run:gifocalypse
Chapter 2: Pines Vs Trees
Beginning AN:
Sorry to say this, but I'm pretty sure that from here until a certain point (and you'll probably find out when you hit the "certain point" as soon as you see the tinier scroll bar to the side) the chapters will get a bit shorter. Uh, especially in the chapter after this, likely. To make up for it, because of the short length I'll see if I can get a lot of this out and with very few hiatuses.
"So this is how the world ends..." Ford noted, watching the last of the anime-ish girls disappear into the trees. "Not with a bang, but more like with a... 'OH SOOS, LOVE ME LIKE A CUTESY ROBOT GIRL!'"
That last portion happened to be the point in time where Wendy walked in, and just his luck Ford also made appropriate curving moments to emphasize his inpersonation of the .GIFfany army.
The group all held a collective sigh. It was explanation time yet again.
"This doesn't make any sense..." Dipper said as he tried to calculate what he saw in front of him, before the need to exposit arose. ".GIFfany can only posses electronics. Even when brought to life. So why would an army of her head out into the middle of the woods without any electronics at all? Unless..."
Mabel gasped. "The bunker! You think they'll free the Shape Shifter?"
This gained a different reaction from each other occupant. Dipper simply tensed and looked like he was ready to bolt for the bunker. Wendy shrugged and said "Well, we know that place more than they do...," Soos tried to hide behind Stan, who simply asked "What bunker?" and Ford scratched his head, asking "That old thing? It's still active?"
"I don't know how we can stop a bunch of video games from taking over the world," Continued Mabel. "But I know that the forest is our best shot."
"Wait." Said Soos. "How do we know that they want to take over the world? They just want me."
"If they only wanted to capture you, they would have done it by now." Explained Dipper. "They're planning something bigger. We know it. Now let's get out there, and-"
"Woah woah woah." Stan interrupted. "I wouldn't let you two go up against one goblin monster. This is an army. You better leave this to the adults. Stay here and see if Ford can glitter-proof the Shack or something. Just remember: If he tells you to step head-first into danger, stay out of it."
Mabel scowled at the phrase 'glitter-proof.' Dipper let a barely audioble sigh at the word 'Woah.'
Regardless, he dove off following them, giving a war cry of "You mess with them, you mess with me first!" before disappearing through the trees.
And staying out.
Ford actually stuck with Stan's plan; he simply whipped a pen out, wrote something on a slip of paper, walked out of the Mystery Shack, and wrapped the slip of paper around the unicorn hair.
"There." He said. "I wrote a sequence of numbers that should naturally counteract with anything made from illegal primes. They may have physical forms now, but if they act anything like they did when they were digital, going in here will feel very uncomfortable for them."
"Wait." Said Dipper, looking at the slip of paper. "That's it? We could have beaten Rumble and .GIFfany with a piece of paper?"
"No, you'll also need unicorn hair-"
"I'M ON IT!" Mabel cried.
"-And from what I gathered, the unicorns have moved to a different and unknown location in Gravity Falls after something you did. I'm not pointing fingers, but... becides," He tried to laugh off his accidental blame-place. "I'm sure you had a lesson in facing .GIFfany and this Rumble guy without any short cuts."
Dipper solemnly nodded. Soos, on the other hand, looked a tiny bit more offended.
"I did!" The latter said, "Why is the whole world being punished for it?"
This was the point where Stan walked back out of the woods, a smiling AI with Rose's green hair (only this one was in a knee-length dress that appeared to be made out of leaves) walking by him. Her hair was also slightly different, with a pattern of leaf-shapes above her forehead and a mild added thickness so it wouldn't look unlike a bush or a tree's leaves. She also ditched the cable bow, much like most (but not all) of the other followers, and this one in particular replaced it with a five-petal white flower sticking out from the side of her hair. Her skin also appeared to be far pinker than the character she was a derivative of. Stan himself was looking downward, rubbing his arm with a flushed face.
"I was wrong. I can't speak for the pink-haired psycho on TV, but these people, out in the woods? They're harmless."
The AI becide him laughed, confirming something that was on the other's minds: "Hey Soos, it's me, Professor Rose! I got a new dress! What do you think?"
