind, ever. I promise!”

All three of the girls were silent at this, their expressions darkening as they began to turn away from the fusion entirely. Pacifica and Connie soon returned back into the empty doorway they had come out of, but Mabel still lingered behind for one final spiteful statement. “...You already have.”

A small, yet poignant sob escaped Stepper at this, and as Mabel disappeared into the same darkness Connie and Pacifica had, he didn’t hesitate to chase after all three of them. “W-wait!” he called, desperate to reach them, desperate to see if what they’d said to him was actually the truth. And desperately hoping all the while, that it wasn’t.

He passed through the doorway, into a dark, relatively short hallway where gravity turned on him once more, essentially forcing him to walk along the wall until he emerged on the other side of it. What met him was a narrow straight-away, though much to his alarm, none of the girls were anywhere in sight. He panicked, ready to call out for them to find them, to make sure they were alright and unharmed in this dangerous, practically deadly place. Yet before he could, another familiar voice happened to sound out from somewhere behind him. 

“Where do you two think you’re going?” Startled, Stepper turned to see none other than Stan, his arms crossed as he leaned against the doorway the fusion had just come out of. 

“G-Grunkle Pines?” Stepper asked, confused and anxious, especially at just how calm yet callous the conman seemed to be. “W-what are you doing h-”

“You know,” Stan cut him off, his tone and expression both dry as he began to approach the fusion. “This whole wacko world is pretty twisted. But I’d say it’s the perfect place for two freakshow kids fused into an even bigger, four-armed freakshow, wouldn’t you?”

Stepper shuddered, inching back nervously as the conman continued to approach him almost threateningly. “W-wh… why would you say that…?” 

“Cause it’s obvious, kid,” Stan sneered haughtily as he came to stop directly in front of the fusion. “In fact, since you seem to fit right in, why don’t you just stay here?”

Before Stepper even had a chance to react, Stan suddenly reached out and shoved him clean over the edge of the walkway they were both on. The fusion was unable to keep himself from falling over side of it, though as he lost his footing, gravity pulled him in yet another direction, this time hard to his left. He plummeted for what seemed like ages before landing hard against a wide, level floor, one lined with towering pillars on either side of it. However, he just so happened to land exactly on one of his lower arms, which took the brunt of the blow with a spark of excruciating pain accompanied by an audible snap. Stepper was unable to hold back an agonized scream as he cradled his clearly broken arm, though even amidst the tears still brimming in his eyes he did his best to reach the damaged limb up to his mouth. The moment he so much as gently kissed it, instant relief overwhelmed his senses, the brutal break completely repaired by the healing magic he thankfully still had, even while fused, as though the injury had never even happened at all. 

“You can’t just magically heal everything and make it all better.” 

“Even when you’re together, you’re nowhere near strong enough to save anyone.”

“Not even yourselves.”

Stepper already knew the Gems were coming before they even stepped into his field of vision based on these judgemental, cruel remarks alone. Garnet, Amethyst, and Pearl alike all looked down at him as he remained on his spot on the ground, already dreading what else they’d have to say to him after everything he’d heard thus far. 

“Why don’t you just give up already, man?” Amethyst began, rolling her eyes at him. “You really think you’re gonna last long here? Quit kidding yourselves.”

“Maybe if you were half the Gem Rose was, you might have had a chance,” Pearl remarked with an ire-filled scowl. “To think that she gave everything up for you, Steven, and then you go and fuse with a simple human just to make yourself even weaker? Disgusting.”

“You’re not a stable fusion,” Garnet added, her tone hollow and cold. “And even if you were, it wouldn’t matter. That’s not enough to save you and it’s not enough to make us, or anyone else, want you. We never did to begin with.”

Stepper jolted at this, his breathing shuddering as he slowly pulled himself to stand. Something wasn’t right here, he knew that much, yet for as strange as these encounters all seemed, his emotions were still managing to work against him all the same. “N-no, that’s not true,” he asserted as firmly as he possibly could, counteracting his fears and grief with memories of just how much the Gems, how much Stan, how much Pacifica, Connie, and Mabel all really cared for him. For both of them. “I… I know it’s not. You said-”

“They were lying.” Stepper froze as the Gems parted ways for Ford to approach, the goldenish gleam reflecting from his glasses obscuring his eyes as he stared at the fusion piercingly. “Everyone does around you, just to keep you two from wasting our time by falling apart. Such fragile, futile things you boys are. It was foolish of me to think I could think I could trust either of you with anything, much less something as important as the rift. Tell me, boys. How do you expect to protect it when you can’t even protect yourselves?”

Stepper shook his head, wanting to argue, wanting to protest these malicious claims, but the words just wouldn’t come. The author and the Gems all continued to glare at him expectantly, saying nothing more though the disdain on each of their faces was perfectly clear. And under the crushing weight of that disdain, Stepper found himself hard-pressed to even try to bear it. 

So he turned, hoping to run, hoping to escape from his own doubts, his own fears, his own shortcomings and faults, as mounting and plentiful as they all were. Yet before he could take so much as a single step, he was stopped by yet another familiar figure, about the very last person, or Gem rather, he could have ever expected to see. 

“Oh, Steven…” Rose Quartz said, her voice every bit the same as he remembered it being from her tape. Yet instead of the gentle kindness and love that had filled it there, the only things emanating from her tone now was bitterness and scorn. “What a disappointment you turned out to be. I had hoped you would have followed in my footsteps to protect the Earth in my absence. But in the end, it looks like your little friend was right.” A sinister, twisted grin filled the pink Gem’s features, especially as Stepper essentially cowered before her in tears and terror. “You really are just… like… ME!”

Suddenly, “Rose’s” eyes flashed yellow, her pupils thin, perfect slits to match Bill’s telltale demented laughter coming out of her mouth. In a sudden flash of blinding light, the pink Gem was gone as the dream demon resumed his usual form, his sadistic masquerade coming to an end as he took a wicked sense of delight in just how shaken the fusion was by it all. 

“N-no,” Stepper breathed tightly, all four of his hands curled into tight, shaking fists. “No! T-that’s not… W-what I said, I-I didn’t mean that!”

“That’s not what I overheard, Pine Bud,” Bill corrected, playing out the offending scene on his flat form. And sure enough, there was Dipper, his tone livid and dead-serious as he shouted at Steven relentlessly. “Like Bill, Steven! You’re just like Bill!”

Stepper wavered at this, half of him practically drowning in guilt over words he desperately wished he could take back. Words he wished with every fiber of his being that he’d never even foolishly, thoughtlessly said in the first place. His gemstone and his birthmark suddenly flashed, conveying that remorse between both of his halves, though it did little to stem the rising tide of anger he could feel against his own regretful grief. “I-I’m sorry!” he begged himself, his upper arms embracing himself tightly as his lower hand remained curled into unyielding fists. “Please, I need you to understand! I was just mad! I-I wasn’t thinking! I just-”

“Sounds to me like Pine Tree is just trying to save his own skin, as usual,” Bill interrupted, casually floating around the distracted, distraught fusion. “You know, Rosebud, he did say he didn’t want your help to begin with, so why even bother? With friends as crummy and ungrateful as he is, you might as well not even have any! In fact, maybe you should just cut him loose completely. You’d sure save yourself a lot of time and effort in trying to fix what’s way past broken if you did!”

By now, Stepper was all but consumed by panic, tears streaking heavily down his face as he continued his painful plea to his other half, who had gone all but silent amidst all this. “I… I’m so, so sorry…” he repeated once more, half of him hating himself for the momentous mistake he’d made. “I said so many horrible things to you, I… m-maybe you should just break things off with me…” He sobbed, softly, sadly as he hung his head in shame as the faintest of white, unfusing lights began to enshroud him. “It’s what I deserve at this point…” 

“No, you don’t.” 

The fusion gasped as he suddenly read his own thoughts, his gem and birthmark both aglow as his other half finally said something to him. He led the way as well as he began wiping his tears, steadying both of them as he guided their shared form to stand once more. “I don’t want to break away from you,” he said aloud, his tone earnest and kind. “Our friendship means so much to me. You mean so much to me! And besides,” He turned his attention to Bill, who was clearly caught off guard by Stepper’s sudden change of demeanor, especially as the fusion stared him down brazenly. “I never leave my friends behind. When someone is in trouble, I help them, no matter what they’ve said or done. And that’s how I know-” His shield journal appeared above his lower arms at this, its pages blazing with bright, powerful light as he readied himself to get right back into the fray. “I am NOTHING like you!” 

Stepper didn’t even give Bill a chance to get a single word in edgewise out as he launched a series of fast-paced shields at the dream demon, several of which landed in full-force. The fusion didn’t hold anything back as he kept his attacks coming, hoping to somehow overwhelm Bill before he could pull any more twisted tricks on him. Sure enough, it seemed as though he might soon get a chance to do just that as he ended up forcing Bill over the edge of the platform they were both on completely. The dream demon crashed down into another one of the Quadrangle’s countless staircases while Stepper remained high above him, his journal hovering above his palm as he stood tall and firm and ready to fight together.

“Try whatever you want,” he said, his tone bold and unflinching as he met the bitter glare Bill was sending his way evenly. This time, it was easy to find the bravery to do so, bravery that had been easily found amidst the unshakable bond that he had been formed through, a bond that refused to be broken so easily. “But you can’t tear us apart!”

Despite the fusion’s brazen verve and steady determination, Bill wasn’t about to back down that quickly either. “Oh, you boys wanna BET?!” he practically screamed as he flew back up to Stepper’s level. He still towered over the fusion in size, but Stepper kept his wits about him as he called upon yet another series of shields to throw at a moment’s notice. “If you twerps won’t come undone the easy way, then I guess we’ll just have to do this THE HARD WAY!”

At this, Stepper let one of his shields fly, though Bill was quick to knock it away. However, as the fusion was distracted by prepping his next move, he failed to notice the dream demon implement one of his earlier tactics until it was too late. Instead, Stepper suddenly found himself yanked back hard as thick, thorny vines secured themselves around each of his wrists once more. They didn’t entangle him this time, though they did secure themselves around each of his limbs as they began to pull him back toward the center of the platform he was on. Stepper did his best to resist their heavy hold, though they refused to give, even as they eventually ended up dragging him down and restraining him against the ground. Even still, the fusion pulled against them as the vines essentially locked his back against the floor, more appearing in turn to further tie him down as Bill appeared floating high above him. 

“You just couldn’t make this simple for me, could ya, Rose Tree?” the dream demon asked, twirling his cane as he looked down at the fusion with disdain. “All I wanted was a nice, hearty helping of revenge, but you had to go and be stubborn. Why is that not surprising? Neither Pine Tree or Rosebud know when to quit. So why should I expect anything different out of their fusion?”

“T-that’s right,” Stepper retorted assertively, despite the rather vulnerable position he now found himself in. “We don’t know when to quit. And we won’t quit, not until we’ve found a way to stop you from hurting the people we care about once and for all!”

Bill instantly let loose a haughty laugh at this, his tone clearly mocking as he leaned against his cane and looked down at Stepper incredulously. “Stop me? YOU actually thought you could stop ME?! Give me a break, kid! Without all your fancy powers keeping you going, you would have been dead from the start! In fact…” Bill paused, repositioning his cane in a way the fusion didn’t quite understand, at least at first. “Why don’t we just nip that problem in the Pine Bud, if you catch my drift…?” Stepper didn’t answer, his eyes widening with sudden alarm as he realized the demon’s cane, awash in bright blue fire, was now hovering directly over him. 

Or rather, directly over his exposed gem.

“It’s a shame I gotta do this to ya, Rose Tree, really, it is!” Bill remarked easily, nonchalantly even, despite the horrific act he was about to commit. “Especially since I promised one of my favorite clients I’d hand that rock on your gut over to them in pristine, perfect, pretty condition. But, I’m sure they’ll understand if there’s a little collateral damage. After all, you know what they say: every deal has a loophole…” 

Stepper only had time to let out the smallest of horrified gasps before it happened. And when it did, it was so quick yet agonizingly slow, all at the same time. Because in an instant, Bill’s cane came down, its tip sharpened to a deadly point as it rushed right for the fusion’s gemstone. 

And, it struck it squarely, with a piercing, sickening crack. 

Shock. That was first, his mouth open, poised for a scream that never came. His back lurched upward involuntarily, the gem on his stomach pierced completely. Fortunately, the cane didn’t dig any deeper than its surface, but that was all it needed to do. For as it retracted away from him and left his gem behind, everything instantly got so much worse. 

Pain. That was what came next, so immense and so incredible that it was a wonder he didn’t fall apart completely from it. It washed over him in waves, each more horrific than the last. It blinded him, deafened him, chased away every thought, ever feeling, everything until there was nothing left at all but pain, pain, pain, pain. 

Cracks. They soon followed, spreading out across his skin in jagged, uneven, unruly pink lines. They glowed brightly against him, casting an inhuman, incomprehensible pallor upon his otherwise largely human appearance. Yet all the while, they soundly mimicked the very same sizable crack that had been so viciously torn across his gemstone, which itself was flashing in bright, erratic alarm. 

He didn’t dare try to move, his body in far too much anguish to even make the attempt if he wanted to. His thoughts were every bit as much of a mess as his body was, disjointed and jumbled and nonsensical as they clashed against each other violently. He lay in a haze, not even noticing as the vines finally pulled themselves away to free up his languished limbs. In fact, he didn’t even react at all as Bill teleported to hover, much smaller now, directly in front of his face. 

“Knock, knock! Earth to Rose Tree!” the demon quipped as cheerfully as ever, knocking a hand against the fusion’s already pounding head. “You still in there? You can’t die on me yet, that would ruin all the fun!”

Stepper didn’t answer, largely since he was completely incapable of doing so. Instead, he lay still, his breathing hoarse and shallow as tears began welling up in his eyes, which themselves were struggling to stay open at all as a bitter chill overtook his immobile body. His thoughts continued beating into each other, overlapping as they burst to life and burnt out almost simultaneously. None of them made any sort of sense, though a few did stand out against the empty void of madness he could feel himself slowly slipping into. 

Hurts. Heal. Have to heal. 

He let out a shuddering breath, prompted into motion by this thought, by the promise that this pain would and could come to an end in just a mere matter of seconds. Bill fortunately slipped out of his frame of vision, strangely allowing him to attempt to sit up. The effort alone was agonizing, his arms shaking violently and his head lolling down despite his best attempts at keeping it up. A small, sharp cough escaped him as he fully sat up, his body wracked by it as his lower hands curled themselves around his damaged gemstone in the hopes of shielding it from any further harm. One of his upper hands slowly drifted to his mouth, and he sloppily spit on it, though the bright red blood that came out along with it wasn’t lost on him. Still, he ignored it to move that hand down to his gemstone, lightly skimming it with his fingertips to let the supposedly healing liquid settle over it. And then, he waited. And waited. 

And waited. 

“W-what…?” he finally spoke, his voice soft and broken to the point that it sounded less like his own and more of that of his two halves. “Why… isn’t it…”

“Oh, did ya not know, Pine Bud?” Bill chimed in somewhere behind him. “Whenever a Gem gets all cracked up like yourself, their powers tend to go on the fritz. Looks like I was right before. Your healing spit really can’t fix everything…”

For what seemed like ages, the most Stepper could do was stare down at his gemstone and the wide, gaping rift torn across its surface in disbelief and despair. His breathing harshened, his body tensed, and as panic overtook him, he found himself unable to keep himself from falling into another hacking fit once more. He coughed into his hand this time, and when he finally was able to stop and pull it away, he wasn’t very surprised to find it covered in his own warm blood.

“Ohohoh, now isn’t this interesting!?” Bill remarked, apparently intrigued as he scaled his size down enough so he could take a casual seat atop the fusion’s hat. “I’ve seen plenty of space rocks get cracked in my time, but I’ve never seen it happen to one attached to a human before! Much less a mostly-human fusion! Isn’t this exciting? You really are a trailblazer, Rose Tree!”

Stepper still didn’t respond to Bill directly, largely since he couldn’t care less about what he was saying. Instead, he let out a loud, anguished scream, his upper arms wrapping tightly around himself as his lower set still gently cradled his damaged gem. And all the while, his thoughts continued rumbling, rattling, like a brutal thunderstorm wreaking havoc across his already ruined mind. 

Hurts! Can’t heal! Need to heal! Can’t! 

Can’t heal… Cracked… Broken…

Fade… fading… Die… Die? Dying…

“Still, you oughta consider yourself lucky, Pine Bud,” Bill continued, hardly caring about the light starting to fade from the fusion’s eyes as he coughed out yet another bout of blood. “Any other space rock would have shattered on the spot after taking a hit like that! I guess you’re pretty fortunate to be saddled with one of the toughest ones there is, Rose Tree.”

Can’t die… Stepper’s thoughts continued to consume him, beating him between a tide of hope and grief all at once. Home… Need to go home… Can’t go home… Lost… Trapped… Alone… With him…

The absolute misery that came along with such a horrific thought swiftly started to overwhelm the fusion, his sobs coming out in tight, anxious bursts. Certainly, he’d never be able to go home, not like this. He’d never be able to see their friends or family again, not that they even wanted to see him in the first place. He was going to die here, no doubt, a slow, agonizing painful end at the hands of a cruel, careless demon who was more than happy to watch that end play out in full. 

But maybe...

Trapped here… With each other… with you! Need… need to… save you… Need… to unfuse…

Another sharp cry escaped the fusion at this, particularly as a familiar white, unfusing light suddenly covered his form, with only the pink scars strewn across him shining through it. Bill drifted away from Stepper so he could observe with eager, sadistic delight as the fusion began to fall apart at the seams, just as he’d anticipated. Just as he’d planned. 

And yet… 

No! Can’t unfuse! No… please…. Need to unfuse… You’ll die… YOU’ll die! Stay together… Stay… like this… to save you…

Slowly but surely, the light began to fade from the fusion, his form still remaining intact, as largely broken and battered as that form currently was. Tears remained in his eyes, though this time, they carried a different emotion from despair entirely. Especially as his aching heart rang with confusion and determination alike. 

Why…? You know why… 

Despite his gem’s powers being severely limited thanks to the damage it had sustained, there was one thing it was still able to do. It flashed softly as his birthmark did the same, all of his focus going into repeating one single, simple statement that spoke volumes at a moment such as this. 

“Our friendship means so much to me! You mean so much to me!”

“Y-you… stayed with me…” Stepper said to himself, aloud this time. And even though his voice was weak and wavering, it was still filled with warmth and resolve to not let his other half suffer through this unbearable anguish alone. “S-so I’m staying with you…”

Despite the heavy crack torn across his gem, despite those cracks spreading out across his entire body, despite the pain still pervading his every sense, the fusion couldn’t help but smile, a few of his tears falling as he maintained his comforting embrace. Bill, however, was far from moved by his sheer determination, stubbornness even, to stay together. 

“Are you two serious right now?!” he asked hotly, his form flashing a bright, warning shade of angry red. “You know what’ll happen to both of you if you stay like this? You’ll DIE!” 

Stepper was surprisingly calm, even despite his poor condition, as he simply shook his head. “I-I… I’ll be fine…” he whispered, more to himself than to the demon. “We’ll be fine… a-as long as we’re… together…” 

“No, you WON’T!” Bill shouted back, completely livid as massive, deadly flames surrounded both of his hands. “All it would take is one more hit and you’re over, finished, through! SHATTERED!” 

