Sat Oct 19 '24 Announcement
over 1 year ago – Sat, Oct 19, 2024 at 10:43:02 AM

Well, we've got HUGE news today, as the very first Ford Pines figurine has been sampled by the factory and assembled. This is a massive milestone in the campaign and a great proof of concept for what we're capable of.

This is a pre-revision Ford Pines, so the face has already undergone resculpting (including a redesign of his glasses and lips) and the colour scheme is mostly proof of concept as opposed to representative of the finished product.

So, what's going to change?

Skin tone and colouring
Ford is looking a little too Goth for our tastes, so we're getting him to a tanning salon and lightening up his hair and features to bring him a little more Grunkle energy instead of 'kid outside Hot Topic'.

Facial sculpt
This is a pre-revision Ford, based upon our initial design. We've already reworked his lips, facial shape and glasses - the latter is particularly important for us as the eyebrows on this sample simply don't fit the character's design.

What's staying the same?

Size and scale
I mean, look at him. He's glorious - a full 8" tall makes for a very bulky figure, and we reckon this sample will really display just how much figure you're getting for your cash.

The Infinity Mirror
We're content that this was perfected right out of the gate. We're super proud of how it turned out and just how bright the LEDs are shining!

What's next?

Sampling is a super long process, and the moment this one began production, we began production on the second version. This is to help us work out what works and what doesn't, and for those of you who haven't seen us at work before, it's really fascinating! As a result we're hoping to keep you up to date as this progresses.

Our amazing 3D Modeller Kelly is also hard at work on producing renders of our other figurines, which we're hoping to publish before the campaign ends.

For now, bask in the greatness! The majesty! The slightly off-colour glory!

Fri Oct 18 '24 Announcement
over 1 year ago – Fri, Oct 18, 2024 at 04:33:47 PM

If you've already preordered an item from the BYEEE campaign, please check your emails for a secret link to your latest add-ons. This will unlock a reduced shipping rate for the incredible 8" tall Frobo - with two alternative cabins (featuring Soos and Kikimora) and a race-car accessory - not to mention the legendary B-Rat Keychain commemorating the campaign.

This will allow you to add other items from the campaign thus far, too!

We've got something AMAZING planned, but we need to hit $750k to unlock - and only a little over a week to achieve such a magical number. Think we can do it? Please spread the word of the campaign far and wide!

---

The inhabitants of all three worlds could only back off cautiously as the demon swelled to thirteen times his usual size, clearly infuriated beyond belief by the honest attempts at owl-based friendship.

Even Hooty coiled back, taking serious offence at Bill's reaction to his dance of peace and love.

“We’re no longer friends! Hoot!” 

“I DON’T HAVE ANY FRIENDS!”

“Well you definitely don’t now!” Hooty retorted, haughtily, before horking up a thick green globule of corrosive spit and flinging it at his invalidated buddy-prospect. 

Bill sneered, leered over the demon's be-beaked head and pulled back his fist...

THWHUMP!

…Only for a much, much harder punch to pound into him so hard that the giant interdimensional criminal's body almost split in two. Sparks flew, shards of his golden exoskeleton flying skywards. Indeed, this colossal thump not only stopped his advance in his tracks - it sent him flying backwards against his damp, mossy Theraprism wall, where we smacked against the fauxcrete with a sickening crunch!

He groaned, shrank back down to size instantly and propped himself up dizzily on one arm, only to find a larger-than-ever crack in his exoskeleton and a purple hue taking over his usually golden eyelids. 

“Son of a…”

Suddenly, the delirious dream-demon seemed much less eager to break into the world. Although, to be fair, right now his legs were lacking enthusiasm for standing. He slumped back against the wall dizzily and adjusted his hat. He hadn’t felt a punch like that…well, ever. 

After all, that fist wasn’t merely the fist of Stan Pines - he had memorised that punch for the entirety of his life since. 

No, the fist he had been so suddenly introduced to was gigantic, metallic, and picked out in a fetching shade of frost white and Polly pink. 

Ford, Dipper and Stan stood aside, mouth agape, while Mabel gasped with her hands clasped over her rosy cheeks. Eda, Lilith and Luz stared blankly. The Amphibia crew, meanwhile, weren’t even particularly surprised by robots anymore. 