He was trying to hide the flushing in his face, or the fact that his brain was asking him What's like, holding that up, anyway? "It's um... it's... leafy."
"Come on, why don't you see what my following sisters are doing!"
Everyone was hesitant to enter. Going off the trail, out into the unknown, away from the general public... even Stan clearly had to take a breath in first. But everyone's been to the woods at least once over the summer, how will these supernatural beings make it any different?
Even though none of them were making sugar (as far as the Mystery Shack group knows), the AI group in the woods specifically were being too sickeningly sweet. Dotting around, past viewing distance from the Mystery Shack, was the huge collection of rainbow-haired simulated girls brought flesh, all of which bar Rose herself were helping something green. A cluster was trimming brush into the shape of what looked like a pair of welcoming gates. Past said gates lied a small plantation, more AIs being careful to water those. One of them floated up to an unbalanced bird's nest, re-adjusting it so that it was no longer rested on a breaking branch. Several of them gathered around an especially large tree further down the back. Becides whatever Ford probably placed out here, there were two electronics admist all of this: A lone television near the front, and a barely visible (from the 'entrance') green computer at the far back, resting on a cylinder of equally-green metal.
"We just started a few minutes ago, but this will be our botany group!" Rose cheered. "The world is always a world of demand. So... I thought about trying to turn it into a world of supply! We're trying to grow as much food and as many trees as we can, a place to lower hunger and have more wood for houses!"
Mabel snickered, keeping a low volume. "See? I told you something good can come out of this! She wants to end world hunger!"
"Okay," Sighed Dipper, "And what if she's not just pretending to be nice? She's just one professor. There's fourteen more of them, .GIFfany is one of them, and between her and Rose I'm betting the Rose is the exception and .GIFfany is the rule, and not the other way around."
"ROSE!" Mabel cried out, waving her hand around.
"What?" Asked the green-haired AI.
"Dipper brought up a good question. What are the other AIs doing?"
"Oh, them..." Her smile faded for the first time since entering the forest. "Well, none of them are in Gravity Falls. They picked places that match with what they are trying to do. We just set up a way to link from place to place using these things we call Wires. And... as for the professors... they don't agree on everything I do."
"Rose!" Cried out a voice from behind. Whipping around quickly, the team saw three AIs rushing out of the bunker's entrance, carrying what looked like another Dipper in their hands. "Rose Rose Rose!" The origin of the voice was, of course, one of them.
"What is it?" Said professor asked.
"We were looking around the land with thermal sensing, and found a hidden bunker... and deep inside one of the tubes was this boy! He was the boy you said fought .GIFfany in the past, right?"
Rose stepped forward to take a closer look. "...That looks like him, but the boy is right here!"
She pointed at Dipper. He, Mabel, Soos, Wendy, and Ford all knew far too well where this was going.
The 'Dipper' held by the anime girls coughed a few times, getting up on his own. "I just... want to tell you..."
"Rose!" Cried out the original Dipper, "That's not me! That's not a clone of me - trust me, I know them - that's-"
And the second 'Dipper's' eyes blinked sideways. Donning a delightfully surprised smile with leering eyes, he stated. "That you are all idiots."
This was when the Shape Shifter noticed the group that raided the bunker weeks ago. "Well, what a surprise we have here? Sixer was freed from his prison, he brought his brother along, and the group that outsmarted me are back. What a reunion!"
And he morphed himself - into an exact replica of a purple-haired AI in the vicinity, giving a short laugh. However, judged by how he cut off his laugh and noticed how many similar-looking people there were around, he didn't like his new form for long.
So he morphed into something else. Something he did back in the bunker - the Hide-Behind, a form only Ford recognized, and barely at that. But he moved too quick to be fully analysed. Like that, he was behind a tree, surely about to plot something else.
Rose turned to give the Mystery Shack group another look. She put a hand on her hip, thinking.
"Was this a trick you pulled off?" She said, looking over at the confused and frightened group of AIs that were just carrying the Shifter.
"What? No, it wasn't, we went in that bunker weeks ago and found that thing and froze it. Well... re-froze it." Dipper explained. "Then he turned into me. Something about a big taunt, a 'you'll look like this if you keep looking for answers,' he was a villain. We are not affiliated with that guy. At all."