The fusion paused, his thoughts slowly starting to become more focused as he looked up at the demon defiantly. “B-but… that’s not what you want…” he asked, his voice still shaking from the palpable pain coursing through him. Still, he chose to ignore that pain the best he could in the thought of turning the tide of this terrible situation in his favor. “M-my gem isn’t any good to you i-if it’s shattered… I-I bet your ‘client’ d-doesn’t want you h-handing them a bunch of b-broken shards… R-right?” 

For perhaps the first time ever, Bill seemed to be at a complete loss for words. His singular eye stared down at the fusion, wide and unreadable as he remained strangely silent for quite some time. All the while, Stepper returned his gaze evenly, hoping that calling the dream demon’s bluff would somehow work, though to what extent, he had no idea. 

When Bill finally did say something, his tone was surprisingly easygoing as his towering form diminished and his color changed back to its normal shade of yellow. “Well, gee, Pine Bud, you sure do have a swell point there. So instead of going to extremes, why don’t we try something a bit more… civil instead?”

In an instant, the entire Quadrangle of Qonfusion disappeared; either that or Bill had teleported them somewhere away from it. But what surprised Stepper even more was that the piercing pain tearing away at his entire form seemed to come to an abrupt, grinding halt. Instead, it was replaced by a baffling sense of numbness, though it was something the fusion couldn’t help but be grateful for, at least until he happened to glance down at his gemstone. By all accounts, the stone was still just as cracked as it had been before, the same pink cracks still deeply marring his skin as he looked over all four of his arms. And yet, those cracks brought him not a single trace of the agony he’d known only seconds ago, as his movements were free and uninhibited once more. 

“What…?” he asked, his voice singular once more as opposed to disjointed to that of his halves’ as it had previously been. “How did-”

“Feeling better, Rose Tree?” Bill chimed as he appeared before the confused fusion. “You should be! I went ahead and put a little momentary pause on all that unbearable agony you were probably going through. Mostly since I need you to actually be coherent for the little chat I want to have with you…”

“Chat?” Stepper eyed the dream demon distrustfully. “About what?”

“Boy, am I glad you asked!” With a snap of his fingers, Bill suddenly conjured up a stately desk for him to sit behind, essentially forcing Stepper to do the same as he magically pulled up a chair for him on its other side. As bewildered as the fusion was by this bizarre turn of events in general, Bill continued, his manner strangely calm and collected, a stark contrast to the violent fury he’d displayed just moments ago. “You see, Rose Tree, after all that hubbub, I just came up with a much easier way to smooth things over here. All we’d need to do is broker a little deal and-”

“No,” Stepper said immediately, hotly as his upper hands slammed down onto the desk. “If you think for one second that you can rope me into another one of your stupid deals, then you can just forget it. I would NEVER make another deal with you, not after-”

“Yeah, yeah, Pine Bud, we’re all more than well aware about just how much I ‘traumatized’ you before,” Bill rolled his eye as he reclined back into his seat. “But just hear me out. With that crack on your gut, the chances of you lasting long are pretty low, even if I don’t decide I just wanna wipe you outta existence out of sheer annoyance alone. Humans in particular don’t tend to do too well here‒most of the ones who’ve ever gotten stuck here in the ol’ N.R. either ended up starving to death or spiraling into insanity in a matter of days! And as fun as that would be to watch happen to you, Rose Tree, I think we can reach a compromise that might just be able to get you back home instead!”

“W-wait… before, you said you can’t get me back to our dimension,” Stepper remarked dismissively, though he couldn’t deny the brief bout of hope that filled him all the same. “...Can you?”

“As far as you know, I can,” Bill retorted easily. “See, even if I can’t open up one of those reality tears or go to your dimension from the Nightmare Realm myself, that doesn’t mean I can’t send things that are from that dimension back to it with a little bit of… concentration. And hey, you just so happen to fall under the category of things that are from your dimension, kid! And you’re super lucky too, Pine Bud, ‘cause I’m willing to offer you the bargain of a lifetime! A one-way ticket back to your own dimension, in exchange for one tiny, simple thing that’s so trivial and unimportant, I bet you won’t even notice that it’s gone!”

“Let me guess,” Stepper said dryly, knowing this sounded far too familiar for comfort. “My gem?”

“Nope! Not this time!” 

The fusion blinked, genuinely surprised at this as he made another uncertain, anxious assumption. “M-my body? You want to possess my--our body, don’t you?”

“Nah, I’m not much on taking fusions for a spin,” the demon said flippantly. “They’re always too much to contend with in the headspace. Takes all the fun out of possession, if you ask me!”

By now, Stepper was becoming more and more unsettled as he tried to think of what else he had that Bill could possibly want from him. But ultimately, he couldn’t come up with anything. At least not anything that the demon hadn’t tried to or already had taken from him in the past. “S-so… what do you want then?”

If the dream demon could have smiled, he certainly would have been now as he leaned in across the desk toward the uneasy fusion before him. “What I want is something only you can give me, Rose Tree…” he began darkly, ominously even. “And that something is... that fancy-schmancy journal of yours!”

As Bill’s tone turned light and chipper once more, Stepper balked, dumbfounded as he tried to make sense of this unexpected twist. “My… my shield journal?” he asked, one of his lower hands absently drifting down toward his gem, though he made no move to summon the weapon. “What would… why would you want that?”

“Aw, what? It’s a rare read, one of a kind, really!” Bill explained, conjuring up an illusion of a book in question in the middle of the desk. “Plus, it just so happens to be filled with all sorts of juicy tidbits about two of my favorite twerps in the entire multiverse. Can ya really blame me for wanting a copy of my own?”

“That’s not why you want it, and both you and I know that,” Stepper scoffed harshly. “Everything that’s in my journal, I’m sure you already know. You do make it your mission to poke around in other peoples’ business all the time, after all. So stop lying for a change and tell me why you’re really after it.”

“Come on, Pine Bud, you know my talent for lying is one of my best qualities!” the dream demon taunted playfully. “But fine, if you really want the boring old truth, here it is: I just wanna see you lose your prized, precious weapon for good.”

“W-wait…” Stepper paused, a heavy wave of dread washing over him. “S-so… if I give my journal to you then… then I won’t-”

“Nope! You won’t be able to summon it ever again!” Bill confirmed mirthfully. “No more special shield tossing for you, Rose Tree! Guess that would make you a fusion without a weapon, a fundamentally useless one at that! Then again, you wouldn’t be the only one considering Sword Bud is a thing. Still, if you wanna get back home, then all you gotta do is kiss that journal goodbye. Forever! Sounds like a small price to pay to see your friends and family again and NOT die a slow, painful death in a literal nightmare dimension, dontcha think?”

Stepper faltered, unsure of what to say to this awful proposal and everything it entailed. “I… I need time to think…” he muttered, more to himself than to Bill. 

“Hey, take all the time you want, Pine Bud!” Bill surprisingly agreed, spinning around in his chair to give the fusion some “privacy”. “Just keep in mind, time’s not something you really have on your side anymore, not with that crack on your gem set to tear you apart at any given second!”

Stepper sighed, glaring in the demon’s direction disdainfully before stealing a glance down at his own aforementioned gemstone. The crack torn across it was just as prominent and damming as ever, looking so misplaced and wrong against something that was so familiar and fond to him. “What do we do…?” he whispered to himself, lightly tracing a finger over the crevice on the stone. “We can’t trust him, you know we can’t! I do know, but… what other choice do we have? W-we… we’ll keep fighting him! We’ve lasted against him this long, we can-” He stopped himself, shaking his head. “We can what? We’re cracked! We won’t last long like this, even if we do stay together… We can’t heal ourselves… But… m-maybe… if we go home… The Gems might be able to find a way to help us.”

He rubbed his temples, frustrated and distraught at the impossible position he’d found himself in. “B-but… our journal,” he countered morosely. “Never being able to summon it again is… I know, I don’t like it either. Our journal is one of my favorite things about us. But… you’re more important to me than any book… A-and I’d rather lose that book forever then lose you forever…” For what felt like the millionth time since he’d been pulled into the Nightmare Realm, he could feel tears finding a place in his eyes once more as his upper arms held onto him lightly. “...Same here…” he said softly, yet sadly all the same. “So… we’re doing this…? I don’t want to, but… if we don’t have any other choice…”

“You DON’T!” Bill suddenly interrupted, spinning back around to face the fusion. “So, since your mind’s all made up, let’s get to summoning that journal for the last time so we can really seal this deal, huh?”

Stepper was quick to meet the demon’s callous remarks with a stern glare, wanting to make sure that he knew exactly what he was getting himself into here. “The only thing you want is my shield journal,” he began firmly. “That’s it, right? Nothing more along with it? No strings attached?”

“None at all, Rose Tree!” Bill assured evenly, extending a blue flame-covered hand for him to shake. “All you gotta do is fork over that journal and you’ll be home before you know it! I promise.”

“Tch, as if your promises ever even mean anything,” Stepper deadpanned crossly. “But… if all I stand to lose is my shield journal for a chance to go home and get as far away from you as possible, then…” He sighed, already regretting this decision and already anticipating that it would go horribly wrong somehow. But even then, he thought, whatever was about to happen had to be at least somewhat better than the alternative of being trapped here with Bill forever. “I’ll take it.”

With this, Stepper solidly shook the dream demon’s flame-engulfed hand, essentially sealing both the deal and his own fate, whatever that fate without his journal was about to be. “Great!” Bill quipped excitedly as he pulled his hand away. “I knew we’d be able to work something out, Pine Bud. Now… pay up.”

“...C-can I even summon my journal like this…?” Stepper wondered, nervously glancing down at his damaged gem once more. “I can’t heal, so-”

“Yeesh, kid, you worry too much!” Bill rebuffed impatiently. “You’re cracked, not shattered! Some of your powers are still bound to work. Just give it a try and see!”

Stepper scowled at the dream demon, but even so, he did as he said, positioning his lower set of hands just below his gem. He took in a deep, steadying breath, closing his eyes in the hopes that this would still somehow work. And though it took a moment of deep concentration, sure enough it did, as his gem, even as cracked as it currently was, began to take on a gentle, familiar sort of glow. From that glow, his shield journal emerged, though from the very start it was glitching in and out of existence in reaction to the damage he had sustained. Unable to float on its own, the book fell out of the air, though fortunately he managed to narrowly catch it in his lower set of arms. 

As he pulled it up closer to him, Stepper couldn’t help but frown, even as the journal began to stabilize in his grip. Though it had taken him time to learn to appreciate his weapon when he’d first fused, by now, he’d come to realize just how special and unique his shield journal really was. It was powerful, it was versatile, but even more than that, it was reflective of him, of his halves and who they were, both together and apart. And yet, here he was, ready to give it all away without a chance at ever getting it back. It was a heartbreaking decision, but a necessary one. One that both of his halves knew they had to make if they ever hoped to save each other. 

“Alright, Rose Tree,” Bill remarked, already extending a hand out to retrieve the book. “Hand it over.”

Stepper sighed, resigning himself to that decision as he pulled his sights away from the journal to stare Bill down brazenly. And, with his movements slow and steady, the fusion lifted his shield journal up, offering it to the dream demon as he prepared to part ways with it permanently. 

Without skipping a single beat, Bill swiftly snatched the journal away from Stepper. The effect was immediate, for as soon as the shield journal left his hands, the fusion took in a sharp gasp, his former agony returning in full force as his gem, birthmark, and cracks strewn across his skin all flashed a vibrant, garish pink. As that flash died down every bit as quickly, his eyes began to roll back in his head, one of his hands involuntarily reaching out toward the journal that Bill had already taken away from him. But that hand fell away as the fusion drifted off into a deep, unconscious void, lost to his pain and perhaps, to something else entirely. 

“Well, that takes care of that!” Bill concluded brightly, sending the fusion’s journal away with a mere snap of his fingers. “Now, all we need is a…” At that exact moment, the Nightmare Realm itself rippled with a sudden, forign energy, one that tore open a rift in the dimension’s already chaotic plane. A rift that happened to form into a portal not too far away from where the dream demon happened to be floating. “Aha! Perfect timing!” 

Bill quickly pulled Stepper’s limp, listless form toward the newly-created portal, one that, sure enough, led right to the very dimension the fusion was from. “Looks like you’re getting your ticket home after all, Rose Tree!” the dream demon quipped, shaking the unconscious fusion roughly. “Ohoho!” Bill’s interest peaked as he stole another brief glance through the portal beside him. “And you’ll even get your own welcoming party too! How nice!”

This ‘welcoming party’ was, in truth, more of a search party, one composed of the Gems and Mabel as they all frantically combed through the woods for none other than Steven and Dipper themselves. It was a search that had been ongoing for quite some time now, and after several restless nights of the boys’ mysterious absence, stress and exhaustion was weighing heavily upon them all as their relatively fruitless effort continued. 

“I just don’t understand!” Pearl huffed, exasperated as she peered around yet another tree. “How did they just… completely disappear without a trace?! Nothing about this makes any sense!”

“You sure your future vision hasn’t seen anything about where they’re at, G?” Amethyst asked, looking to Garnet almost pleadingly. 

The Gem leader took pause at this, adjusting her shades before letting out a disappointed sigh. “No,” she reported tiredly. “Nothing.”

“B-But they’ve been gone for three days now!” Mabel explained, her tone deeply fretful. The growing bags under her eyes were telling of the fact that she hadn’t gotten a wink of sleep since the boys had vanished, and by all accounts, she had no intentions of even trying to get any until they were safe and found. “Steven and Dipper wouldn’t just… leave without telling anyone! Something must have happened to them! We’ve gotta find them, please!”

“Don’t worry,” Garnet assured, placing a comforting hand on the girl’s shoulder. “We’re not going to stop looking until we do. No matter how far we have to go, we’ll-”

“Actually, Fuse Box, you won’t have to go that far to find ‘em…”

The entire group let out a shared, startled gasp upon hearing this all-too familiar voice echo through the nearby forest. It instantly drew their attention to the surprising portal torn near a tree just a ways ahead of them, and floating within the void it contained was none other than Bill Cipher himself. 

“Y-you!” Pearl shouted as her, Garnet, and Amethyst all swiftly summoned their weapons. “What are you doing here?!”

“Yeah, get lost, chump!” Amethyst yelled just as bitterly, ready to lash out with her whip at a moment’s notice. 

“We have no time to deal with you right now, Bill,” Garnet added rigidly, her gauntlets curled into tight fists. “We have something much more important we need to take care of.”

“Oh really?” the demon retorted casually. “You mean you don’t have any time… for him?”

Another heavy round of shock, one even stronger and piercing than the last, ran through the group as Bill suddenly hoisted a certain, unconscious four-armed figure up for them all to see. “S-Stepper!” Mabel cried, tears already springing up in her eyes. She didn’t hesitate to try to rush to him, though Amethyst made sure to hold her back just before she could. “W-what is he… h-how did he get-”

“How’d he get here? To the cozy little corner of the multiverse I call home? Great question, Shooting Star!” Bill piped up. “Ya see, poor Pine Tree and Rosebud here tumbled through a randomly-occurring interdimensional tear, just like this one right here! Ohoho boy, if you all could have only SEEN the look of sheer terror on their faces when they realized where they were! What a pair of spineless little-”

“Quiet!” Pearl snapped hotly, angrily tossing her spear, which struck the tree just above where the portal hung. “What did you do to them, you monster?!”

“I didn’t do much of anything to them,” the demon remarked with faux innocence. “Well, aside from put them in their place for being dumb enough to think they could stand up to me, of course. But I’ve had my fun with Rose Tree here, and better yet, I’ve gotten what I wanted outta him, so I think I’ll just do you all a solid and toss him back over to you. Free of charge!”

“W-what… what do you mean you got what you wanted out of him…?” Mabel asked, frightened by the sheer vagueness of that statement alone. 

“Wouldn’t YOU like to know, kid,” Bill scoffed, rolling his eye. “Still, I’m sure you’ll figure it out soon enough. Or not. Doesn’t really matter to me if you do either way. Anyway here, take your empty-headed Pine Bud back.” Without much warning at all, the demon suddenly threw Stepper forward, sending him tumbling through the portal and back into his own dimension with little effort or care at all. Though Amethyst, Pearl, and Mabel all gasped in shared surprise at his sudden return, Garnet was the first to react, rushing in to catch the comatose fusion before he could hit the ground. 

“Cipher!” the Gem leader shouted furiously as she glared up at the portal before her. 

“Good to see you all again too!” Bill replied, offering the group a cheerful wave as said portal began to seal itself back up. “I have a feeling it won’t be long before the next time we meet up. Maybe we’ll do lunch! But until then, remember: I’ll be WATCHING you!” 

The dream demon let out another insane, sadistic laugh that echoed through the woods even after the portal itself was gone. Amethyst and Pearl leapt forward in an attempt to keep it from closing so they could properly attack Bill, but their chance was gone before they could even try it. 

“Ugh! I hate that guy!” Amethyst groaned, severely annoyed as her whip disappeared. 

“It’s safe to say we all do by this point…” Pearl agreed just as disdainfully. “B-but, let’s look on the bright side: at least we… ‘found’ Steven and Dipper!”

A sudden gasp from Garnet cut through this small bout of relief entirely as she got a chance to properly look over the limp fusion lying in her arms. “N-no…” she whispered, her visor disappearing to reveal the tears welling up in all three of her eyes. 

“G-Garnet….?” Mabel took a cautious step forward. “I-is… is he ok?”

By now, Pearl and Amethyst had caught onto what had Garnet so distraught, and likewise, their panic was just as palpable. The white Gem collapsed to her knees, tears finding a place in her eyes as well as she moved a trembling hand to cover her mouth. The purple Gem was absolutely shaken, though she still managed to rush over to Mabel, hoping to pull her away before she could see what had truly become of her brother and best friend. 

“Uh, h-hey, Mabel!” she exclaimed, throwing on a forced smile as she turned the girl around. “Why don’t we, um… h-head back to the shack a-and tell Stan and Ford the good news?”

“No!” Mabel protested, pulling herself away. “I-I want to see him!” None of the Gems were really able to stop her as she rushed to Stepper’s side, though the moment she caught sight of his gem, she practically fell ill. “H-his… his gem…” she began, a sob slipping out as she knelt down beside him. “I-it’s…”

“Cracked…” Garnet finished, her tone awash in grief. 

“AUGH!” Amethyst suddenly shouted, absolutely infuriated as she slammed her fist against the nearest tree. “He did this to them, that stupid triangle piece of-”

“AMETHYST!” Pearl cut her off just in time. 

Meanwhile, Mabel placed a gentle, shaking hand against the unconscious fusion’s arm, noticing the jagged pink lines torn across it, only adding to just how disheveled and damaged he looked overall between his torn and tattered clothes and countless scratches and scrapes. “D-Dipper… Steven…” she whispered, her heart aching as she noticed the traces of pain in his otherwise empty expression. “S-Stepper…”

At this, the fusion suddenly began to stir, much to everyone’s surprise, especially as he let out a soft, exhausted groan. “M-Mabel…?” he spoke, his voice his own yet still so broken in an entirely different way all the same. 

“Stepper!” Mabel and the Gems all exclaimed in unison as they began to crowd around him. At least until Garnet put a swift stop to it. 

“Give him some space,” she ordered her teammates, looking down at the fusion in her arms earnestly as he addressed her. 

“G-Garnet… i-is… is that… you?” he asked, clearly agonized by the effort alone as he remained limp in her hold. 

“Yes,” Garnet couldn’t help but smile, overwhelmed with relief to see that he was still alive at all after what he’d been through. “Stepper, y-you… your gem is badly damaged. But don’t worry. We’re going to take care of you.”

