#please ignore the stickers that’s the only version of that panel I had saved

[steampunk-cowboy]

I can’t believe they got rid of his best feature fuckinh shaking and crying

[feferipeixes]

The Good Lines (2/3)

Trapped in an unfamiliar world, Alcor finds that he doesn’t mind the loneliness. He doesn’t care about finding a way out. He doesn’t even care about Mizar. All he cares about is solving puzzles, and drawing the good lines.

(or: I Think Dipper Should Play The Witness)

Chapter 2: Hotel (link to chapter 1) (3)

(See the most updated version on AO3!)

===

There was an earth-shaking roar in the sky as Mizar drew the line. Alcor couldn’t quite catch exactly how she did it since she wasn’t there with him in person, but the noise it made was deafening. He tried to look around for the panel responsible but there were no panels around him that he hadn’t already solved himself. It happened so quickly, and then there was the sound of an explosion, followed by a building taking form directly in front of him.

He eyed it uneasily. “This is the hotel?”

“Yep.” Mizar’s voice still came through clear as day. “This will take you out of the game. Then you’ll be free.”

“I’m not -” he started, but thought better of it. He could feel Mizar’s eyes on him from another world, looking down through a television screen, and figured he’d caused her enough stress. “Okay. Here we go.”

It’s not like he had much of a choice anyway. The entrance to the hotel had replaced the only exit from the garden he’d been standing in. He approached the opening, peering down the long hallway lined with fancy sconces. He took a step inside and immediately the ambient hum of the outdoors cut out. He may have thought it was quiet on the island before but it was nothing compared to the emptiness he was feeling now. He had to turn around just to verify that the outside even still existed. Two steps in and he already felt swallowed up by the unknown.

“Dipper?” Mizar’s voice came out of nowhere, and Alcor nearly jumped out of his skin. “Sorry! Are you alright?”

Alcor clutched his chest and took a few deep breaths before responding. “Yeah. I’m fine.” His wings didn’t get the memo, flapping hard against the wall and his back. “This place isn’t weird and creepy at all.”

He couldn’t see her, but Alcor could practically hear the frown in Mizar’s voice. “I thought you loved the weird and creepy.”

“I do! I really do.” He took some shaky steps down the hall to what looked like a reception desk. It sat in front of a wide pillar decorated with a pattern of orange spikes that fanned up and out across the ceiling like a sunburst. “In fact, I’d kinda love to explore a place like this.” Turning a corner, he found himself face-to-face with a large painting of a windmill, and he remembered a similar structure he’d come across in the island’s town. A structure that sat atop a network of underground tunnels, most of which were blocked off by wooden gates he hadn’t been able to bypass. “It’s the thought of all the other stuff I won’t get the chance to explore that’s getting me down.”

“I’m sorry,” came the response.

Alcor waited for more, but more didn’t come. Sighing, he headed past the reception, where there was a bar, some seating, and a balcony. Eyes growing wide, he approached the edge and looked out. Somehow, despite not climbing any stairs from where he was in the garden, the balcony was high enough that he could see half the island. His eyes passed over the desert, the town, the forest, and up to the structure at the top of the mountain. It gave him the feeling that he wasn’t supposed to be there, that the ground he was standing on didn’t exist and he was soaring freely through paradise.

“No, don’t do that!” Mizar’s voice snapped.

Alcor blinked and broke out of his thoughts. Without intending to, he’d flared his wings large and wide, and was standing in a position like he was ready to dive forward. Taking a step backward, he let his wings shrink and balled his hands into fists. “I didn’t… I didn’t mean to. I wasn’t going to.”

Mizar gulped -- a strange sound to get beamed so clearly into Alcor’s head. “That’s alright. It’s not your fault. How about… you keep going?”

He shrugged, and looked around. A set of stairs led to a doorway on the second floor of the hotel, and he followed them up. He glanced back once more before entering. “If my kid really made this for me, he did a really good job.”

“Oh?”

“Yeah.” Alcor went through the doorway, and found himself inexplicably in what looked like a cave. Diamond-shaped hanging fixtures bathed the room in an eerie green glow. “Back when I was human, I spent all my time trying to uncover the mysteries of Gravity Falls. He would’ve known that I couldn’t resist a good mystery. I mean, like -” (he walked a little further, to where a set of lounge chairs overlooked a gap in the cave wall) “what the hell is this? Why is this hotel like this?”

He peered through the gap and saw that it dropped down into another cave, a cave in which he couldn’t help but notice there were puzzle panels. Some were mounted onto the walls, some seemed to be suspended from the ceiling on thick cables. All of them were deactivated, and Alcor’s heart sank at the thought that he wouldn’t get to know what kind of puzzles they concealed.