“Step back, nacho-man! Frobo…uh… 2.50 is here!” came the chirp of a tiny little pink polliwog.

“Dude, ain’t we kinda 3.0? I mean, these upgrades? Hardcore.” added an all-too familiar voice, crunching on a bag of chips as if standing alongside a giant demon-punching frog-bot was part of his day to day. 

“Don’t argue with the engineers, Soos.”

The handyman, stained with abomination fluid, chuckled as he took another mouthful. “Look, Wendy, let’s be real. This is the second time we got a giant robot to punch this guy. I think I know what I’m talking about, bro. Also, these Thai chips? Awesome, bro.”

Fiddleford Hadron McGucket was less interested in the classification of the robot, and more interested in celebrating the ultimate innovation in the latest iteration of the enormous automaton. “Ah went an’ filled his back-pipes with emperor goop!”

Wendy rubbed the bridge of his nose - something that Polly eagerly mimicked. “Fidds. Please never…never say that again.” 

The still distinctly unhinged hillbilly merely bounded proudly to the robot’s side, slapping a ‘Refueled by McGucket’ sticker onto the screeching tank of decrepit witch-hunter slime with an overabundance of enthusiasm. 

“Dear Titan.” Eda murmured. “That’s beyond horrific.”

“I almost feel bad.” Luz agreed. “...Almost.”

“Ah wouldn’t go a-worryin’ too much! This feller ain’t got no pain receptors! He’s just a wigglin’ battery!” McGucket retorted, dancing for reasons known only to him. 

“Gotta say, it was totally gnarly squeezing the guy into the capsule. The purple blob thing was given to us by some cute pink-haired witch with a cat on her shoulder.” Wendy grinned, tipping her oil-stained ushanka with a large monkey wrench. “Said something about saying hi to a sweet potato.” 

Luz flushed a vibrant pink, but decided not to comment. Somehow saying ‘I’m the sweet potato’ seemed really inappropriate in a moment containing a giant robot.

Ford was unsurprised at McGucket’s insane level of genius...but the dedication of Soos, Wendy and Polly had come as a bit of a shock. “How did you…?”

“We figured we’d need something really big, really strong and totally magical to beat the triangle’s hiney. So while all of you guys were messing around, we sorta dove back into space and time to find some supplies. And grabbed Frobo.” Polly beamed. “It was super simple! All I had to do was set up a multiversal circuit board with a magical capacitor interface and a miniature bile sack-”

"Turns out this magic stuff is like stuffing a nuclear reactor into a Tickle-Me-Emo." Wendy agreed. "That punch wasn't even full strength."

"Ah drew th'theoretical physics on the back of a bean can!" Fiddleford interjected, to absolutely nobody's surprise. 

“Genius.” Ford murmured, tapping his lip. “This purple tadpole creature is clearly of enormous intellect. I may have to take a sample.”

“Wait, what? A sample of what?!”

Hop-Pop emerged from the cupboard, took in the ensuing chaos, and quietly opted to return to the cupboard. Not today.

Mabel, Sasha and Luz were a little less interested in the technobabble. Instead, they peered into the flickering portal, to see Bill Cipher - sitting there, hat askew, exoskeleton fractured, and eye bruised. 

“Man. You guys TOTALLY messed him up.”

“Sweetie, don’t feel bad for him.” Stan smiled, ruffling her hair. “He got what he deserved.”

“I don’t feel bad. Punch him again!” Mabel beamed. 

Frobo heard her and got ready to do exactly that.

P o l l y? The hulking technicoloured machine buzzed, turning to his little pink compatriot. 

“Yeah, hit ‘im where it hurts, Frobo!” 

His robotic features locked up into a wide, perhaps even slightly sadistic grin, and his enormous fist raised. The bubbling of abomination-and-Belos goop batteries began to echo around the room. Hydraulic hoses hissed, and lights illuminated…

“Now, hold onto yer banjo-strings!” McGucket interrupted, diving into the path of the robot’s two-ton punch. “This ain’t no pug-fightin’ game we’re playin’! Why, if we go a-puncherin’ all-over again through space an’ time, we could end up offsettin’ the entire balance’a the universe!”