Of course, the Shape Shifter may be able to make himself look like a Hide-Behind, but he was far from the real thing. It wasn't long before Wendy managed to tackle him, and she really just drew out a deep breath more than anything.
"I knew it. I can't speak for Soos in the twins since I never saw .GIFfany before, but fighting two creatures we pounded already isn't something I want to be doing for long."
This was when the other AIs started joining in - zapping the shape-shifting experiment with their own little bolts. The entire time, Rose was staring at the Mystery Shack gang with a tilted head.
The television in the front began roaring to life - .GIFfany's image appeared, before she coated most of her upper face in shadow by her own will. All that was visible were her eyes, and even they were in the form of pink crosses glaring from the shadows.
"Rose." She said. "You had orders. Follow them. Or else."
Two wires shot from the screen of the television itself - colored in bright, hot pink - each wrapping around one of the Stan twins in a split-second.
"Now I will show these two a preview of the park. I saved two seats for them. Ford, for making the anti-AI pack."
"How did she know?" The six-fingered author in question asked.
"I have my spies. And Stan... for having a bad taste in animatronics."
"Ugh!" Cried Rose, ".GIFfany, we didn't really agree on this! Why aren't you capturing Soos, anyway?"
"He needs to see what you and the other professors have done. Becides, I only have two of these special cables that can travel through any electronic right now, and I wanted to get people in pairs."
Ford could barely kick the capturing pack to the rest of the Mystery Shack team before .GIFfany yanked the Stan twins inside, warping them through the television screen and into the now-visible background. Which appeared to be that same location from the broadcast, seemingly made of light pink metal.
Rose got everyone's attention with a scream, and followed that scream by knocking over the television. "If she thinks she can be such a great leader while I can't, she can just warp to this place herself. In person. As a real girl."
She noticed the gang, just as Dipper got his hands on the pack.
"Oh. You guys." She also looked at the Shape Shifter knocking aside other AIs in the form of a Manotaur, turning to face Rose herself. "I'm sorry, but it seems... it seems you may have introduced a source of violence into our garden. If by accident."
"So?" Asked Wendy. "You brought that thing out. We were just defending ourselves."
Rose hesitated before speaking again. "It's just that... we kind of... want a non-violent atmosphere around here."
The Shape Shifter morphed himself into a large pile of rubber with eyes, deflecting any subsequent lightning blasts while he tried to form a counter-attack on his own. Against the increasing number of support AIs. Rose herself waved the army off.
"I'll join you in a second! For now, I need to ask these humans... if they could step out for a few seconds."
"Sorry, but no." Wendy stomped a foot. "You kidnapped two of our friends. We're basically at war now."
"I'm... I don't want to be, but I can be serious! Please... it will be easier if you just-"
"Where did .GIFfany take my great uncles?" Dipper asked, even if he just took one step back.
"Yeah." Wendy added. "I've wanted to hate you. I haven't found a reason to hate you, but I don't like your boss, and when I find a reason to hate you, you are dead. Nobody messes with the Pines on my watch."
"I swear!" Rose held her hands out defensively. She broke this to give a zap of her own on the Shape Shifter, but instantly resumed, "This wasn't what she told me! If only- if only..."
The Shape Shifter threw off all the following AIs, stomping his way over to Rose and the central group with his still-rubbery feet. "And you must be their leader?"
"Well... not exactly... but at the moment... if I don't want to follow .GIFfany's orders anymore... then yes! I'm the leader."
"Tell me this: Wouldn't it be a good start to freedom if I could use your army as my own?"
"They're not an army. They are... 'students' that volunteered to work with me." Rose looked down. "Oh. Wait. I see where you are going. With this. You want to kill me, don't you?"
"I don't want to, since I'm already free. I just thought about taking over your army and... how do I say this, your head on a pike sounded like a convincing way to get them on my side."
"We'll never betray Professor Rose!" Cried out one of the following AIs.
"Even if she wants to betray grand Dean .GIFfany!" Cried another, as more of them took a break from their crop-managing to join along her side, some pushing the Shape Shifter back.
