He was going to be sick.

"You're not serious. No, you lost your mind down there. That's the only explana- no, wait. Did that bastard send some shapeshifter up here, trying to keep you hostage all year? I'll kill him-ah!"

Dipper spluttered as his sister pushed him back into the fountain they were sitting on.

"Nope. Still you," he muttered to himself, coughing up water.

"You need to chill, bro. If anyone kills him, it'll be me," Mabel declared. She had way more reason to than her brother did. She sighed. "Is it that unbelievable that I… well… kind of like Bill?" Mabel flushed, looking around furtively. She knew Bill kept an eye on her in some way while she was away and this was the last thing she wanted him to know about.

"When he kidnapped you while I was gone and kept you trapped in the Underworld until the king of the gods literally demanded your return, but not before tricking you into coming back?" He summed up. "Yeah, just a little." Dipper dragged himself out of the fountain feeling like a drowned rat as he took back his spot next to Mabel. With a wave of his hand, a beam of sunlight shone on him, leaving him toasty and dry in a matter of seconds.

"Look, I'm not saying that what he did was okay or that he's perfect. It'd probably be more accurate to say he's a perfect monster, really," Mabel admitted, scratching her cheek. "But he has his good points, ya know?"

"No. I don't," Dipper replied bluntly. "From everything I've heard, that guy is crazy, violent, sadistic and mad with power." He rose an eyebrow at her.

"Uh, well…" Mabel twiddled her fingers together as she looked off to the side. Her twin wasn't wrong.

Dipper scoffed. "And you think you… "like" him?" He saddled his sister with a chiding look. She was always charmed by the bad boys, but even he had to admit that Bill was in a league of his own.

"Dipper, are you really gonna guy shame me about not hating the man I'm actually married to?" Mabel asked with crossed arms.

"I'm just saying, you need to think a little more with your head when it comes to this stuff," Dipper said in a tone of finality. "Tom," he coughed under his breath. (1)

"Dipper, you're just asking me to dip you again," Mabel warned him idly, glancing back at the waters of the fountain. "And it won't be water this time." She snapped her fingers and the water instantly transformed into a pool of snakes, one jumping up to snap at him.

"Gods, Mabel!" Dipper shot away from the fountain as Mabel laughed. That was what he got for bringing up the god of war. "I think Bill's been a worse influence than I thought," he grumbled under his breath.

"Oh, yeah. Like this is the first time I turned water into animals," Mabel said sarcastically, leaning back on her hands.

"First time you turned them into snakes. And real ones at that," Dipper cautiously approached the pool.

"Hm. I guess you're right," Mabel said, petting one on the head with her index finger as it slithered up to her. Before they'd always been made of vegetation of some sort and been on the more cuddly side, but snakes needed love too and were pretty cute when they weren't snapping.

"Anyway, what do you even like about that cyclops? What is there to like?" Dipper scowled and Mabel couldn't really be upset about his attitude towards Bill. Ford and Stan felt the same way, loathing Bill only for the fact that he took her away from them and that they thought she was miserable in the Underworld. Which she kind of was, but not all the time and not because Bill tried to make her so. It was really the opposite. It was just that the Underworld wasn't exactly her idea of paradise.

"Look, it's hard to explain," Mabel began, snapping her fingers to turn the water back to normal to Dipper's relief. "Bill gets me in a way that… not everyone does."

As the goddess of nature and more newly dubbed the goddess of growth and spring, people held her on a pedestal. Her dominion over life and creation meant order. She was a part of a cyclic wheel that was meant to be certain, organized and controlled, yet she was also supposed to be delicate like the flowers that need just the right conditions to bloom. But that wasn't who she was. Not entirely.

Overgrowth, trickery, resilience, and anomalies were all parts of earth and therefore her nature. They were just as real as the harvest, grass and flowers that returned every year. But few saw this other side of her and approved or cared for it. Even Dipper and their grunkles sometimes had a hard time grasping her wild side even though they accepted it.

Bill, on the other hand, had barely batted an eye. Even one time when they'd had a particularly bad fight and she'd turned the palace into a giant jungle with the weirdest, ugliest, worst of what she had to offer (which might have included a plant that smelled like rotting flesh (2)) he'd looked bored.

"That all ya got, Wife? If I wanted to smell the decay of meatbags I'd take a step outside. At least give me something that deadly and my bunny slippers might run for cover."

She'd done just that with a giant Venus flytrap.

"Now we're talking!" He'd named it Bill Jr.