"Did he just say pug-fighting?" Marcy murmured into Anne's ear. Anne merely nodded sagely.

“Quite right.” Ford added, solemnly. “We’ve got to find another solution.” 

“You remember how this joker’s demonic book explained he’s in some kinda therapy dimension dealio being watched over by a big newt or somethin'?” Stan said, in an almost frighteningly casual nature while rubbing his nose.
“When I was in a Colombian prison and we were sick of wrestling with a guy, we just kinda called the warden so he’d get beaten round back. Why ain't we just calling this guy's guard or somethin'?"

“Wait! Wait! I noted something down!” Dipper beamed, diving into the blue pine-tree journal he had started using for his adventures. “Grunkle Stan used to say all of this in his sleep!”

“I’m not sure I like where this is going.” Ford said, sternly.

“No, haha, don’t worry. I only wrote the useful bits. The rest will haunt me. Forever.” A tense pause overtook the teenager briefly as he spaced out into a particularly darkened corner of his mind. “...Forever.”

He cleared his throat and continued leafing through his notes. Witch-circles, fairy-circles, chuck-e-cheese-circles, spells, incantations, the ingredients to a popsicle that he was sure contained anthrax, his own attempt at decoding Yumberjack’s secret sauce…

“Whoa, do you, like, have some kinda Necronomicon or something?” Sasha peered over his shoulder with interest - much to Dipper's surprise and rapid loss of composure.

“Oh, Dipper here, he messes around with some crazy stuff.” Wendy said, leaning over his other shoulder, which really wasn't helping the situation. “This lil’ dude’s seen everything from zombie invasions to the FBI.”

Sasha grinned. Though admittedly, her interest seemed rather taken by the oil-stained flannel-wearing redhead rather than the kid whose book she was glancing at. 

...Perhaps another time.

Dipper tugged on his collar, blushing a bright red and now taken over with a different form of tense silence entirely. It lifted with only a nervous smile as he leafed through the Pine Tree journal trying to find the incantation that his Grunkle so often recited in his sleep…

Finally, he found the page, and grinned.

“If I’m not wrong, we just gotta do a little rewriting.” 

If Bill Cipher was not nursing a rather painful black eye and trying to stop his cell spinning around him, he would have no doubt been quick to protest the intuitive twin’s intentions.

And by the time he would realise…

It would already be too late!

Sun Oct 13 '24 Announcement
over 1 year ago – Sun, Oct 13, 2024 at 06:52:43 AM

If you've already preordered an item from the BYEEE campaign, please check your emails for a secret link to your latest add-ons. This will unlock a reduced shipping rate for our two incredible new Owl House collectables - and will allow you to add other items from the campaign thus far, too!

---

The multiverse was continuing to provide ripe conversations and ample tension. While Ford tried to piece together the increasingly complex - and, judging from the otherworldly electronics in his hand, increasingly unstable - situation. The excited chatter was not usually something he’d try to interrupt, in fact, he openly adored the idea of meeting outer-dimensional beings. 

But when the air around them seemed to hum with a dull reverb, making everything sway and wave in short, almost imperceptible flashes, he couldn’t help but be concerned. He had heard a great many things about LA - it being a weirdness hotbed shouldn’t surprise him - but the fact it seemed to be surrounding him, his beloved family and a mismatched array of innocen- um- mostly innocents? That concerned him. 

A flash of doubt filled his mind all the same, though. The scene was deniably a positive one. 

Dipper was scribbling with enthusiasm as he admired Luz’s Palisman. “So she can change into anything?”

“Yeah.” Luz smiled, as the little creature twirled proudly in her hands, “She’s amazing, huh?”

Dipper nodded enthusiastically as he scribbled his notes. He had always been the sort to get excited over a new cryptid. Stringbean was one of the coolest ever, not least because she could turn into any other creature out there. The grin on his face was one of pure, unadulterated enthusiasm. 

Mabel was cuddling the strange little skull-faced dog-demon. Stan was trying a few moves (and failing) on Lilith, and Sprig had fashioned a tiny little saddle to turn Waddles into the ultimate steed. 