Stepper didn’t respond, his eyes bleary as he tried and failed to focus on the Gem leader. His thoughts were all a distant haze, enshrouded by the immense, unending pain that he felt like he had been drowning in for ages now. So instead, he let his eyes slowly slip shut once more, content to let Mabel and the Gems do whatever they could to help, even if he didn’t know how he’d ended up among them to begin with. 

“C-can’t he just heal himself?!” Mabel asked, frantic. “Stepper, just use your healing powers on your gem and-”

“M-Mabel, he’s… cra--damaged,” Pearl interjected, shuddering even as she spoke the horrific word. “His powers probably aren’t working right. W-well have to help him some other way.”

“We’ll take him to Rose’s fountain,” Garnet concluded, her tone firm as her shades appeared once more. Slowly and carefully, she stood with Stepper still in her arms, carrying his languid form as comfortably as she could. “It’s waters should be able to fix his gem. In the meantime, Amethyst, go get Stan and Ford and bring them there. They need to know what happened to Dipper.”

“Right,” Amethyst nodded, not even hesitating to turn and rush back through the forest toward the shack. At the same time, Garnet, Pearl, and Mabel wasted no time in setting off as well, marching swiftly through the woods to get back to the temple as fast as possible. Despite Garnet’s steady pace, Mabel did her best to keep up with her, if only so she could keep a comforting hold on one of Stepper’s lower hands all the while. 

“I-it’s ok, Ste-bro,” she whispered to him tearfully, trying to muster a smile even if he couldn’t currently see it. “You’re gonna be o-ok… We’ll fix you right up, you’ll see. I-I promise.”

For his part, Stepper could barely even hear her, much less the anxious conversation stirring up between Garnet and Pearl along the way. He only briefly caught bits and pieces of it; the word “cracked” in particular came up over and over again, though given his current condition that was hardly surprising. Largely, Stepper spent the bulk of their brisk trip back to the temple wavering in and out of consciousness, steeped in dull, familiar agony all the while. Yet strangely, he happened to find some comfort amidst that agony: the brief, blurry flashes of war, sunlight sparkling through the trees high above him, the secure, safe hold Garnet had on him as she held him close in a protective carry, the soft, gentle grip Mabel made sure to keep his hand within, one that he wished he could return, even if he didn’t have the strength for it. 

After what seemed like years, the group finally burst into the temple, making a beeline for the warp pad. Stepper didn’t register its activation, nor was he aware for anything at all until they arrived at a familiar, serene setting. 

The air around Rose’s iconic fountain was always warm and sweet, smelling of the pink blossoms that flourished all around it. That beauty was lost on the group as they ran toward it however, their purpose grim and their hopes high that its waters could somehow work another miracle, just as it had so many before. There was no deliberation as Garnet reached the fountain first, repositioning Stepper before she gently, carefully lowered him down into its sparkling, rejuvenating water, allowing him to sink into it until it covered his cracked gemstone completely. 

For a moment, the most any of them could do was wait. The fountain’s waters grew still, the fusion floating within them just as still too, at least until a warm, radiant light began to surround him. Garnet, Pearl, and Amethyst all watched with wide, wondering eyes as that light became practically blinding, and even still they were kept waiting as it slowly faded away. At least until Stepper splashed up out of the fountain’s waters with a startled, heavy gasp. 

“Stepper!” Mabel cried, rushing for him immediately. Before the fusion even had time to properly orient himself, she barreled into him, knocking him back into the water with a tight, elated hug. “I-I’m so glad you’re ok! Don’t ever scare me like that again!”

“M-Mabel,” Stepper couldn’t help but let out a soft chuckle as he returned her embrace. “I’m glad to see you too.”

“Oh, thank goodness, you’re alright!” Pearl chimed in as her and Garnet remained at the edge of the fountain. “You’re-” She stopped short, her relief whiplashing right back into alarm as Stepper began to climb out of the fountain himself. “I-it… it can’t be… Y-you… you’re gem i-is still…”

Stepper’s stunned gasp filled in the blanks as he looked down to the gemstone, only to find that, sure enough, it was every bit as cracked as it had been before. And even more than that, it was strangely duller somehow, its usual bright pink muted to a very noticeable degree. While most of the cracks scarring his skin had disappeared, a few still remained, mostly all congregated around the gemstone itself as they retained the same sort of dull pink pallor. “W-what…?” he asked, quite frightened as one of his lower arms reached for the damaged stone. “B-but how…?”

“T-this should have worked!” Mabel exclaimed, distraught as she took in the sight of the stone herself. “It should have healed you! Why didn’t it work!?”

“Stepper,” Garnet interjected, her tone surprisingly steady as she approached the fusion. “Your gem is still cracked, but you appear to be fine. Tell us you’re feeling.”

“Um, w-well… I-I feel fine now,” Stepper shrugged, though his tone was honest all the same. And it was true, all of the pain that had prevailed his senses disappeared the moment his gem so much as touched the fountain’s healing waters. “But… my gem… w-what happened to it…?”

Garnet, Pearl, and Mabel exchanged a confused, concerned glance at this, though the white Gem was ultimately the one to speak up to it. “Y-you mean… you don’t remember?”

Stepper shook his head, his brow furrowing in thought as he tried to think about how his gem might have been so severely damaged, though in the end, nothing came to him. “That’s… troubling…” Garnet remarked, though she didn’t bother explaining any further. At least not at the moment. “Still, even if you feel fine, Stepper, you should unfuse so we can see how each of you are doing on your own.”

Now it was Stepper’s turn to be confused as he looked to the Gem leader as if what she’d just said was the most baffling thing he’d ever heard. Which, at least to him, it was. “Unfuse?” he repeated, raising an eyebrow. ��What do you mean?”

“Uh, you know, unfuse?” Mabel repeated with a ghost of a smile. “As much as we love having you around, Stepper, we should probably check on Steven and Dipper too.”

A beat of silence that felt like it lasted ages passed at this, with only the fountain’s flowing water filling it in. And all the while, Stepper’s expression was awash in bewilderment, his eyes wide and unknowing as he voiced a simple question that sent shockwaves out the moment it was asked. 

“Who?”

Next: 

[softnquebd]

Complete Flutter and Dart Roadmap 2020

Mohammad Ali Shuvo

Oct 30, 2020·4 min read

DART ROADMAP

Basics

Arrays, Maps

Classes

Play On Dart Compiler

String Interpolation

VARIABLES

var

dynamic

int

String

double

bool

runes

symbols

FINAL AND CONST

differences

const value and const variable

NUMBERS

hex

exponent

parse methods

num methods

math library

STRINGS

methods

interpolation

multi-line string

raw string

LISTS

List (Fixed and Growable)

methods

MAPS

Map (Fixed and Growable)

methods

SETS

Set ((Fixed and Growable)

methods

FUNCTIONS

Function as a variabl

optional and required parameters

fat arrow

named parameters

@required keyword

positional parameters

default parameter values

Function as first-class objects

Anonymous functions

lexical scopes

Lexical closures

OPERATORS

unary postfix expr++ expr — () [] . ?.

unary prefix -expr !expr ~expr ++expr — expr await expr

multiplicative * / % ~/

additive + -

shift << >> >>>

bitwise AND &

bitwise XOR ^

bitwise OR |

relational and type test >= > <= < as is is!

equality == !=

logical AND &&

logical OR ||

if null ??

conditional expr1 ? expr2 : expr3

cascade ..

assignment = *= /= += -= &= ^= etc.

CONTROL FLOW STATEMENTS

if and else

for loops

while and do-while

break and continue

switch and case

assert

EXCEPTIONS (ALL ARE UNCHECKED)

Throw

Catch

on

rethrow

finally

CLASSES

Class members

Constructors

Getting object type

instance variables

getters and setters

Named constructors

Initializer lists

Constant constructors

Redirecting constructors

Factory constructors

instance methods

abstract methods

abstract classes

Inheritance

Overriding

Overriding operators

noSuchMethod()

Extension methods

Enums

Mixins (on keyword in mixins)

Static keyword, static variables and methods

GENERICS

Restricting the parameterized type

Using generic methods

LIBRARIES AND VISIBILITY

import

as

show

hide

deferred

ASYNCHRONY SUPPORT

Futures

await

async

Streams

Stream methods

OTHER TOPICS

Generators

Callable classes

Isolates

Typedefs

Metadata

Custom annotation

Comments, Single-line comments, Multi-line comments, Documentation comments

OTHER KEYWORDS FUNCTIONS

covariant

export

external

part

sync

yield

FLUTTER ROADMAP

Flutter Installation (First App)

Flutter Installation

Basic Structure

Android Directory Structure

iOS Directory Structure

BASICS

MaterialApp

Scaffold

AppBar

Container

Icon

Image

PlaceHolder

RaisedButton

Text

RichText

STATELESS AND STATEFULWIDGETS

Differences

When To Use?

How To Use?

Add Some Functionality

INPUT

Form

Form Field

Text Field

TextEditing Controller

Focus Node

LAYOUTS

Align

Aspect Ratio

Baseline

Center

Constrained Box

Container

Expanded

Fitted Box

FractionallySizedBox

Intrinsic Height

Intrinsic Width

Limited Box

Overflow Box

Padding

Sized Box

SizedOverflowBox

Transform

Column

Flow

Grid View

Indexed Stack

Layout Builder

List Body

List View

Row

Stack

Table

Wrap

Safe Area

MATERIAL COMPONENTS

App bar

Bottom Navigation Bar

Drawer

Material App

Scaffold

SliverAppBar

TabBar

TabBarView

WidgetsApp

NAVIGATOR

pop

Routes

Bottom Navigation

Drawer

Create Multipage App

popUntil

canPop

push

pushNamed

popAndPushNamed

replace

pushAndRemoveUntil

NavigatorObserver

MaterialRouteBuilder

BUTTONS

ButtonBar

DropdownButton

FlatButton

FloatingActionButton

IconButton

OutlineButton

PopupMenuButton

RaisedButton

INPUT AND SELECTIONS

Checkbox

Date & Time Pickers

Radio

Slider

Switch

DIALOGS, ALERTS, AND PANELS

AlertDialog

BottomSheet

ExpansionPanel

SimpleDialog

SnackBar

INFORMATION DISPLAYS

Card

Chip

CircularProgressIndicator

DataTable

LinearProgressIndicator

Tooltip

LAYOUT

Divider

ListTile

Stepper

SCROLLING

CustomScrollView

NestedScrollView

NotificationListener

PageView

RefreshIndicator

ScrollConfiguration

Scrollable

Scrollbar

SingleChildScrollView

Theory …

Flutter -Inside View

Dart

Skia Engine

Performance

Comparison

App Built In Flutter

OTHER USEFUL WIDGETS

MediaQuery

LayoutBuilder

OrientationBuilder

FutureBuilder

StreamBuilder

DraggableScrollableSheet

Learn How to Use Third Party Plugins

CUPERTINO (IOS-STYLE) WIDGETS

CupertinoActionSheet

CupertinoActivityIndicator

CupertinoAlertDialog

CupertinoButton

CupertinoContextMenu

CupertinoDatePicker

CupertinoDialog

CupertinoDialogAction

CupertinoNavigationBar

CupertinoPageScaffold

CupertinoPicker

CupertinoPageTransition

CupertinoScrollbar

CupertinoSegmentedControl

CupertinoSlider

CupertinoSlidingSegmentedControl

CupertinoSwitch

CupertinoTabBar

CupertinoTabScaffold

CupertinoTabView

CupertinoTextField

CupertinoTimerPicker

ANIMATIONS

Ticker

Animation

AnimationController

Tween animation

Physics-based animation

AnimatedWidget

AnimatedBuilder

AnimatedContainer

AnimatedOpacity

AnimatedSize

FadeTransition

Hero

RotationTransition

ScaleTransition

SizeTransition

SlideTransition

NETWORKING

http, dio libraries

json parsing

Local Persistent Storage

SQFLITE

Shared Preferences

Hive

JSON

JSON- PARSING

INTERNATIONALI ZING FLUTTER APPS

Locale

AppLocalization

json files

STATE MANAGEMENT

setState

InheritedWidget

ScopedModel

Provider

Redux

BLOC

OTHER IMPORTANT TOPICS

Widget Tree, Element Tree and Render Tree

App Lifecycle

Dynamic Theming

Flare

Overlay widget

Visibility Widget

Spacer Widget

Universal error

Search Layout

CustomPainter

WidgetsBindingObserver

RouteObserver

SystemChrome

Internet connectivity

Http Interceptor

Google Map

Firebase Auth

Cloud FireStore DB

Real time DB

File/Image Upload

Firebase database

Firestore

Semantic versioning

Finding size and position of widget using RenderObject

Building release APK

Publishing APK on Play Store

RxDart

USEFUL TOOLS

Dev Tools

Observatory

Git and GitHub

Basics

Add ,Commit

Push

Pull

Github,Gitlab And Bitbucket

Learn How to Become UI Pro

Recreate Apps

Animations

Dribble -App Ui

Make Custom Widgets

Native Components

Native Share

Permissions

Local Storage

Bluetooth

WIFI

IR Sensor

API -REST/GRAPH

Consume API

Basics of Web Dev

Server

TESTING AND DEBUGGING

Debugging

Unit Testing

UI (Widget) Testing

Integration Testing

WRITING CUSTOM PLATFORM-SPECIFIC CODE

Platform Channel

Conclusion: There are some courses out there but I believe self-learning is the best. However, you can take help whenever you feel like it. Continue Your Journey By making Apps and also You can clone the existing apps for learning the concept more clearly like Ecommerce , Instagram , Expense Manager , Messenger ,bla bla …….

Most important thing to remember that don’t depend on others too much , when you face any problem just google it and a large flutter community is always with you.

Best of luck for your Flutter journey

Get Ready and Go………..

[hunterlist346]

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Download NSC-A1 Single Axis USB Stepper Motor Controller for Windows to combine a microstepping driver with a programmable controller into a compact envelope. Software & Drivers.Note: Individual products can be found by searching the site via keyword or by selecting one of the link categories listed under the 'Products' main menu found in the header. To browse and download files and software specific to Motion and Optical Measurement as well as certain obsolete products, visit download.newport.com.

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T-BERD/MTS-5800 V1 Model Numbers 5801, 5801P, 5802, 5802P, 5812 and 5812P Software. Free nss usb driver download software at UpdateStar - Install the driver to establish a cable connection between your compatible Nokia phone and a compatible PC.Important for Windows 2000 or XP or Vista users: Drivers for the Nokia DKE-2, DKU-2, CA-42, CA-53, CA-70, and CA-101 cables are now.

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The Windows ACPI driver, Acpi.sys, is an inbox component of the Windows operating system. The responsibilities of Acpi.sys include support for power management and Plug and Play (PnP) device enumeration. On hardware platforms that have an ACPI BIOS, the HAL causes Acpi.sys to be loaded during system startup at the base of the device tree. Acpi.sys acts as the interface between the operating system and the ACPI BIOS. Acpi.sys is transparent to the other drivers in the device tree. Drivers sahara desert.

Other tasks performed by Acpi.sys on a particular hardware platform might include reprogramming the resources for a COM port or enabling the USB controller for system wake-up.

In this topic

ACPI devices

The hardware platform vendor specifies a hierarchy of ACPI namespaces in the ACPI BIOS to describe the hardware topology of the platform. For more information, see ACPI Namespace Hierarchy.

For each device described in the ACPI namespace hierarchy, the Windows ACPI driver, Acpi.sys, creates either a filter device object (filter DO) or a physical device object (PDO). If the device is integrated into the system board, Acpi.sys creates a filter device object, representing an ACPI bus filter, and attaches it to the device stack immediately above the bus driver (PDO). For other devices described in the ACPI namespace but not on the system board, Acpi.sys creates the PDO. Acpi.sys provides power management and PnP features to the device stack by means of these device objects. For more information, see Device Stacks for an ACPI Device. Download nokia usb devices driver.

A device for which Acpi.sys creates a device object is called an ACPI device. The set of ACPI devices varies from one hardware platform to the next, and depends on the ACPI BIOS and the configuration of the motherboard. Note that Acpi.sys loads an ACPI bus filter only for a device that is described in the ACPI namespace and is permanently connected to the hardware platform (typically, this device is integrated into the core silicon or soldered to the system board). Not all motherboard devices have an ACPI bus filter.

All ACPI functionality is transparent to higher-level drivers. These drivers must make no assumptions about the presence or absence of an ACPI filter in any given device stack.

Acpi.sys and the ACPI BIOS support the basic functions of an ACPI device. To enhance the functionality of an ACPI device, the device vendor can supply a WDM function driver. For more information, see Operation of an ACPI Device Function Driver.

An ACPI device is specified by a definition block in the system description tables in the ACPI BIOS. A device's definition block specifies, among other things, an operation region, which is a contiguous block of device memory that is used to access device data. Only Acpi.sys modifies the data in an operation region. The device's function driver can read the data in an operation region but must not modify the data. When called, an operation region handler transfers bytes in the operation region to and from the data buffer in Acpi.sys. The combined operation of the function driver and Acpi.sys is device-specific and is defined in the ACPI BIOS by the hardware vendor. In general, the function driver and Acpi.sys access particular areas in an operation region to perform device-specific operations and retrieve information. For more information, see Supporting an Operation Region.

ACPI control methods

ACPI control methods are software objects that declare and define simple operations to query and configure ACPI devices. Control methods are stored in the ACPI BIOS and are encoded in a byte-code format called ACPI Machine Language (AML). The control methods for a device are loaded from the system firmware into the device's ACPI namespace in memory, and interpreted by the Windows ACPI driver, Acpi.sys.

To invoke a control method, the kernel-mode driver for an ACPI device initiates an IRP_MJ_DEVICE_CONTROL request, which is handled by Acpi.sys. For drivers loaded on ACPI-enumerated devices, Acpi.sys always implements the physical device object (PDO) in the driver stack. For more information, see Evaluating ACPI Control Methods.

ACPI specification

The Advanced Configuration and Power Interface Specification (ACPI 5.0 specification) is available from the Unified Extensible Firmware Interface Forum website.

Revision 5.0 of the ACPI specification introduces a set of features to support low-power, mobile PCs that are based on System on a Chip (SoC) integrated circuits and that implement the connected standby power model. Starting with Windows 8 and later versions, the Windows ACPI driver, Acpi.sys, supports the new features in the ACPI 5.0 specification. For more information, see Windows ACPI design guide for SoC platforms.

ACPI debugging

System integrators and ACPI device driver developers can use the Microsoft AMLI debugger to debug AML code. Because AML is an interpreted language, AML debugging requires special software tools.

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For more information about the AMLI debugger, see ACPI Debugging.

Microsoft ACPI source language (ASL) compiler

For information about compiling ACPI Source Language (ASL) into AML, see Microsoft ASL Compiler.

Version 5.0 of the Microsoft ASL compiler supports features in the ACPI 5.0 specification.

The ASL compiler is distributed with the Windows Driver Kit (WDK).

The ASL compiler (asl.exe) is located in the ToolsarmACPIVerify, Toolsarm64ACPIVerify, Toolsx86ACPIVerify, and Toolsx64ACPIVerify directories of the installed WDK, for example, C:Program Files (x86)Windows Kits10Toolsx86ACPIVerify.

The Concept

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The Concept The “Solution F2“ fire control panel is a new generation, extendable and ultra modern fire control panel for small applications. It has been developed to meet international standards and to satisfy specific international requirements at the highest level.

