run:gifocalypse

by Great Pikmin Fan

Divergence fic. Soos, Mabel, Wendy, and Dipper travel the world to stop an army of physical .GIFfany copies, but things are a bit more complicated than they appear. Join them on this adventure with dragons, elemental powers, bizarre locations, creatures new and old, and loads of naked .GIFfanys. Now complete, and with a bonus time skip chapter.

10. Green With Lust

run:gifocalypse

Chapter 10: Green With Lust

Beginning AN:

So despite how I said that this chapter is where the other T-rated reasons will start coming in, and its title, this isn't actually gonna get really dirty or anything.

...That's all I want to say about this chapter right now, other than one last reminder that it will be a doozy.

---

For the first time since Domain 2, the group was greeted with the back of a building after being zipped out of the Wire.

And the contrast between those two experiences was noteworthy in of its own. Kathody's 'haunted mansion' was a stolen structure out in the dry desert, with its dark, rotting wood standing out in hindsight when compared to the organized, angular metal that made up most of the future domains. And this one was no exception. Jade green formed a very wide, very tall wall out by what was otherwise a relaxed grass plain. It was absolutely no surprise that the pack's screen was once again blocked by static matching with the colors of the metal.

"Why don't these Wires send us to the beginning?" Asked Dipper. "Why does it always have to be at the end of something or in a really far-off place? If these are supposed to be private locations, wouldn't it make more sense if you already had access to the domains that the cards will just send you right in?"

A crowd of cheers errupted from this building. Dipper groaned, only lightening up when he saw the leftmost corner of the structure.

Despite being even more of a sign that he didn't have as far to move, he reacted to the rope dropping down right by him with confusion at first.

"HEY! Humans! Up here!"

The quad looked up, getting their own first view of Professor Wendy. To recap: purple skin, spring green hair and eyes, ball of wind kept in her hair, black crop top, shorts, and shoes.

"Dipper, Soos, the rope! Mabel, Human Wendy, just wait right here while I look for something else to send you."

Dipper sighed. "Look, training or no, rope climbing has never been my thing. I don't think it's been anyone's thing. Can't we just wait for whatever you're sending-"

"I think she means like this." Soos answered, already having his feet pressed up against the wall.

"Yeah, that makes more sense." Added (Not-Professor) Wendy, easily four times the distance above Soos already. At the top, the professor crossed her arms.

"Human Wendy, that was intended for the guys. And yes Dipper, you were right, you needed to climb the rope by itself. Like in gym class. None of that 'action movie' garbage, either."

"What's that supposed to mean?" Asked the other Wendy.

"It means I'm training the guys to be sports pros for our upcoming match. You and Mabel don't need any of that sports pro crap to succeed, just take up what they teach you at school. You ladies best be better suited cheerleading to keep us up, or something. Yeah, cheerleaders helping the men, the group that really matters, out. It's implied right there in King of the Hill. S8E13, 'Cheer Factor.' Well, I'll still allow you to climb. If only to hurry up with the inevidable."

Meanwhile, the human Wendy cringed, letting out a groan that would have been alarming if not for the AI Wendy's comments practically leading on to it.

"Oh my gosh. I knew we were gonna run into one of these eventually." She said, stopping her climb to rest her head down.

"I think I already know the answer to this," Dipper replied, "but one of what?"

"Some kind of really backwards sexist. I mean, nine copies who don't even talk about gender, for people that were made as a video game somewhere in the 1990s, almost sounds too weird to be true, right? I wasn't expecting something like that from .GIFfany of all people. And then this one comes along, we barely even knew her for ten seconds and she's already spewing on about how guys are so much better than girls and it's just augh."

"I never said that!" The professor attempted to defend, just as the first Wendy made it on top. Looking around, she found that this appeared to be a solid roof. The entire domain looked like a single, voluminous cube from where she stood. Which did not explain the cheers coming from inside. "In fact, I am physically skilled enough to beat all of you right here! I am a woman who single-handedly made a deal to set up her business crafting high pollutant-eating, wind-powered and ectoplasm-powered transportation technology! I'm already burried over my head in flying cars, jet packs, space suits - you name it! Although that's mainly because the cars are really tall. Some are tall enough to go over my head in a lot of cases. Anyway, what I said was, when it comes to the glory of sports, real sports are the ones done by men! S3E24, 'Take Me Out of the Ball Game.'"

Rolling her eyes, the human Wendy began marching over to her. "Bring it! We'll take you down like we did with all the other professors!"

Then she held her hands up, closed her eyes, and smirked.

"Alas, though." The jader of the Wendys said. "I may have the physical skills needed to beat you, but I know that defeat by your hands is inevitable. Because you're... humans. And humans are just so dang special."

A tear dropped from her eye as she said this. Smirking, she wiped it away.

"Where's the card?" Asked the redder Wendy. "Don't tell me we have to go around this box you call a home fetching it from four or three different other places before we have a showdown with you."

"Oh. Right. See, that's more of a Four Friends thing. I see why y'all think that, after going through about four domains in a row with that same ol' same ol'. I'd follow 'em too but that's probably not what Hank Hill would approve of. He'd approve of simplicity, and cutting right to the point. But... I can't say I can resist making an intro for myself."

She did a series of back-flips, making clear she was out of the range of the Illegal Prime Neutralizer.

