The Axe Effect: Gifillions

Beginning AN:

Well, I wanted to write more short, stupid little stories like this instead of trying to focus exclusively on "larger narratives," so this is something of me continuing that along with the "crack crossovers" such as Carl Stevens Universe, The Hair Idealization, and Simpsons Meet Brandy and Mr. Whiskers. Rest assured, my longer, more complicated stories aren't really going anywhere (but I'll still probably keep with most of them being no longer than about thirteen chapters, and the chance of sequels for any of them is low. The highest chance being Total Zeksmit Plains getting Campsites Around the World, but after giving it some thought I might just silently kill off that fic once Plains is finally over with and behind me).

So, even though this was mostly finished (a second look through with a tiny number of notes-to-self not being counted here) long before chapter 11 of run:gifocalypse itself was, I still wanted to wait until at least that chapter came out to publish this. So that, unlike the joke ending for 496 Reasons, I wouldn't be spoiling some professors that have not yet been seen in RunGif proper. It goes without saying that, if you take reveals of what the professors are like, themed after, etc as spoilers in of themselves, this contains spoilers for the first eleven chapters of run:gifocalypse. In fact, it might even spoil the as-of-yet-unreleased twelfth one, since one character in particular was just barely introduced by chapter 11. I cannot stress how much I highly recommend that you read run:gifocalypse before reading this, and not just because I want RunGif to get more reviews and attention.

(Speaking of recommendations, I mentioned Total Zeksmit and 496 and, well... now, I wouldn't recommend reading either of those. I only still have the latter for archival purposes, because I believe that completely acting like I didn't write something when I did is a bit of petty censorship. 496 is discontinued and unless Homestuck's following spinoffs are spectacular enough to draw my attention back in it's extremely unlikely that anything similar to the concept would be revived any time soon. Total Zeksmit has a 'wonderful' update average rate of about one chapter per year and it quickly went from being the project I was the most proud of to something I consider a very awkward old shame that had trouble deciding exactly what kind of story it even wanted to be. Expect the elemental stuff and the hints of a much bigger world to be kind of retconned and it's just a more "ordinary" AU that happens to take place in a semi-odd universe where Canada took over most of Earth. That's all.)

This is not flat-out intentionally poorly written, but please do not take it too seriously. I just kind of wanted to poke at those Axe commericals, even if the one this is a parody of in particular is a really old one.

"This is nice," Melody commented, "I'm glad you recommended this spot for our date."

The beach side was indeed bordered by a number of landmarks. All around, not even divided cleanly, was a circle of biomes providing a backdrop to the date. Mountains to the north, some pearly and capped with snow while others were distant crimson volcanos spawning trails of lava. Going clockwise, the mountains gave way to sunset orange canyons, and those to a vast desert with golden sands. From there lied the vibrant chatreuse hills, rich leafy forest, fields of jade grass with wind blowing around as a sign of freedom, sparkling teal springs the emitted steam from the natural heat, a swamp with glistening cerulean plants emitting whispers and tunes. To their side lied the beach itself, black gravel giving off to the open navy blue ocean. And past that, fields of indigo flowers peaked among tall grass with assorted wildlife, a large pit emitted deep magenta gasses. The final point of interest before rejoining with the mountains were a jungle of gleaming amaranth stones and fruit.

"I didn't recommend this spot," Soos replied, "You did." The setting itself did raise the question of exactly where the hell in the world Soos and Melody were right now, but that's becides the point.

"So wait. If you didn't invite me here, then-"

Soos looked down and pinched his nose. "Oh boy."

The 'race' was on.

By the forest in the east south-east, green was the majority color of choice. A handful of green swimsuits, several costumes made entirely out of fresh green leaves, clean white dresses. Its apparent leader bore bright pink skin and had a full leaf dress on. The desert, too, began picking up its own army: Donned in what could only be described as exaggerations of revealing Halloween costumes, the yellow-haired leader in a tattered reaper-like robe holding her scythe proudly. The most visible of all teams was the swimwear-clad ones coming in straight from the ocean. Though other teams such as the near-naked canyon group or the cavewoman-like gang from the flowers were making their way there. Most of these outfits paled compared to the horrors of the towel and bubble-clad ones from the springs, contrasted nicely with the more fully-dressed (well, half of them, if their outfits were not just painted on) apparent artist group that came from the jungle.