Bill saw her at her worst, saw what she was capable of and her unusual nature underneath, but he didn't care or flinch away. He embraced it and almost seemed to admire it, like he'd discovered something special. It was a hard trait to dismiss.

"Sometimes I just feel free when I'm around him," Mabel explained to her brother who sighed.

"Okay, okay," he said, causing his sister to perk. "I'm gonna find Ford, because there's no way you didn't not get brainwashed while you were away." Dipper stood to leave.

There went his love struck sister like always. Feeling free around your captor? How much more ridiculous could you get?

"Dipper, you said you wouldn't tell!" Mabel tackled him to the ground.

"Hey! Get off!" Dipper shouted as she pulled him into a choke hold.

"Not until you promise not to say uncle!"

Gods, his sister was stronger than she looked.

"Okay! Not uncle! Not uncle!"

…

"You seriously think a bribe will make it up to her?" Will asked as he walked along the balcony beside Bill.

"If I do it right and if I'm bribing her with the one thing she really wants… sort of. Do you have any better ideas, birdbrain?" While Bill may not have ever been in the dog house quite as deeply as he was now, he had still managed to get her to come around to living in the Underworld even if she did complain about it incessantly. Plus, it had worked the last time, so why not now?

"Gee, I dunno. Has the thought ever occurred to you to give her a sincere apology?"

"And we all know how well that worked the last time." Bill rolled his eyes.

"Yes. Very well until you burned down her forest!"

If anything, talking to her might put what remained of Mabel forest at risk.

"That was an accident and I'm fixing it! What more do you want from me?" With the sheer amount of nagging that Will did, he could easily pass for Bill's second wife.

"I just don't want you to do something that will make this worse, okay?" Will rubbed at his temples. Bill wasn't known for his rational thinking.

"Tell me. Did you hatch to be this annoying or did you get dropped on your head as a chick?" Bill rolled his eyes. "Things will be fine and it's gonna work."

"Okay, let's say it does work," Will began with a frown, growing somberly. "We still have a very pressing issue at hand. That being finding Mabel's shooting star. If we don't, she could-"

"I know, Will," Bill cut him off in a leveled tone. "There's no way she could handle living down here on her own." It wasn't just her depression that had led her to constantly sleep the first decade or so of their marriage. The miasma and lack of life in the Underworld naturally zapped at her energy. It had left her barely able to drag herself out of bed and that was at a time when she didn't have an entire forest leeching off her power. "That's what the shooting star was for… mostly." Now she threatened to fall into a stasis. Not that the thief would know.

His jaw tightened. That information was sensitive after all. Few knew about it and whether the thief had known or not could be disastrous. However, Bill never knew one to steal from a god unless they had the motivation and they knew exactly what they were doing.

"Then where do we start? Anything could have happened while she was gone," Will pointed out.

"That's why I'm calling in an expert."

"Expert?" Will paused thoughtfully before realization lit up on his face. "But Bill, he hates you!"

"And what's so special about that?" Bill asked, undeterred.

"You really think he'll help you of all people? Besides, he's been a hermit for the last month. Hardly anyone has seen him since he found out some of his stuff went missing." He'd insisted that whatever went missing was gone, but most everyone else was almost certain that he'd simply lost his possessions in the chaotic mess he called his system. There were thousands upon millions of items and documents in his archive after all. Anyone could have overlooked something. However, either way he was incredibly paranoid, stubborn and suspicious. Especially of Bill.

"You underestimate just how persuasive I can be." He might not be obliging at first, but Bill had a feeling that if he found out what was at stake, he could be swayed otherwise. To the gods, stasis wasn't something to take lightly and if Bill was good at anything, it was making a bad situation seem worse than it was. "Plus, even he can't deny how dangerous it is to have her shooting star on the loose in the hands of some unknown schmuck."

"True, but do you really think the thief could know that it's-?"

"Bill."

Their heads snapped up to see Mabel down the way, leaning against the wall.

"We need to talk." Her pensive frown deepened as they approached. "Alone," she added softly and raised a brow at Will, giving him a pointed look.

"Oh." Will glanced at a nearby door leading inside. "Uh, right. I'll just-"

"No need, because we're not going to talk," Bill spoke, grabbing Will by the back of his shirt and dragging him forward.

"What?" Mabel looked almost hurt.

"What? Bill," the blue haired servant admonished with a disapproving tone, staring at him in disbelief. He was just brushing off a chance to make up with Mabel when she should logically be furious at him.