"I thought she was more of a headmaster or something..." Said a third, a number of AIs gathering in.
"You mean sneaking up on and betraying .GIFfany wasn't our main plan all along?" A fourth asked as artificial university students flooded that section of the garden. All the while, more started jumping on the electric-resistant alien to give him a more physical beating.
And a fifth just gave out a small call of "Rose you're sooooo sweet you're my favorite professor." Before Rose herself stopped them by holding a hand up.
"I will take care of the Shape Shifter first..." She said, after a long inhale to prepare. "Then the humans... then I can answer some questions from the students."
And this was where most of the humans themselves started taking a more defensive stance. Rose walked backwards, straight into the wooden makings of a larger tree behind her as her being appeared to slip right into it. Seconds after she completely disappeared into the plant behind her, it shook. Roared. Its branches began moving.
"That's impossible!" Dipper said, already knowing where Rose was going with this. "She- they can only possess electronics!"
"Technically, aren't all things electronics?" A vague 'face' with overly jagged 'teeth' marks and glaring eyes were formed, obviously being unnecessary. "Energy is mass times the speed of light squared... I can convert my mass into energy... then back... it makes sense. Doesn't it? But I have only trained how to do that with plants. And only because of the garden I wanted to start in our new worlds..."
The Shifter tackled her to the ground after that, rolling his six eyes before morphing into yet another form - this one recognizable from the Bunker, once again. A flaming mass that only has the faintest sign of a face out of anything on its 'body,' and as it turned out the flames were real enough to spread on Rose's newest possession. She rocked back, sending the burning Shape Shifter flying, but at the cost of spreading more flames to the nearby flower sets and crops.
With some strugling, Rose managed to extend a few beams of electricity to two neighboring trees. Which were then heaved out of the ground, root by root, and turned to form makeshift arms for Rose's latest puppet. With several mighty thumps, her new arms slapped against the burning side of the central tree, extinguishing that fire. It still left the growing flames that flew across the forest unbounded, something that the Shape Shifter hid himself among.
The side-AIs were at it again, rushing with wooden buckets filled through a near by river with efforts to get rid of both the fire and the Shifter. The army of supernatural 'school girls,' one by one forming a chain of filling, tossing, and rushing back to repeat. Some of them took a more aggressive stance, braving the flames and once again doing hop-bashes into the roaring fires itself to try pinning down the Shifter's location.
Suddenly, human feet were moving... buckets were picked up... Mabel doing those actions wasn't that surprising. Neither was Soos.
It was Wendy who was questioning why she was the third of them to be helping out the artificial monsters. Well, stopping a wildfire from burning down the entirety of Gravity Falls and then some was one reason. They all still had another.
Dipper picked an option that he percieved as neither helping nor hurting them - using the kind of logic he cooked up during the panic. And that was to seek out which of the flames about were the ones that were actually alive. Each time he thought he saw an eyeball, one of the AIs tried yanking at it with some form of electric pulse, getting no result but extinguished smoke. It wasn't until Rose herself lumbered over there - roots scurrying along the ground like individual legs - and used her 'arm'-trees to slam on the burning spot did anything seem to go anywhere.
The Shifter rose back in yet another form. One that was, once again, seen by the Mystery Shack group just before his freezing. A hulking rock monster that sucker-punched the tree mass to the sky.
Ironically, this is where the tables finally turned on the opposite side. Mabel and a decent percentage of the AIs leapt on the creature, this time armed with tasing shocks (aside from Mabel herself) that stunned him just long enough for Wendy to swoop in and bring an axe down on his face. Nobody questioning how the Shape Shifter survived with 'only' another spurt of green blood, the AI army hurried back to the bunker's staircase, leaving the humans alone with Rose. And the loads of schoolgirls that didn't run off to freeze the form-changing monstrocity.
Rose herself finally landed back, all three of her trees shattering to reveal her regular self, which fell to the ground right after. Dipper was shivering at this point.
"That shape-changing..." She said to herself as she rubbed her head. Her dazzed expression lightened up when she realized that the Shifter was now gone, something confirmed when she saw a group of her following students walk out from the bunker empty-handed.
