The gravitational pull was slow but inescapable, no amount of thrashing about had any effect on the force that constantly, relentlessly lifted his body toward the metallic leviathan behind him. Panic flared in his chest, gripping his throat as the pungent smell of ozone grew by the second, as he was dragged closer and closer to the edge of the portal, to the place where he was. He threw his journal at the man gaping beneath him, a desperate order, or demand, or plea rushing past his lips.
"Stanley! Stanley, do something! Stanle-"
A blinding whiteness engulfed him, squeezing pained tears out of his eyes and drowning his voice. He could almost feel all the molecules of his body vibrate, detach and reconnect to each other as they crossed the threshold, as if they had momentarily forgotten about the physical laws and forces that kept them in place. He shut his eyes, not daring to breathe, to move, to look at whatever awaited him, a realm so horrifying and inconcievable that it had driven the sanity out of his colleague's mind in a matter of seconds. A realm where the monster reigned supreme.
He fell. His back hit the ground with a low thud, his breath rushing out of him because of the impact. He waited, perfectly still, too scared to move. His brain registered the presence of breathable air, of gravity, of some faint buzzing noise, of dim light filtering through his eyelids. After a few seconds, after he wasn't welcomed by a manic laugh or sharp claws or lovecraftian horrors, he finally opened his eyes. The portal was looming over him, apparently damaged and tilted to one side, fizzling with discharges of residual power. The air was heavy with dust, the ceiling and walls were cracked and riddled with debris. He was still in the basement. Something must have malfunctioned. Oh thank God, something had malfunctioned.
He heard something shuffle further behind him, then quick steps approached him. Before he could move, a bulky, unfocussed silhouette kneeled above him, strong hands gripping his shoulders.
"Oh God... I did it, you're here! Ford, you're here!"
He blinked in confusion while he pawed at his inner pocket and put on his spare glasses. The voice that had spoken was unmistakably Stanley's, even though it sounded rougher than usual, probably because of the dust. But the man before him, with those familiar features, that tattered suit, that unmistakable fez... when had he arrived? Why had he even come?
"What...? Dad?"
Filbrick - was he even his father? Something seemed off about him, but he couldn't quite tell in the faint light - gaped at him in surprise for a few seconds. Then a loud laugh echoed in the basement as Ford was pulled up sitting into a crushing hug that left him out of breath once again.
"No, you ass! Dammit, I can't have aged that badly... Surely worse than you though, look at you, as fresh as a daisy! I can't believe it, after all these years... Can't believe it..."
The man-who-looked-like-his-father-but-apparently-wasn't-his-father patted his back and rubbed his arm enthusiastically. He chuckled and leaned back to look at Ford, a wide smile on his face and something shiny at the corners of his eyes. Ford opened his mouth to voice his many, many questions, but someone else spoke first.
"Grunkle Stan... who is that?"
He looked in the direction of the voice. Holy hell, what were two children doing in his basement? A girl - the one who had spoken - and a boy Ford had never seen before were gawking at them, apparently as lost as Ford himself was. The old man beside him suddenly wrapped his arm around Ford's shoulders and squeezed him hard, his expression turning positively beaming and his chest puffing out.
"Ah! Right! I promised you answers and you're damn well going to get them! Behold..." He grinned widely and pointed at Ford with a flourish, like an overly proud magician executing a complex trick before an expectant crowd. "...the author of the journals: my brother!"
"Your-" Ford and the boy spoke at the same time, but Ford barely noticed. He was staring at the old man in shock, recognition slowly dawning on him while the logical part of his brain utterly failed at processing the information. "...Stanley?"
"Damn right! Took you long enough, Poindexter." He took a better look at Ford from head to toe, scratching his chin thoughtfully. "Wow, you really haven't aged one bit, you look exactly like... Wait, have you been zipping through space all this time? Oh God, this is just like that lightspeed-twin balderdash in your nerd books... Ok, long story short, you got sucked into the portal, the blasted thing broke and it took me thirty years to get it up and running again. Don't know how much time passed for you, but... well, I hope jet lag doesn't catch up with you."