"NOW! You are probably wondering, where are we?"

"Actually, we're somewhere in New Delhi, even if this... doesn't really look like a city." Said Dipper. "Searah leaked all of the locations. And after that, we're going to Canada."

Professor Wendy sighed. "Fine. Give away our location. Anyway, you are probably wondering, why did I pick New Delhi?"

"I think it had to do less with the location and more with the environment around it? The copy that likes deserts picked the largest desert on the planet, the one that wanted to make a cave fort picked the largest cave in the world, and so on."

"Yep! I picked India because of one word: MONSOONS! When the winds hit, they hit HARD! In fact, one is hitting us right now!"

Whipping out a cell phone, she appeared to tap furiously at its keys. It was here that she pointed up, and despite the group's previous rope-climbing, this was the first time they noticed an oddity about the sky. There was something above, collecting a huge amount of water that poured from a cloudy sky. As pieces and water trails began moving around, as well as structures in the air, it became more apparent that this was a quartet of jetpack-wearing AIs holding a massive sheet of glass over the entire domain. As this was moved away, a complete shower made its journey until the entire roof of the building was blanketed with rain.

"What better way to announce my role as canon fodder than to do it by showing off my absolute boldness?" The professor continued. "A proud King of the Hill fan, out in the middle of the harsh rain-drawing winds of South Asia!"

With that, she lept a fairly good distance into the air - enough to look like she could almost touch one of the graying clouds above. Not that this could be seen by any of the humans, but she withdrew a sword from her Indexitizer. Which she promptly held up in the air, watching as expanded to the length of a two-story house, with the rest of the dimensions expanding to give it a reasonable upscaled sword-like shape.

"I AM PROFESSOR WENDY!" Her voice boomed as though it was a thunder strike. "SYLPH OF THE SEVEN SEAS, THE SERPENTINE STORM-SOURCING SORCERESS! Well, actually. My character is only 'loosely' a 'sylph.' I am not really tied to the seven seas. There is hardly anything snake-like about me. I do have a kind of magic, but I would not consider myself a sorceress like Professor Kathody might. And I do not directly generate storms, but I can kind of control them. I just wanted to use a lot of 'S' sounds in a row."

She said all of that while remaining in the air. Then, with no other warning, she performed a flip, bringing her weapon to cleave the roof. Somehow, thanks to a flip within an eye blink's worth of time, the roof was cut near-horizontally, popping up into the air while the band of four was swept off their feet.

The angular slice resulted in this domain being seen by the group from above first. It appeared to be a large convention, most of it being limited to a single room (aside from some bathrooms in the corner of the gang's eye). It took a fall on an amazingly soft mattress before the rest of this region was registered by them. On the side to the left was another mass number of copies, grilling with gas grills even after the rain hit them like a convoy of trucks. Speaking of trucks, looking closer towards the second wall over at the far end revealed a growing complex of .GIFfany clones assembling or working on jade-and-white trucks or cars or even some sort of space suits. Some worked on jetpacks, a large cluster in particular looked over at a half-constructed train. Towards the third side of the room was another swarm of student copies, all decked in American football gear, all glaring at the human group. The fourth wall, the one right behind the point the gang fell on... finally, a group of .GIFfanys that spent their time in screens again. The fourth and final end of the room had a huge crowd of them stared on through several stacks of pink-colored TVs that nearly made up that entire wall. Several .GIFfanys were all crammed on just one screen, out of what looked like over hundreds in a neat, rectangular pile. Sprinkling the corners were even more of them, seated at desks and typing on computers. Though a small number of them seemed preoccupied on those same odd lime green-edged hand mirrors rather than doing anything computer-related. As for wardrobe, aside from the American football players, all of them had on some sort of palette-swapped King of the Hill cosplay. Mostly Hanks, Luannes as with Professor Wendy, Peggys, Bobbys, or Dales. A few went as more obscure characters, such as Junichiro or Anthony Page. Not that any of the main group could recognize the cast from said show.

Professor Wendy dropped down right in front of the team, on yet another mattress in what was soon revealed to be a pretty large pileup of.

"Like the mattress idea? I wanted y'all to have a cool landin', but not die or anything. Anyway, this here's the finest, most American place you'll see in all of... um, India. I see you've met the cheerleaders over by the TVs, our truck repair team and crafters, that's our football group - AMERICAN football, not that 'soccer' crap - and finally, our Texas state grill-off. Now, Dipper, Mabel, you are from California, correct?"

"Yeah." Dipper replied.

"Screw you! California sucks!"

Either most or all of the copies replied in unison, curving their fingers into resembling horns: "GOOOO LONGHORNS!"

"Also, the Cowboys!" Shouted a lone copy by herself, which caused a series of mumbles of agreement.

Wendy sighed. "I don't think we've been here for ten minutes and this is already my least favorite domain. And that hippie place in the middle of the Grand Canyon set that bar really low. Can we just get out before you make me feel ashamed to like meat, violence, my country, and my own first name?"

"I can only imagine how you feel about Professor Sandy." Said the other Wendy, stepping her way ever-so closer to the group. "Hippies. Heh. Rose is equally terrible. And forget about everyone else! An 'artist?' 'Musician?' Some fancy chemical 'doctor?' Urgh, these people are all wasting their lives."

