Prologue

It had all going so well. Well, not at first. Being arrested hand't been fun, then fining out your great uncle might not be your great uncle, then finally coming to the realization that you'd been lied to, and that everything you thought you'd known was wrong.

Factor in that the great uncle you thought you knew but didn't had been building some sort of doomsday device in the basement, and then he has the gall to ask you to trust him! Why should you trust someone who's been lying to you ever since you met him? Who, before all this, you did trust! Who you cared about and loved and looked up to, and he turns around and stabs you in the back!

But oh, it gets better. That doomsday device from earlier? It's up and running, and you're having to fight your great uncle (who was more of a dad then your real one) to turn of the goddamn machine because it's going to rip apart your reality but your sister, your naive, trusting, gullible twin sister decides she trust him! And what does she do? Does she turn off the machine that's about to rip apart the universe? Oh no, of course not. Nope, she does nothing, and the machine's portal opens and-

-and nothing really.

No big explosion. No death, no mayhem.

Just a swirling blue mass between the iron rims. But then from that mass steps a figure, a figure you never knew but always wanted to meet, even though you never expected to. A person who'd been keeping you up every night, filling your dreams, becoming an obsession.

Out steps the Author, and when you don't think anything else could get stranger, when you're certain nothing could top this, he pulls of his hood and you realize, finally, that maybe your uncle wasn't lying, not really, and if he was maybe it was for a good reason because the author isn't just a stranger (not really). He's your family, your great uncle, your Grunkle Stan's twin brother!

And you're a twin too. You know how devastating it would be to loose your other half, to have your best friend trapped for god knows how many years suddenly it doesn't matter that your uncle lied to you and that the machine might have destroyed the world because it's the machine that brought your uncle's brother back and you know you'd do the exact same thing to save Mabel. You finally, finally, understand the lying and the secrets, the pretending the town wasn't magic because it was all to get his brother back.

So you find that you can forgive him. You find you can take that crazy, stupid leap of faith and trust him again because he'd do the same for you.

And then of course Soos faints and everything comes snapping back to reality.

The rest of Dipper Pine's day went something like this: he, Mabel, and Soos all sat down for a long winded tale of how his Grunkle Stan (Stanley- not Stanford) grew up with his six-fingered twin (who was the real Stanford), how they grew apart, not speaking to one another in years, and then finally how Ford was sucked into the portal, leaving Stan to figure out how to get him back.

And here, thirty-odd years later, Ford was finally back, and what does he do? He punches Grunkle Stan.

That, ha, that had been funny (and shocking. Who knew Ford had such a good right hook?)

But after the story things quieted down. Only to realize a crap load of government agents were on their way down to arrest them all.

But Mabel, the crazy genius she is, whips out the memory gun and Ford does some sort of nerd tech wizardry to it that you can only dream of being able to do and suddenly all the government guys forget what they're doing and leave.

Of course the small bit of calm doesn't last.

Because, crawling out of the portal is something you've never even heard of, something you can't comprehend.

Something that will change the very essence of what you are.

So as this multi legged thing comes crawling out of the blue mass, all Dipper Pines can think is... "Really?"