Ford's sleep-deprived, overloaded and possibly mildly concussed brain trudged through that startling revelation with nothing more than numb stupor. The portal had worked then, even though not as he expected, possibly due to the struggle Ford had had with his brother near the control panel. The portal had worked, and...
Ford's eyes shot up to the machine. It had worked. It was still working. Even though it wasn't operating, the portal was still active, a low hum rumbling in the background, a faint sheen of light coming from the circular opening to... to where? Not to his own time, he could tell that the hole wasn't fully formed, but then... A cold feeling gripped his stomach as he realized the danger he had blatantly overlooked until then.
"No! It can't stay on! Turn it off! SHUT IT DOWN!"
He jumped on his feet as soon as he saw the red button, thankfully ready to be pressed. He run to it and smashed both his hands on top of it with desperate urgency. A loud noise of machines powering down briefly filled the basement, then all fell silent, the portal losing its glow and resembling a dark, scraped carcass. For a good minute, all they could hear was Ford's quickened breathing, while the other three - four, there was another man in the farthest corner, how had he not seen him before - people were just staring at him, surprised by his sudden outburst. Stanley, or the man who claimed to be him, was the first one to recover and he slowly got back on his feet, eyeing Ford curiously.
"Uh, ok. It's off now, I guess. Crap, I had forgotten... Anyway. I know we all have a lot of catching up to do, but there's a tiny problem we should take care of first, and we could really use your brains with that, Sixer."
Ford gulped, the familiar nickname sending an unpleasant shiver down his spine. The entire situation felt incredibly off, it made him wonder if... Ford's eyes narrowed as he unwillingly asked for an explanation he already knew he wasn't going to like.
"What problem?"
"Well, there are like... thirty heavily-armed FBI agents upstairs, looking for the entrance to the basement right now."
"What?" Ford sputtered, his doubts about the reality of the situation momentarily pushed aside. "No no no, they can't get to the machine! They'll try to use it, to experiment with it, they'll open the dimensional passage! Why is the government here?"
Stanley raised his palms defensively and pointed at the screens showing the live footage from the security cameras, near the control panel. "Look, I can tell you my entire life story if you want, but later. Hell, you can even see those robocops crawling around the house right now! So, any ideas on how to get rid of them? Anyone?"
They scuttled to the monitors and silently took in the worrying sight with different reactions, ranging from Ford's silent dismay, to the unnamed man's nervous finger biting , to the kids' energetic confabbing. Ford couldn't see any way they could drive those efficient, deadly-looking men in black out of his house - if that was even his house, since he could recognise the basic layout of the rooms but barely any of the interiors.
"Wait, I think I know a way we can fix this!"
Ford turned to look at the boy, who had spoken with sudden enthusiasm and was now rummaging in his backpack, pulling out-
"Where have you found that?" He hissed instictively at the sight of the weapon that had been one of the main banes of his existence in the last months. Simply looking at it made him feel vaguely nauseous, taunting him with the notion of the many memories he knew he had been robbed of by his deranged colleague. The boy shrunk a bit into himself as he met Ford's inquisitive gaze with an uncertain expression.
"Uh, that's... a bit of a long story, but I promise I'll tell you, Mr. Author! We could wipe the memories of this incident from those agents, if they weren't so many... and so well trained..."
The boy's face fell a bit further as he realized the flaws in his idea, but he hold out the gun to Ford nonetheless, a hint of hope and expectation in his eyes. After a slight hesitation, the man took the weapon and glanced appraisingly at it, then again at the monitors.
"...It could work. They're all wearing radio receivers, if I can..."