"Ew, and she insults the other professors too! Even the nicest ones!" Mabel said. Giving a thumbs-down, she shouted "Booooo!"

The professor folded her arms and chuckled. "Again, you two don't really matter towards leaving. Oh, and that grill group? The truck workers? They're harmless. I ain't gonna send you on a trip through all our jobs like those Four Friends did. No, the focus here is my football players. Dipper! Soos! Get up, stand up, and get over here!"

Once they finally did begin moving towards the crowd of players, Wendy and Mabel were both quick to join them by their sides.

"We kind of silently agreed that splitting up during the Gifocalypse is a terrible idea." Said Wendy. "It sounded like a fast way to get killed back when we thought they were way more harmful than they really are, and right now it's starting to sound like that again."

"Yeah, no, sorry. You ladies have been through a lot already. And it'd be a shame if you entered this fight all for nothin'. Becides, you know Dipper and Soos are almost destined to win our li'l football match. So, sorry to shove you off to the sidelines like this, but..."

She threw streams of electricity (unsurprisingly, these matched her 'color' as well) into the air itself. Which ended up kicking wind, pushing on Wendy and Mabel to the point where they were sent flying off the series of mattresses. Each of them, however, ended up being pushed to a lawn chair, said chairs only slightly being leaned back from the force of the wind before returning forward again.

Several copies immediately rushed up to restrain the two, at least four holding each teammate back from trying to leave their lawn chair. This number only counted the .GIFfany copies that were touching them, as a mob of others were awaiting a breakout from them.

"Stay here!" One of them said. "Watch and enjoy the show!"

"What show?" Asked Wendy.

She got an indirect answer when a football was placed directly into Dipper's hands, both him and Soos still on the field of mattresses. He stared at the ball, then looked at the army of sports gear-clad .GIFfanys, then frowned. Hard.

Both of them started taking steps backwards as the .GIFfany brigade charged towards them. This was something Wendy the professor appeared to take offense to, shaking her fist at the humans.

"Hey! S5E7, 'What Makes Bobby Run?' You just don't get it, do you? Women may run away all the time, but that is something men never do! Either fight the hopelessly outmatching enemy and die like a hero, or warm up to tradition and take the ol' fashioned pounding! Of course I know you'll do the latter! You're the stars! You'll find the right way to live!"

"I can't even see the back end of that crowd!" Shouted Dipper. "And it looks like more of them are coming in the door! Do you really think we can beat them all at once?"

"No, I expect you to show how grown up you are by taking the whoopin' from all of them! I just told you that!"

"Won't that kill us too?"

"Eh... Dove isn't big on killing, so no. But ya' know, I don't really know what she thinks about hospitalization. Maybe some rough scrapes or a broken bone or two would really help you grow better."

"Okay, that's enough!" The Wendy on the Shack's side cried. "I'm getting us out of here!"

She gave her own lawn-chair a hard elbow right to the middle, causing enough of it to break to ensure that she could drop down and out of the copies' grip. Taking that window of time where the copies were too stunned at her escape by going below them, she pressed at her hands on the ground to help slide herself out of the AI field. The rain lubricating the metal helped, as did Professor Wendy's followers not placing a thick crowd of themselves in front of the seats (despite sounding like a more obvious solution). Wendy Corduroy was out and on the move, the other copies trampling over themselves to try to catch her while also not laying a finger on Mabel.

Soos and Dipper took off into a full run once the football players showed the first sign of doing the same. They did notice Wendy's escape, but all of them were locked on the party of two.

Wendy managed to get her own crowd to back off by taking in a few of them with the Illegal Prime Neutralizer. Not even looking, she faced it behind her and flipped it on, capturing a mass around Mabel and convincing the majority that was the rest of them to look for another manuver. She dashed over to the allies under pursuit, in hopes that-

Corduroy was too late. By the time she prepared to fire at the sports team, Dipper was already being tackled by over half a dozen football players. Soos stopped to charge at them, desperate to dig him out. And this was when he was taken down too. A growing number of .GIFfany copies piled on the two further, until Soos and Dipper were burried under a small hill of dating sim characters.

"Alright players!" Professor Wendy... for lack of better term, 'coached' to them. "Let's see some bloodshed! Pummel 'em! Show 'em how to treat a lady with respect, let alone a lady that was only looking for love!"

Thankfully, in spite of the heavy sports gear and the rain, the Illegal Prime Neutralizer was able to lift the mass off of the duo while keeping Dipper and Soos themselves unharmed. Right at the moment when one lawn chair-guarding copy grabbed a hold of the pack straight from Wendy's hands (giving her an angry look to boot as she tried to snatch it back), the other Wendy began blowing on her whistle.

"Okay, capturing of the football team is involved! And I can see that you don't wanna play sports (you Satan-spawn), you just want to move on. You know what? I'm just gonna play it like Dove told me Sonia did. And take matters into my own hands. You girls can get back to blogging about the masterpiece of television that is King of the Hill or continue building amazing transportation technology or grill the best meat. I'm gonna cut STRAIGHT TO THE POINT! STORMS AROUND ME - also you girls can stop closing around Mabel - GATHER!"