"He'll be in there longer," One of the students cheered, "When we froze him, he changed to look like some large... fish thing? To break out. And he was that way when he got frozen again!"
Rose nodded, and looked back at the team from the Mystery Shack. "Now, as for you. We need to discuss some matters. As I mentioned before, you may have introduced a far too violent environment to live in. For our garden of peace. I- don't want to be so cruel about it... but if you could, leave... while we work things out..."
"We helped save your garden!" Mabel cried out, pointing an accusing finger at the botanist's leader. "And you're blaming us for 'being violent?' You were too!"
"That was in self-defense! A necessary choice! Becides, that creature may have been that way because of what you did in the bunker before."
"Nope." Dipper cut in. "He was always like that. Trust me. He only looked like me because he wanted to show me what would happen if I 'kept digging.'"
Rose still didn't budge from her stance, aside from standing up even straighter. "And the AIs... they had to prove themselves, that they were of proper alignment and will not disturb our calm nature. I could have made an exception with you, since you cared about our forest enough to-"
"Your forest? Forests aren't your private property! We should be asking you to leave, you're being led by a crazy robot girl and her army of equally-robotic, equally-crazy digital girls brought to life!"
"Do not make my job any harder than it is..." She bent over in a split second - Dipper was already on to fiddling with the controller for the AI-vacuum when he saw this. Moreso when electricity shot through the grass around her in a straight line, the clump of blades near the end growing up to form a hand.
"Watch out!" He cried, "She's gonna shoot us!"
All the hand did was point a finger out towards the gates. It wasn't even close to being aimed at the team. Rose only sniffled, until she saw that the pack was starting to hum. Dipper didn't even have time to press anything - he was still processing his recent switch-flips. Rose, however, managed to get out three words:
"What are you-"
The pack's nozzle began taking in a greater amount of the air in front of it, Rose's standing point included. She threw the arm back out of the grass in favor of trying to use it to defend herself, just to get caught in the vortex anyway. Trees rustled above, bushes were nearly ripped from their roots, AIs ran away in a panic, leaves were scattered around - including most of Rose's own outfit, which was sucked down from a full dress to something of a leaf bikini by the time the leading professor was pulled in. A brief 'shrinking' effect added on to her in order to make the part-digital, part-organic girl get stuffed to the video game-trapping machine.
Dipper finally got to switching it off, but by that point Rose's intake caused both him and the device to be sent flying back. In a small panic, he turned the vacuum around until he noticed the small, black computer screen. With some green sparks, Rose appeared on it - still appearing to be in the flesh and not 100% digital - rubbing her head.
Every single other AI looked at their wrist and noticed armbands that spawned from seemingly nowhere. Which soon started flashing pink. And, seconds later, they disappeared into pink bolts of lightning that appeared to travel skyward.
Just after .GIFfany finished toying around with what looked like a watch on her wrist, several zig-zags of pink lightning zapped around the matching metalic shell she was located in, turned back into the respective AIs from Rose's garden club.
"Sisters." She said. "Dove informed me. Rose has failed. You will stay in the Construction Site from now, helping me build it into the one weapon that will be able to cause the apocalypse. I never had any hopes for those botanists, anyway. And their vegetable obsession."
Some of them nodded with trembling eyes. Most, on the other hand, crossed their arms, which got .GIFfany to add something to her little speech.
"If you want to find a way to leave, you can. Just like the captive humans. Otherwise, feel free to keep them... company."
Dipper was rushing to stream one excuse after another. "I'm sorry- the supernatural creatures we found so far... your slightly-creepy video game group... Stan and Ford got captured, and-"
"No. I deserved this." Rose said, leaning to the screen with a sulk. "I should have worded myself better. I only wanted my students to be safe. I should have thought about your safety too."
"Can I..." He sighed. "Get you out?"
Rose took a while to look around. She pressed a hand against her side of the glass screen, then brushed them along the interior. Her face heated up when she was done.
"Wow... I want to meet this Ford man. He did an... impressive job. Keeping everything inside. Th-there's no reversal switch as far as I can see, but it looks like Ford wanted to make a second machine to take AIs out one-by-one. You should be able to release us if you break it - but please don't! You still need to capture the other professors, including .GIFfany!"