“Even on the way out,” he mused, “My kid has to go and throw more secrets at me.”

“There are mysteries out here, too,” Mizar said after a beat.

Alcor heard the waver in her voice and sighed again. “Yeah, yeah, I know. It’s just not as fun when I already know the answers to everything out there.”

She didn’t respond to that either, so he pressed onward. The passage got narrower, and he almost had to squeeze himself through a couple of the gaps.

“I have to admit, though,” he spoke up, “that it’ll be nice to have my magic back. If I could change my shape, I’d be through here in no time. Better yet, I could just tesser to the end of this thing! Doing puzzles all day is fun, but maybe I gotta realize there’s other stuff that’s more important to me.”

There was a snort and a half-suppressed giggle. “Really. And that’s magic? Not, like, your family?”

Alcor put on a display of thinking about it and smirked. “Yep! Definitely magic. Definitely not the people who love me enough to go through hell saving me from a virtual reality… game…” He trailed off as he passed by another gap in the wall. It looked out over another cave, although unlike the last one, this one was wide open and mostly empty.

“Dipper?” The giggle in Mizar’s voice trailed off too. “Why’d you stop?”

Water rushed beneath his feet, flowing into the chamber below, lapping up against the shore and the chunk of ground sticking out in the center of the room. In the middle of this chunk was a small table, illuminated by a single light hanging from the ceiling, and on this table was… something.

“What’s… that?” he breathed.

“What’s what? Uhh...” she responded. There was some banging in his head, the sound of drawers opening and closing, of devices being moved around. “Sorry, everything went a bit fuzzy, uhh…” A loud crash followed by the sizzle of a CRT monitor turning on and finally a sigh of relief. “Ah, fixed it! Okay, let me, uh… Oh. Oh no. Shit.”

It was hard to tell what the thing on the table was from a distance. There were two black boxes angled outward, and there was something else behind them. Whatever it was, it had a thick wire trailing out of it. Alcor wondered where it went.

“Shit! Don’t look at that. It’s… nothing!”

He glanced up, and noticed another hole in the wall across the room, through which he was surprised to see a figure in a dark suit with a floating top hat. The figure’s wings were flapping wildly. He looked over his shoulder -- huh. Looked like his own wings were doing that too.

“There’s nothing interesting down there. Just a boring cave! Hey, how about you keep going through the hotel? There’s another scenic overlook of the island coming up! That’ll be fun to look at, right?”

Alcor turned around and saw that there was a gap in the cave wall directly behind him. Peering through it, he found himself viewing the same cave as before, but from the opposite side. From this angle, he could see the panel mounted in front of the other objects on the table.

And he could see that it was active.

“Dipper, please,” Mizar pleaded. “You don’t want to do that. It’s not worth it. You won’t be able to solve it.”

“Seriously?” he said, remembering that he could talk. “That just makes me want to check it out even more. I’ll be quick, I just really wanna know what that thing is.”

Taking a few steps back, Alcor stretched his arms and wings. He took his suit jacket off and tossed it aside, where it promptly vanished. Rolling his sleeves up, he rubbed his hands together and grinned. Then he ran forward and dove through the opening into the cave below.

“WHAT are you DOING?” Mizar yelled, her voice clipping out the microphone she was using to speak with him. “That’s not even POSSIBLE. You can’t jump or go off ledges in this game! I checked!”

Ignoring her, Alcor drifted downward, feeling the rush of air in his face for the first time in a while. He touched ground, shoes clacking against the stone, and let the force of the impact ripple through him. He was pretty sure Mizar was right -- that you couldn’t jump in this game -- but he didn’t care. There was only one thing he cared about right now.

Up close, he could see that the object on the table was a record player, with the two black boxes being speakers. There was a record already mounted on the device; instead of a sticker in the middle to identify what was on it, it only bore an image of an orange sunburst, just like the decoration in the hotel lobby. And finally, there was a panel on the table, which he could only assume would start or stop the record.

It was odd, to be sure. What would such a device be doing in a cave? Weird stuff like that was always intriguing, sure, but presumably all the device did was play music. Why had Mizar said that he wouldn't be able to solve it?

[ Because the music is only part of the puzzle, ] a metallic voice said, and Alcor's eyes widened in surprise.

“Kid?” he asked.

[ Hi Dad. Nice to talk to you again. I hope you're enjoying the game. ]

“It's really you,” Alcor marveled. “Mizar was right. You're the one who made all of this. The island, the puzzles, everything.”

[ Sure did! ] the virus replied with a vaguely smug note to his synthesized voice. [ I worked real hard on it, cause I only want the best of the best for my dad. And speaking of the best, you're in luck! You've stumbled into my magnum opus. I call it - ]

There was a bang, like a fist coming down on a table, and Mizar's voice rang out into the cave. “No! Don't listen to it!”