"I said we're not going to talk. Run along now. Kind of busy here," Bill said dismissively, walking past the stunned woman.

"Wait, Bill." Mabel reached out to tug on his arm and the god immediately shrugged out of her grasp, giving her a stern look.

He let go of Will, turning to her fully, close enough to tower over her. "Touch me again. I dare you." His tone was low and menacing.

Someone was apparently still salty about nearly being torn apart.

Mabel swallowed thickly and took a step back, her fists clenched as she grasped for patience. All the while, Will wanted to strangle his master.

"Please, can we talk for just five minutes? I… I've been thinking and I have something I need to say," Mabel spoke calmly.

With a sigh of annoyance, Bill leaned back against the railing. "You've got two." He conceded and then demanded. "What? And you stay!" he shouted at Will who flinched from his failed attempt to give them some privacy.

"But why?" Will asked incredulously. Normally Bill was the first to throw him out when it came to personal matters.

"Time's a ticking," Bill told Mabel with crossed arms, tapping his foot impatiently. He had time for this, but he really didn't feel like giving it and had better things to do.

"Okay, look. We've both made mistakes. I'm not gonna lie and say that our problems are going to disappear overnight, but they're not going to get any better with how we keep acting," Mabel strode towards Bill, resting with her back against the railing beside him, giving him some space this time.

"Oh? And what would you have me do? I'm not the one who comes back and throws a hissy fit every autumn." Bill's golden eye locked onto her with an annoyed glare. This had been going on for ages and he might hate it, but he'd at least accepted that it wasn't going to change.

She sighed. "Do you think it's easy for me? Being away from my family hurts so much and I feel so caged down here. I know I can be overbearing-"

"More like a total bitch," Bill interjected offhandedly.

Mabel gave him a miffed stare. "But…" She paused uncertainly and glanced to the side shyly. "Most days…" she trailed as if trying to find the right words, "I think to myself that I at least have you." Her voice grew softer as she stared at her feet. "I have someone who wants and cares about me. Someone who loves me."

Bill was quiet, his expression softening marginally. Did she really think that despite all that he had done? Things weren't always as tense between them as they were when she came back, but throughout the millennia, he'd still never known if she really forgave him or if she just tolerated it all and fooled herself into thinking it wasn't so bad.

He'd been fine with the latter in the beginning, but now he wasn't so sure. He had always been greedy and wanted more than what he had, even if it seemed impossible to possess. With Mabel, the urge was no different, if not stronger.

"You do, don't you?" As if sensing that she'd gotten through to him, Mabel cautiously reached her hand out to touch his shoulder. His somber expression was unmoving.

Bill turned his head down to look at her. "What do you think?" he asked, only the smallest amount of sarcasm in his tone.

A warm smile spread on her face as she reached up to lace her hands behind his neck. "I think you feel the same way I do, Jerkface." She leaned up to close the distance between their lips.

Meanwhile, Will was turning a bright red hue as he watched the rare affectionate interaction between the married couple. He began to inch down the hall. "I'm just gonna-"

"Time's up."

Mabel's eyes widened a split second before a blast of fire flung her through the stone wall across from the railing in a plume of dust and crumbling rock.

"Mabel!" Will rushed in to help the goddess, but his arms were suddenly pinned to his sides and a weight on his body sent him crashing to the ground. "Bill! What the hell's wrong you!? ARE YOU CRAZY!?" He squirmed fiercely against the chains on his body.

"Quiet down before I throw you into the wall next," Bill drawled, approaching the rubble.

"B-Bill?" Mabel coughed, her dust covered face visible under the stone. "Wh-What are you doing?" she asked him fearfully, struggling to free herself from under the heavy debris. "Ugh, gods, it hurts," she groaned in agony.

"Funny, I was just about to ask you that," Bill said, twirling his cane as he flipped over a piece of stone here and there with the toe of his shoe.

"H-Help! Bill!" Mabel pleaded. "Please!"

"Bill, what the fuck!? Go help her!" Will urged his master, the same betrayal on Mabel's face shining in his eyes.

"Yeah, just hang tight for a sec. Thanks!" Bill called as he continued to survey the wreckage of his attack. When something caught his eye, he let out a low whistle and bent down. "Now what do we have here-?"

Bill narrowly evaded the fist the size of his body that swept by as another cloud of dust filled the air.

"It's not nice to throw fire at your wife, hubby," Mabel growled lowly, her clothes in tatters as her arm shrunk back to its normal size and she stepped out of the hole in the broken wall, picking up the object of Bill's interest.

