You don't move for a long time. You know you should, know you have to — you have to warn Dipper about Will's sudden change in demeanor — but you can't. You can't even move from your log, even though what you really want to do is curl up on the ground and cry.

You're just as bad as the rest of them. You think I would hurt people. You think I'm a danger.

Will's words run through your head over and over, and you start to believe them. Didn't you tell him not to use his powers? Didn't you warn him about hurting people? And now your warnings, as well as Dipper's, have caused the very thing they were meant to prevent. No wonder Will hates Dipper so much. No wonder he hates you.

You wallow in your despair for a while. You don't know how long. Finally, when the sun starts descending out of the sky, you find the strength to stand up. You look back the way you came — which way did Will go, again? — and nearly lose your resolve all over again. You came out so far. . . can you even make it home?

You grit your teeth. You will not be useless. If Will really is going to terrorize the town, you have to stop it. You have to get to Dipper.

You don't know the way to the Mystery Shack from here, only the way to your own summer home, which is not exactly near the Shack. But going there is better than getting lost, and you can recruit your mother and her car to get you to Dipper. So you plod back the way you came.

As you walk, you start to get angry. How dare Will say those things about you! He can't read your mind anymore — he doesn't know what you're thinking! Your footsteps turn to fuming stomps. If he's going to get revenge based on imagined offenses, then that makes him the bad guy! Not you, not Dipper, not anyone else! Him!

Are they really imagined, though?

Your anger slips back into shame, and you almost stop walking. At the very least, your enraged pace carried you farther than your depressed one. You try to reignite the fire, but there's no getting it back now.

Why bother going to Dipper? He'll know soon enough if Will goes rogue. Maybe he already has, and maybe you're too late. Maybe you'll just get to the Shack for Dipper to yell at you and demand why you didn't come sooner. You were on that log for a long time. Can you handle the shame of that, too?

Stop it. You have to keep going.

Maybe Will went deeper into the woods. Maybe he'll come down from his anger and try to find you. Maybe he'll try to apologize.

Ha. Like that would ever happen. Either Will has changed dramatically since escaping that alternate dimension, or he really was manipulating you. After all, you found out that demons can't lie from a demon. If they can lie, then he could just say that, and everything else he'd ever said to you could be a lie as well!

But then you remember the look in his eyes when you showed up to rescue him. The fear in his body when he first hugged you in that dream. The sincerity in his voice when he thanked you for helping him escape. All of that couldn't be faked.

Right?

Finally, you start to see signs of civilization through the trees. You pick up your pace to a jog and exit the tree line near your house. Now what? Should you go straight to the Shack, or should you stop and explain to your mother? On the one hand, she has a car — she can get you there faster. On the other hand, explaining to her and calming her down enough to drive said car will probably take forever.

But she deserves to know where you are. And you can explain everything on the way. You run up the porch steps and into the house.

"Mom! Mom, I need a ride to the Mystery Shack! Right now!"

Your mom turns from the window across the living room, where she was looking out at the forest. "Yasmin! There you are! I was about to go after you!" She frowns. "Where's Will?"

"Gone," you say, having not the time nor the energy to say anything more than that. "I need to get to Dipper. Can I have a ride?"

She freezes up, getting that look in her eyes when she's overwhelmed by the abrupt onset of an intense situation. But your mom has always been good with taking things in stride, and she nods. "Okay. Go get in the car. Do we need bring anything?"

"I can't think of what," you say, already halfway out of the door.

You sit in the car for a good few minutes before your mom comes out. Your leg bounces with anxiety. Will hadn't actually said what he was going to do. But he'd been talking like he was going to rampage — or worse, start another Weirdmageddon. Even if he doesn't intentionally cause destruction, you highly doubt he'll feel sorry if he accidentally does.

"What do you mean Will is gone?" your mom asks as she shifts the car into drive.

"I mean he walked away. I don't know where he is now. But he's been changing a lot since last night, and he was talking like he wanted to hurt people. E-especially—" Especially the people who judged him to be dangerous. But that includes your mother, and you don't need her freaking out, not when she's driving. "Especially Dipper."

Despite your efforts to keeping the freaking out to a minimum, your mother's hands tighten on the wheel. "What would he do to hurt Dipper?" she asks. "Does he have the same powers as Bill did?"

"I don't know," you say. "I don't think so. He's not as powerful as Bill was. He can't use telekinesis very well" — your heart aches as you think of the wildflower — "and he can only handle so many copies of himself. He gets tired easily. But I don't know how long it'll take before he rivals Bill. And. . ." You hesitate. Should you tell your mother about the weirdness bubble? Weren't those traumatizing for her?

Your mom takes a turn a little too fast, and you know you can't remind her of her trauma while she's behind the wheel. "What?"

"M-maybe I should wait until we're with Dipper. So I only h-have to explain it once."

Your mom purses her lips, but she doesn't argue. A few moments later, the car pulls up to the Mystery Shack. You're out of the car before Pacifica has even put it into park.

You run up the porch steps and bang on the door. "Dipper! Dipper, I need to talk to you!"