He moved to the control panel of the antenna and started to tinker with the frequency settings, sending a series of brief, high-pitched signals on different wavelenghts and checking the monitors after each try. He smirked proudly when he finally saw the entire squad flinch simultaneously and bring their hands to their ears. Found it. He hooked up the gun to the input jack, dialed in a bunch of key words - portal, Gravity Falls, his own name, his brother's name, hopefully those would suffice -and transmitted the signal.
Every agent froze instantly. For a good minute, nothing and no one moved, then they gradually started glancing around with sluggish gestures, apparently questioning each other in stunned confusion.
"...Well, hopefully we have made some progress." He stated as he turned to face the small crowd gathered behind him. "I think it worked, but I'm still not sure how we could convince them to leave without raising new suspicion."
"Hang on a sec." Stanley interrupted. "You're telling me they actually forgot everything? They're just... I don't know, like gullible fools waiting to be fed some bullshit story to fill in the gaps?"
"Well, subjects usually take a while to regain full coherency after a wipe, so they're probably more impressionable than-"
"Oh." A wolfish grin spread on the man's face and, for the first time, Ford truly felt a genuine sense of familiarity radiating from him. "Right up my alley then. Give me ten minutes."
Stan disappeared in the elevator with a confident blink. They watched the monitors anxiously and saw him reappear upstairs almost immediately, directing furious screams about civil rights, power abuse and unwarranted searches to the nearest agents. Miraculously, it worked. Everyone positively cowered before his heated arguments and seemed to be unable to justify their presence in the house, let alone contradict his claims.
The four viewers let out a collective sigh of relief. Ford detached the gun from the cable and observed it thoughtfully, genuinely surprised that for once that cursed invention had actually proved beneficial to him. That, and Stanley's questionable skill at lying and deceiving people, which had somehow increased during the hypothetical thirty-year time lapse.
"Sooo..." Ford was snapped out of his thoughts by the girl, who was now looking directly at him with a bright smile. "While Grunkle Stan works his magic with the police, why don't we all warm up to each other with some overdue introductions?" She beamed an all-encompassing, enthusiastic grin all around, but everyone else just kept blinking at her in silence. The lack of response didn't faze her in the slightest as she run to grab the unnamed man - tall boy? His age seemed undefinable - and dragged him closer to the rest of the group.
"This is Soos, the best repairman of the world! He works for Grunkle Stan and brightens our days with his heart-warming charm and humbling wisdom!"
Soos chuckled with a mumbled "Thanks, dude" and waved embarassedly at Ford, who didn't quite know what to make of the peculiar information provided. However, the girl had already moved on to grab the boy by his shoulders and merrily elbow his arm.
"This bundle of laughs is my one and favorite bro-bro, Dipper! Under his sweaty and stuttering appearance lie the brain of an ace mystery solver and the heart of a loyal friend! And I am MABEL!"
Ford nearly flinched at the strenght of the last word, which the girl had positively shouted as if she could convey the entirety of her personality and history just with her name. He managed to mumble a low "Uh-huh" as a reply. Mabel deflated slightly at that, but her smile didn't fade and she kept talking with a more leveled, yet still warm tone.
"And you are Grunkle Stan's brother, right? Wow, we didn't even know we had another great uncle! And you're also the author Dip-Dop has been looking for for the entire summer, get ready to be bombarded with questions! Anyway, nice to meet you!"
She walked up to him and amicably offered her hand, which Ford couldn't find in himself to refuse.
"...Greetings to you too. Stanford Pines."
They shook hands, but his concise presentation got three confused stares in return for some reason.
"Uh... That's Grunkle Stan's name though... isn't it? We found a bunch of fake ID cards in his room, but..." The kids exchanged a nervous glance, their faces darkening in unison. Ford frowned in turn.
"No, that's my name. My brother's name is Stanley. I can't speak for your... 'grunkle' though, he doesn't look anything like the Stanley I know."
They looked at the screens again, contemplating the mysterious, boisterous man who was now squeezing an agent's shoulder and muttering to him with a conspirational stance. The more Ford thought about it, the more the entire situation seemed fishy and unrealistic. A thousand questions and possibilities crowded his mind, and none of them lead to a favorable outcome.