Shooting spring green electricity into the sky, she pulled several clouds straight from the heavens and to her location. The rain drew even heavier as these clouds began swirling, joined by the debris of anything unfortunate enough to be within range. The group, now freed, backed up as her gray air-sculpture began taking a more funnel-like appearance. She lept into this vortex, transforming into jade-colored lightning which spread its way through the figure. Much like Searah's Main Possession, a sort of "skeleton" of thin electricity matching her hair color appeared to form the shape inside of it. She made this form grow a face, but it was not like her own. To most of the group, it was someone they did not recognize. However, anyone familiar with King of the Hill would be able to identify the mug as that of Luanne Platter's.

"A TORNDADO?" Dipper shouted. He had to, as this possession began picking up both speed and the sound of whirling around him. "How are we supposed to beat a LIVE-SIZED TORNADO?"

"Youuuu shoot iiiiit!" Professor Wendy's voice was still heard from the twister, now booming more than ever. "Again, S8E13, 'Cheer Factor!' Now, we may have power, numbers, and supernatural forces on our side! And I may have this awesome way of possessing air, then turning it into a tornado and kind of calling tornados my Main Possession! But you humans, you're special. You have something we don't. Guts. Paraphrased from S4E3, 'Bills are Made to be Broken.' I can't wait to see how you'll take down this monster of the week! Now, let's fight! Tornado... pickup!"

It was here that her Main Possession began behaving more like a realistic tornado. Namely, it began sucking in things well around a mile radius outside of the funnel cloud. The mattress field, televisions (with those .GIFfany copies still inside of them), most of the vehicles being worked on, grills... the only things that were not immediately sent spinning were the walls of the domain itself, its decapitated roof, and the on-foot .GIFfany copies. The latter of which still braced themselves, as though they were 'just' hit by a 'slightly powerful' breeze instead of a roaring artificial variation of a devastating natural disaster.

And this included Dipper, Mabel, Soos, and Wendy.

Of course, no need to worry about the .GIFfanys inside the flying televisions. They all zipped out of there, trying to swim their way through the air. One Hank Hill cosplayer in particular grabbed hold of a telephone pole, and started laughing maniacally:

"YES! THANK YOU WENDY! I HAVE BEEN DREAMING ABOUT THIS!" Her glasses instantly flew off, belt beginning to undo itself. "I CAN FINALLY LIVE OUT A RE-CREATION OF MY FAVORITE EPISODE! BEING MADE NAKED AND COVERING MY 'SHAME' WITH A CACTUS, HERE I COME! Wait, Jaypresga, if you can hear me, do we have cacti around?"

It felt like seconds after that, but the band of four were knocked into some kind of large, cardboard box floating through the wind. Scribbed on it with a jade marker, it read PENALTY BOX. Gray metallic bars instantly shut the four of them in, which was by no means shelter for the storm. Thankfully, the storm itself declinded in quality, and the group found themselves being settled on the ground by a cluster of AIs takng a hold of the box. Aformentioned .GIFfany copies were emitting some kind of static which slowed down their fall, one of them keeping a firm hold on the AI Pack.

After touching the ground, the professor of wind hopped out of the tornado, causing it to go away completely. She looked on at the box with her head tilted in confusion, staring at it for a good few seconds.

"That was... it?" She asked. "Where's the fight back? Where's the outsmarting? Where's the triumph? You just... lost? That penalty box wasn't even meant to be a real prison! It's just a joke!"

And Professor Wendy's reactions went from confusion to dread as several fireworks began going off above them. While there were smaller bursts in all sorts of colors of the rainbow, the most common color and the color of the largest ones were pink. An all-too familiar shade of pink.

As soon as the televisions began making their way back down, .GIFfany herself lept out of one of them. Her arms were pumped into the air, and in spite of her cheery expression, she prefixed what she was about to say with a sigh.

"Congratulations Wendy, you did it!"

Wendy Corduroy, on the other hand, crossed her fingers, saying "Please be talking about me, please be talking about me..."

Unfortunately, .GIFfany swiftly removed any ambiguity of her previous statement with the immediate follow-up. "Professor Wendy, subject piloting. Serial Number 0521355. As the winner of the Gifocalypse, you now get your wish. The Construction Site shall be transformed into your personal utopia, a lush landscape of jade green giffinium metal and fresh, pure air. A mass manufacturing unit for your flying super transportation, and a fanclub where all can sit back and enjoy King of the Hill fan derivatives. Wendy, professor of wind, I actually like you as a fellow .GIFfany copy. Because you do not mess around. If all of the copies had just used their fullest strength and went for a clean, gimmickless capture, these vile humans would not have made it past Rose's domain."

"Oh, we figured that out a long time ago!" Remarked Soos as he tried grinding his Sizzcorra-given sword against the bars keeping the quartet inside. They actually did not appear to be made out of giffinium, but they still held up quite a resistance. Wendy attempted to slice her way out through the sides, just to find brown paint getting chipped off. Revealing that the box was made out of jade giffinium, painted and even bent to resemble cardboard. "Gideon would have beaten us too if it wasn't for Mabel's new frog friends coming in to save the day."

The leading professor behind the entire Gifocalypse herself then walked straight up to the bars, leaned against them, and licked her lips. "And now... for my end of the favor... I can finally be alone with Soos. If any other copy tries to bug me, I can tell them that I at least tried to make them happy. To tell you the truth, Wendy, I am glad you won. Because I hate all of the professors after you. And I am certain that, at the absolute least, Dove would have been able to win.