"Where are they? Is there a way we can go straight to where my Grunkles are?"
"No... we have the Wires, like I said earlier, that link to the points of the world that the other professors are in. But! I am only part of a system of twelve. Dove and .GIFfany herself are... kind of split from us. But .GIFfany said that Dove is watching us somehow. And I think she implied that she can take all AIs at once. Unless... since I'm still here, unless they are in this. Hm... maybe, if you can seek out and capture the rest of us, you can find out how to get to Dove! And then, from there, she should have a personalized Wire leading straight to .GIFfany's location!"
"That's only fourteen. I thought there were fifteen of you."
"...There's a small complexity, but you don't have to worry about that. I need to do the worrying - to see if these key cards can escape. Otherwise, you may need to buy a lot of plane tickets."
She reached down the clevage of her leaf-top, something that didn't even seem like a good hiding spot even when it was a full leaf dress, and yanked out a yellow card. Dipper and Soos both turned beat-red, enlicting a small giggle out from Mabel. Rose tossed this behind her, and sure enough, the card itself popped right out of the nozzle. Mabel was the only one willing to pick it up until she gave it a brief sweater-cleaning.
"This will let you access the next professor's domain. But we have this set up like a linear chain right now, to prevent..." Rose looked down in her own empty black space. "To prevent people like you, but meaner. Do you know where the gate is?"
Wendy looked at the abnormally long grass, still forming the signaling index finger, and frowned back at Rose. "Yeah."
"Go in the exact opposite direction of that. You also may want to pack a lot, this could be a long mission."
"Anything it takes to get our Grunkles back." Said Dipper.
After a brief trip back to the Shack and a trek through abandoned corn stalks and planted peppers, the gang reached the extreme end of the garden. Where, still resting along a single huge cylinder, was the Wire mentioned before, now with the group getting a closer look at it. The same pure green as Rose's hair and eyes, it only bore a slight resemblance to the monitor of an old-fashioned desktop. While not large or flashy, the main trait about this that caught the eyes of the group was that a single cord in matching color appeared to be extending from the monitor before ending abruptly, with a haze of visible green electricity acting as the 'end' to the system. The only other feature of note was what appeared to be a thin slot just above the actual screen.
"Stick the card in. And, so that you will all travel together, make sure that you are all within... see that circle?"
The group looked around, Mabel even kicking away some fallen leaves. Sure enough, there was a circle of dashed lines in green chalk surrounding this mysterious electronic. Triangles were spaced evenly through the dashed circle, each with an exclamation mark letting people know that it was tied to a risk of some sort.
"We meant to add a little more, so that it would be more noticeable, but it will do for now. That circle is the marker where that all organic beings, and what they're touching,"
The group gave a collective sigh of relief at that latter part, each for different reasons.
"Are transported in. Except the floor - .GIFfany actually had to take a few tries to get that to work out."
"Are we gonna be blown up and the 'us' that's made over there is really just random air parts or something?" Mabel asked, "I'll still teleport, I just want to know if I stay the same me."
"No. I requested that we used a method where everyone is transported whole. It's safer for the environment."
With no further questions, Mabel plunged the card right into the Wire's slot. Suddenly, a low buzzing noise was made as a pale dome formed to the boundries of the dashed circle-
"Onnnnne last thinggggg..." Rose said, blushing. "This Wire system... it's different from how .GIFfany stole your family and can warp through electronics, and... it's never been tested on humans before."
By the time Dipper asked "WHAT," the bubble shrunk itself into the screen, leaving only a blue and white hat as the one thing that failed to teleport.
Despite not being part-code, the system worked pretty well with the four fully organic humans. It helped that this was likely made with the newly organic video game characters in mind, and any 'companions' that they want to take over.
That did not mean that the process wasn't beyond bizarre. Everyone was floating in a massive, empty void with just the slightest glowing signs of color. The card was thankfully transported in too - as it was being scanned by an invisible scanner (and yet the foursome could still note the cliche wireframe markings on it as it was being 'read'), which then projected another bubble over the four matching the card's coloration. With an invisible force, the group was pulled downward after a few moments of weightlessness. Downwards and on to a direction, into a large tube of green with 1s and 0s floating in the distance, all the way to the bright light of the electricity at the end of this tunnel.