The first to reach the duo was not the group of band uniform-dressed copies from the swamp. It was not the ones in industrial (or royal, or otherwise themeless) costumes that crawled out from the caves. Nor the exceptionally fast group, some of which in cars, going by from the winds, in outfits that were still revealing yet at least 'normal' even if most of them were cosplays of King of the Hill or King of the Hill AUs. It was not even the assortment of skimpy lingere from the hills. A hand reached out from the sand before the team of flashy fire-like costumed-dressed mountain members could use their alarming speed to find him.

Gasping a bit at the sudden hand, Soos and Melody were in for a nastier surprise as a massive number of hands began sticking from the ground to follow. What must be hundreds upon thousands of arms reached out at him, quickly grabbing his legs. When a black-haired, gray face emerged, Soos had to sigh. Dove.

"I got him first!" She cheered, "I am the superior-"

And this was when the other copies piled on him. Predictably, this meant that Dove lost her grip and was knocked back into the sand, while her followers found their arms being surrounded by bodies without really understanding why until they activated thermal sensing. Soos, in direct center of a thirteen-fold professor hug (Melody being crammed in with him; Dove still being kicked out by accident), struggled a bit as he tried to find the words to get them to let up.

"I give! I give! Can't we just say everyone won?"

And this was when everyone heard the voice from above. The one that technically started this mess. (Well, from a perspective of Gravity Falls. When it came to the meat of everything, that blame would be placed on Dove.)

"You offshoots! I saw him FIRST!"

Neither Soos or Melody could see it from under the pileup - actually, none of the leading .GIFfany copies could either - but looming above, on a floating platform of pink metal, was none other than the first copy encountered. Still holding her pink hair, still in physical form, and crossing her arms. Not that any of the 'major' characters of this short tale could see her right now, due to being burried under at least hundreds of other copies.

"By first, I mean before the race. I mean that I first saw him when he bought my game. It's my copy, I was the one he first played, it should be me! Becides, don't you professors have dates? Becides Rose, Dove, and the twins."

"Wow. Everything else you just said was your stupid yandere speech, but that last part makes a surprising amount of sense from you." Commented Bubbles. "Anyway, we uh... sort of broke off from our players."

"Let's just say none of those last, and we all conveniently staged a race for Soos instead. This was my idea, after all." Said Dove.

"Yeah, and this was an uncharacteristically smart idea on Dove's part." Bubbles added again, "And it took us by surprise that she won. She usually never wins at her own game."

"You didn't really win." Soos commented. Since the (growing) dome of AIs had long blocked out sunlight, he was currently saying this in the dark. "I'm still with Melody and everything."

"Well, it's the feeling that counts. Sorry we used your date to get a sense of euphoria."

"That's okay Bubbles."

Above, .GIFfany began tapping her foot.

"Do not get distracted. I said I was the first to see him. Everybody, unpile. I want him for myself."

"You weren't even invited!" Kathody belted.

"Becides, we can't really 'unpile' that well. Most of these girls still can't possess non-electronics that good, let alone something harder like this gravel." Remarked Burnda. "And outside of that they can't really enter their energy forms that long without an electronic. If you would like, we can hop along around our students and end up outside this growing pile, so we can talk to you in person-"

"You know we all don't like talking in person very much! We'll chat online!"

"The net's down." Said Professor Wendy. Not that many of the people involved could tell, but she frowned when she mentioned this. "Trust me. I tried to get into a new fandom today. I think you disabled it or something when you found out about the race."

"I did and it's back up!"

She heard a beep. Looking at a watch that was on her wrist the entire time (yes, .GIFfany added a tiny bit of attire compared to her canonical self in this story's context, it makes a bit more sense if you have followed the warning and read run:gifocalypse first), she rolled her eyes.

"Very mature, Dove. Nice language, too."

"You criticizing me on maturity? Ha! Good to see it means at least part of you is growing!"

.GIFfany lept off of her platform, standing on top of the growing pile that consisted of AIs climbing up and over one-another. She looked down at them, as if attempting to X-ray through this enormous crowd to try to find Soos.

"Is this going to be over with soon?" Asked Melody, "I'm finding it harder to breathe in here."

.GIFfany sighed. "Yes. But only because Soos might be finding it hard to breathe in there too."

"I can make this last longer by manipulating the oxygen around us, so-" Professor Wendy began. "Wait. I should just keep my mouth shut."

"No, you should do exactly what you just said. Provide them both with oxygen."

"...Dang it- I mean drat. I'm not into King of the Hill anymore."

"What about pressure-mojo?" Asked Sandy. "Sure, we're in a stable dome now, but if even more of us pile on, we might crush them. That's bad for your bones and junk."