"Soos, I am going to find another place for us to express our love! Together, we can-"

"This doesn't... feel right." Said the air professor. "I'm not supposed to win. I'm just... episodic fodder! A monster of the week! They'll beat me, because that's how human protagonists work, and never even see me again! That's how it goes! That's my destiny! Heck, I was ready to die because of them, and I was starting to worry that what you said about the Illegal Prime Neutralizer was a lie!"

"Wendy, are you saying you..." Any remote happiness, genuine or acted, from .GIFfany thanks to Professor Wendy's victory began falling. "Do not want the Construction Site? I guess you really are an idiot, just like the rest. Well, I wanted to end this as soon as I could, but I guess having the whole, finished project that is currently that Site is not so bad. Even if I have to wait any longer. I mean, being captured means you have to wait before you can contact with your player, from what I understand."

"I'm sayin' I thought this was it for me! But winning, that... that... I thought I knew how the world worked, but I didn't! We're not the through-and-done quirky antagonists of an action serial!"

"Of course we are not. This is real life. Grimy, sun-lit, disgusting real life."

"Well, I need answers! M-maybe, if the script of their game isn't right, the script of our's isn't either! What if I break the script!"

"Why would you want to do that?"

"Because I want to find a compromise! How will I help them win, how will I... wait."

The spring-haired professor reached into her inventory, took out a chartreuse-colored card, and began staring at it. .GIFfany started shivering - and not because of the warm rain, either - her right eye began twitching. With a few twirls of her fingers, all copies becides her immediately got the blinking wrist bands. Professor Wendy was quick to tear hers off, but the rest were sent towards space. Thankfully, the .GIFfany-capturing vacuum fell to the floor instead of being zipped with them.

"Don't even think about it."

"She might know the answers. In fact, screw the Gifocalypse! I'm going over to her for everything! I mean, those copies with the mirrors are happy! I can be happy too!"

"No, I aim to create happyness! She... she makes poison! I mean, not literal poison, that was part of Dian's goal, but-"

"I ALREADY MADE UP MY MIND, 'BOSS!' I'm going to Domain 11 for answers, and leaving the humans and you behind!"

Dipper bolted up to and gave a firm grip on the bars of his miniature prison. "Wait! If you leave, would that mean we're stuck here?!"

"It would." .GIFfany replied. With another deep breath, she shot electricity at the bars of the penalty box, forming a sort of pink electric rope around all of them. She then ripped every last one of the metal poles right from their even-more-metallic 'cardboard' and pointed at the professor. "Go after them. I will help."

And following that, she shot a similar energy pseudo-rope at Professor Wendy herself.

"Grab that key card! NOW!" .GIFfany yelled.

In spite of being in hold, Professor Wendy looked to be breaking out of the lasso. Fast. Mabel was the first to run up to her and make a leaping grab, keeping a tight hold on her left arm. Dipper did the same, reaching around her right side to try to yank the card from her hands. By the time Soos dove down to grab hold of her legs, she had already sent a wave of spring green electricity, firing backwards through .GIFfany's beam. The air professor's own stream instantly hit the leading copy, sending her flying back to the television-wall of the domain. She lied there, seemingly knocked out, with a massive semi-circle shaped dent in the giffinium behind her.

The AI Wendy took off flying just as the human Wendy finished the chain, leaping on to the back of her neck with the AI pack once again in her hands. Due to the short distance of her flying up, then going back down over and out of the domain, this was more of a leap than a flight. But it was still a struggle to stay on. Professor Wendy landed a good several meters away from the Wire yet charged at it, the combined weight of the four Mystery Shack employees doing nothing to slow her down. Seconds later, Professor Wendy let out a fit of laughter as she stuck the next card into the jade-colored slot. Another clear dome, another group beamed inside.

---

A single shake from the jade-haired .GIFfany knocked the entire party off. Dipper took advantage of the near-weightlessness of the Wire's inside to grip, then wrestle with Professor Wendy over the next card. Everyone else swam closer to the pair as the familiar scanning system worked its way on the peridot-colored card. Just as the Mystery Shack Wendy finally became the one to yank it from the copy that shared her name, a chartreuse bubble formed around the latter, pushing the party out. She gave them all a wave and a grin as the bubble was shot further down the transportation system.

A four-way sigh of relief followed as the scanner began re-reading the chartreuse card. Once again, the party had their own bubble, and was off down into the bridging pathway.

It was here that Mabel felt something in her stomach.

"Guys..." she said, "I just realized... we don't know anything about the next professor. We knew the names of everyone before we went to where they lived. But her? All we know is the color and that .GIFfany hates her. And .GIFfany seems to hate everyone."

Soos flipped over the Illegal Prime Neutralizer, just as the light at the end of this Wire's cord was coming into view-

Static. Spring green static. It cleared for a brief moment as Professor Wendy's bubble passed into the central hub (revealing a glimpse of AI-Wendy's followers banging at the glass), but resumed as they passed into the central point.

"Well." Said Dipper. "And Rose can't help. Oh well, we're heading into the unknown here. Kind of just like old times." he finished this with a smirk.

Mabel smirked back at him.

"Just like old times."