[ - The Challenge. ]

Alcor felt a tingle run down his spine. “That’s so foreboding! What is it?”

[ It’s a test of your puzzle-solving abilities! Two songs will play, and you’ll have until the end of the second one to solve a set of randomly generated puzzles. If the music stops, you have to start all over with new puzzles! But if you can solve them all in time, a fabulous prize waits for you at the end! ]

“A prize?” There was a muffled pounding noise in the distance, but Alcor tuned it out. “What’s the prize?”

Al-V’s smile was practically audible. [ Why don't you find out for yourself? ]

The panel on the table. Alcor approached it, enrapt with curiosity, and put his finger on the start circle. There were two ends to the panel. One was a tiny little line sticking out of the circle. He tried that one first, and nothing seemed to happen. Pursing his lips, he pressed on the circle again and dragged his finger down the long path that extended the full length of the panel.

“Wait!” Mizar yelled before he could lift his finger. “Dipper, it's a trap! Please listen to me! You were so close to escaping the game! Think of your family! They miss you! This can't be -”

Al-V’s voice cut over Mizar's. [ Family, schmamily. Think of all the puzzles waiting for you to solve them. Won't that be fun? At least give it a try. ]

There was a lump in Alcor's throat and he swallowed hard to get past it. “I… Sorry Mizar.” He lifted his finger, and the panel made a clicking noise. “I gotta see what this is.”

There was a soft rumble as the record player activated. The tonearm glided into position above the record, which slowly began to spin. After a moment, the thick cable attached to the player lit up, illuminating a puzzle mounted on the wall. And then, the first few notes of Anitra’s Dance filtered through the speakers.

Bum da da, bum da da

Bum da da, bum da da

Alcor broke out into a huge smile. The silence which had haunted him as long as he’d been on the island was gone; now his body was being scooped up and set adrift by the music. The mesmerizing strings, like the lying tongue of a devil; the passionate bass, giving urgency to the affair; the wail of echoes careening off the cave walls. He’d missed this. He wished he had his violin so he could join in.

“The songs are a distraction!” Mizar was still there, sort of, still trying to talk to him even though he could barely hear her over the music. “They’re just there to make it harder to focus on the puzzles!”

“Oh. Oh yeah,” Alcor murmured, his smile drooping slightly. For the briefest moment, Mizar thought she’d gotten through to him, but then he smiled again and flew over to the illuminated panel. “New puzzles for me to solve. Gotta draw the good lines.”

“No!” she screamed, but it was too late. His hand flew across the panel, solving it with ease, and the music swelled triumphantly, completely drowning out Mizar’s voice. The next panel lit up, displaying a maze three times as big as the first one, and Alcor’s grin widened. This was going to be good.

The difficulty of the puzzles only increased from there. Soon Alcor was swooping through a tunnel into another cave, which he immediately recognized as the one with the deactivated panels he’d spied from the hotel. Now, however, they were turning on, one at a time, solve after solve after solve. Though each puzzle took progressively longer for him to figure out, Alcor revelled in every second of it, even as the first song came to a finish and Mizar’s cries faded back into his awareness, why! won’t! you! listen! to! me!

“Hi Miz,” he chirped as the music changed to In the Hall of the Mountain King, and it set her blood boiling.

Duh duh duh duh dadada…

“Having fun?” she grumbled.

“Oh, yeah!” He shot a pair of finger guns at no one in particular, but didn’t take his eyes off the puzzle. “This one’s hard, though. Been stuck on it for a little while.”

Dadada… dadada...

“A minute and a half,” Mizar replied. “You’re not even doing it right.”

“Ugh, I know. I’ll figure it out though. I’ve got time.”

Duh duh duh duh dadada ba dadadadada…

“You’ve got like two minutes left to do seven puzzles. You don’t have time.”

Alcor grimaced. “Okay, negative. If I can’t solve it in time then I’ll just try again.”

Dun dun dun dun dadada,

Dadada,

Dadada,

“So, what, you’re just gonna stay in this stupid game forever? Is that it?”

Alcor’s hand slipped, and he drew a bad line. The panel turned off, forcing him to trudge back to the previous one to solve it again. "I said I'll come out after I get the prize, I can do this, I promise..."

Dun dun dun dun dadada DA da ba ba da da!

"You're not gonna beat it!” Mizar spat. “That's not me not believing in you -- I know for a fact that the virus coded the challenge so that you specifically would always get stumped at some part of it!"

DUN dun dun dun dadada, WA WA WA WA!

Amidst music rising to a heart-pounding clamor, Alcor hurried back to the panel he’d been stuck on. "Yeah, it's random, I know, and sometimes the puzzles it makes are really hard, but if I keep practicing..."