"Just shift the gravel below them to make a pocket!" .GIFfany replied.

"Urgh. The solution just had to be the one to ask the question."

Like that and with a bit of orange lightning, Soos and Melody felt the ground below sink in, allowing them some extra space. Some straining sounds indicated that the AIs were hard at work to not collapse over them.

"New plan," .GIFfany announced, "Just bring him up to me. This is getting stupid."

"Wait a minute!" Said Soos, "I have an idea! Melody, I can get these copies off of our backs for good! Now, do you know anything about a body spray called AXE?"

"I wish I didn't..." Melody said under her breath.

"Great! Have any with you?"

"It's not the kind of thing I want to have on me, so no-"

"Oh yeah." Professor Wendy commented, "My old player loved that stuff. He said it was 'real manliness.' I kept some as a souvenir. But since I'm not into him anymore, you can have it."

Fingers shifted around as the spring green professor opened up her inventory, briefly illuminating the setting. It was here that Soos noticed some things about his placement. Number one: Sandy was the closest to him, and seemed to already be falling asleep in spite of talking no more than two minutes ago and shifting the sand below them. Number two: Melody was starting to arm-nudge at the pileup from the inside, and due to some kind of silent telephone system the copies were giving to one-another, it seemed to be kind of working.

"Here you go," the professor of wind said, handing him a spray bottle of the stuff. "Knock yourself out. Or knock us out, if you really think that's .GIFfany repellant."

Now blinded by the darkness once again and hearing the thuds of an impatient above them, Soos felt a can being placed in his hands. He fiddled around with it a little, then sprayed. It ended up hitting his forearm, but the place he sprayed didn't matter. He still got an intended effect.

A wave of coughs rippled through the pileup, which finally stopped growing as the copies from all thirteen sides (including below) came to a complete halt. And started bolting off in the opposite direction. Those that were already trying to dig into the field lept off, layer after layer of .GIFfany copies running away. Once it thinned enough for the professors to finally have their escape, Professor Kathody turned back to Soos and pointed a finger at him.

"You may have foiled our unfoilable plans THIS TIME Soos, but mock my words, we WILL be back!"

Professor Wendy seemed unaffected at first, but after a few nervous coughs, she began walking out herself. Her words while doing so were "Yeah, even I do not want to defend that."

All that was left, standing several feet away, was the first one he encountered. The unofficial leader of this bizarre party. .GIFfany herself, the 'Risen' one who did not think up a new name, folding her arms. While also transforming an index finger into a flash drive.

"Now that they are out of the way, I can have you for myself!" .GIFfany began a running charge, but was clearly slowing down as she approached the source of the body spray. "We'll be... together! For..." She huffed, finding it to get increasingly difficult to breathe with her new-ish 'lungs.' "Ever... and... ever..."

She ended up running right past him, taking some dizzy steps and outright collapsing shortly after.

"Yes! We did it!" Soos cheered as he pumped his hand in the air.

Then he looked over to see Melody, eyes watering, down on one knee while she too hacked up a storm.

"Melody? Are you alright?"

"I'm sure I am," she said between coughs, "After all, it's just body spray, how bad can it-"

She fell over, just as dazzed and tired out as .GIFfany was right next to her.

"I'm fine... I'll sleep the smell off..."

Soos then looked over at the camera, smiling as he held out the spray:

"AXE! Not that good for getting girls, but at least it's a great stalker repellant!"

Dove leaned back into the scene, with a sort of mask over the lower half of her face for seemingly no other purpose than to use as a way to block the smell.

"Does it also work on men?"

Soos raised a finger to the air. "You bet it does!"

And following that, he fell backwards. Dove's own head began spinning around before she too collapsed to her knees, and then fell on her face with her rear in the air.

Even though Melody was on the path of recovery a few minutes later, Dian was still examining the four once she walked back on to the beach with a purple gas mask on.

"Does this mean I technically win? Eh, I never really wanted to get involved in this. But my followers told me I should. Anyway, I think I should take you all to the hospital."

She said "Come on, up we go." As she effortlessly picked up Soos, Melody, .GIFfany, and Professor Dove, carrying all four of them over her shoulder. Dian laughed a little to herself.

"And the other professors made fun of my fixation on gas masks. This will show them. Well, except Bubbles, Leona, and Sonia. They were cool."