It was chaotic, sure - but undeniably amicable. He didn’t even clock that three people from his own party had gone missing. 

Finally, as the reading on his weirdness meter flashed higher, he decided he could be passive no longer. He cleared his throat and stood impressively. “I don’t mean to interrupt the little crossover event going on here, but we should really focus on trying to fix this situation, not indulging in a show-and-tell.” 

The scientist took on a rather commanding tone - one that had his brother rolling his eyes -  and began pacing around the room with his big, heavy boots - making a mess of Studio Bad Egg HQ’s favourite rug.

“We need to be able to match Bill’s energy,” He continued, tapping his lip as he paced relentlessly. “Something that not only hits as hard as he can, but can neutralise him. You’ve seen those portals he’s using - they’re weak. He’s desperate. Tiny little rat-holes, nothing like Weirdmageddon. If we break his concentration, dissipate his energy, he’s done for.” 

Marcy nodded eagerly as the stoney-faced figure she had simply dubbed sci-fi man mapped out the reality. “So what do we need?”

“Something powerful. Really powerful. Veering on the supernatural.”

There was a pause. All eyes fell upon Luz, Eda and Lilith. 

The Owl Lady spoke first, polishing her talons on her shoulder. “Well, I don’t mean to brag…”

“Edalyn, please. We don’t know this thing. He could hurt you.”

Stan’s eyes widened, and he quickly interrupted the discussion. “Wait, hold the phone. Edalyn? I thought-”

“C’mon, chief, I called myself Marilyn Fakename. No way you didn’t realise.”

“I thought it was pronounced Foreign-like. Fakaynam. Somethin’ like that. Kinda hard ta listen after a night on the tables.”

“You’re lucky. I almost took your kidney, Carlos!”

“Carlos-” Stan blinked. And burst into uproarious laughter. “That’s right, I was usin’ a fake name too! I guess we were never married in the first place! …Problem solved!”

“Your love life gets more bizarre to me every time I hear about it,” Ford murmured, nursing his temples.

“I’ve read your journals, Sixer, don’t even start with me.”

It looked as if one of the famous brotherly rows was about to kick off - good-natured though they usually were - when everything was interrupted by the crackling of a split between time and space. This time, however, it wasn’t opened by the two-dimensional menace in Theraprism. It was, quite literally, a wormhole. 

Hooty - being a creature of unsound mind and terrible body - had dug his beak into the threshold of time and space and ripped it open like an envelope… in order to say hi to what, he presumed, was a new tea-party candidate. After all, in his somewhat dull and utterly asinine mind, everybody was a potential friend. 

“So you’re a demon? I’m a demon too!” He began, wiggling his slick, feathered body as he stuck his face through the middle of time and space - as if it was some kind of porthole. “You wanna be friends?” 

The reception to him was not positive. Bill Cipher was used to being disgusted by otherworldly phenomena, but even he was taken aback by the strangely greasy avian tube that had writhed into his cell. He yelped and fell onto his flat-sided hindquarters with disgust. “WHAT THE HELL IS THAT THING?!” 

“They call me Hooty! You see, because I do hooting noises and I’m also called Hooty and in my spare time I like to have a hoot and-”

“YOUR VOICE! YOUR ACCURSED VOICE!”

“Oh boy, I get that a lot! I used to sound just like emperor Belos, who you don’t know, but maybe you know, but you probably don’t know, and then I realised he was giving really bad Juju, so I decided to reinvent myself after a corporate mascot, and I also learnt…” 

“Oh no.” Eda murmured. “He’s going-”

“Hooty, no!” Luz yelled, trying to pull him back. “Nobody wants that!”

It was too late. Setting back his Porta-hooty bag, Hootcifer rose to full height and begin to twist and wiggle like a creature of the dirt, coiling and crawling into all manner of grotesque shapes. 

“...to dance! Look at me, Mister Triangle! This is how I make friends! Hoot hoot! You see how I’m pretzel-shaped, but also heart-shaped? That’s because we’re going to be best friends!” 

“GET AWAY FROM ME!”

“And then I look at yooou all seduuuuctive-liiiike!” 