"Mabel?" Will's eyes widened.

Bill scoffed. "See, I'd apologize, but, one, I couldn't care less, and two, I kind of have this thing about daggers being close to my neck while they're in hands other than my own." He shrugged, resting his cane on his shoulder. "I'm funny like that."

"Oh, don't worry. I'll be laughing soon enough." Mabel threw the knife in the air and caught it. "Hysterically actually. From watching you bleed," she grinned.

Bill frowned thoughtfully, tapping his chin. "I'm starting to get the feeling that you're not a sprite." This wasn't the first time one had transformed to try and throw him off before, but they'd also always had a very blatant lack of thirst for blood unlike most creatures native to the Underworld.

"What the heck is going on?" Will murmured in a stunned daze.

"Fake Wife just tried to kill me. Try to keep up and not embarrass yourself for once, Willy boy," Bill told him.

"What gave me away?" The imposter asked, tilting her head. "Was it the eyes? I'm still working on that."

"One, your pathetic impersonation, and two, how much you reek. What the hell kind of nature goddess doesn't smell like nature? Even when she's trying to tear people apart limb by limb, she smells better than you," Bill remarked with a smug look. "Like flowers and trees or whatever. You couldn't have at least rolled around in some daisies or dirt before you came here?" Bill tsked.

The fake Mabel shrugged. "Live and learn."

Bill laughed before grinning widely. "Not anymore." The next moment he was gone and behind the creature, swinging his cane down on her head.

She immediately threw her arm back and caught the blunt weapon on her blade, spinning her head back to look at him while her body still faced forward.

"From behind?" She chuckled with a shake of her head, showing her sharp teeth. "How charmingly predict-"

Lasers shot from Bill's eyes, causing her neck to snap back almost painfully to avoid them. It had been so close she had felt the heat of the blast on her face.

"Now try not to lose your head!" Bill cackled and pulled back to swing his cane down again and again in rapid succession.

The shifter's eyes widened before she reoriented her body to parry him with the dagger, being pushed back with each slash from the blond. Her hand shook as she tried to keep a grasp on the knife, deflecting Bill's attacks at different angles, struggling to keep up with his assault. Then, one misstep back onto a piece of rubble caused the force of Bill's next attack to send her careening onto her back. The dagger fell to the side and she braced herself for the next hit, but after a moment saw Bill simply standing there, blinking.

Bill looked at his cane quizzically, turning it around in his hand. "What the?"

It took Will a second to see it, but he soon caught onto the same fact that Bill had noticed: his cane was starting to crack.

"Looks like the fool wasn't bluffing," the shifter smiled, slightly out of breathe. Her head was soon knocked against the ground when the curved handle of Bill's cane crushed down on her neck.

"I knew someone had to have sent you on this suicide mission," Bill commented smugly, pressing his cane more firmly against the imposter's neck only to watch more of his weapon break off from the pressure.

He frowned. That didn't make sense. His cane was made of energy from the Underworld. There was no mortal metal on earth that could crack it, meaning that dagger was something else. "So who was it? The mustache musician? Uncle coulda-shoulda-woulda? (3)" Bill paused thoughtfully, realizing that the list of suspects was way too long for his guesses to really matter.

"Wouldn't you like to know?" The fake coughed as Bill constricted her windpipe.

"Oh, trying to be coy, huh?" Bill stooped down to meet her face. "Be as tightlipped as you want, but you don't get to be King of the Underworld without learning how to twist a few arms and decapitate a few heads in at least four different ways," he smirked. "I gotta say, though. Trying to assassinate a god, let alone a god like me; it takes some real balls. Now orchestrating the assassination of a god like me." The humor drained from Bill's face like the flow of oxygen to her lungs as he set his hard gaze on the shifter. "That's practically asking for a fate worse than death."

Her eyes widened and she screamed in pain as the cane was lit on fire and began to burn into her flesh.

"So here's the deal. Tell me who sent you and I might just decide not to make the admittedly short rest of your life a living nightmare," he said lowly, the coldness in his eye chilling.

The fake coughed weakly, seeming to try to speak. It then turned to laughter, prompting Bill to throw a questioning glance at Will who seemed at a loss as well. "Gee, the lack of oxygen to your brain is really hitting you hard and fast, isn't it?" Bill remarked with his hand on his hip. "Lightweight much?"

"It's not that." The fake winced from the cane searing into her. "It's how deliciously ironic this is."