Closing AN:

I'm not even really sure if I have ever smelled anything AXE-related. I just heard that it smelled awful or something like that. I generally don't like advertisements that imply "Hey, our product will help you get laid" even in a subtle way (IE that car indirectly leading to a new wife, or whatever), so of course the AXE ads outright do something like that and I felt like taking it out on the product itself. Honestly, while working on run:gifocalypse I was just thinking of that ad and thought "Hey, how come I haven't came across any fan fiction parodying that?" Because run:gifocalypse actually involves millions of women in some form, I thought that would be the most appropriate route to go for here. (Though the ad was titled billions, but...)

If by some chance I get fans in the way that they only want me to focus on, like, one thing and get super upset when I'm not on that thing, then end up hating this for "Stealing time space" (hey, if Smash Bros. apparently has this thing called "roster space" then why not "time space" too?) when I should have updated, I don't know, Hair Idealization-related storylines or whatever, rest assured. This fic did not take very long to write, and I was working on other stories at a time during the same days. And while I did kind of hold off on starting or going back to some other ideas until after the rough of this was finished, it's mostly because I was coming up blank on writing for those anyway.

Well, I hope you enjoyed this, and other various stories along the way.

Gravity Falls is owned by Disney and Alex Hirsch. Also, you're free to do whatever you want with these weird .GIFfany recolors so long as you give some form of credit or even just say, for example, "This is Professor Rose she ain't my idea" and hopefully a Google search for "Gravity Falls Professor Rose" would take care of the rest. That is, of course, only if you take the design directly. If you invent your own .GIFfany-army with element themes or whatever, I care even less about credit but mentioning that run:gifocalypse inspired you (only if it actually did, of course, if it's your own idea I believe you since element minions have been around for a long time) would be neat.

With this out of the way, I will be going to Journals of Wisdom, Power, and Courage chapter 5 starting November. Once that's out, I'll put that story on hiatus and get through the halfway mark "filler" that is Spooky's Jump Scare M- OH LOOK IT'S BILL CIPHER, and I will not go back to Journals for the second half until all five chapters of Spooky's are out. Unless I absolutely rush through Spooky's (which I might, the chapters of that might be pretty short, as are most of the chapters in Journals - possibly barring ten and nine), chapter 5 will probably be the last Journals update of the year, and some time in November. run:gifocalypse is still being written and I do plan on having chapter 12 out some time in November, with chapters 13 and possibly 14 out in late December, finishing the story up.

If, for whatever reason, you actually want me to go anywhere else with this '.GIFfany army' idea, I have a sort-of compromise. I'm still planning a spiritual sucessor to run:gifocalypse in the form of an original-fiction story probably titled Emazh In or something like that. Of all the 'elemental group' stories I have planned, RG is the first one I truly ended up liking, and I thought that this particular group of characters was developed and distinct... enough to actually warrant giving another shot as its own thing instead of risking making a bunch of fics that don't feel like they're Gravity Falls-related at all and might as well be their own thing anyway. (If you read RG, you could probably tell when I'm struggling to make it have some semblance of canon.) This is basically my way of saying that this upcoming story thing will have its own characters, but a few of them are basically their RG counterparts in new coats of paint, so to speak. (A green plant-themed one that is still going to have an emphasis on trying to keep things peaceful and safe, a yellow one that's still going to love horror attractions, etc.) If you absolutely must get Gravity Falls in on this, Emazh In will still be my bigger priority once I actually start it (which will be after run:gifocalypse is completed), but I probably won't completely retire these guys. They might have minor cameos or the like, but the chances of them having major roles again like in run:gifocalypse again are slim. Heck, even the chances of them getting another one-shot is slim. But I'll still consider that.

Speaking of which, consider the alien area this story takes place in as a sort-of loose preview of the world of Emazh In. Or, part of it, at least.

THE END.

Sand blew outside of the small town for as long as she lived. Only the small, scattered buds that grew against all odds of the harsh climate were any sign that the Earth would return to normalcy. The shining yellow of her glasses were of a welcoming lighthouse to any other humans that dared wander the open abyss in search for another group of survivors.

On the other hand, to any Gems...

The wanderer finally made her way through the ship burried in the dune. The technology behind it had been figured it. For the first time, humanity had hacked into Gem ships.

Just in case he was was here, she drew out a lengthy, gray sword as she punched in the right numbers. This was not any other sword taken from a fallen foe. It was her most proud capture. But said capture just had to be nullified...

The door way opened up, revealing blackness. Turning into a red blur, this trained kid soldier broke into a silent yet quick dash, eyes glancing at all directions and with all weapons for shattering at the ready...

Desert City.

Q2 2017.