“STOP! STOP, DON’T LOOK AT ME LIKE THAT!” Bill snarled, throwing art therapy crayons desperately at the writhing mass of terrible, just utterly terrible bird-beast. 

“And then I start producing friendship mucus, just like this!”

The noises that followed had even the amphibian-hardened Calamity trio backing off in horror. Hooty began horking and sputtering in a way that caused his frame to bulge and quiver, the Porta-Hooty house bouncing from the floor in all manner of directions. 

“Oops! No, wait, that was just the remains of the rat I ate for lunch, hoot-hoot. Let me try again!” 

Bill Cipher was not known for his temperament. He grew increasingly livid at the frankly grotesque display, not least considering it had been Hooty to open this particular gateway, and not him.

Of course, that also got his scheming mind roaming. 

If this had been opened by the owl…tube…thing, it was being done under his own power. Not from the failed efforts of the Cipher Cult. No, this was (surprisingly, considering the entirely unhinged gyrations of the foul creature) an entirely more stable passage into the world. 

Snarling, his breath heaving, the triangular terror reached out for those glowing boundaries and began to pull. Electricity seemed to shoot in all directions, fizzing and sparking wildly, throwing papers across the room. 

Lightbulbs began to pop. The entirety of LA began to fizzle and flash. Ships began to rise from the water, BMW drivers started using their turn signals, and the smell of ozone began to fill the room. ITA bags, keychains and pin badges fell from their mountings and scattered across the Studio.

The very fabric of reality seemed to roll, quiver and wave, and a dull reverb filled every single one of our hero's ears. His temper completely depleted, Bill Cipher was now going whole hog. Quite literally ripping apart from the boundaries between worlds.

He was utterly, unemphatically enraged.

“ENOUGH OF THIS! NO MORE MISTER NICE GUY! I’M GOING TO DESTROY EVERY SINGLE ONE OF YOUR MOLECULES! I’M GOING TO DISASSEMBLE EVERY SINGLE ONE OF YOU AT A CHEMICAL LEVEL! THIS IS THE ENDGAME!”

Tue Oct 8 '24 Announcement
over 1 year ago – Tue, Oct 08, 2024 at 02:02:06 PM

If you've already preordered an item from the BYEEE campaign, please check your emails for a secret link to your latest add-ons. This will unlock a reduced shipping rate for two returning items from the Cipher Cult Collection - Bipper and the Glitter Knight figure - and will allow you to add other items from the campaign thus far, too!

---

“Dude. Are those, like, bone boots?”

“Eh, yeah. Kinda. They’re infused with the power of a continent that was once a walking monolithic demon that infused the entirety of our dimension with magic. They ended up building the entirety of civilization atop his decomposing, half-sunken corpse!”

Anne clapped her hands onto her cheeks with pupils like dinner plates. “...Dude. So cool.” 

It was fair to say that, for the most part, the meeting of the minds between each of the multiverses had been a pretty successful one. While the little house in LA was beginning to feel rather cramped (Polly had decided to claim the mug cupboard and was now refusing to leave), everybody was mostly finding things very agreeable. 

…Mostly. 

“I can’t stand these guys.” Sasha murmured, gesturing to the Pines family. “He keeps staring, she keeps throwing glitter everywhere, he smells like cheap cologne and keeps trying to sell us tickets to his weird little tourist trap and you keep simpering over the guy in the trenchcoat!” 

“He’s got such great sci-fi energy, you don’t get it.” Marcy whispered, framing an oblivious Ford Pines in her fingers. “It’s like an episode of Space-Gate in here, and I’m totally for it.” 

Sasha was absolutely certain Anne would provide some clarity to this whole fish-outta-water situation. She was to be sorely mistaken.

“Okay guys, so it turns out that the bone-boots girl is totally into it. Told you she wasn’t possessed. I mean, she’s sorta possessed. It’s a bit like she’s fused. Kinda reborn? Point is, I can’t pick ‘em up online.” 

“Y’know… I sometimes think I’m the only one here to pays any sort of attention.”

“Look, Sash relax. We’ve literally done all of this big climatic battle stuff before. I basically died for a frog dimension, you were a literal sword-toting tank-”

“HEY!”