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Solution F2 in B1 enclosure

A lot of experience and know-how from the outstanding “Solution F1” fire control panels have influenced the development of this new fire control panel.

Flexibility – especially for connecting different detectors – was one of the most important aims during the development of this new “Solution F2”. Very remarkable: The “Solution F2” panel is compatible to the newest analogue addressable sensors of Hochiki and Apollo – two of the biggest and best known players in the detector market worldwide.

The panel has as standard one loop module supporting 126 Apollo sensors or 127 Hochiki sensors plus 127 base sounders (only Hochiki), a power supply unit 230 VAC / 24 VDC with 2,5 or 3,5 Amps, a control panel with membrane keypad and graphics LCD module, USB and RS232 interface and several inputs and outputs.

The following extension modules are available:

A second loop module

I/O interface (2 sounder outputs, 3 relay outputs etc.)

RS485 interface card

64 zone LEDs modules

Solution F2 in B2 enclosure

The convenience features

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Depending on the configuration there is the choice of one of two sizes for the housing. As a standard the panel already provides a slot for an I-module. That means an analogue or ISDN telephone modem can be plugged into the panel. By using the NSC configuration software the panel can be configured by remote access control. In addition, on the card location of the I-module the new NSC web server can be plugged in. Then you have access to the “Solution F2“ panel via any common internet browser.

Signal processing, indications and operating the panel are exactly according to the EN54 standard. All inputs and outputs are programmable. And for some more comfort there are soft keys below the LCD module and programmable push buttons for often used operating functions.

Intelligent single-loop panel with comprehensive possibilities to extend for small applications

Designed according to EN54 standard, part 2 and 4; VdS and CPD approved

Supports Hochiki ESP sensors and modules as well as the Apollo ranges XPlorer, XP95 and Discovery

Integrated control panel including graphics LCD module and internal Power Supply Unit 24 V/2,5 or 3,5 A

PC configuration by the well-known and easy-to-use NSC configuration software (Windows XP.NET based)

USB and RS232 interfaces included in the standard configuration

Extension modules available for controlling of the German Fire Brigade Control Panel incl. transmission device, for RS485 interfaces

User-friendly membrane keypad with programmable push buttons for user defined functions

Multi Sensor ACC-EN

The „Solution F2“ is characterized by highest compatibility. It can - for example - address ringbus detectors from different manufacturers, such as ESP-detectors by Hochiki or the Apollo XP95/Discovery-detectors.

You can find detailed information about this in our 8-paged brochure:

[wallpaperpainter]

The Truth About Simple Canvas Painting Is About To Be Revealed | Simple Canvas Painting

In May of this year, [Erich Styger] shows his activity alleged “60 Billion Lights” off to the world.  Now he has appear an amend on the authoritative of this absorbing assignment of art. As a quick recap, “60 Billion Lights” is a canvas art piece, which has 60 bifold shaft stepper motors chip into it. Anniversary stepper motor has forty 24-bit RGB LEDs, authoritative for a absolute of 60 billion position and ablaze combinations on the absolute canvas.

With the bifold shaft stepper motors, one can ascendancy the position of laser-cut acrylic rods central anniversary of the forty depressions that accomplish up a unit. Anniversary assemblage has its WS2812B LEDs positioned about the central edge.

As the anchored video (after the break) shows, it can be acclimated to actualize a advanced array of effects. The accomplished of it is apprenticed by 15 ambassador boards that run FreeRTOS on an NXP LPC845 (Cortex-M0 ), affiliated via RS-485.

In the ‘Making Of’ video (embedded afterwards the break) and article, added capacity are apparent of the alone components, including the bifold shaft stepper motors, stepper motor PCBs, the LED arena PCBs, and endless images of the construction, painting and assembly.

If the aboriginal commodity gave one the consequence that this was an accessible project, it is this abaft the scenes attending that gives one a acceptable consequence of the abounding scale. From the endless PCBs, ambassador boards, wiring, programming to the accumulation and testing. Not to acknowledgment the painting of the canvas itself, which is an aboriginal work.

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15 Shocking Facts About Easy Acrylic Paintings | Easy Acrylic Paintings

In May of this year, [Erich Styger] shows his activity alleged “60 Billion Lights” off to the world.  Now he has appear an amend on the authoritative of this absorbing assignment of art. As a quick recap, “60 Billion Lights” is a canvas art piece, which has 60 bifold shaft stepper motors chip into it. Anniversary stepper motor has forty 24-bit RGB LEDs, authoritative for a absolute of 60 billion position and ablaze combinations on the absolute canvas.

With the bifold shaft stepper motors, one can ascendancy the position of laser-cut acrylic rods central anniversary of the forty depressions that accomplish up a unit. Anniversary assemblage has its WS2812B LEDs positioned about the central edge.

As the anchored video (after the break) shows, it can be acclimated to actualize a advanced array of effects. The accomplished of it is apprenticed by 15 ambassador boards that run FreeRTOS on an NXP LPC845 (Cortex-M0 ), affiliated via RS-485.

In the ‘Making Of’ video (embedded afterwards the break) and article, added capacity are apparent of the alone components, including the bifold shaft stepper motors, stepper motor PCBs, the LED arena PCBs, and endless images of the construction, painting and assembly.

If the aboriginal commodity gave one the consequence that this was an accessible project, it is this abaft the scenes attending that gives one a acceptable consequence of the abounding scale. From the endless PCBs, ambassador boards, wiring, programming to the accumulation and testing. Not to acknowledgment the painting of the canvas itself, which is an aboriginal work.

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[shotgunstrength]

Personal Training

Personal Training

When considering your options as a personal trainer, one of the very first things to decide is WHERE you are going to train your clients. The most obvious answer for most trainers is to get a job at a local fitness facility and train clients there. This is certainly an option, and one that is recommended especially in the beginning of your career. The structure and experience that you will get by working at a successful gym or fitness center is invaluable for a new personal trainer. However, there are drawbacks to working with your clients at a gym, and some clients will be unwilling or unable to workout at a local facility. Don’t lose those clients by not having other options! Working out with your clients in their homes is an option for any trainer, and by offering this option to your clients you can increase your potential client base by a dramatic number, and you may even decide to exclusively offer home personal training. In order to decide if this type of business model is for you, there are several points to consider, and they include time management, exercise modalities to be used, and business resources that are available. Time Management Managing your time and your schedule is a critical consideration when deciding whether or not to work with clients in their homes. Unlike working at a facility, the amount of time that you need to dedicate to each client is increased, sometimes to the point of even doubling the time spent for each client session. For example, let’s use a standard one-hour training session as our business model for this discussion. Although many trainers are utilizing different training times with their clients these days, one hour is still a good time frame to use for your scheduling reference. You want to remember that as a home personal trainer, you can be on a tight deadline to get from one place to the next, so you don’t want to schedule your sessions back-to-back like you can when you are working at a fitness facility. You must also factor in your travel time to get to your client’s home, as well as to get to the home of the following client, the client after that, and so on. If you live in an even reasonably populated area, you will have to allow at least 15 minutes of driving time to and from every client’s home, and sometimes as much as 30 minutes per client, depending on the size of the geographic area that you train in. Using our one-hour training session as an example, just one training session can cost you as much as 2 hours of your time. A standard 8-hour workday will now only allow you to train between 4 and 6 clients, depending on where they live in relation to your starting point, as well as in relation to each other. Your best bet whenever possible is to set up your clients in a roughly straight line, or possibly a circle that brings you back to your starting point at the end of the day. The last thing that you want to do is set up a client who lives 30 minutes north of your starting point followed immediately by a client who lives 30 minutes south of your starting point. Not only will you eat up massive amounts of time driving to and from your client’s homes, but you will put serious mileage on both your car as well as your wallet at the gas station! More on that in the Business Resources section below. Exercise Modalities The next thing to consider is the type of training that you will be doing with your clients in their homes. Unless they have a full fitness facility set up – which is rare – it is very likely that you will have to come up with ways to put them through a vigorous workout without the massive amount of equipment that is available at a full-size fitness facility. In order to put together these home workouts, you need to address the two different energy pathways that your clients will need to use during their workouts: aerobic and anaerobic. Anaerobic Workouts Although many trainers are used to the massive resources available at a local gym, getting your clients a variety-filled and intense anaerobic workout in their home is actually easier than most would think. With nothing more than an exercise ball and a portable set of dumbbells, you can take your clients through the full range of motion and exertion on almost the same scale that is afforded those clients training at a gym. If you are just starting out in the industry, or are simply used to working your clients out at a fitness facility, you should do some research on the Internet for dumbbell workouts, bodyweight workouts, functional training, and sport-specific training. Those 4 keyword combinations alone will net you hundreds of websites with free or low-cost resources that will teach you thousands of exercises that can be done with little or no equipment. The key to getting your clients a good anaerobic workout at home is not the type of equipment that is used, or the actual amount of weight that is moved, but rather the INTENSITY of the workout. A bit of trial and error will teach you how to take a client through their paces in a safe but intense manner that will leave most people ready to call it quits in 30 minutes or less! Aerobic Workouts Taking your clients through appropriate and effective aerobic workouts can happen on many levels. The 2 obvious differences are going to be whether they get their aerobic activity during their session, or if you assign them activities to do after you leave. You could also do a combination of both, depending on the needs and the fitness level of the client. If you are going to take your clients through an aerobic workout during their session, you can either incorporate “heart rate maintenance” exercises into the workout itself, or you can get the anaerobic exercises out of the way, and then move into an aerobic workout for the second half of the session. Just remember that if your goal is to keep your clients inside their target heart rate zone, there will be very little rest time in between exercises. However, before you blindly go forcing all of your clients to stay inside their target heart rate zone for the entire session, consider the fitness goal of the client, and the metabolically intense benefits of structured strength training compared to a session when you just make sure they are sweating the whole time! Another option for your client’s cardio is to have them do it on their own after the end of the training session. Obviously they still need your guidance on what to do, how to track their heart rate, and how long they should perform the activity, but not all clients will actually need you to stay there and guide them during the activity. Also, it is not uncommon for people to own a piece of cardiovascular training equipment such as a treadmill, elliptical trainer, stair-stepper, etc. Nonetheless, most clients will still need some specific guidance on how to maximize the benefits from the type of equipment that they have access to. Things like interval training, cross training, and training at different heart rate levels are all things that you should educate your clients on, especially if they are going to be doing cardio on their own. Business Resources You must also consider the business resources that you will need access to when training clients in their homes. The time factor has already been discussed, and you should also consider the daily expenses involved in this type of training model. These include equipment expenses, “on the road” expenses, and auto expenses. Equipment expenses should be minimal. You may have an initial cost, but after your initial purchases, all of those assets are reusable. Basic items for home training include an adjustable set of dumbbells and an exercise ball at a bare minimum. It would also be a good idea to have a roll-up exercise mat, a jump rope, and any other items needed for the type of activities that your clients will be engaging in. A great cardio idea for clients training at home is boxing drills. If you were to utilize that type of training, then a decent set of protective gloves for the clients would be in order, as well as target mats that you hold for them to strike during their drills. In all cases, the items that you own stay with you, and they are simply taken from one client’s house to the next. It is a great idea to have your clients eventually buy their own gear, however, which keeps you from having to tote arm loads of equipment into and out of their houses day after day. Also, depending on the type of program you put them on, they may use some of their own equipment in between training sessions. “On the Road” expenses include food and drinks while you are traveling. Depending on your schedule, you will be on the road anywhere from 2 to 12 hours at a time! In those cases, you will obviously need to plan healthy places to eat along the way, or keep portable meals in your vehicle each day. In any event, make sure that you consider the cost of eating away from home as part of your business expenses. Auto expenses are potentially the biggest expense that you will have to face in order to train people at home. The wear and tear on your vehicle – although accountable on your taxes – can still be a drain on your financial resources. You have to keep your vehicle insured, fueled up, and in good working order at all times. The last thing that you want to do is be late for a client session because your car broke down, or you ran out of gas! Also, at anywhere from $1.50 to $2.50 per gallon, gas can get expensive if you put in a lot of miles every day. Conclusion As you can see, there are many considerations when deciding whether or not to train clients in their homes, and you must weigh those considerations against the benefit of being “free” from the gym trainer’s normal boundaries, and instead being in charge of your own day to day business. In return, you can command higher per session fees for home training. Since you are saving your clients a lot of driving time and gym expenses, as well as giving them an opportunity to get healthy in the privacy of their own homes, it is not unheard of for a home trainer to charge $75 to $100 or more per session. Figure in scheduling issues, the exercise program that you will have your clients on, and the resources needed, and decide for yourself if this type of training program will work for your business!

source https://www.shotgunstrength.com/personal-training/

[minijenn]

Universe Falls Chapter 64

Yesssss Three’s a Crowd is finally here, and as promised, its a DELIGHT involving a bunch of fusion and feels! I honestly don’t have a ton to say about it aside from the fact that Stepper and Dipevebel are both precious babies that deserve to be loved and protected. And with that outta the way, might as well get started!

Previous: http://minijenn.tumblr.com/post/182514454899/universe-falls-chapter-63

Chapter 64: Three’s a Crowd

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With the question of leadership on the project answered, construction on the drill was now underway. Even after the robot rumble the day prior, the barn still had plenty of suitable materials that Pearl, Ford, and Peridot were able to scrounge up to use on the machine. For the time being, McGucket had taken his leave back to his humble shack to draw up a proper blueprint for everyone to work off of, but for now, laying the proper foundations on the project would certainly prove to be a good first step forward in their efforts to stopping the Cluster once and for all.

“Hm… yes, this should all work nicely…” Pearl mused to herself, looking over the list she had created before checking over the pile of scraps and supplies resting in the yard before her.

“Yo, P! Brought ya more junk like you wanted me to,” Amethyst reported before dropping her load of various items.

“Now, now, Amethyst, this ‘junk’ might just end up contributing to the drill that will hopefully save the entire planet from impending doom,” Pearl concluded with a thoughtful smile.

“Oh yeah?” the purple Gem asked with a smirk as she briefly rummaged through the pile. “So uh… how exactly do you think this is gonna help us save the world?” she asked playfully as she held up a deflated whoopie cushion.

Pearl rolled her eyes as she snatched the cushion away from the chuckling purple Gem and tossed it back into the pile. “Well, you never know,” she said, her amused smile fading as she looked back to the mess before her. “Still… we’re going to need to clear some space out so we’ll actually have someplace to build the drill… To be honest, we… probably should have done that before moving all of these supplies out here…”

“Ugh, so you mean we gotta move all this stuff again?” Amethyst asked, already exasperated by the mere thought alone.

“No need,” Garnet interjected as she stepped up to the pair. “All we need to clear some space is a little muscle.”

“Oh, Garnet…” Pearl took in a bit of an anxious breath. “You don’t mean-”

“I do,” Garnet nodded firmly before offering the purple Gem beside her a small, cordial grin. “Amethyst?”

Upon realizing what the Gem leader’s intention was, Amethyst was unable to hold back a huge gasp of excitement, stars in her eyes as she eagerly showed her agreement with this plan. “Yes, yes, YES! Let’s mash it up, G!”

Garnet simply let out a small laugh at this as she took Amethyst’s hand so they could prepare their dance. Though still slightly apprehensive, Pearl took a step back to allow them the space they needed, hoping that they’d reign themselves in this time when compared to before. All the same, Garnet and Amethyst moved smoothly and fluidly as they strutted towards each other, their usual dance bringing them together in a burst of bold, bright light. And out of that light emerged bombastically large, familiar figure: Sugilite.

“Awwwww yeah, baby!” the rowdy fusion proclaimed, towering high over the entire barnyard. “Ya girl is back and ready to bust it up! Now… lets drill out a space for this drill…”

“C-can we possibly do so in a way that doesn’t raise half the barn?” Pearl asked rather nervously.

“Too late!” Sugilite exclaimed, swiftly summoning her flail and giving it a mighty swing. Pearl let out a small squeak of fear as she quickly ran for cover as the supplies for the drill went flying at random. The rowdy fusion let out a wild laugh as she entertained herself with her thoughtless “land development”, largely unaware to the fact that the white Gem wasn’t the only one watching her reckless display.

“Whoa…” Dipper mused in amazement as him and Ford stood near the barn, observing Sugilite’s strength from afar. “They make it look so easy…”

“They certainly do, don’t they?” Ford agreed with an enthused smile. “Fusion is by far one of the most incredible abilities I’ve witnessed from Gemkind. The fact that they can merge their light-based bodies and gem-based minds completely together to create larger, stronger beings is simply astounding! It’s always been one of my favorite topics to study when it comes to Gems and its an absolute treat to see it again for myself.” The author paused briefly as Sugilite tossed her flail once more, rattling the entire area as a result and nearly knocking Ford and Dipper to the ground entirely. “E-even if Sugilite is… quite a bit to handle…”

“So, is that why you wrote so many notes about fusion in your journals?” Dipper asked, as curious as ever to hear perspective from the author himself.

“Oh, yes, absolutely,” Ford nodded before letting out something of a wistful sigh. “After all, its about the most I could do to document my research on such an amazing phenomenon, even if that research is somewhat… inadequate…”

“Inadequate?” Dipper frowned, confused. “What do you mean?”

“Well, you see, Dipper, I’ve always believed that the best kind of scientific research is born from firsthand experience,” Ford informed astutely. “Its for that reason that I accompanied the Gems on so many of their missions back in the day—so I could see their mysterious powers at work for myself. But fusion is… something on an entirely different level. Its complexities, its true nature, the sheer experience of fusion in and of itself is something that is unfortunately beyond human’s capacity to understand due to one single, simple, unfortunate fact alone: humans cannot fuse.”

“Well… I don’t know if that’s completely true…” Dipper muttered without really thinking.

“What was that?” Ford asked, looking down to his nephew inquisitively.

Dipper flinched, suddenly anxious as he realized that he’d now have to explain exactly what he had just implied. An explanation that likely wouldn’t be the smoothest to provide given how he was still occasionally baffled by it himself. “Um… w-well… I know this might sound… kinda crazy but… I’ve sort of—ok, well not really sort of as much as I’ve actually fused before… So… yeah.”

At first, such an admission was only met by a look of complete confusion from the author, though he soon broke out into a small bout of bemused laughter that only flustered his nephew even more. “Oh, that’s a good one, Dipper!” Ford chuckled, warmly patting the boy on the back. “You nearly had me going there for a second, but I know better. Like I said before, fusion between humans and Gems is a complete and utter scientific impossibility.”

“N-not for Steven it isn’t!” Dipper protested earnestly. “I… I mean, Steven’s half Gem and half human, so I guess that means he can fuse with both? A-anyway, he has fused before, with Connie, and with Mabel a-and… and with me.” He finished quickly, only barely noticing how warm his cheeks were with the recollection of his own fusion with the young Gem.

“…Really?” Ford asked, now quite intrigued as he realized that his nephew was completely serious. “W-well, that’s… that’s incredible! By all accounts something like that should be impossible, but then again the fact that someone like Steven, who’s simultaneously both Gem and human even exists at all is a miraculous impossibility in and of itself! Still, Gem and human cross fusion… it’s a scientific marvel! I’d simply love to know more, that is, if you don’t mind filling me in with all of the details, Dipper.”

“Oh, of course!” Dipper readily agreed, more than eager to aid in his uncle’s important research. “Well, first we—wait…” he paused briefly, a smile spreading across his face as he came up with a plan that would no doubt impress the author even more than the knowledge of human-Gem fusion had. “You know what? I have a better idea. Instead of just telling you about it, why don’t we just show you instead?”