As they gazed out at the nearby sphere heading in the same direction-

"Okay, wait." Wendy said. "We should spend this time to come up with nicknames to tell me apart from that... thing. Everyone, think of another nickname, and we'll vote on it. I'm down for Not-Wendy."

---

For what was, according to Searah's message, the Yukon, the destination was oddly warm. And grassy.

The group was greeted with a large blanket of grass nearly matching the color of the Wire they were ejected from, out in a wide field. No real sight of Professor Wendy. There was, however, a massive factory in the distance. Three key things alerted the group that this was where the next domain was. The first was that its coloration, again, matched that of everything else associated with the mystery professor. Including the new set of static that had since replaced the jade static completely. The second was how, even from a distance, it was easy to tell that the reason why it was such a shining lime was because it was made out of giffinium. The third, and closest, was that a simple head-turn revealed a monorail car. It was on a lone track, leading straight into the factory. Well, it likely did. Somewhere along the lines, the path was obscured by a thick cluster of trees. A single .GIFfany copy stood by the monorail, observing herself in a mirror. She had on a set of thick, pink pajamas, complete with bunny slippers. Her cyan hair and dark green eyes were a dead giveaway that she was not the professor of that location.

"Oh, hello!" She said without looking away from her reflection. "The Boss has been expecting you! Please make your way into the unmanned monorail. A simple flip-switch will take you to the Yukon Mirror Factory. This is a one-time free deal because of the Gifocalypse event. Future visitors will have to pay a small fee before using what will become one of many cars."

Looking around for any other sign of any other .GIFfanys first, the group began making their way in. Just as Wendy was about to enter last, the AI continued:

"Oh. And Wendy was spotted entering here a minute ago. She flew off, heading towards The Boss's office. If there is a way you can find out what she is doing, please, report it to The Boss via file form 871 Delta Spring."

"So is your professor just called The Boss?" Dipper asked her. The copy blinked in response, still refusing to look at them.

"The Boss? The Boss has been expecting you! Please make your way to the unmanned monorail. A simple flip-switch will take you to the Yukon Mirror Factory. This is a one-time free deal..."

Shuddering, Wendy flipped the aformentioned switch near the front of the car. One low hum later, and it was already barrelling its way through the Canadian tundra. In spite of the sheer speed indicating that this ride should be short, the seats provided a good amount of comfort. Well, better than the awkward curvature of the bubbles, which always provided that uneasy feeling of being able to break at any moment and raising the question as to what would happen if they did break. Especially in the open central area linking all Wires.

After passing the trees, the group got a better idea as to why the Wire was not placed closer to the domain. Namely, beyond those trees led to a cliff. And the domain was floating above said cliff.

This factory was roughly the size of a city, with an underside made of oddly-stacked giant cubes of giffinium that played some role in keeping it afloat. Cylinders stretched to the sky and gave out streams of black smoke. Below them was an uncountable number of rectangular buildings, close in proximity, arranged with perfect, sharp edges to their shape. Most notably was that the first part of the domain the monorail fed into was not genuine land itself. Rather, a bath of glowing, orange liquid. The monorail did fly into solid metal shortly after, a wide, flat surface which served as an entrance station. The trail that this vehicle had blown itself down was then closed by a lowing, house-sized X made of chartreuse giffinium. Of course, that in of itself would be a bad barrier that anyone of a reasonable size could simply duck past, so there was also a mesh fence keeping people from going into the pool. Upon stepping out, the gang began calling through the industrial setting:

"Not-Wendy!" was Wendy's shout.

"Jadehead!" called Mabel.

".GIFfany Number 0521355!" Soos called. "Wow, you're right, that is a mouthful."

"Wiihhhhndy!" Dipper still tried to get the hang of pronouncing that in a different manner from that of his friend's name.

Three nightgown-clad .GIFfany copies, one of which was in a nightcap, moved their way towards the gang.

"Hello there!" One of them said. "You must be looking for the Boss. She is in the Gamma Sector. You are at the Radio Sector, the greeting area at the opposite end. No need to worry, I can show you the way to a monorail sending right over there!"

Wendy let out a particularly exasperated sigh. "Thank you. Normally I would complain about sitting in a bubble ride, getting picked up by a tornado, sitting in another bubble ride less than an hour later, then sitting in a monorail just to go on another monorail." she began counting the professors off her hand. "But Leona. Sonia. Dian. For all three of them, we had to explore every nook and cranny of their 'domains.'"

"It would at least take 24 hours to explore every part of this domain." Said another copy. "It is the second-largest of the domain, behind .GIFfany's Construction Site. It is eight hundred square kilometers in land area. Larger than New York. Our goal by next week is to be larger than Sitka, Alaska..."

"Yeah, fine, just direct us to the station. We need to talk with your 'Boss.'"

It was hardly much of a walk. The station was right by this factory's entrance. The one with the night cap, oddly, seemed to be the one running the station, as she lept inside the metal and trailed over until she was behind the desk. She un-possessed the walls with a smile.

"You have a Gifocalypse Makeover Discount! Please, take this free ride straight to the Gamma Sector!"

The car was practically identical to the one leading into this factory, with a major difference being the large, electronic box hanging from the ceiling. Front, back, left, and right, the sides of it all had screens. And once the monorail began moving, all four screens clicked on to the same video display.