Crossing the static did not lead to them getting shot out and into the forest while tiny or anything. Instead, that's where the first signs of teleportation came in. The gang, still bubbled in yellow, was now warped into a much bigger expanse. Clearer binary numbers stretching across the open void, other bubbles of various colors moving around, above, and beneath them, and fifteen massive circles of colored energy zapping and breaking around them.
This part was by far the longest of the trip, so while Mabel and Soos swam to the edge of their 'ride' to look in awe, and Wendy gripped her axe in fear, Dipper flipped the pack so he was facing the screen again and gulped.
This question... didn't really deserve that gulp, right? He wondered as he rubbed the top of his hair. It had an obvious, reasurring answer, didn't it?
"I lost my hat. Is there any-"
"Sorry." Rose flushed again. "When I sad this was like a linear chain, I was counting returns to Gravity Falls before going through the chain. You see, 'People like you' meant that .GIFfany expected someone to try to attack us, and in the case of that, she only gave us cards of the next professor in line. When you get the next card, you can come back to the place we're going, but even I don't have a green card. W-we were supposed to get all cards, for each professor, after a week of a 'cooldown period.'"
"So, in other words..."
"You can't go back to Gravity Falls. Not before you make eleven more stops first, at least. Or just buy plane tickets. But that is not recommended when you have the option to use the Wire system."
Just like that, the cross-computer ride became less entertaining for all parties involved.
Colorful mass-space once again turned into crossing an electric barrier, then going through a tube closer in color to the bubble the group was in. Shooting up the tube to a wider, emptier space, and finally getting ejected from another, yellow 'Wire.' This one out in a desert. As with the green one before it (and for future reference, all other such computers unless otherwise noted), it was rested on a cylindrical mass of metal matching the computer's color. All four of them were squeezed out at once, as with their packed up supply kit, scattered along the sand.
"Ugh, it figures." Said Soos, getting up from a fairly rough landing. "Level two is a desert level. What a cliche."
Unlike the bustling garden in the woods, there were no signs of moving life - either organic or video game-turned-organic - at a first look in this area. But there was one thing lying in front of the pseudo-computer that was almost impossible to ignore: The back of a large, dark purple house, towering at four stories. With the words "Hope to see you again!" spray-painted on in a dark red, hanging above a massive pair of maroon doors.
Wendy attempted to open these doors - first with her hands, then her hands and a foot, then an axe. In order, the following happened: It didn't budge, it still didn't budge, and the axe was sent back flying into the sand. Once she started looking around the windows and found them to be black-tinted and hard as rocks, Dipper once again flipped over his vacuum pack for answers.
Static. He would have been worried that he broke the pack on its fall, but the static being the same yellow as most other things associated with this place was a clear giveaway that the professor of this region was likely blocking Rose out on purpose. With communication with Rose being impossible, and the back exit not giving any results, the gang did their walk to at least look at this from all angles. The left side of the house was nothing spectacular - just rows of more cheap wood and blacked out windows. The front... had a typical porch to it, and the words "The Giffening: Sparks of Fear" spray-painted just above the door.
It was inside that things changed. Pitch-black, almost, making Wendy doubt that the windows were really tinted. Going by audio, wood creaked beneath the four with each step they took, only audioble because of the complete lack of any other sound. An echo from the footsteps implied that this place was large and empty, but finite. The air inside was also notably cooler than the dry winds around the outside.
Sure enough, the doors closed on them, leaving them in complete blackness. The gang, by instinct, aligned with their backs facing one-another, even in their state of blindness. Someone had to ask the one-worded, fate-tempting question, and that someone turned out to be Mabel.
"Hello?"
Then, everything came on. Too fast. Dim lights illuninated the manor's foyer, revealing a figure in front of Soos. Roughly larger than a human at first, it was dressed in black robes that flowed to the rotting wood below. It carried an imposingly large scythe in one hand, and held a hooded, grinning skull in place of an actual head. The creature introduced itself with a maniacle laughter, pointing a bony hand at the Mystery Shack group as they rushed to their weapons. But it was already too late.