"Well, I'm sure he'll explain us everything as soon as the SWAT guys leave. It turned out that he wasn't up to anything bad and he's still out to save our butts, right?"
Mabel aimed another bright smile at his brother, who only hummed doubtfully in return. Suddenly, his gaze focussed on Ford's hands and he let out a startled gasp.
"Oh my God, you have six fingers! You are the author of the journals then! Oh gosh, you have no idea how long I've been waiting to meet you! I've read the third one so many times from start to finish, it saved my life like twice a week since I got here! Oh man, I have so many questions to ask you!"
Ford raised his hand defensively to stem that flow of enthusiastic confessions, feeling mildly embarassed by the simply adoring look in the boy's eyes. Dipper's words only raised more concerns in his mind though, and he felt his uneasiness growing more and more by the minute.
"You found my journals? And the memory gun? How on Earth did you get your hands on such dangerous and well-guarded objects?"
Dipper's face fell at the harshness of Ford's tone, and his gaze dropped to the floor.
"I-I only found the third one. By chance, in a secret recess in the woods. I had no idea Stan had the other two, he acted like he thought the third one was some sort of prank. We didn't even know the Shack had any underground floors until one hour ago, and then-"
He was interrupted by the elevator doors opening again, the self-proclaimed Stanley/Stanford Pines strolling into the room smoothly and flashing a devlish grin.
"Yeesh, it's been a while since I've had to cheat this many cops at once! But fear not, folks, everything's settled, those entitled busybodies won't bother us- uh, everything all right here?"
His expression sobered as he took in the gloomy atmosphere of the room. Everyone was staring at him with emotions that ranged from mild confusion to utter distrust, Ford being the obvious bearer of the latter. Dipper spoke first, his tone even but guarded.
"Yeah, but you owe us some explanations, Grunkle Stan. Why didn't you tell us you had a brother? What is all this stuff down here? And why have you been pretending to know nothing about the journals and the weirdness in Gravity Falls?"
Stan sighed and rubbed the back of his neck, his shoulders hunching over slightly and his energetic demeanor toning down all of a sudden, looking in every way like a normal, tired old man.
"All right, all right, you have a point. Let's just... go back upstairs and get some cola, ok? This is gonna take a while."
They all nodded and moved toward the elevator, all except Ford. His eyes were trained on the three books he had painstakingly created, laying untidily on a nearby desk. He didn't look at Stan - if that was even the man's name - as he spoke.
"Where did you find them?"
"Dipper and another kid in town had them. You left me the first one yourself. I managed to collect them all only one month ago, and... ah, I told you, it's a long story. Let's go-"
"Bullshit." Ford turned to glare at the surprised man and at the anxious boy, his grip instictively tightening on the memory gun he was still holding. His voice was quiet but crystal clear. "I hid them personally so that they couldn't be recovered. A couple of ten-year-old children wouldn't have been able to find them. Not by themselves."
"Hey, I know they were well-hidden, I lost all hopes to ever find them after the first decade of searching. But, what do you know? A lot can happen in thirty years. Besides, Dipper's smart, and that other flamboyant pipsqueak is too, in some ways. Really Sixer, there's-"
"Don't call me like that." Stan had taken a step toward him, but he had immediately stopped in his tracks as Ford had pointed the gun at him. Further behind, he saw the other three people gasp in alarm, the repairman immediately stepping in the line between Ford and the kids. Ford knew from... unfortunate circumstances that the ray, if shot without any key words dialed in, was still powerful enough to scramble a good amount of neural pathways and incapacitate the target with a crippling migraine, possibly stun him for a few minutes. He kept talking, his tone slightly increasing in volume.
"And how did you even manage to read them, anyway? Most of the notes about the portal are hidden or written in code, not to mention highly technical and specific. I doubt anyone but me and my assistant could make sense of them, especially someone without a more than impressive knowledge in the field."