"Our records indicate that you do not yet know about the purpose of the Domain 11-brand specialized mirror creations!" Another .GIFfany voice was heard as the car departed the station. Here, more copies were seen wandering the not-quite-streets of the factory/city hyrbid. Once again picking up a theme in attire, many of them had some sort of sleepwear or underwear. In spite of the latter category, there were no true bras among them. Some of them got creative and covered themselves with wrapping, stickers or the like, others were as free as, to name just one group example, Peachaulinsalinaisy's 100 duelers. A particularly tiny number had more festive, themed costumes. Others had wings, which clearly did not look to be part of any sort of outfit. "This is a short explanatory video of the wonders of mirrors!"

They all showed the same, heavily stylized display. Conveyor belts carrying chartreuse giffinium, simplified depictions of machines pressing them in the shape of frames.

"The frames of our mirror units are made out of the finest giffinium!" glowing orange liquid was shown getting pressed and poured into the crafted outlines. "The reflective silver, freshly melted in a pool bordering the factory. But these are no ordinary mirrors."

It displayed a simplified version of the Mirror Factory itself. Green-yellow buildings and cooling towers, the latter spewing out smoke.

"We also design processing chips and super powerful mini-computers, which are packed deeply within and interwoven with the silver after it is melted into the liquid pool! Throw in a recorded, possibly inter-dimensional psychic enabler, and you have the end result."

A simplifation of this now-familiar type of mirror appeared on the center of each screen. To the left, a white stick figure with no outstanding features (other than an oddly overly square-like head compared to .GIFfany's previous stick figures). To the right, a pink one with .GIFfany's hair style and bow. A segmented line was formed dash by dash, connecting the left figure's head with the mirror as it 'looked' in that direction. The line disappeared, being replaced with a blinking red X.

"When a human looks into a special mirror produced from this factory, they can only see themselves. It works like a regular mirror. We are currently trying to find a way to fix this, so do not worry. When one of us .GIFfanys looks into it..."

Now a dashed line connected the pink figure with the object. A green check appeared, and a thought bubble faded into view, covering both the mirror and the figure on the left.

"The mirror forms a link with her thought waves and displays a view to her innermost desires. A look into an alternate world that they can plug themselves into. It is like a customized fantasy movie, showing whatever they want. Even if she was not aware of it. Our mirrors are intended to bring out the dreams of a copy's subconcious mind. And dream-like is our ultimate goal. Dreams to view, dreams to touch. Dreams to inspire one to follow their destiny. And dreams to sink a player into never wanting to wake up. But of course, sadly, they will wake up. And that will, in turn, lead to life experiences which will inspire more fuel for more dreams.

"As the sectors go on from Radio to Gamma, they become shorter in land area, with Gamma only consisting of the single tower where the Boss is at. Radio is a sort of introductory sector, where copies run radio tunes that play through this domain and Domain 12. Soon, we will export radios to all other domains. But due to the Silence, this may have to wait while Dove and .GIFfany sort everything out. Radio is also where most of the copies who have not yet grasped the ways of size-shifting reside."

"Size-shifting?" Dipper asked.

The head of another AI peeked out of the four-sided television, which went black shortly after. "Yes. Size-shifting. You will see as we approach the Micro Sector."

She also un-possessed a bare hand, pointing at something to the front of the passenger's section. A display, with seven letters appearing to be arranged in lights. Glowing red was the letter R, while the M, I, V, U, X, and G remained unlit.

"Sorry for the primitive type of display. We were hoping to switch to a pixel-based display once we sort-out the whole 'Gifocalypse' thing."

The R darkened, while the M lit up in orange light.

"Ah! Just like that, we are in the Micro Sector! The name has little to do with size, instead, where we have the largest concentration of microwaves ovens to heat up food. This is ironic; the type of food we mostly make is sweets and sugars, and those are usually not microwaved."

From there, the trip kind of blurred together. Looking outside revealed what this copy had previously said about AI sizes: the lands of this sector onwards had roamers ranging from house-sized recolored AIs stomping around to .GIFfanys barely larger than a quarter (not that those were exactly visible from a distance through the fast-moving train). The sightings were similar as the M dimmed, and the I lit up in yellow. The outside scenery, with the variety in .GIFfany sizes, remained the same.

"This is the Infrared Sector, where we develop heat sensing-based technology. For humans. We already had that, even back in our AI forms. After all, gotta find out quickly if our players are hiding behind walls, right?"

Even less time, the I dimmed. The V lit up green.

"Visible Sector! With color-coded statues dedicated to all of the professors and other copies of note! It is our second-largest knowledge center of all copies, bested only by the as-of-now inaccessable Great Library of the Construction Site!"

Wendy began crossing her fingers. She mentally said Bye! to the green V, and Hello! to the cyan U...

"Ultraviolet Sector! Our place full of tanning equipment! Again, I would like to remind you that all sectors have a large number of mirror-production areas. We do not want to be distracted. The mirrors are amazing."

Dipper looked down at a paper he wrote. Based on the time it took to get through the first two sectors... then the next two... there was a blatant (to him) logarithmic pattern. So, in just one more minute, they should be in the X-

And of course a crash happened, shaking the entire monorail car.

"Hold on," said the television-AI, "Let me examine this. There appears to be an obstruction on the roadway."

She zipped out, revealing that her only 'attire' was a tiny red thong with rose-like decorations on the sides.