“Show me?” Ford asked, raising a confused eyebrow.

“Wait right here,” Dipper advised quickly, already glancing around to see if Steven was anywhere around in the immediate area, which he wasn’t. So instead, he began hurrying off to go find the young Gem for himself, refusing to pass off the opportunity to amaze the author in more ways than one. “I’ll be right back!”

“Oh, w-well, alright then,” Ford smirked, waving his nephew off, even if he really didn’t understand whatever he could possibly be planning. At least not yet. “In that case, I suppose I’ll be right here until you return!” A mere second later, however, a large piece of upturned earth crashed down right next to the author, courtesy of Sugilite’s recklessness, prompting him to step into the barn for his own safety. “O-on second thought… maybe I won’t…”

“The hat feels… redundant…” Peridot scowled as she glanced up at the colorful party hat Mabel had perched atop her triangular hair mere moments ago.

“Aw, come on!” Mabel exclaimed brightly as her and Steven stood before the green Gem. “I think it looks pretty on you, Peri!”

“Yeah! And besides,” Steven added with a smile. “It’s to celebrate your first time eating Earth food! I mean… technically coffee was kind of your first food, but then again, coffee is a drink so… I don’t think it really counts.”

“Then… what’s the chair for?” Peridot asked, glancing down at the high chair the pair had set her up in.

“Safety!” Mabel and Steven chimed in pointed unison.

“…So… how does this work exactly?” Peridot raised an eyebrow as she looked down dubiously at the plate of macaroni and cheese before her.

“Oh, its really easy,” Mabel informed. “First, you take this fork, then you grab some food with it and bam!” She acted the movements out, shoving a forkful of mac and cheese into her mouth to demonstrate. “Ya get yourself a yummy meal!”

“How dignified…” the green Gem remarked sarcastically. “So… what is the point of this whole ‘eating’ thing anyway?”

“Oh, well, the point is that food tastes really good!” Steven shrugged with a small laugh. “And you eat it so you can enjoy how great it tastes! And… so you won’t starve to death, but then again, I guess that’s not really a problem for Gems so… for you, it’d probably be more about the taste thing.”

“Hm…” Peridot’s expression was still rather critical as she looked down at the food in front of her yet again as she picked up her fork experimentally. “Very well then, I shall try this so-called ‘eating’, but only for the sake of gaining further intel on this planet and its bizarre customs…” Steven and Mabel both stood by, watching expectantly as the green Gem clumsily used her fork to pick up a single piece of macaroni and lift it to her mouth. However, right before she could actually eat it, their unofficial ‘experiment’ was suddenly and unexpectedly interupted.

“Steven!” Dipper shouted as he rounded the corner of the barn. However, in his excitable haste, he accidentally ended up tripping himself up as he did so, resulting in him face-planting hard onto the ground. The racket was more than enough to startle everyone, especially Peridot as she jolted forward in her high chair, ultimately knocking it, and herself over in the process and spilling what was supposed to be her first meal all over her.

“Dipper!” Steven exclaimed, concerned as he hurried over to help his friend up while Mabel moved to assist Peridot. “Are you ok?”

“Steven,” Dipper repeated, his tone very earnest and intentful as he tightly gripped the hand the young Gem offered to help him up. “We have to fuse. Right now.”

“WHOA!” Mabel gasped in shock as she overheard this, accidentally letting Peridot fall back down to the ground. Ultimately, the green Gem picked herself up and stormed off, too perturbed to continue her first attempt at eating now, especially since Steven and Mabel were distracted. “What did you say, bro-bro?”

“I said,” Dipper began a bit breathlessly. “Steven and I need to-”

“Yes!” Steven interupted, his expression an elated smile as he swiftly helped Dipper up and pulled him into a tight, excited hug. “Yes, yes, of course I’ll fuse with you, Dipper! Its been such a long time since we’ve formed Stepper, and I’ve really been wanting to give him another go since we had so much fun together last time, so of course I’m up for fusing, especially if you are!”

“W-well, that’s great!” Dipper smiled just as excitedly as their embrace disbanded. “Then let’s do it!”

“Wait, wait, wait!” Mabel interupted, casting a suspicious glance at her brother. “Not that I’m not super hype to see my favorite four-armed Ste-bro again, because oh my gosh I am, but… what’s the catch here, Dipper? Why do just wanna suddenly fuse with Steven outta the blue like this?”

“Oh, well, y’see…” Dipper began somewhat apprehensively as he glanced away. “I was… sorta telling Great Uncle Ford about how Steven can fuse with other humans and he was really interested in hearing more about it so I figured we could maybe… show him an example of a Gem/human fusion? Just so he could see what that looks like for himself and all.”

“Aha! I knew it!” Mabel remarked with a knowing grin as she placed her hands on her hips. “I had a feeling this had something to do with you bein’ a huge nerd and wanting to impress Grunkle Ford!”

“Oh, come on, that’s not what this is about,” Dipper rolled his eyes. “I just wanna help him with his research! He’s always studying all these incredible things, and what’s more incredible than someone like Stepper?”

“I can’t think of too many things that are!” Steven chimed in brightly as he took Dipper’s hand again. “I think this is a great idea, Dipper. Mr. Ford is just gonna love Stepper, I know it! So come on!” The young Gem didn’t hesitate to pull Dipper after him as Mabel hurried not too far behind. “Let’s go introduce him!”

Despite Dipper’s instance on forming Stepper as soon as possible to keep Ford from waiting in suspense for too long, Steven and Mabel had a bit of a different idea in mind. With ample space to build the drill cleared out, Garnet and Amethyst had unfused, and not long afterward, Mabel quickly gathered the two of them and Pearl to congregate in front of the barn for unknown reasons. Meanwhile, Steven also made sure to round up Ford and even Peridot, still not explaining the reason why they were all being brought together, save for the fact that it was to “watch something”. And needless to say that upon realizing the pair had gathered an audience to bear witness to their fusion, Dipper was less than pleased.

“Are you guys serious?” he asked Steven and Mabel in a harsh whisper as everyone settled in front of the barn. “Do we really need everyone to watch us fuse?”

“Well, yeah!” Steven exclaimed with a grin. “Last time we fused, the only one who got to see it was Mabel. But now that the Gems and Mr. Ford are here, they should get the chance to see us form Stepper too, shouldn’t they?”

“Uh… I don’t know about that…” Dipper frowned, rubbing his arm uncomfortably.

“Oh come on,” Mabel reassured. “All you guys need to do is dance and just pretend like nobody’s watching you. Or that everybody’s in their underwear. Your choice.”

“Hey, are you guys actually gonna do something over there?” Amethyst called as she leaned against the side of the barn. “Or did you just get us all together to watch a whole bunch of nothin’?”

“Oh, its not nothing,” Steven said brightly. “Me and Dipper are gonna fuse!”

A round of surprised murmurs arose from the group near the barn, though Ford in particular stepped forward out of immense interest as to what was about to take place. “T-they’re actually going to do it!” he exclaimed, rushing to pull his journal out of his coat so he could take notes. “If they manage to actually pull this off, then this will be a true breakthrough in my research! An absolute wonder of science and magic!”

“And… rather unprecedented…” Pearl frowned, a bit less enthused. “Steven and Dipper don’t really have much of a logistical reason to fuse right now, so why are they-”

“Because they want to,” Garnet concluded with a hint of a smile on her face. “That’s why.”

“Ha! As if those two clods could even pull something like fusion off,” Peridot scoffed, crossing her arms. “And even if they could, said fusion would likely be barely even functional given that a Gem and a human are hardly compatible and shouldn’t even be together in the first place!”

“Uh, Peridot?” Amethyst spoke up with a bemused grin at the irony of the green Gem’s doubtfulness. “I hate to break it to you, but-”

“Alright, boys!” Mabel interjected loudly, grinning over at Steven and Dipper as she pressed play on the nearby boom box to give them some music to dance to. “Get fusing!”

“Oh, come on, seriously?” Dipper asked in immediate embarrassment upon realizing the song playing in the background was none other than BABBA’s “Disco Girl”. “Do we really have to fuse to this song?”

“Well, it is the song that we fused to the first time around,” Steven pointed out with a small laugh as he already began moving to the pop beat. “And besides, its starting to grow on me a little too. I can see why you like it so much. You… do still like it, don’t you?”

Dipper paused, not really paying too much mind to the question as much as he did the hand Steven had extended out to him so they could properly begin their dance. “Heh, yeah,” he said with a warm, genuine smile as he accepted the young Gem’s invitation. “I still do.”

Without any further hesitation, Steven readily pulled Dipper into a fast, free spin, both of them twirling together, their hands joined as they moved about in wide open circles. With this immediate momentum, it was easy for both of them to forget the spectators watching them as they spun each other out, only to immediately pull each other back in. There wasn’t too much grace or elegance to their dance, but their hardly needed it as their shared elated laughter spoke volumes about just how much this dance was truly bringing them together.

However, their laughter wasn’t the only show of excitement between the boys. For as their dance continued, everyone watching it soon let out a shared gasp of amazement as Steven’s feet slowly began to rise off the ground first, followed by Dipper’s as a result of his tight grip on the young Gem’s hands. The others were all awestruck as they watched the boys rise a good bit into the air together, somehow still spinning in jubilant circles with their eyes closed and their laughter unending. The Gems exchanged a stunned gasp, all three of them silently and collectively realizing that Steven had just very well unlocked his mother’s renowned floating abilities. And yet, they didn’t bother to point that out right then and there, lest they interrupt what was, by all accounts one of the most astonishing fusion dances any of them had ever seen.

Of course, eventually Dipper did open his eyes only to realize that him and Steven were in fact, more or less dancing in mid-air. He let out a sharp, fearful gasp as he gripped the young Gem’s arms tightly, trying his hardest not to look down at the ground several feet below them and doing little else. “S-Steven!” he squeaked anxiously, his grip on the young Gem tightening ever so slightly as they continued spinning winding circles in the air. “W-we’re-”

“I know!” Steven laughed warmly as he looked to Dipper, apparently not even noticing their lifted elevation at all. “I’m having a great time too!”

For a moment, the most Dipper could do was state at Steven with apt disbelief, especially as the young Gem let out another jovial, liberating laugh. And, upon realizing that he’d stay safe and in the air so long as his hands were intertwined with Steven’s, it was a laugh that he was ultimately helpless to join back in on once more. Everyone was still completely awestruck as they watched the gently floating pair, but their amazement only grew as a warm, pale pink light began to flush out from Steven’s gemstone, enveloping both boys as their separate gales of laughter soon became one.

In fact, Stepper didn’t stop laughing, even as he did stop spinning, both sets of his four arms wrapped around himself tightly in an elated, affectionate hug. The newly-returned fusion was more or less hanging in midair, that is, until he happened to notice his precarious perch several feet above the ground. “Uh oh…” he muttered, his laughter quickly dying out, especially as gravity decided to kick in for him yet again. Stepper let out a fearful cry as he quickly plummeted the thankfully small distance to the ground, face-planting onto the grass with a very audible thud.

“I-I’m ok!” the fusion announced, using both sets of arms to pull himself up into a sitting position. He let out a gasp, however, upon noticing the very fact that he did indeed have four arms in the first place, stars filling his eyes as he burst into a delighted smile. “No, I’m even better than ok! I-I’m back! We did it!” Stepper broke into another round of cheerful chuckling as his upper arms pulled himself into an excited embrace once more. “And it feels better than ever before!”

“STEPPER!” Mabel’s ecstatic shout caught the fusion off guard, especially as she plowed right into him, knocking him flat onto his back as she locked him into a heavy hug. “Oh my gosh, its so great to see you again! It feels like its super long since the last time you were around!”

“Aw, come on, Mabel,” Stepper chuckled, sitting up as he returned her hug. “You technically see ‘me’ all the time. Ok well, maybe not me me, but Steven and Dipper me… Oy, this is getting kind of confusing… But still, it is pretty great to be back together like this!”

“Ooo, I am lovin’ those super harmonious vibes you guys got goin’ on there!” Mabel exclaimed as she effortlessly climbed up to sit atop the fusion’s shoulders as he stood. “That’s it! Operation ‘Find the Harmony’ is officially a success! Now we just need to come up with a new mission for you! Now let’s see… hm…”

“I know,” Stepper spoke up with a bit of a wry grin. “How about Operation “Who Said You Could Sit On My Shoulders”?” He asked playfully as he used both sets of arms to hoist her off his shoulders and hold her out in front of him.

“Hey! Its not my fault that you make such a good lookout post!” Mabel protested, sticking her tongue out at the fusion.

“Oh, so you’re finally admitting that I’m taller than you then?” Stepper asked with a knowing smirk.

“Ha! Not a chance!” Mabel shook her head triumphantly. “I’ll never admit defeat! Never! NEVER!”

“Mabel, I’m literally double your height right now,” Stepper pointed out, still grinning.

“…And your point is?”

“Heeeeeyo!” Amethyst called as her and the other Gems began to venture over to the pair. “There he is! Our four-armed main man Stedip!”

“Uh… actually, Amethyst, its Stepper,” the fusion pointed out with a bit of an amused chuckle.

“Oh, yeah, I know,” the purple Gem remarked. “I just think Stedip sounds funnier.”

“Heh… right…” Stepper said a bit sardonically before Pearl spoke up.

“Well, it certainly is a treat to see you again, Stepper,” the white Gem said, gently pushing the chuckling purple Gem aside. “You know, while you’re here, we might just have to fit in some combat training if at all possible. I’d love to see what you’d be able to pull off with Steven’s shield, Dipper’s sword, and that special journal of yours all at the same time…”

“Oh my gosh, that’d be so much FUN!” Stepper exclaimed with an amazed gasp. “I’d be unstoppable with all three of them! Plus, I got plenty of hands to hold them all in,” he grinned, waving three of four of his hands before raising the final one enthusiastically. “And one to spare!”

The others all shared a warm laugh over the fusion’s humorous quip, though it gradually died out as Garnet approached Stepper next. However, the fusion simply took in a deep breath and straightened his posture, offering the Gem leader a solid expression as he allowed her to silently inspect him. “So, Garnet? What do you think?”

It took a rather expectant moment of apparent scrutinization from the Gem leader, she finally broke out into a small, pleased smile accompanied by a nod of certain approval. “I think you’re looking pretty stable, Stepper,” she confirmed warmly.

“YES!” the fusion cheered loudly, only to quickly catch himself and reign his excitement back in. “O-oh, I mean, uh… that’s cool. Ya know… just like I am. Cool and stable all the way!”

“DORK!” Mabel shouted teasingly, letting out a rowdy laugh as Stepper spun around to face her in faux offence.

“Hey!” he snapped, grinning himself as he geared up to chase after her as she ran off. However, before he could, his attention was quickly diverted by a very loud, very angry yell from a very perturbed green Gem.

“YOU!” Peridot shouted, her tone and expression both burning with fury as she stormed up to the somewhat startled fusion. “You’re that four-armed abomination that destroyed my attack robinoids with your information log-based projectiles!”

For a moment, Stepper simply regarded the green Gem with a bit of confusion before he realized exactly what she was talking about. “Ohhhh right, the… dumb robot things,” he said, boredom filling his expression briefly. “Well… I’m sorry about breaking them, Peridot, but—actually, wait, no, we’re not sorry because you tried to use those things to destroy the Gems and Mabel!”

“Well, it’s your fault that I even came to this doomed planet in the first place, you malformed pebble!” Peridot retorted harshly. “I would have never requested an envoy to Earth if not for your destructive actions against my beautiful machines!”

“Ugh, whatever, Peridot,” Stepper scoffed, rolling his eyes as he scowled down at the green Gem. “What matters is that you’re here now, so you might as well try to make the most of it by helping us build that drill.”

“I will not take orders from the likes of YOU!” the green Gem ranted, furious. “I should have figured all along that you were merely the despicable fusion between the Steven and that irksome Dipper given that they’re both just smaller clods coming together to make one bigger one!”

“Alright, that’s enough,” Garnet interjected just as it seemed as though Peridot was reeling back her first to strike the fusion’s legs since she couldn’t really reach the rest of him. So instead, the Gem leader easily lifted the green Gem into the air, even despite her angry struggling as she tried her best to even so much as land a hit on Stepper. “I think its time for you to go cool down… again.”

“Honestly, that’s like the third tempura tantrum she’s thrown today alone!” Pearl remarked as her and the other Gems began to take their leave, with Peridot sending hostile, though ultimately empty threats Stepper’s way all the while.

“I’m not finished with you yet, you four-armed… whatever it is you are!” she yelled fiercely as she pounded against Garnet’s secure hold on her. “You’ll pay for ruining my precious robinoids, you hear me? PAY!”

“Pfft, yeah, sure,” Stepper remarked with a small smirk as he crossed his upper arms. “I’d like to see you try.” The fusion’s calm demeanor was soon broken, however, as he noticed the only member of the group he hadn’t spoken to yet slowly make his way over to him with wide eyes of awestruck amazement.

“O-oh! Hi, Mr. Grunkle Ford!” Stepper greeted excitably, only to quickly cover his mouth out of embarrassment over his accidental slip up. “I-I mean, h-how’s it going, Great Mr. Ford! N-no, I… what I meant to say was, i-its great to finally meet you—ok, well not really meet you since we both already know you, b-but you’ve never met us like this even though you have met us when we’re apart and—you know what? I’m getting confused again, I think I’m just gonna stop talking before I make this any worse than it already is.”

“Again I say…” Mabel grinned as she leaned over towards the scatterbrained fusion. “DORK!”

“Mabel!” Stepper exclaimed hotly, his already red cheeks burning with even more embarrassment than before. However, Ford hardly seemed to take any notice of how flustered Stepper as he instead continued staring at him, absolutely captivated by the supposedly impossible fusion standing before him.

“I-incredible…” the author murmured, astonished. “You boys actually did it! You’re a… a fusion! A true, genuine, Gem-human hybrid fusion!”

“Yep! I sure am!” Stepper grinned excitedly. “T-though according to Pearl, I’m actually like… 75% human and only 25% Gem or something? So, there’s not a ton of Gem in me, but I still have this,” he pointed down to the exposed pink gemstone on his navel. “So, I guess that still counts for something, right?”

“Fascinating…” Ford said, circling the fusion to get a better look at him. “And you appear to be so stable as well… ‘Stepper’, was it?”

“Heh, yeah,” Stepper confirmed with a bit of an awkward laugh. “Though to be fair, it… did kind of take us a while to get us this stable…”

“A while?” Mabel spoke up. “Psh, come on, be honest, Ste-bro! The first time you guys fused, you were an absolute mess! In fact, you were so scatterbrained and all over the place, that you almost-”

“O-OK, Mabel, that’s enough!” Stepper quickly interjected as one of his lower hands hurriedly covered her mouth. “I-I’m sure Mr. Uncle Ford isn’t interested in any boring old recaps of things that don’t really matter anymore! R-right?”

“Hm…” the author mused, tapping his pen against his journal as he looked between it and the fusion. “You know what I would be interested in? Being the first scientist in history to document accurate, fully-researched notes on a Gem-human cross fusion! W-with your permission, of course.”

“…You… you wanna put me in your journals?” Stepper asked, his eyes wide and his expression absolutely stunned. Ultimately, he failed to provide a proper answer, instead opting to stare at the journal in the author’s hands in disbelief, even as Mabel lightly elbowed his leg.