"Well, I-"
"And even without considering all that, why did you reactivate the machine? I specifically stated not to do it, I wrote about its instability and the enormous risks that would entail, why would you overlook-"
"Because I had to save you, you ass!" 'Stan' suddenly blurted out an answer, overriding Ford's tirade. "You fucking disappeared in front of my eyes, Ford, screaming at me to do something. I had to fix whatever had happened, I couldn't leave you stuck in some black hole or random dimension!"
"Oh, you had to save your brother, isn't that right Stanley?" Ford uttered that name with nothing less than sheer contempt, both at the flashing memories of his real brother and at the lousy impersonator before him. He was quickly losing his temper, rage and distrust making him tighten his grip on the gun so much that his hand began to shake slightly. "I haven't talked ten minutes with these people and I've already heard enough to know you can't be trusted, whoever you are. Fake IDs, lies and omissions, ridiculous stories about time travel... You may have deceived them, but I've learnt my lesson."
The impostor was shocked into complete silence for a few seconds by Ford's outburst, then he raised his palms and tried to speak quietly, with a patronizing tone that made Ford positively fuming.
"Ford, listen-"
"You're working for Bill, aren't you?" The researcher didn't manage to hide the desperate edge in his tone despite himself, his mind racing through all the possible explanations for his current predicament, each hypothesis turning out more harrowing and hopeless than the previous ones. "He has guided you through all this, used you to get the portal active again- if, if this is even real. If you aren't all..."
He trailed off, eyeing each member of the unlikely group with suspicion. It wouldn't be the first dreadfully realistic dream or hallucination the demon had trapped him into. He did cross the portal, after all, and if he had really ended up in the nightmare realm, Bill's power on his mind could only have increased...
"Bill? You mean Bill Cipher?"
Ford shot an alarmed glance at Dipper, who had interrupted him in the worst possible way. He could have just read about Bill in the journal though, that could mean nothing too worrying.
"We aren't working for him, it's the opposite! He's been terrorizing us all summer!" The boy continued in a rush, peeking from behind Soos and gesturing in a frenzy with his arms. "He has tried to help the kid with the second journal to rob Grunkle Stan of the Shack, but we stopped him. Then he even possessed me, he tricked me into making a deal with him, but in the end we-"
"What?" A heavy, horrifying cold terror set into Ford's stomach like a boulder. The boy had made a deal. He had been possessed. He- he was like Ford. He was a timebomb. Bill had already claimed him, and he could do it again, he could slip into his body and wreck havoc at any time. Any moment.
Unthinkingly, Ford took a step back and aimed at Dipper.
Stanley was on him in a split second. He grabbed Ford's wrist and slammed it against the wall before he could even react, the gun clinking loudly as it dropped on the floor. Ford hissed in pain and tried to defend himself, but his free hand was immediately trapped by another fierce grip.
"What the hell do you think you're doing?" Stan barked back at him, visibly angered. "Leave the children out of this! No one's deceiving anyone, no one is out to get you, Ford! If you just could get your head out of your ass for one minute and let me explain-"
"LET GO OF ME!"
Ford tried to tug his arms free to no avail, panic quickly making his way in his chest. Either 'Stan' was unbelievably stupid, or he was in league with Bill, and in both cases Ford couldn't afford to go easy on him. He instictively tried to kick him in the stomach, unconsciously mimicking his earlier fight with his real brother, but the hit didn't land. His reaction time may have been slower than usual due to the massive exhaustion, both mental and physical, he had worked up in the last month, but somehow the other man managed to avoid the kick by quickly releasing Ford's wrists and stepping to the side. A simple enough move that threw Ford completely out of balance and sent him crashing forwards with inertia. The researcher barely managed to catch a glimpse of the solid, sharp side of the table in front of him before his forehead smashed against it with a spectacular thud, excruciating pain and burning radiating across his skull. He was out like a light before he even hit the floor.