The door opens to reveal, not Dipper, but a startled Mabel. "Yasmin? What is it?"

"I need to talk to Dipper," you say. You start to walk in, heedless of Mabel standing in your way. "Is he in his lab?"

"I'm not sure, I just got here," Mabel says. She raises her voice. "Dipper! Wendy! Where's Dipper!"

The swing door at the back of the room opens, revealing Dipper and Wendy behind it. Dipper holds Stanford on his hip. "What is it, Mabel?" He frowns. "Yasmin?"

Suddenly you're talking too fast to stop. You vaguely register your mom entering the Shack behind you, but that detail is unimportant in comparison to telling Dipper what just happened. "Okay, so, don't tell me you were right, okay? But you were right. Will's starting to go demonic, and we had a fight in the forest, and he walked off, and I have no idea where he is."

Dipper holds up a hand to stop the flow of words. "What do you mean, Will's starting to go demonic?" The worry lines etched into his face tell you that he has an idea.

"W-well, this morning, he told me he was changing. O-oh, and he can't sleep. At all. So he just stayed up all night last night and luckily didn't destroy anything but he was messing with his powers a little — although he said he was waiting for me to wake up — and—"

"Woah, Yasmin, slow down," Dipper says. He gives the baby to Wendy, who takes him without comment. "You're not making any sense."

So you take a deep breath, organize your thoughts as best you can, and tell the whole story from when you woke up this morning to now. It's still pretty jumbled — your stories always are, and this one is more emotionally charged than most — but you think you do okay, because the adults seem to understand. When you explain the fight, you get choked up, both with sadness and with anger. But you soldier on. Dipper needs to know Will's exact words so he can figure out what he's going to do next.

"—A-and then he repeated the words you said last night. That he's a demon, and he can't ignore his nature. After that, he left."

The words travel through the room, settling like dust on everyone's shoulders. Only Stanford's baby noises stave off the suffocating silence. His babbling grows louder and more distressed, until Wendy hitches him up on her hip. "C'mon, Fordsie, let's go feed you," she says to her baby. With a worried glance at you, she steps out of the room.

"Did Will say where he was going or what he was doing?" Dipper asks after Wendy leaves.

You shake your head. "B-but he was talking like. . . like he was going to start another Weirdmageddon. O-or something."

"You said. . . he created a weirdness bubble?" Your mother's voice is soft but horrified.

"Yeah. N-nothing happened — it just floated there, and he explained what it was until I realized it was the same thing Bill used. A-and — it took him a long time just to create the one bubble, and really tired him out, and didn't Bill create a bunch of them at once? When I told him that, he seemed j-jealous that Bill could do that when he couldn't."

Dipper's face darkens. "Jealousy of Bill is never a good thing. You said you don't know where he is now?"

"N-no, but the fight was at least an hour ago. I thought m-maybe he'd already started destroying the town."

"It's not the town he's mad at," Dipper says, "it's us. But if he really does think humans are insignificant, then everyone is in danger."

Pacifica stumbles across the room to Mabel, who puts an arm around her.

"I-I don't understand," you say. "Just this morning, Will was talking and laughing and being happy. Wh-what happened?"

Dipper breathes out heavily, putting his hands to his face. He doesn't respond for a long moment. Finally, he says, "Will has been through a lot in less than a day. Becoming physical changed everything, and his emotions have been going haywire ever since."

You remember Will's comments about all the things he can hear and see and feel since becoming physical. He's never even felt himself sitting down before. He said it was a lot to get used to, but you didn't think about that as a bad thing.

"What changed, exactly?" Pacifica asks. "Besides 'everything.'"

Dipper frowns in thought. "Imagine sensory overload, except you've never felt any of the sensations before. Coupled with a group of people suspicious of your every move, plus a newfound power that you can use to take control of everything. It's too much." He sighs. "I shouldn't have let him go last night."

"He wouldn't have let you keep him here," you remind him.

Dipper concedes your point with a nod. "I suppose I didn't worry about it too much, because. . . well, I thought being with you might help, Yasmin."

You blink. "But it didn't."

"But it did. He lasted this long, didn't he?" Dipper sighs. "Now he's realized just how powerful he is, and his species' mind is wired to equate power with a right to rule. Which isn't very different from how humans deal with power, if you at all study history."

You think about that. It's true. But what human can, on a whim, drive someone insane by sticking them in another dimension?

Dipper looks deep in thought, and nobody says anything lest you should interrupt his mind. "Okay," he finally says, "I think I may have something. Something that can help. Will would see it as a weapon, but. . . well, it may be our best — our only — option. To keep everyone safe."

"And. . . is it a weapon?" you ask hesitantly. You may be mad at Will, and a bit scared of him, but you don't want to hurt him.

"I don't think so, but I can guarantee Will would disagree." Dipper paused. "I need some time. Mabel, Pacifica, Yasmin, would you—"

A sudden crash sounds from the kitchen, making everyone jump. There's no time to recover from the shock before Stanford starts crying. Loudly.

Your heart sinks to your shoes. There goes Dipper's time.

Will is here.