"Hurry up with those last words of yours. I'm getting real bored real fast. And you wouldn't like me when I'm bored." Bill rose his gloved hand that soon ignited with blue flames.

"Let me put it this way. Enjoy watching your wife's face writhing in agony from your own hand. Burn it into your memory." Her eyes danced with sadistic amusement. "Because it'll be the last you'll see of her. Not that she'll miss you."

The white of Bill's eye went black and he pulled his hand back to torch the shifter's cocky face until he felt a sharp pain across his face followed by a fist plowing into his stomach. The shapeshifter had stretched her arm to the side to retrieve her blade and slashed it across his face before sprouting a fist from her torso to ram into the god's. His body went hurtling back until he regained control of his momentum, slowing just before he hit the railing. Scowling with a grunt, he wiped his forearm over his face and found blood.

Meanwhile, the shifter got back to her feet with a cackle of triumph, a muscular arm hanging limply from her stomach.

"Even if I told you who sent me, it wouldn't do you any good at this point. And unfortunately for you, I'm done playing around." With that, the Mabel-like form of the creature receded to a white insect-like one with milky looking skin and four spidery legs. The arm that held the dagger became long and thin like a snake, while the other arm was a lobster-like claw that had a giant bulge in the upper part.

Will eyed it with disgust and fear while Bill let out a low chuckle. "Now things are getting interesting," he declared as he held his cane in both hands in front of him. His golden eye began to glow as a yellow aura surrounded him and the crack in his cane sealed itself just before the whole thing began to glow golden as well.

"Glad we're on the same page though, because I don't have time to play and I've changed my mind," Bill spoke as his eye turned black, his red iris glaring into the shifter's very soul. "You have until the count of ten to tell me everything you know."

"Or what?" The shifter spat.

"Let me count. I dare you." Bill's skin began to turn red, matching the blood running down his face. "One…"

Before it knew it, Bill was in front of the shifter. Like a whip, the god's hand darted out and his cane cracked against the shifter's hand. It cried out in pain and surprise as it lost its grip on the knife and watched it slide across the ground and fall over the edge of the balcony.

Bill's frame glowed with a menacing red and black aura.

"Ten."

Author's Note: Just a heads up, there may be M rated material in later chapters. Still not sure if I'll go through with it or not, but if there is, then I'll mark where it is and the story will still be cohesive with or without that part.

Also, I made some unfortunate revisions to the last two chapters. Nothing you need to go look at since it doesn't really change anything, but if you're reading this before I revised them, then the ending of this battle just lost an amount of tension.

(2) These flowers are real. They're called stapelia asterias. Look em' up.

(3) At this point I thought I'd make a little note about about who is who in this AU so far just to be clear and so that some references make more sense. Note that I've taken some liberties just for the sake of translating everyone to a Greek God counterpart.

Bill = Hades: God of the Underworld

Mabel = Persephone/Artemis: Goddess of Spring/Goddess of chastity, virginity, the hunt, the moon, and the natural environment. I just decided to mix the two because it was easier with the whole twin dynamic with Dipper since Artemis and Apollo are twins as well.

Dipper = Apollo: God of music, truth and prophecy, healing, the sun and light, plague, poetry, and more.

Gabe = Dionysus: God of the grape harvest, winemaking and wine, of ritual madness, fertility, theatre and religious ecstasy.

Mermando = Water nymph.

Soos = Hermes: Messenger of the Gods.

Stan = Epimetheus: Titan associated with hindsight. Brother of Prometheus. Or as Bill calls him, Uncle coulda-shoulda-woulda.

Ford = Prometheus/Coeus: Titan associated with foresight/Titan god of intellect who represented the inquisitive mind. Brother of Epimetheus.

Sheriff Blubs = Orpheus: A legendary musician, poet and prophet whose music softened Hades enough to allow Orpheus to rescue his wife out of the Underworld on the condition that he did not look back while they left.

Deputy Durland = Eurydice: Nymph wife of Orpheus. Was forced back into the Underworld when her husband failed to keep his word and looked back to ensure that she was following him as they left.

(1) Tom = Ares: God of War. He's not from Gravity Falls, but I thought it was appropriate since I do see a fair amount of Gravity Falls and Star vs. the forces of evil crossover work due to the similarities of Mabel and Star. It hardly matters to the story anyway.

Star Butterfly = Aphrodite: Goddess of love, beauty, pleasure, and procreation. I ship them and these two gods had a few flings. I mean, why not? Also, I do see her and Mabel getting along in this AU.