“Oh come on, not like that! And Marcy-” 

There was a pause. 

Sasha and Anne both recalled moments when they were true warriors with an innate sense of pride. Marcy, compared to her two charismatic friends, wasn’t so eager to boast about those times she kicked ass, no matter how real they were.

Bill saw that. They don't call him an all-seeing eye for nothing, and he immediately senses an opportunity. Leaning in through that little rip in space-time, the tricksy little manipulator made Marcy’s blood run cold.  

“YA WANNA BE A WARRIOR, MARCORE?! WHY DONTCHA TAKE A LOOK AT THIS?!” He cackled, ripping open the fabric of reality with a sweep of his scheming hands.

Marcy stared blankly as a vortex opened ahead of her. No. No, this wasn’t her! This was never her! It couldn’t be! She’d been through plenty of therapy, been through plenty of self-reflection, and yet, at the hands of the triangle’s devilish manipulation, there it was. The one thing from Amphibia she was genuinely desperate to forget.

Darcy. Prancing proudly with that terrible laser scythe, a scheming grin upon her face. The Wu family’s pride and joy stares, her eyes like pindots, her knees rattling…

When Anne and Sasha both looped their arms around her shoulders.

“This yellow thing’s just another big, dumb jerk. Don’t let him play tricks on you, Marbles.”

She looked up, furrowed her brow... and cracked into a smile. Her voice still trembled - but it wasn't quite enough to erase that confidence deep in her heart.

"Y'know, Bill? You're real pathetic. Still holding a grudge when your little armageddon got ruined?"

"I'M NOT HOLDING A GRUDGE! THIS IS JUST WHAT I DO! I'M BILL CIPHER! I'M A BEING OF INFINITE ENERGY WITH NO WEAKNESS!"

"Sure thing, buddy. You know what I did when I realised what I'd been through? What I'd put myself through? What others did to me? I embraced it. I learned from it. I even ended up growing from it. And you know what? I think it's maybe time you did the same thing."

Anne snorted. "Yeah, you're just some maths reject who didn't get what he wanted!"

"A little kid throwing a tantrum because he couldn't take the world down with him." Sasha added with a grin that could just about stop any egomaniac in their tracks.

"I'LL TEAR YOU LIMB FROM LIMB!"

"Do you know, the funny thing about limbs is that they're way stronger when they're all bundled together. Think you can take on this?"

Marcy raised her wrist-mounted crossbow, pointing it with an almost disturbing amount of glee at Bill's big, round ocular. Sasha unsheathed a dagger. Anne raised a tennis racket. It was a bonafide stand-off! And while Bill had encountered many terrors, he was not quite prepared to face off against the brutality of three war-hardened teenage girls with absolutely nothing to lose.

The crossbow creaaaked...

The tension built.

A trickle of sweat ran down the demonic shape's panicked face...

And the portal slammed shut before another word could be uttered.

Marcy wiped a stray tear from her eye and took a deep breath, before embracing her two friends thankfully. As much as reliving these things can be difficult - as much as confronting old traumas can hurt - having your loved ones around you can certainly help. Even those most difficult of moments should never be forgotten.

“Oh my gosh. Oh my gosh that was so cool!” Luz squealed. 

Mabel gripped her with almost obsessive enthusiasm. “I will swap my grappling hook for your crossbow thingy. I need it. You don’t understand how much I need it!!”

Dipper promptly grabbed his sister’s oversized turtleneck and pulled her away. “O-okayyy, let’s just take my sister well away from the crossbow thingy.” 

Meanwhile, in his increasingly stuffy cell, Bill Cipher glowered. He sat there on his fauxcrete floor, his eye seething with anger. Anger at the girls, anger at his restraints, anger at those damned Cipher Cultists that had utterly failed to bring him back. 

He wasn’t going to take this much longer...

Mon Oct 7 '24 Announcement
over 1 year ago – Mon, Oct 07, 2024 at 01:11:24 PM

If you've already preordered an item from the BYEEE campaign, please check your emails for a secret link to your latest add-ons. This will unlock a reduced shipping rate for two returning items from the Cipher Cult Collection - Bipper and the Glitter Knight figure - and will allow you to add other items from the campaign thus far, too!