DUN DUN DUN DUN DADADA BA DA DA DA BA DA!

"No, Dipper!”

DUN DUN DUN DUN DADADA BA DA DA DA BA DA!

Mizar yelled at the top of her lungs to be heard over the music. “That's you trusting the game to always give you solvable puzzles! How do you know they'll always be solvable?”

DUN DA! DUN DA! Dun dun dun dun dadada ba da da da ba da!

”How do you know the virus isn't just nerd-sniping you until the music stops playing and you have to start over?”

Dun wa wa wa wa wa wa wa!

”Why do you trust this game more than you trust me????"

Dum tsh!

With two final, crashing notes, the song came to an end. There was a beat, during which Mizar could see Alcor standing very still, his hand still on a glowing panel. Then there was a loud beep as all of the panels in the cave deactivated, followed by the distant click of the record player turning off.

Alcor clenched his fist. “You want to know why I can’t trust you?”

“Um. Yeah I do,” Mizar replied, taken aback. “Like I was saying -”

Alcor’s words came out slow and metered, but there was a nasty undertone to his voice. “It’s because you lie.”

He looked up from the deactivated panel and stared at the ceiling, directly where she was watching from, and she could see streaks of yellow running down his face. “Every time I get close to you. Every time I get close to anyone. You mortals love to say I’ll always be here for you and like an idiot I keep letting myself believe it, but then you die. Everyone I’ve ever cared about has died or will die and there I still am, suffering and mourning and alone.”

“B-but-” Mizar stammered.

Alcor snarled at her, baring two rows of shark-like teeth and spraying spit at the wall. Mizar’s mouth snapped shut.

“This game doesn’t lie to me,” he continued, walking back toward the record player but not taking his eyes off her. “A puzzle is just a puzzle. It has an answer that I can figure out if I stare at it long enough, or maybe I won’t and that’s okay too. Puzzles don’t lie to you and say people don’t really think of you as a monster and then go research banishment rituals behind your back.”

“I-I wasn’t going to actually use it!” Mizar replied, in unison with Alcor saying the exact same words. “I was only looking it up just in case! Just to reassure my brother -- he has anxiety!”

“Yeah, how many times do you think someone’s said that to me before?” Alcor spat. “I don’t blame you for being nervous around me. I literally am a monster. Just don’t fucking lie to me about it, okay?”

“Dipper, please! Think about all the people who love you. You can’t just leave them behind!”

Alcor stopped in front of the record player and turned away. “If they can do it to me, I can do it to them,” he murmured. Then he slid his finger across the control panel again, and the world went dark.

Mizar gripped her computer screen. “Dipper? Dipper, what’s going on?”

The humming from the machine had stopped, and all she could hear was the ringing in her ear from Dipper’s shout. Mizar rifled through the desk drawers, looking for an instruction manual or a cheat sheet or anything that would help her reach her brother again. Every scrap of paper she found was covered in strange symbols that she recognized as puzzles from the game. She knew it was a fruitless search. After all, the system was designed to trap someone, not to let them go.

She looked behind her, to the two person-sized capsules pushed up against the wall. One was empty, with its lid discarded on the floor. Mizar walked over to the other one and pressed her face up to the glass. Beyond the window rested Dipper’s physical body, hooked up to a dizzying array of cables and electrodes. It made her mind itch to look at. His body was as fake as the avatar he was controlling in the video game. But it was an anchor for his soul, and Al-V did what he did best with it: reverse engineered it, figured out how to anchor the demon’s mind in something else.

Mizar once again eyed the power outlet the capsule was plugged into. Would his mind be able to escape, if she…?

“Please, Dipper,” she whimpered, in total solitude. “Please come back.”

---

Down in the cave, Alcor leaned on the record player and stared at the ground.

[ Woof! ] Al-V piped up. [ Talk about an overreaction! Want I should take over the security robots outside the building and get them to lock her in a broom closet? ]

“Forget about it,” Alcor murmured. He watched the record begin to spin -- watched the orange points of the sunburst begin to meld into a solid circle -- and imagined a smiling face in the middle. “Forget about her. I don’t need her. All I need is you, and the puzzles.”

[ Whatever you say, Dad! ] Al-V replied. [ You’re the boss, but not like in a video game sense! Ha-ha! You, uh, you gonna solve those puzzles? ]

Alcor closed his eyes for a minute, and the face stuck in his vision. When he opened them again, the record player had stopped, and the puzzles had deactivated.

“Yeah,” he said finally. “Yeah, I’m gonna solve the puzzles. I’m gonna draw the good lines. I’ll be happy.”

He swiped the panel to start the record again, and got to work.