“Uh… Grunkle Ford?” she frowned back at the author. “I think you might have broken him…”

“YES!” Stepper suddenly shouted, stars in his eyes as he bounced on the balls of his feet in obvious elation. “Yes, yes, YES! Oh my gosh, YES!” Even despite his boundless excitement, the fusion was quick to notice the bewildered look Ford was giving him, and as a result, he forced himself to calm down by putting a rather forced aloof front on. “I-I mean… yeah, I… t-that sounds cool. I’d… I’m totally down for that i-if you are.”

“Excellent!” Ford exclaimed brightly. “Then come along, boys—or I suppose I should say, boy. There’s much important research to be done!”

“R-right behind you!” Stepper called after the author as he began to head towards the barn. Even so, the fusion lingered behind for a moment, breaking down into a bout of delighted, outright ecstatic laughter the moment Ford was out of earshot. “I-I can’t believe it! I’m gonna be in THE journal! This is seriously one of the coolest things that’s ever happened to me! Y’know, aside from fusing, which is also totally awesome since I wouldn’t even be in the journal at all if not for that!”

“Only you would get so excited about showing up in some nerd book, Dipper,” Mabel pointed out with a playful wink.

“H-hey, no fair!” the fusion said defensively. “We’re both excited! I mean, its not every day that we get to fuse, and now we get to be in the journal too! Its like a two-for-one deal, just like me!”

Mabel was unable to hold back an amused chuckle at this, one that Stepper gladly joined her in, given his already quite upbeat demeanor. “Wow, you guys are so much more fun together this time around than you were the first time!” Mabel pointed out with a bright grin. “We gotta hang out for some real fusion fun while you’re still fused! Just the two of us! Wait, no… three of us. Two of us? Eh, you know what I mean.”

“Oh, yeah, of course we can hang out later, Mabel,” Stepper readily nodded in agreement with this plan. “Just let Great Mr. Ford get in a few notes in the journal about me, and then I’m all yours for the rest of the afternoon, I promise.”

“I’m holding to that promise, Ste-bro!” Mabel quipped cheerfully as Stepper began to head off to join the author. “Don’t you go and have too much nerd fun without me, k?”

“Well, I can’t make you any promises on that,” the fusion called back with a chuckle as he glanced over his shoulder. “But I’ll try!”

Mabel easily returned Stepper’s send-off smile, confident in the fact that she’d get to have some quality time with the fusion of her best friend and brother later on. Of course, what she didn’t know was that quality time would come in a way that none of them, not even either half of Stepper himself, could have ever expected.

While the Gems continued going through and organizing their supplies for the drill, Ford and Stepper had taken to the far side of the barn so the author could get a chance to properly study the fusion with few distractions to stop them. And needless to say that Ford had already filled up several pages of notes on Stepper alone as the fusion eagerly and readily answered any and all questions the ever curious author asked him.

“So, you can control each of them simultaneously and individually then?” Ford asked, referring to Stepper’s extra set of arms.

“Yeah, pretty much,” the fusion said, holding both one of his upper and lower arms out to demonstrate. “I’m never really sure who’s controlling which arm exactly, and… sometimes they can be kinda awkward, like-” Stepper cut himself off as he accidentally bumped his lower arm against his upper one. “Like that. But they are nice for things like multitasking or carrying a whole lot of things at once, so I guess you could say they’re pretty handy. Ha! Handy!” he chuckled to himself as he waved his hands a bit. “Good one! Thanks!”

“Hm…” Ford mused, tapping his pen against the journal in his hands as he looked down at it. “You know, one thing I can’t help but wonder is whether or not the extensive fraction of you that’s solely organic inhibits any Gem abilities you may have had…”

“Uh… what do you mean?” Stepper frowned, confused.

“What I mean is that the fact that the two of you have fused is already incredible enough on its own,” the author explained. “But imagine how much more incredible it would be if you could shapeshift, or heal, or summon a weapon-”

“Oh! I can summon a weapon!” the fusion exclaimed excitedly before he reeled himself back in as he remembered exactly what that weapon was. “Uh, w-well, I mean… its… kind of a weapon, but not really. I-I’m sure you wouldn’t be interested in seeing it-”

“Actually, I’d be very interested!” Ford exclaimed, his pen already at the ready to document notes about it. “Fusion-specific weaponry has always been quite a point of fascination to me, after all.”

“Ah… right…” Stepper sighed though he was quick to perk up once more. “Ok then! Here goes nothing!” At this, the fusion closed his eyes and took in a deep breath, his four hands surrounding his Gem as it began to glow brightly. Stepper couldn’t help but smile warmly to himself as he glanced down to see the telltale orb of light emerge from the stone as he guided it upwards with his lower hands, watching with anticipation as it flashed and transformed into the shimmering pink book he was familiar with.

“Is… is that…?” Ford trailed off, amazed as he looked over the book as Stepper held it up.

“Its… a journal, yeah…” the fusion blushed in embarrassment. “I think its kind of based on your journals? I’m not really sure why that is but… yeah… sorry…”

“Oh, don’t be sorry, my boy,” Ford said with a wave of his hand. “Honestly, I find it to be quite flattering. Do you mind if I take a closer look at it?”

“Oh, sure, go ahead,” Stepper agreed, handing the journal off to the author to allow him to leaf through it. “So, um… for some reason, half of it is full of notes about Dipper while the other half is all about Steven. Again, I have no idea what the deal with that is, though I kinda like Mabel’s theory about the journal being 50% about each of them, which makes it 100% about me since I am them.”

“That’s certainly a novel theory,” Ford noted with a grin as he continued skimming through the book. “And by all accounts, this journal is a very special one indeed. Though… I fail to really see how it can be considered a genuine ‘weapon’…”

“Oh, well that’s ‘cause it can do this,” Stepper smiled as the author handed the journal back to him. The fusion opened it flat, and as a reaction to him, it began to hover slightly above his upturned lower hands. The book glowed with a pale pink light, Stepper’s Gem and unique birthmark doing the same as his smile widened ever so slightly. And then, in a swift, solid movement, the fusion summoned a glistening, projectile shield from the book’s center, quickly flattening it out before sending it flying far off into the distance until it disappeared from sight.

“Absolutely astounding…” Ford whispered, awestruck as he adjusted his glasses and turned back to the fusion with a wide grin. “Can it do anything else?”

“Uh… well…” Stepper trailed off, uncertain. However, the shield journal itself seemed to provide an answer to this question as another shield materialized over its pages, this one featuring clearly sharp, serrated edges. Intrigued, the fusion tossed it, watching with amazement as it soared through the air much like a buzz saw would. In its place, the journal replenished itself with several smaller, almost miniature shields, which Stepper sent off all at once, allowing them to fly through the air like tiny, yet deadly seeker missiles. Still, it seemed as though the journal wasn’t done showing off what it could do yet as it flashed brightly, garnishing Stepper’s attention as it flipped several pages back towards what was no doubt Dipper’s half of the journal. It stopped on a page depicting a detailed drawing of the Sword of Seasons, and when the curious fusion skimmed his hand against it, a pink, ethereal rendition of the blade itself rose from the pages, allowing Stepper to grab it and give it a wide, experimental swing. While it was bereft of its usual elemental powers, the sword was still physical and material so long as the fusion held onto it, and the moment he released his grip on it, it disappeared into thin air as though it had never existed at all.

“Wow…” Stepper gasped, stunned as the journal finally snapped closed and fell back into his hands. “I have no idea what just happened but… just… wow. I thought this thing was cool before but now its gotten even better somehow! I didn’t even know it could do half that stuff!”

“That was quite an impressive display!” Ford agreed, just as amazed. “I take back what I said before; that journal isn’t just special… it’s… its phenomenal! I’d love to be able to study it even further to learn all of its no-doubt incredibly intricate secrets!”

“Yeah, considering what we just saw, I’d kinda like to know what’s up with it too…” Stepper said, still rather bewildered as he held the book up at examined the star and constellation emblazoned together on its cover.

However, before either of them could begin investigating the matter further, they were suddenly interupted altogether as the fusion let out a startled gasp as he suddenly fell forward, his journal disappearing as he looked back to the sudden weight sitting on his back. “W-what the—Mabel!” he exclaimed as he attempted to shrug her off of him.

“Ha! Gotcha!” Mabel exclaimed teasingly. “That makes it Mabel – 1, Stepper – 0!”

“Who’s counting?” Stepper quipped with a smirk as he picked her up and sat her back down on the ground before standing himself.

“I am!” Mabel proclaimed proudly. “So what are you guys up to anyway? Still doin’ all that nerdy fusion research stuff?”

“Well, actually,” Ford began to eloquently explain. “We’re-”

“Oh man, Mabel, you just missed it!” Stepper cut in, stars of excitement in his eyes. “I just found out my shield journal can do all these amazing things like make these cute little tiny shields or even summon my sword, it was so cool!”

“Oh my gosh, I wanna see!” Mabel exclaimed, jumping up and down. “Can ya show me?”

“Uh… well, maybe in a little while…” Stepper admitted, his smile falling a bit. “We’re still sort of in the middle of the whole research thing and we’re on the verge of uncovering something huge, isn’t that right, Mr. Uncle Ford?”

“It absolutely is,” Ford nodded. “For all we know, Stepper, uncovering the secrets behind that ‘shield journal’ of yours could very well unlock untold secrets about the very nature of Gemkind and humankind themselves! Its an opportunity we simple cannot pass up!”

“Yeah, so ya see, its… pretty important,” the fusion said as he glanced down at Mabel, immediately noticing that her smile was all but completely gone by now. “B-but don’t worry! I promised you that we’d get the chance to hang out later, Mabel, and I meant it. Its just… gonna be a little later than I thought. You understand, right?”

Mabel didn’t respond right away, though when she did, it was with a relenting sigh as she realized she couldn’t very well bring the fusion down from his palpable excitement now. “Y-yeah…” she said, hiding her dejection well. “I understand…”

“Great!” Stepper replied, sending her four thumbs up as he began to hurry on after Ford once more. “See ya then!”

“Y-yeah…” Mabel forced a smile as she watched the fusion leave her behind yet again. “S-see ya…” As soon as Stepper had fully turned away, she was unable to hold back another sad sigh, wishing that they didn’t have to keep putting off their sought-after time together like this. In truth, she did understand exactly why the fusion wanted to spend this time with Ford; after all, the very reason why Steven and Dipper had fused in the first place was largely for the sake of assisting in the author’s research. But even still, Mabel couldn’t help but feel somewhat lost in the shuffle of it all, knowing that it was a rare event to get to see the fusion at all, much less in the newly found harmonious state he was now in. Even just a few minutes of free, boundless fun with him would be more than enough to suffice, but at this rate, it didn’t seem like Mabel would ever even get those moments as distracted and distanced as he seemed to be.

However, as she stood alone and upset as she was, Mabel largely failed to notice a certain green Gem approach her until she spoke up dryly. “What are you doing just standing here like this doing nothing?” Peridot asked, her hands on her hips as she raised an eyebrow at the girl.

“Oh! Peri!” Mabel exclaimed, startled out of her thoughts. “I was just… uh… waiting for Stepper… as usual…”

“Ugh, the Stepper,” the green Gem groaned with disdain, rolling her eyes. “What’s the big deal about him anyway? As far as I can see, he’s nothing more than a four-armed, impetuous, robinoids-destroying clod.”

“Aw, he’s not a clod, Peri!” Mabel chuckled slightly. “Stepper’s really great once ya get to know him! Heh, it’s probably cause he’s made up of two of the people I care about the most… even though I don’t really feel like he’s caring that much about me right now…”

“Well, why do you care if he cares about you at all?” Peridot asked, not following the concept.

“Well, its just… he promised me that we’d get the chance to hang out and have some good old fashioned fusion fun…” Mabel explained. “But he’s been so busy with Grunkle Ford that he just… keeps putting me off. He keeps saying he’ll have time for me ‘later’ but who knows when later is gonna be!”

“Hm… so you’re upset with that bothersome fusion too then?” Peridot asked somewhat leadingly.

“Well, I don’t know if I’d say I’m ‘upset’ with him, but-”

“Then, I have the perfect idea!” the green Gem interrupted with a vindictive smile. “Revenge!”

“Revenge?” Mabel asked, confused. “Revenge for what?”

“For him destroying my machines, of course!” Peridot snapped hotly. “Alone, there’s not much I can do against him and those projectile shields of his, but if I recruit you to my cause, then together can get even with that nuisance of a Stepper once and for all!”

“Uh… I don’t really wanna get even with him for anything…” Mabel noted with a frown. “I guess… all I really want is to get his attention somehow… Maybe if I could just get on his level or somethi—OH! That’s it!”

“What’s it?” Peridot asked.

“I just got the perfect idea!” Mabel exclaimed with a daring grin. “What’s the one, sure fire way to get the attention of a fusion like Stepper?”

“I don’t know and I don’t ca-”

“Fusion!” Mabel interupted brightly. “Which means… Peri, you and me are gonna fuse!”

For a moment, Peridot said nothing, instead opting to send the girl a look of complete and utter bafflement above all else. “We’re going to what?”

“No time to explain,” Mabel said quickly, grabbing the green Gem’s arm and pulling her after her so they could spring her newfound plan into motion. “We gotta find ourselves one of Grunkle Ford’s spare lab coats pronto. I have a feeling this is gonna work great!”

“Well, its certainly composed largely of Gem magic,” Ford concluded as him and Stepper stood over the shield journal as it rested on the small table before them inside the barn. “That much is obvious. But I’ve never seen a Gem weapon… ‘behave’ like this one does, so to speak.”

“Maybe its because I’m a fusion?” Stepper guessed. “Though even then, it is sorta weird that my weapon is a journal which… isn’t the first thing that comes to mind when you think about weapons…”

“It is rather peculiar…” Ford agreed thoughtfully. “Which is why I believe this warrants a full-on scientific investigation. Allow me to go fetch my camera. We’ll begin by taking several expository photographs for later use. Just you wait, Stepper; I have a feeling this research is going to wield some of our most integral and exciting research yet!”

“Sounds great!” Stepper called after the author enthusiastically. Once he was gone, the fusion let out a contented sigh as he placed a fond hand against the cover of his shield journal. There was no telling what sort of secrets its sparkling, mysterious pages might hold, and he was quite excited to uncover them all alongside the author himself.

“You know, I gotta say,” Stepper said to himself as one of his lower hands gently skimmed one of his upper ones. “This has seriously been one of the best days I’ve ever had. Yeah! I’m having a great time too! Makes me wonder why we haven’t done this sooner… I don’t know, but… I think I’d like to try doing it more often from here on out. Really?! Yeah, why not?” he chuckled as his upper arms embraced himself excitedly. “It feels… really nice.”

“Oh, Steeeeeper!” The fusion jolted in surprise at this call as he glanced over his shoulder, only to be met with a sight that baffled him instantly.

“Mabel?” Stepper frowned in confusion as he turned to face the oddly tall figure before him. Mabel had apparently commandeered one of Ford’s tan lab coats, draping it over herself and Peridot, who she was clearly sitting on the shoulders of if the obviously triangular shape under the folds of the coat was anything to go off of. The fusion watched curiously as the pair awkwardly shuffled over to them, clearly struggling to so much as balance at all, much less move coordinately at all.

“Wrong-o, Ste-bro!” Mabel quipped pointedly, grinning excitedly as she realized she was about on the same eye level as the fusion. “I’m not Mabel, I’m… Mabeldot! Or Peribel. I haven’t decided which one I like more yet.”

“Uh… ok?” Stepper raised an eyebrow. “So… what are you guys doing exactly?”

“Isn’t it totally obvious?” Mabel asked with a wide grin. “We fused! Just like you guys did! Isn’t that right, Peri?”

“Ouch!” Peridot shouted underneath the lab coat. “Will you just sit still up there already?!”

“Um… I hate to break it to you guys, but… you guys didn’t fuse,” Stepper pointed out with a frown.

“Whaaaaaat?” Mabel asked in faux appalled shock. “Of course we did! Would we be as tall as you if we hadn’t?”

“Mabel, that’s only because you’re sitting on Peridot’s shoulders,” the fusion noted. “Wait, don’t tell me you’re actually upset about the whole thing about me being taller than you know, ‘cause if you are, then that was just a joke-”

“No! That’s not what I’m upset about!” Mabel huffed, forgetting her fusion façade.

“Uh… then what’s… this whole thing about?” Stepper asked, motioning to the false “fusion” before him.

“It isn’t about anything!” Mabel snapped, frustrated. “M-maybe I just wanted to fuse with my new best friend Peridot because having only one Gem and human fusion around here wasn’t enough.”

“Uh, ok, but just one problem with that,” Stepper crossed his lower arms. “You and Peridot can’t even fuse in the first place.”

“See!” Peridot spoke up as she suddenly shrugged Mabel off her shoulders, prompting them both to fall to the ground with a resounding thud. “I told you! This so-called ‘plan’ of yours was complete and utter foolish waste of time! We wouldn’t have fooled anyone! Now, if you’ll need me, I’ll be plotting out an actual revenge scheme instead of some ridiculous, implausible masquerade!” And with this, Peridot stormed off, Ford’s lab coat still hanging onto her as she made no attempts to shrug it off as she took her heated retreated, leaving Stepper and Mabel alone.

“Mabel, come on,” Stepper said evenly, his expression sincere, concerned even. “I can tell something’s up with you. What’s really going on here?”

“I already told you, nothing’s going on!” Mabel retorted crossly. “I’m fine, everything’s fine, especially you! You’re just off, having a great time together and with Grunkle Ford doing your ‘super important fusion research’, and I get it, ok?”

“Get what?” Stepper asked, still not following.

“That you’re so busy that you don’t have any time to hang out with me!” Mabel exclaimed pointedly. “Even though you promised that you would, but I guess you guys would rather spend your time doing way more important things than having fun with me!”

At first, Stepper had no idea what to really say in response to such an intense, emotional outburst, though he quickly made a move to correct it the moment he noticed tears starting to well up in Mabel’s eyes. “Aw, Mabel…” he began gently as he knelt down to her level. “You know I didn’t mean to blow you off. I really do wanna hang out with you, its just…”

“Its just I gotta wait till you’re done with Grunkle Ford, huh?” Mabel finished, her hands on her hips.

“Um, yeah? That’s pretty much it,” Stepper said, standing. “I won’t be that much longer. You can wait a few hours, can’t you?”

“That’s not the point!” Mabel refuted, stomping her foot down. “The point is that you guys are finally stable together! You’re finally fun, or at least I thought you were until you decided you wanted to bury your head in all that boring research again!”

“W-well, why do you have such a problem with that?” Stepper asked somewhat defensively. “We’re just trying to find answers to questions that deserve to be answered! We could learn so much about fusion, and Gems and-”

“Ugh, who cares?!” Mabel interupted impatiently. “You guys could always just study all that stuff when you’re not fused! Why do you gotta waste your time with it now when you are fused?”

“Well, why does it matter to you so much that we hang out with you while we’re fused in the first place?” Stepper argued back, growing readily more annoyed. “You spend time with Steven and Dipper every day, so why are things so different when I’m around? I am them, for crying out loud!”

“It matters because you’re-” Mabel sharply cut herself off with a frustrated sob, not wanting to give the fusion any sort of high ground in this fight.

“I’m what, Mabel?” Stepper asked a bit harsher than he had meant to as the girl quickly turned around to wipe her tears. While half of the fusion did feel rather guilty about being the cause of those tears in the first place, the other half was far too incensed with what he believed to be justified frustration to let her win this fight. “I think I get it now,” he said, his tone cold as he pulled himself to his full height. “You’re just being selfish.”