Drawing with one hand, the Grim Reaper-like image brought its scythe up and-
Intentionally struck the floor about a good mile away. Its laughter was replaced with a more familiar voice, a normal hand emerged from the arm holding the scythe to take off the black-and-skeletal glove on the other, and both hands took off the skull mask.
Underneath was yet another cheap .GIFfany recolor, this one bearing extremely bright yellow (that would not 'just' be considered blonde in any circumstances), very stringy and messy hair with matching eyes. And slightly tanner skin. She also had very bizarre orb of swirling, colorful gas-looking substance within her hair, much like Rose and her flower.
Just when Dipper thought she was a one-woman army, a crowd of AIs slipped themselves from behind various potted plants and hidden closets to join in on the laughter.
"WELCOME TO THE GIFOCALYPSE HAUNTED HOUSE! THE GIFFENING: SPARKS OF FEAR!" She announced, throwing off the Grim Reaper robe to reveal a second dress that looked like someone stitched several pieces of other cloth together, then ripped it in parts. Just about everything she stressed out in the following sentences were met with looking skyward (or, ceilingward) and shaking her hands in the air. "I am your host, the BRILLIANT Professor Kathody, MISTRESS of the dramatic arts and lover of all things horrific!"
Dipper let out a sigh of relief. "So... do you hate .GIFfany as much as Rose does?"
"Oh, of course not! I'm a loyal follower! And seeing as you're probably the ones Dove warned me about... I get to capture you! Now, stand still, this won't be THAT painful."
She brought her scythe up, taking advantage of the sound it made along with the shine of the blade. Wendy took an offensive stance, while Soos and the twins had to scream first.
Closing AN:
Wow. I didn't think this chapter would be as long as it is now. Mostly because I kind of wanted Rose to end up inside that AI-hunting pack thing (for reasons you can catch a glimpse of at the end of this very chapter) and that I was thinking about a sort of lead-in to the next chapter, then thought "Okay, this is gonna end right here. At this exact spot. No other options."
Speaking of Rose's capture, I'm still not really fond of how it was handled. It doesn't feel natural at all that, after a lot of trust-establishing moments, Dipper would just kind of have that last-second reaction. I'll see if I can come up with some alternates.
So this is around the point where the plot will start picking up, as the story is now at the spot I really want it to be. I hope you enjoy the hunt for the other professors. Also, if you don't like recolors, don't worry: They're not really the stars of this story. Just, more along the lines of the obstacles. There isn't going to be some overly long and tired out love triangle where Soos must decide between Rose and Melody with an obvious ending or anything like that. This isn't listed as a romance for a reason.
...Building on that would be the news you don't want to hear. Let me put it this way... while there will be a lot of other appearances from past canonical characters (the Shape Shifter is the rule and not the exception - also it likely won't just be the monsters, expect some of the non-Mystery Shack humans to get involved briefly), don't be surprised if this closing author's note right here is the only time Pacifica's name comes up in the entire story. Bill would be in a similar boat but I forgot at first that I mentioned his name back in the first chapter. Which kind of implies how unimportant he is to this story.. Sorry but this is about them as much as "Soos and the Real Girl" was. (Which is to say, it isn't.) Again, this isn't tagged as a romance for a reason, and I would never write Bill as a romantic cool guy anyway.
Relatedly, I'm afraid I won't be taking suggestions or anything like that. This story is already planned from beginning to end, and while I'm still fleshing out things in the middle, it's relatively minor stuff.
This is going to sound really arrogant, but if you by some chance like these .GIFfany recolors, you're more than free to do whatever fan stuff you want with them just as long as you credit that this is where the idea came from. I'm not gonna pull a don't-steal or anything on them.
With that out of the way, this will be my last chapter-posting for the rest of the year 2015. Which seems obvious since this is also the second to last day of 2015. So, spoilers, there's nothing for New Year's Eve. I hope you enjoyed this, and will enjoy the following chapters to come. (Don't worry, if you feel the need to read all author's notes, this will probably be the longest of them until the ending.)
