flying-guinea-pig:

 I saw this on the TAU blog and I couldn’t help myself.

BAELHUNT 3016!

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He needed
to have a talk with Ian. This was getting ridiculous.

The Baelhunt
had been going on for thirteen days and Dipper had lost count of how many fans
summoned him in hopes of a clue. Aside from the fact it was insanely risky to
just summon demons like that – and Ian had warned them specifically not
to do this – he didn’t know, okay! He didn’t know where the damn statue was! He
hadn’t looked very hard either, but if he had known he wouldn’t tell anyone
anyway so could they give him a rest
already –

He narrowed
his eyes and growled as he felt the pull of yet another summons. At this rate
he was starting to miss the murderous cultists.

… at this
rate he was even starting to miss the Twin
Souls fans.

Great. He’d
been summoned in a messy bedroom, posters of Mizar the Magnificent hanging on
the walls, a folding table covered in papers at the edge of the circle.

A teenage
girl stood next to it, hand gripping one of the papers hard enough to crumble
it. She stared at him, seemingly frozen.

“Rḯ̌ͬ̇̿͂̄g̋̓̌̇̈ͨ̕h͆̅̎̊ͩt̅͐͋̄͌,
I’ve seen enough,” he said, ready to rip apart the binding circle and
leave. “Don’t summon me again.”

“No, wait, don’t go! I need you to help me
find the next clue,” the girl said, dark circles under her bloodshot eyes.
She turned that feverish gaze away, running a hand through her hair as she
started muttering: “The answer is in the clouds, he said. The answer is in
the clouds! But I can’t figure it out, I’m stuck,
I need to figure this out damn it! We’ve all been stuck at this for days! I’ll
give you my friggin’ soul if you’ll just help
me!”

Dipper blinked.

“Your
soul?” he said. Sheesh, Ian might have gone too far this time with the difficulty
of these clues. Then again, being difficult is what Bill’s soul did best.

“Yes!
Just tell me what to do!”

She had no
idea how lucky she was.

He left the
offer hang in the air. It was tempting.
“How long has it been since you slept?”

“I
don’t know, a few days,” the girl said, distractedly. “Who cares
about sleep! Look, I got as far as connecting the center of each cloud to
eachother and if you run that through the Bael cipher you get letters, right, but
they’re all nonsense because I can’t figure out the damn keyword!” She
slammed the paper down on the table, which overflowed. One of the stacks of
notes came raining down to the floor. “I need something! Please!”

“Why
does this even matter so much to you?” Dipper said. “It’s just a
game. Someone will solve it eventually. Is this about the prize he talked
about? Because that’s just some merchandise, if you’re curious. It’s definitely
not worth all this.”

“I
can’t leave a mystery hanging,” she snapped. “But I wouldn’t expect a
demon to understand. Do we have a deal or not?”

Dipper
paused.

He knew he
had changed. You couldn’t live for centuries without changing somewhat, even
aside from the whole being-a-demon bit. But when exactly had he last felt the
thrill of a real mystery hunt?

Maybe as
far back as the Transcendence. Man, omniscience really took a lot of fun out of
life.

“You
know what?” he decided. “I’ll give you exactly what you need. And in
return you’ll let me have all of your notes about the Baelhunt. Deal?”

The girl
hesitated for a second. But desperation won. “My notes… but I guess I
won’t need them anymore. Whatever, yes, deal!”

Dipper
shook her hand with a grin. Then he snapped his fingers, three times.

Snap.

Blue fire
spread over the many, many papers and took them straight to the Mindscape.

Snap.

The girl’s
eyes drooped. The rest of her body followed, and he levitated her to the bed
before she could fall on the floor. She was fast asleep before she even hit the
mattress.

Snap.

A blue baseball
cap popped into existence in his hand. He ran a clawed finger over the pine tree
on the front.

Things
change.

But
sometimes… only if you let them.