Mabel was unable to let back a sharp, bitter laugh upon hearing this as she turned back around to face the fusion. “Yeah, ok, I’m being selfish,” she remarked with a rare sense of biting sarcasm. “Says the fusion who broke his promise and doesn’t seem to even care!”

“I didn’t break my promise!” Stepper snapped fiercely. “You just too impatient to wait for me to finish with Great Mr. Ford! Face it, Mabel, you’re are being selfish, just like you always are!”

A heavy, shocked gasp escaped Mabel at this, her offense to such a burning remark immediately clear. Stepper himself took in a suddenly anxious breath as soon as he said it, knowing that he had crossed a line and wanting to take it back, though at the same time, he forced himself to let it be, still refusing to back down now. “I’m not selfish,” Mabel finally spoke up as she glared up at the fusion squarely.

“Yes, you are,” Stepper countered with a bit of a tired sigh.

“No, I’m not!” Mabel argued, this time much more intently.

“Yes, you are!” the fusion exclaimed. He knew this entire argument was somewhat futile, but even so, a large part of him was far too angry and far too stubborn to simply let it go.

“No, I’m not!”

“Yes, you are!”

“No, I’m NOT!”

“Yes, you—STOP!” Surprisingly enough, Stepper cut himself off, his lower hands clenched in tight fists as he continued almost desperately. “Stop fighting! Please, I don’t wanna-” The fusion interupted himself again, this time with a sudden gasp as his Gem and birthmark flashed brightly. “B-but… but we shouldn’t…” he trailed off, closing his eyes tightly as he placed a hand against his head. “We shouldn’t say things like that, she’s your sister—yeah, she is and she’s wrong! But being angry like this isn’t gonna—I don’t care! She needs to realize she can’t always have her way! B-but we—Ugh, forget it! I’ll handle this!” The fusion finally managed to steady himself as he took in a deep breath, meeting Mabel’s somewhat startled gaze with a stern, serious glare. “Mabel, I’m sorry, but… we didn’t fuse just so we could hang out with you. And… if you’re going to be so jealous and clingy and selfish then… then maybe I just won’t hang out with you at all!”

Mabel let out another harsh gasp at this, recoiling back a bit as if Stepper’s words had physically hurt her. And for as much pain as they brought her, they might as well have. “O-oh yeah?” she asked challengingly, aggressively fighting against her pressing tears as she returned the fusion’s glare relentlessly. “Well… m-maybe I don’t wanna hang out with you either if you’re gonna be so boring and stubborn!”

“Fine!” Stepper snapped, swiftly spinning around to face away from her, his upper arms crossed tightly.

“Fine!” Mabel repeated just as angrily as she did the same.

And for the next several minutes, that was it. Neither of them said another single word to each other, their argument ending on a sour, stated stalemate. However, as seconds passed on into minutes, Stepper couldn’t help but glance over his shoulder back at Mabel, even if half of him clearly didn’t want to. All the same, his expression softened quite a bit as he noticed her shoulders hitching ever so slightly in what was clearly a mournful sob. With a small sigh, he turned to face her once again, his expression rather neutral as a result of the disagreement between both of both of his halves over the matter. A part of him was clearly angry with her, there was no question about that, seeing her behavior and lashing out as nothing more than immature and foolish. He believed that the best way to handle such an attitude was to simply let her stew in her frustration with him, knowing that she’d get over it eventually and maybe even learn a lesson in patience and acceptance in the process. And yet… while his other half did understand those sentiments, and even did agree with them to some extent, he still couldn’t help but feel rather guilty all the same. True, Mabel’s outburst against him had been harsh and demanding and even possessive to a point, but the only reason she was so upset in the first place was because of his failure to keep his promise to her. He had gotten distracted, and in his distraction he kept putting her off until later, always saying that they’d have time to spend together, but never actually following through. He couldn’t really say that if he was in her shoes, he wouldn’t feel at least a little left out and forgotten as she likely was.

And maybe… that’s exactly what the problem here was in the first place. Though Mabel hadn’t said so in those exact words, the more sympathetic half of Stepper was quickly starting to suspect that was what this conflict was actually about. With Dipper and Steven as fused as they were, it stood to reason that Mabel might have felt as though she was being left out on all of the fun they were having together, and in turn, those feelings of loneliness soon turned into those of bitterness. It all made sense, but even so, it was a problem that he really had no idea how to fix. What they needed was a way for all three of them to work this out without devolving into another hostile shouting match. A way for them to work out their differences on common ground. A way for them all to see things eye to eye.

Or better yet… a way for them to see things through the same eyes.

Stepper moved carefully and intentfully, keeping all thoughts of his newfound plan out of his mind, lest his other half pick up on them and stop him altogether amidst his own frustration. Still, he could feel that half’s palpable confusion as he stepped forward towards Mabel, who couldn’t help but glance over her shoulder at him in equal bewilderment, especially as she noticed one of his lower hands was extended out to her in offering. The fusion’s expression was mingled with both that same almost disgruntled confusion as well as what almost appeared to be a sense of sad sincerity as he nodded at her, silently asking her to take his hand. And, even despite her own currently mixed feelings about the fusion at the moment, Mabel did so, curious to see exactly what he was planning on doing.

However, the last thing she could have ever expected was for Stepper to do was grasp her other hand before pulling her into a slow, first initial spin, one that soon turned into what was clearly an impromptu dance. The fusion himself seemed ever bit as surprised as she was as he met her bewildered gaze evenly, yet even so, they continued on in easy, almost waltz-like twirls gradually leading them out of the barn and into the yard. Neither of them said anything as they tried to piece together exactly what was going on, which was something only one half of the fusion knew while leaving both his other half and the girl completely in the blind. In truth, he had no idea if this would actually work or not, but for the sake of restoring the peace and bonds between them all, it was at least worth a shot.

Unable to hold her immense curiosity in any longer, Mabel was about to speak up to finally ask Stepper why they were apparently dancing in the first place. However, before she could get a chance, she was suddenly blindsided by the bright burst of light from the fusion’s gemstone, one that seemed to flood and fill in over both of them. And, in that brief moment, both of them, or rather, all three of them finally realized exactly what was happening.

Their eyes opened swiftly, all three of them wide and easily depicting their shared shock. Their breath caught in a sharp gasp, their uneven trio of hands trembling as they caught sight of them, as well as the rest of their newly amalgamated form. Even so, they were clearly struggling to take it all in as one single thought ran through their now shared mind: against all odds and all impossibilities, Steven, Dipper, and Mabel were all fused together at the exact same time, resulting in neither Stepper nor Maven even, but in someone entirely different altogether.

“W-wha…” the new fusion whispered, their voice just about completely neutral when it came to gender. They slowly shook their head, still completely baffled as they noticed that their only extra arm rested underneath their left one, while their only additional eye rested evenly above their right. They weren’t able to make much else about their appearance, aside from their attire which was clearly a mix of that of all three of their components. And yet, that hardly mattered to the fusion as much as the fact that they even managed to exist at all, especially as they managed to realize that only a third of them had hoped for this to happen in the first place. “W-what… what did you do?!” they asked, their voice suddenly rising in both fear and fury. “I-I’m sorry! I just thought-”

The fusion gasped again, their shoulders jolting as they suddenly became aware of the several sets of eyes watching them from afar. Despite their new, rather-tall legs, they quickly spun around, only to find Garnet, Amethyst, Pearl, Ford, and even Peridot all standing near the barn, all of them staring at the new fusion, completely dumbfounded.

The fusion’s breathing began to pick up under the sudden scrutiny, a wave of unbridled anxiety washing over them. All three of their components felt it rush through them almost painfully, but it was clear it hit one of them much harder than the others. They let out a startled cry as their form flashed briefly, turning amorphous and unclear as one of their components began to fall out of the fusion entirely. Dipper didn’t even have time to let out a fearful gasp as, before he could even fully split apart from the fusion, a hand suddenly grasped his tightly. He glanced back up to find Maven, still somehow left over from their fusion and still clinging onto him, their expression morose and pleading, almost as if they were silently begging him to not let go just yet. And, despite the countless emotions running through him at that moment and the stunned audience that they had just a few feet away, he found that was a plea that for some reason, he couldn’t refuse.

Light silhouetted the kids once again as their three-way fusion reformed, still clearly in a state of shock as they glanced down at themselves briefly, before looking to everyone watching them again. To say that they were overwhelmed would be an understatement, and with so many thoughts and so many feelings pouring through their shared mind at once, the one thing they did know was that this was something they had to figure out on their own. Which was why, before anyone could so much as say a single word to them, the fusion turned on their heel and bolted, running off towards the distant fields and hills of open farmland before them, not bothering to look back even once.

“W-wait!” Ford called after them as soon as he shook himself out of his shock, more than curious to learn about something as incredible as the fusion he had just seen. However, before he could attempt to run after them, Garnet stopped him, shaking her head calmly.

“Let them be,” the Gem leader said, watching as the fusion disappeared off into the distance. “After all, this is between the three of them and no one else.”

In their ongoing state of emotional frenzy, the fusion had no idea how long they had been running or even where they were really going. The late afternoon landscapes sped by them as they maintained a steady pace, tears welling up in all three of their eyes the entire time though none of them ever fell. When they finally did come to a stop, it was out of exhaustion more than anything else as they gradually came to a breathless halt against a tall, wide tree standing alone out in the midst of the otherwise empty fields. Their trio of hands were still shaking as they took the time to stare down at them in disbelief, their own existence bewildering them more than anything else at that moment possibly could.

They had fused. By all accounts, something like this should have been impossible, and up until now, each of their components would have readily believed that it was impossible. True, three or more Gems could fuse at a time, but the fact that Steven could fuse with more than one human at a time was something no one had ever anticipated or thought of before. But sure enough, it had happened, and despite how baffled the fusion was by how they had come to be, all too soon their thoughts began to turn to why they had come to be.

“W-we… you… I… I don’t understand,” they began, their voice soft and diffident as they conversed to themselves. “Neither do I… You… you just… pulled all three of us together like this and… and now we’re…” They took in a deep breath, all three of their eyes closing as they tried their best to compose themselves amidst their countless mixed emotions. “Why? What’s the point? Why would you—b-because I thought this would help!”

They stopped briefly, sighing almost sadly as they leaned back against the side of the tree and rubbed their spare arm gently. “I… I thought… you were both so upset with each other… I could see it, heck, I could even feel it… I just thought that… maybe if you could get inside each other’s heads for just for a second, t-then… then it might help you—help us what?” They cut themselves off sharply, a sudden burst of familiar, bitter anger running through them. “See just how wrong she is? What?! I’m not wrong! You’re the one who’s wrong! I am not!” They stamped their foot down harshly. “Everything was going just fine until you came along being all impatient and jealous! Guys, wait, we shouldn’t—I wasn’t jealous! I just wanted to have some fun with you guys, which is something you clearly weren’t interested in. We were having fun! But every time I have fun, you always have to have a problem with it! Come on, you guys, we have to try to get alo—I never said I have a problem with that! Then what is your problem, huh?! M-maybe… No, come on, don’t say it, you don’t mean—maybe my problem’s with you!”

The fusion let out a loud, appalled scoff at this, one that quickly turned into an exasperated groan as their least angry third realized exactly where this was going, as hard as they were trying to diffuse it. “S-seriously, we shouldn’t fight, especially when we’re like this!” they urged desperately. “I don’t see why we shouldn’t! After all, I’d love to know more about this so-called ‘problem’ you have with me! N-no, we don’t—Oh, you wanna hear more?” They asked themselves challengingly, set to deliver this bitingly honest opinion in a unique, yet heavy-handed way they wouldn’t soon forget. “Fine! I’ll be more than happy to tell you!”

The fusion took a bold step forward, two of their arms crossed and their other hand clenched into a tight fist as their other two components finally realized that they were all about to burst into song, whether they wanted to or not. “My problem with you,” they began, their melody upbeat yet carrying a certain catty, unapologetic swing to it. “Who me?” they interupted themselves, confused. “No, you,” they clarified, eliciting a sarcastic eye-roll from only one of their eyes. “Is that you always have to be better. Says who?!” they asked with another doubtful scoff. “You do! And if you asked me twice, well wouldn’t it be nice, if you were just WRONG for once! Ohhhh…”

Incensed by these accusations, the fusion turned their nose up, initially wanting no parts of such a petty argument before they ultimately decided not to simply let these callous claims hang as they were. And so, ignoring how flustered they already were, they decided to play themselves at their own game and offer their side of the story in the exact same musical way. “Well, MY problem with YOU—wait, me? Yeah, you!—is that you always have to always have to be selfish—not true!” they protested before part of them finally spoke up rather timidly to these claims, only to be drowned out once again. “But you—You always get your way, but no, not today, until you did anyway! Ahhh…

They sighed, partially to let a bit of their frustration out and partially out of sadness as they continued walking, almost dancing forward. After all, they had hoped that their newfound, unique existence as a fusion would bring them together; but ultimately, it was only pulling them apart even more than before. “You guys, the problem with us,” they began rather solemnly, only to angrily interrupt themselves once again. “No, him! There’s no us! I-is that we have to try to—stop complaining! Don’t fuss!”

The fusion cringed in spite of themselves, realizing that even though their voice was steady and strong, they still seemed so out of harmony, in more ways than one. “How can we get along? It’ll take more than a song—just admit that you’re wrong!” they snapped bitingly, pressing a hand against their head as they tried to make sense of all of the conflicting emotions and opinions running through it. “Wrong,” they stomped forward once again, their eyes shut tightly as their tone grew progressively more intense. “Wrong, wrong, wrongwrongwrongwrongwrongwrongWRONG—”

The fusion ultimately cut themselves off with a sudden gasp of surprise as they tripped, their foot catching on a rock as they fell forward into a small stream running through the field that they hadn’t even noticed as caught up in their song as they had been. They quickly sat up, shaking themselves off and letting out a disgruntled sigh as they still dripped with quite a bit of water. Their song was all but forgotten as they began, trying to dry themselves off, more than ready to get back into their bout of heated arguing. Until…

They paused, froze practically as they happened to glance down at the crystal clear waters of the stream before them. Or rather, at their own reflection staring back at them from within it. Until now, the fusion hadn’t put much thought into what they might have looked like, as caught up in their own internal conflict as they had been. But now, all thoughts of that seemed to fade away as their own appearance practically captivated them. They were tall, much taller than even Stepper or Maven were, and indeed, they had an extra arm on the left and an extra eye above the right, yet somehow, neither appendage looked out of place or unsightly. In a way, they almost seemed to balance each other out, contributing to the unique, completely new being they now were together. Their hair was a medium length and shade of brown, loose, and free and recklessly curly as it spilled out from the unmistakable pine tree hat atop their head. The rest of their attire was clearly a testament to who they were made of as well, from Steven and Mabel’s shirt and sweater respectively combined into a bright pink top underneath Dipper’s usual vest. Likewise, their pair of loose jean capris rested underneath a purple skirt, their shoes mismatched yet comfortable all the same. In fact, despite how seemingly mismatched and at ends they seemed to be in general, their appearance somehow still made sense. Their fusion made sense, oddities, imperfections and all.

And perhaps… that fact spoke to more than just their fusion too.

Throughout the entire summer so far, one thing had always seemed to be a constant; no matter what danger or threat or trial they faced, Steven, Dipper, and Mabel faced them all together. Through thick and thin, Dipper and Mabel were stalwart siblings; they always had been and they always would be, no matter what, and in the midst of that close sibling bond stood Steven, an endlessly loyal and ever-supportive friend to them both. Regardless of minor spats and petty arguments, the three of them belonged together; the fact that they had even been able to fuse at all was proof of that. And perhaps, they all realized at the exact same moment, it was time to stop letting themselves, of all people, get in the way of the bond of family and friendship they all cherished so very much.

“T-the problem with us…” they began their song again, this time softer and gentler as they kept their sights on their own reflection. “No wait… not ‘us’… Is that I’m not just one or the other…” Slowly, they stood, still looking down towards the stream first, before their gaze gradually drifted to their trio of hands stretched out before them. “I’m not one or two… but something just brand new, so what do I do? Oooo….”

“Maybe…” they trailed off with a sigh, a bit of shame filling them as they thought about just how foolish their conflict had been in the first place, and just how much it could have damaged between them as a result. Which meant that regardless of what was said in the past, it was finally time to put an end to it once and for all.

“It wasn’t me…” they admitted, wrapping all three of their arms around each other in a bit of a lose hug as they slowly passed by the creek. “It wasn’t you… You know, they say it takes two…” They finally cracked a small smile at this joke, though it didn’t last long as remorse entered their melody, though hints of forgiveness and empathy were mingled in there just as much. “I couldn’t see… I wanted to be… part of this too…”

Their pace picked up just the slightest bit as they looked ahead towards the horizon, the sun just starting to sink over it and casting everything in a deep, rich glow of twilight. It was a rejuvenating glow, one that filled the fusion with hope and warmth as they smiled once more, finally, finally ready to declare exactly who—and what—they were. “But now that we’re three,” they began, their smile gradually widening as they walk soon started to turn into a job before evolving into an energized run. “Both us and we,” A small, bright laugh escaped them, one filled with building joy and ecstasy that they knew they would soon be absolutely powerless to contain. “And that makes you… ME!”

At this, the fusion acted on sheer impulse, leaping into the air in the blazing light of the setting sun. For a brief, breathless, blissful moment, they felt almost weightless until gravity began to pull them back down, yet surprisingly enough, it wasn’t enough to ground them completely. For instead of their feet hitting the grass below, they seemed to hover above it ever so slightly, floating gently above the earth as they started down at it in amazed disbelief. And yet, for as elated and excited as they were, they decided not to question it, instead opting to make the most out of such a bizarre yet brilliant opportunity for all it was worth.

“And there’s NO problem with me!” they sang, their melody triumphant as they hovered forward with grace and agility. “Cause as far as I can see, we’re singing in perfect harmony!” The fusion preformed a deft spin at this, more or less practically ice skating on thin air and loving every single second it, knowing that this was what they should have been doing from the moment they first fused. “A sister—a brother—friends caring for each other, like its supposed to be!” Once again, they pulled themselves into a fond, tight embrace as they leaned back a bit, still keeping their mid-air momentum going all the while. “Like it was meant to be!” they proclaimed, proud of who they were and what their fusion represented and glad for this experience, despite its less than ideal beginnings. After all, it had indeed done its part in not only bringing peace between them all, but bringing them all together, in a way that got them closer than they had ever thought possible. Which was why, with a warm smile on their face and a contented song in their heart, they gradually began to glide their way back towards the barn, ready to face anything so long as they faced it together. “Like it will always be…”

An air of confusion had hung over the barn ever since the fusion’s unexpected formation and subsequent flight. Ford, Pearl, Amethyst, and even Peridot each had their own respective abundance of questions, to which Garnet simply assured them to wait for eventual answers to them upon the fusion’s return. Still, as minutes turned into hours with no sign of the fusion or any of the kids who composed them in sight, worry was starting to fill the air, mingling with that same confusion as the sun soon began to set.

“I hope the kids are alright…” Pearl frowned, staring off into the distance the fusion had disappeared into. “Its getting awfully late for them to be out there alone…”

“They’re not alone,” Garnet reminded, casually leaning against the side of the barn. “They have each other.”