----

That tiny split in space-time organized by the Cipher Cult had plenty of ripple effects, across California. It briefly started raining rats and frogs, at one point San Francisco started smelling lemony fresh (that’s when you know something’s wrong) and for a brief while, Grunkle Stan even considered making a donation to charity. 

...A brief while, but a while all the same. 

Luckily, the Cipher Cult was not what you'd call experienced (rumour has it they were just ordinary folks trying home rituals and wearing funky jewellery) and they fumbled a lot of their summoning in a pretty big way. In particular, when they tried to call Bill back to Earth, they messed up a couple of code words and created the equivalent of interdimensional mouseholes - tiny little popped stitches of space-time that offered the demon a small reprieve from Theraprism, but not much.

They were, to the interdimensional demon, utterly pathetic. Like trying to tie someone up with sewing thread.

He'd take whatever he could get, though, even if it was a struggle. I mean, have you tasted Theraprism grub? It's like fishsticks, but worse. Because they're tiny planets. Tiny alien planet fishsticks. Gross.

He tried everything to make it work. He tried to wriggle through one portal, tried biting through another, and he even threw crayons out of one in the hope it might catch that weird familiar-sounding dog-demon in the eye. All to no avail.

Finally, our beleaguered villain decided the one thing he could try was getting hold of a host. And when you've been possessed by Bill once, it's never too difficult for him to get back in...

Dipper was busy staring at Sasha Waybright when it happened. (He's never been quite the same since that dealio at Northwest Manor. Something about blondes, according to his sister.) Unforseen to him, a miniature portal opened up behind his head, swirling like a glowing plughole. An inky black noodle-arm reached out, tiny fingers splayed wide - and grabbed the back of his head.

"Dipper! Look out!" Ford, yelled. He whipped out his laser gun in the blink of an eye! Ford was no stranger to being quick on the draw...

... But this time, he wasn't quite quick enough.

The sweaty Pines twin turned round with a shrill laugh and glowing yellow eyes, twitching and glitching through the tenuous little puppet strings Bill was desperately trying to pull. On the upside, Bill's struggled attempt to create a protective exoskeleton created a very fashionable hoodie.

Mabel stared in disbelief as Dipper fell foul of that Illuminati monster and immediately jumped to the occasion, popping on her favourite bike helmet and rapidly fashioning a loyal steed out of papier mache. Never doubt a Mabel Pines craft session.

"Give me my brother back, you stupid nacho!"

"NACHO?! You don't wanna try taking a bite outta me, iron-jaws!"

"Oh it is so on!"

What Mabel might lack in magic powers, advanced scientific theory and powerful punches, she more than makes up for in sheer will, determination, and her belief that all people are intrinsically good. In that sense, she might as well have be one of the strongest of the Pines clan. While Ford raised his shock gloves with a furrowed brow, and Stan tried to think of a way to not punch his great-nephew (grephew?) in the face, Mabel threw glitter at him and gave him the sincere sibling hug of his life.

That vice-like grip was enough to split those straining strands of time and space - and with a single pinging sound, Dipper dropped to the floor, much to the irritation of the triangle beyond.

"I WILL NOT BE BEATEN BY LOVE AND FRIENDSHIP. WHAT IS THIS, A DISNEY FLICK?!"

Stan loomed over the portal with a devilish grin, raising a meaty, brass-adorned fist. "No idea what that is chief. They sure ain't here."

"NO! NO! NOT THE EYE-"

THWACK!!

The miniature vortex snapped shut on impact - it is was only sheer luck and extremely skilled thievin' reflexes that it didn't take off Stan's hand. (Though hey, matching limbs with Marilyn, right? There's gotta be an in there.)

Eda Clawthorne, who had been spending her time avoiding her ex-husband's glance throughout this entire adventure, finally cleared her throat, stepped forward and nudged the glittery Pines twin with interest. "How'dja know that'd work?"

"I didn't."

"Ya just...threw yourself into it, huh?"

"Sibling hugs fix everything!"

"Heh. Ya met the kid yet? Hey, Luz! C'mere, come say hi."

It seems that every attempt Bill made to tear the group apart only brought them closer together...