“Heh, yeah, cause they fused,” Amethyst interjected with a grin. “Which is totally nuts when you think about it. Like its already crazy that Steven can fuse with Dipper and Mabel each on their own, but all three of them mashin’ it up? This is like… a whole new level of awesome!”

“It certainly is an absolutely phenomenal discovery,” Ford commented as he enthusiastically continued taking what notes he could of the new fusion down in his journal. “Just think of the implications here! A human-Gem hybrid, not only fusing with one organic human but two at the same exact time! I wouldn’t believe it if I hadn’t seen it with my own eyes! I have so much to ask them when they return, like what the balance between the three of them sharing the same headspace is like, what possible weapons and abilities they might have at their disposal, what they might possibly refer to themselves as-”

“Dipevebel.”

Everyone jolted in surprise as they all turned to see none other than the fusion themselves, strolling over to meet them from around the corner of the barn. Their expression was relaxed and bright as they smiled at the stunned group, barely even seeming to take notice in just how shocked they all were at their sudden, unexpected return.

“W-what?” Ford spoke up, his eyes wide as he looked the fusion up and down.

“Well, I dunno how to really answer those first two questions,” they began, two of their hands in their pockets while their spare rested casually behind their head. “But I do have an idea for what I’d like to be called and that’s it: Dipevebel. I know its not exactly the easiest name to roll off the tongue, but its kinda the best you can expect when you have to combine Dipper, Steven, and Mabel together, like I do. Still… I think it fits. Don’t you guys agree?”

While Ford, Pearl, and Amethyst were still much to baffled to really even say anything, Garnet stepped forward, demonstrating that even she was a bit shorter than the newly-named Dipevebel. “I do,” the Gem leader nodded with a clearly proud grin as she extended out a hand for the fusion to shake. “Its nice to finally meet you, Dipevebel.”

“Heh, honestly, it was nice for me to meet myself,” Dipevebel chuckled warmly. “Wait… that doesn’t make any sense. Or maybe it does in some deep poetic sort of way? …Eh, forget it. Guess what I’m trying to say is… its good to be here! Even if I… sorta ran away at first—ok, you know what, I should probably just stop rambling.”

“Oh, I like this one!” Amethyst laughed, amused. “They’re like all of Maven’s fun and all of Stepper’s funny awkwardness wrapped up into one rad, three-eyed, three-armed package!”

“Huh… a fusion of Maven and Stepper…” Dipevebel mused. “You know, I haven’t thought of us like that before, but in a way, I guess that’s exactly what I am. Neat!”

“Well, you three certainly are impressive together,” Pearl said with a good-natured grin. “And I’m not just saying that because your mere existence is an incredible feat in and of itself—wait! T-that’s not what I-”

“Nah, its ok, Pearl,” Dipevebel laughed, setting the white Gem’s belief that she had offended them at ease. “Even I gotta admit that it is kind of crazy that I can even be here at all, but just for the record, I’m really glad that I am.”

“And we’re glad that you are too,” Garnet nodded supportively.

“Indeed we are!” Ford chimed in with renewed enthusiasm, his pen ready to take down as many notes as he could about this incredible new fusion. “Now, you kids wouldn’t mind if I asked you one, or two, or several questions about your physiology and abilities as a fusion, would you?”

“Ah, w-well…” Dipevebel trailed off, glancing down with a bit of an awkward smile. “I’d love to, but if its all the same to you Mr. Grunkle Ford, we’d—or, I’d… kind of like to have a bit of time just to ourselves, if that’s ok.”

The author took pause at this, surprised, and though disappointment briefly flashed across his expression, he ultimately smiled in acceptance, knowing that there’d certainly be time to investigate this miraculous, newly-formed fusion again some other day. “O-of course it is,” he nodded humbly as him and the Gems stepped out of the fusion’s way. Dipevebel offered them all another cordial grin as they left, only to be stopped by a certain green Gem as she happened to venture out of the barn at that exact moment.

“Hey!” Peridot snapped as she accitentally ran right into the much-taller fusion. “What’s the big ide—oh, great…” she groaned, glaring up at Dipevebel, unimpressed. “Its all three of you clods, fused and formed into one giant clod, just what we need around here…”

Instead of taking offense at the green Gems disparaging remarks, the fusion simply smiled in amusement at them, playfully patting Peridot on the head as they stepped passed her. “Its nice to see you too, Peridot,” they said, bidding her off with a friendly wave before heading off on their own.

“Ugh, fusion…” the green Gem groaned in disgust as she stood alongside the others and watched Dipevebel head past the edge of the barn. “What’s it even good for anyway?”

“More than you could ever know,” Garnet replied, her pride in the trio still apparent as she glanced slightly upwards, to the roof of the barn where their fusion took up their perch. “They’re proof enough of that.”

The summer sunset was peaceful and warm, accented by a light, easy breeze and early crickets chirping in the early evening. Dipevebel sat alone and silent on top of the barn, taking it all in and not needing any words to convey just how harmonious and happy they felt at that moment.

They had been told before that fusion represented relationships, bonds formed between Gems (or in their case, between humans and Gems), brought to life in entirely new, but familiar beings. Dipevebel themselves had already realized that, in a way, they represented not just one relationship, but several: the dedicated, devoted sibling bond between Dipper and Mabel, the unlikely, but undeniably close connection between Steven and Dipper, the warm, playful friendship between Mabel and Steven. All of these things were what created Dipevebel, what tied them together and kept them close. The fusion themselves cherished those connections and the feelings they brought them deeply, knowing that for as long as they or any of the individual parts that composed them existed, they’d never let any of them go.

As the sun finally disappeared beyond the distant hills and the sky settled into the cool shade of night, Dipevebel finally slowly came undone on their own accord. The act of unfusing was smooth and mutual, but even as they came apart, they were still together, enveloping each other in a loose yet fond three-way hug. None of them said anything as they kept up their contented smiles and upheld this comforting embrace, wanting to hold onto it and the simple happiness it brought them for as long as possible, and even after that.

Next: 

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[ymcaofdarkecounty-blog]

YMCA of Darke County

Website: http://ymcadarkecounty.org

Business Address: 301 Wagner Ave Greenville,, OH 45331

Business Email: darke.ymca@gmail.com

Business Phone: (937) 548-3777

Keywords: Aerobic Studio, Child Development Center, spinning bikes, elliptical machines, dumbbells, Olympic bars and plates, kettlebells, leg press, squat rack, decline and incline bench press, flat bench press, cable cross over, plyo boxes, hot tub, swimming pool

Short Description:

Heated 6- lane, 25 yard long swimming pool

Free-weight center with dumb bells up to 100lbs, olympic barbells, bumper plates, kettlebells, two power racks, two flat benches, incline and decline benches, Smith Machine, cable stacks, leg press, and more

Indoor basketball Court

Racquetball courts- rackets and balls available at the Welcome Center

Gymnastics arena

Indoor tennis court- rackets and balls available at the Welcome Center

Pickleball- equipment available at the Welcome Center

Indoor walking/running track – 1/10th of a mile per lap

Adult Only Locker Rooms with Sauna

Regular Locker Rooms

Family/Special Needs Locker Room

Hot Tub/Spa- adults only

Steam Room

Cardio-strength room, with a full circuit of selectorized strength machines, plus cardio equipment including treadmills, steppers, elliptical machines, bikes, recumbent bikes, a rowing machine, and adaptive motion trainers

Aerobics studio

Party room

Conference room

Child Development Center

Description: About us

HISTORY OF THE Y

The YMCA was founded in London, England in 1844 by George Williams and some friends. Their goal was to help young men like themselves find God. The first members were evangelical Protestants who prayed and studied the Bible as an alternative to vice.

The first U.S. YMCA was started in Boston in 1851 by Thomas Sullivan, a retired sea captain and lay missionary. YMCAs spread rapidly across America, opening their doors to boys and men of all ages. Some YMCAs were started to serve specific groups such as railroad and factory workers, as well as African Americans, Native Americans and recent immigrants. After World War II, women and girls were admitted. Today, half of all YMCA members are female, and half are under age 18.

Here in Darke County, the YMCA was founded in 1965. It was originally located at 212 E. Main Street in Greenville. In 1971, the Greenville facility located at 301 Wagner Avenue was opened. Renovations have been made over the years, including the addition of the Dorothy Coppock Hole Child Care Center in 1992 and the GTI Youth Gym in 1994. In 1998, the YMCA of Darke County opened a facility in Versailles.

COMMUNITY

Welcome to the YMCA of Darke County! The Y is a powerful association of men, women and children joined together by a shared commitment of nurturing the potential of kids, promoting healthy living and fostering a sense of social responsibility. We believe that lasting personal and social change can only come about when we work together to invest in our kids, our health and our neighbors. That’s why, at the Y, strengthening the foundation of our community is our cause. Every day we work side-by-side with our neighbors to make sure everyone, regardless of age, income or background, has the opportunity to learn, grown and thrive.

Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Policy

The YMCA of Darke County, as a global active citizen, and in keeping with the longtime philosophy of the YMCA mission, has adopted a Diversity and Inclusion Policy that drives our efforts and calls for access and engagement of all in the community regardless of race, ethnicity, gender identity, national origin, faith, age, income levels, sexual orientation, immigration status, or any protected status.

What is Diversity and Inclusion?

Diversity: The presence of differences that make each person unique and that can be used to differentiate groups and people from one another.

Inclusion: The full engagement and development of all Y stakeholders (staff, participants, members, policy volunteers, program volunteers, partners, communities, vendors, etc.).

Equity: Equity is the guarantee of fair treatment, access, opportunity, and advancement for all, while striving to identify and eliminate barriers that have prevented full participation of some groups; it acknowledges historically underserved and underrepresented populations, and that fairness regarding these unbalanced conditions is needed to assist equality in the provision of effective opportunities to all groups.

The Y is made up of people of all ages and from every walk of life working side by side to strengthen communities. Together we work to ensure everyone, regardless of gender, income, faith, sexual orientation or cultural background has the opportunity to live life to its fullest. We share the values of caring, honesty, respect and responsibility—everything we do stems from it.

Scholarship Assistance

At the YMCA of Darke County, no one is turned away due to inability to pay program or membership fees. The Y maintains a scholarship program for youth, adults and families who demonstrate financial need.

Special Needs

Special people have special needs and the Y is a good place for those in need to develop physically and socially, and learn to lead healthy lives. Groups such as Wayne Industries, Special Olympics, Big Brothers Big Sisters and Michael’s Home are able to enjoy the YMCA of Darke County every year.

Child Development

The Child Development Centers in Greenville and Versailles service nearly 150 children from Darke County. From as young as six weeks old through fourth grade, the Y provides full-time day care in a setting that is safe, secure and offers children a warm and loving environment in which to grow. With help from the United Way, the Y is able to provide families in need with quality child care that is close to home. We have part-time care available for children in the Infant Room through Day Care II.

Local Schools

The Y facilities are used by youth athletics throughout the county, such as baseball clinics, and tennis and swim teams. The Y also welcomes classes, grades and entire schools for field trips or student rewards. It’s a great treat for the schools and a great way share the YMCA values with kids.

Healthy Heart Center

Adults who have had a heart attack, surgery or heart disease and are under a physician’s care are referred to the Y for phases 3 and 4 of cardiac rehabilitation. Our trained fitness counselor works one-on-one with patients on computerized monitored fitness equipment to help them return to a healthy — if not healthier — lifestyle.

Tobacco Policy

The purpose of the YMCA of Darke County is to help individuals develop a stronger spirit, mind, and body. In an effort to help our members, program participants, and childcare families accomplish this goal we ask that all tobacco products be disposed of properly before approaching the Y building entrances as a courtesy to individuals who do not smoke.

Operating Hours: Monday – Friday: 5:00 am – 9:30 pm, Saturday: 7:00 am – 5:00 pm Sunday: 1:00 pm – 5:00 pm

Social Media Links: https://www.facebook.com/ymcadarkecounty/ https://goo.gl/maps/JwbJgyb3DX786wx76

 Video URL: https://www.facebook.com/ymcadarkecounty/videos/853932864939835/

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[suzanneshannon]

Creating Reusable Base Classes in TypeScript with a Real-Life Example

Hey CSS-Tricksters! Bryan Hughes was kind enough to take a concept from an existing post he published on converting to TypeScript and take it a few couple steps further in this post to elaborate on creating reusable base classes. While this post doesn’t require reading the other one, it’s certainly worth checking it out because it covers the difficult task of rewriting a codebase and writing unit tests to help the process.

Johnny-Five is an IoT and robotics library for Node.js. Johnny-Five makes it easy to interact with hardware by taking a similar approach that jQuery took to the web a decade ago: it normalizes the differences between various hardware platforms. Also like jQuery, Johnny-Five provides higher-level abstractions that make it easier to work with the platform.

Johnny-Five supports a wide array of platforms via IO Plugins, from the Arduino family, to the Tessel, to the Raspberry Pi, and many more. Each IO Plugin implements a standardized interface for interacting with lower-level hardware peripherals. Raspi IO, which I first created five years ago, is the IO plugin that implements support for the Raspberry Pi.

Any time there are multiple implementations that conform to one thing, there is a chance to share code. IO Plugins are no exception, however, we have not shared any code between IO Plugins to date. We recently decided, as a group, that we wanted to change this. The timing was fortuitous since I was planning on rewriting Raspi IO in TypeScript anyways, so I agreed to take on this task.

The goals of a base class

For those who many not be familiar with using class-based inheritance to enable code sharing, let’s do a quick walk-through of what I mean when I say “creating a base class to reuse code."

A base class provides structure and common code that other classes can extend. Let’s take a look at a simplified TypeScript example base class that we will extend later:

abstract class Automobile { private _speed: number = 0; private _direction: number = 0; public drive(speed: number): void { this._speed = speed; } public turn(direction: number): void { if (direction > 90 || direction < -90) { throw new Error(`Invalid direction "${direction}"`); } this._direction = direction; } public abstract getNumDoors(): number; }

Here, we have created a base class that we call Automobile. This provides some basic functionality shared between all types of automobiles, whether it’s a car, a pickup, etc. Notice how this class is marked as abstract, and how there is one abstract method called getNumDoors. This method is dependent on the specific type of automobile. By defining it as an abstract class, we are saying that we require another class to extend this class and implement this method. We can do so with this code:

class Sedan extends Automobile { public getNumDoors(): number { return 4; } } const myCar = new Sedan(); myCar.getNumDoors(); // prints 4 myCar.drive(35); // sets _speed to 35 myCar.turn(20); // sets _direction to 20

We’re extending the Automobile class to create a four-door sedan class. We can now call all methods on both classes, as if it were a single class.

For this project, we’ll create a base class called AbstractIO that any IO plugin author can then extend to implement a platform-specific IO Plugin.

Creating the Abstract IO base class

Abstract IO is the base class I created to implement the IO Plugin spec for use by all IO Plugin authors, and is available today on npm.

Each author has their own unique style, some preferring TypeScript and others preferring vanilla JavaScript. This means that, first and foremost, this base class must conform to the intersection of TypeScript best practices and JavaScript best practices. Finding the intersection of best practices isn’t always obvious though. To illustrate, let’s consider two parts of the IO Plugin spec: the MODES property and the digitalWrite method, both of which are required in IO Plugins.

The MODES property is an object, with each key having a human readable name for a given mode type, such as INPUT, and the value being the numerical constant associated with the mode type, such as 0. These numerical values show up in other places in the API, such as the pinMode method. In TypeScript, we would want to use an enum to represent these values, but JavaScript doesn’t support it. In JavaScript, the best practice is to define a series of constants and put them into an object “container."

How do we resolve this apparent split between best practices? Create one using the other! We start by defining an enum in TypeScript and define each mode with an explicit initializer for each value:

export enum Mode { INPUT = 0, OUTPUT = 1, ANALOG = 2, PWM = 3, SERVO = 4, STEPPER = 5, UNKNOWN = 99 }

Each value is carefully chosen to map explicitly to the MODES property as defined by the spec, which is implemented as part of the Abstract IO class with the following code:

public get MODES() { return { INPUT: Mode.INPUT, OUTPUT: Mode.OUTPUT, ANALOG: Mode.ANALOG, PWM: Mode.PWM, SERVO: Mode.SERVO, UNKNOWN: Mode.UNKNOWN } }

With this, we have nice enums when we’re in TypeScript-land and can ignore the numerical values entirely. When we’re in pure JavaScript-land, we still have the MODES property we can pass around in typical JavaScript fashion so we don’t have to use numerical values directly.

But what about methods in the base class that derived classes must override? In the TypeScript world, we would use an abstract class, as we did in the example above. Cool! But what about the JavaScript side? Abstract methods are compiled out and don’t even exist in the output JavaScript, so we have nothing to ensure methods are overridden there. Another contradiction!

Unfortunately, I couldn’t come up with a way to respect both languages, so I defaulted to using the JavaScript approach: create a method in the base class that throws an exception:

public digitalWrite(pin: string | number, value: number): void { throw new Error(`digitalWrite is not supported by ${this.name}`); }

It’s not ideal because the TypeScript compiler doesn’t warn us if we don’t override the abstract base method. However, it does work in TypeScript (we still get the exception at runtime), as well as being a best practice for JavaScript.

Lessons learned

While working through the best way to design for both TypeScript and vanilla JavaScript, I determined that the best way to solve discrepancies is:

Use a common best practice shared by each language

If that doesn’t work, try to use the TypeScript best practice “internally" and map it to a separate vanilla JavaScript best practice “externally," like we did for the MODES property.

And if that approach doesn’t work, default to using the vanilla JavaScript best practice, like we did for the digitalWrite method, and ignore the TypeScript best practice.

These steps worked well for creating Abstract IO, but these are simply what I discovered. If you have any better ideas I’d love to hear them in the comments!

I discovered that abstract classes are not useful in vanilla JavaScript projects since JavaScript doesn’t have such a concept. This means that they are an anti-pattern here, even though abstract classes are a TypeScript best practice. TypeScript also doesn’t provide mechanisms to ensure type-safety when overriding methods, such as the override keyword in C#. The lesson here is that you should pretend that abstract classes don’t exist when targeting vanilla JavaScript users as well.

I also learned that it’s really important to have a single source of truth for interfaces shared across modules. TypeScript uses duck typing as its core type system pattern, and is very useful inside any given TypeScript project. However, synchronizing types across separate modules using duck typing turned out to be more of a maintenance headache than exporting an interface from one module and importing it into another. I had to keep publishing little changes to modules until I got them aligned on their types, leading to excess version number churn.

The final lesson I learned isn’t a new one: get feedback throughout the design process from library consumers. Knowing this going in, I set up two primary rounds of feedback. The first round was in person at the Johnny-Five collaborator’s summit where we brainstormed as a group. The second round was a pull request I opened against myself, despite being the only collaborator on Abstract IO with permission to merge pull requests. The pull request proved invaluable as we sifted through the details as a group. The code at the beginning of the PR bared little resemblance to the code when it was merged, which is good!

Wrapping up

Producing base classes destined to be consumed by both TypeScript and vanilla JavaScript users is a mostly straightforward process, but there are some gotchas. Since TypeScript is a superset of JavaScript, the two mostly share the same best practices. When differences in best practices do arise, a little creativity is required to find the best compromise.

I managed to achieve my goals with Abstract IO, and implemented a base class that serves both TypeScript and vanilla JavaScript IO Plugin authors well. Turns out, it’s (mostly) possible to have your cake and eat it too!

The post Creating Reusable Base Classes in TypeScript with a Real-Life Example appeared first on CSS-Tricks.

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