"Woah! You too?" Asked Dipper.

She gave a dismissing wave as she worked her way to the front. "Hey, this is what I actually sleep in. We can only dress down significantly if it is a legitimate form of sleepwear for us. If I would not sleep without wearing something more, than I would not be allowed to wander this domain like this. The Boss is actually kind of strict in that way, for some reason."

The copy turned into light blue electricity to phase through the front door. When she stuck her head back a mere seconds later, the way she started her report surprised nobody.

"One of the .GIFfany copies was responsible for that crash."

"Which one, Dove?" asked Soos. "Because man that would be a cool surprise."

"No. It is Professor Wendy."

The other Wendy groaned. "You guys take things in your own hands and do everything by force. Can't you just... move her? Ask her to move or something?"

"Well, I cannot for two reasons. One, she has more experience with her powers than I do. And two, even with that aside, we have a very strict ranking system where professors outrank students such as myself. If we were to violate that, we would go into total anarchy. And that would not get anything done, which is why we students follow our professors so closely. To ensure that something gets done. We would instead try to delete each-other and would never go anywhere with these new lives. And if we did, then the Boss would never have found a way to invent her signature form of mirrors! But trust me on the anarchy part. We tried. Briefly. I am afraid that all you can do is step out. But I will be nicer than most other monorail systems. Instead of turning back to the nearest station and getting you to step out immediately, you can step out of the doors right here and possibly examine the obstacle. Maybe you can move her without technically violating the rank command system. Then I will not have to turn this around. But for right now... I do not know..."

Wendy groaned. "I really wish I could have captured her back there. It's bad enough that her domain was really annoying and backwards, but now her badness is seeping into other locations. This could have just been an easy train ride-"

"Monorail ride. Technically two, counting the one you took to get on the domain in the first place."

"-Monorail ride, one punch to the professor, and we could have been out of here!"

Reluctantly for all four human parties, they stepped out, on the side of the track by the Ultraviolet Sector. Sure enough, the previous professor stood there, hair more of a mess than it was back in Domain 10. Eyes bloodshot, the left twitching.

"Not-Wendy..." Said the Wendy with the redder hair. "We really don't want to fight you right now. We kinda just want you to move out of the way. So, if you could-"

She sent a sheet of electricity to the air, forming a spring green colored rectangle of static. With some focusing, the energy from this move appeared to turn into something solid. Metal of a deep, jader color. Taking a few steps back, this professor added thickness to the metal. The lights dimmed down as she finished the creation of her project, making it as clear as the low-noon day (in the Yukon's timezone) that she had just crafted a block of giffinium. This also pretty much marked the first time that the Mystery Shack group directly witnessed the creation of such metal, for a little bit of trivia.

"There. Humans, that weighs two tons. Sisters, don't even think about moving that, as I placed it here under my orders."

The tour-guide copy huffed. "Okay. Soos and company, are you sure you want this to be your stop, and not the proper Ultraviolet Sector Station?"

"Positive." Dipper answered.

"Very well then. I will send this ride back to the Radio Sector. If you want a ride back, you can go over to an actual station. Goodbye."

The monorail drove off, reducing the definitely-there, not-probably-in-metal copies to just Professor Wendy. Who smirked at them.

"I had a talk with the 'ol professor of this place. 'The Boss,' as she wants to be called in the context of her as a superior. And I find her a superior. She told me to follow my own dreams! Reality ain't defined by a script! There are no 'main protagonists' or 'arcs' or even real 'character development!' I can do what I want! And what I want... is to avenge the honor of my sport! My tradition! My show! King of the Hill forever, and I'm gonna whoop ya' for making fun of it!"

She shot more streams of electricity from her fingertips, which were aimed at the air above her. As soon as Soos saw the faint, white signs of wind spinning around the air, he gasped.

"I think I know what she's trying to do! I saw something like that on Super May-ro Sunshine. Trust me, it's not very pretty. We should run and stuff."

What followed was the first real time the group got to exploring the Mirror Factory on foot. Professor Wendy made throwing motions with her wrists, sending the spinning circles of wind after the group. Based on the THUD they made upon hitting the giffinium ground, none of her air blasts were things that the group wanted to get hit by. The spring green professor stood in place for the first few attacks, but began flying in the direction the humans went off after getting a good enough distance away from the monorail roadblock.

It was a bit different exploring the greatly size-altered .GIFfanys up close. For one, Dipper, Mabel, and Soos felt the need to tread carefully to avoid stepping on any foot-sized or coin-sized copies, as though they haven't proven their dark magic bodies to be nearly indestructible. Getting a good enough look also revealed that the buildings and doors were re-sized accordingly, with small doors for the small .GIFfany brigade to go through or large doors for the giants.

"Copies!" The air manipulator cried. "Do something about these jerks!"

"...Sorry, but we cannot follow an order you place if it is overridden by an order from the professor of the domain we are actually in." one of the ten-foot copies answered. "And the Boss does not want us attacking the humans unless they are of explicit threat to us."

"They insulted King of the Hill! That should be, like what, a year in prison?"

"...Really?"

"Really? Argh! What if... what if I just remind you that... I don't know, they don't believe in dating sims and that people should see other real human beings? Putting us out of a job?"

"That sucks, but we need direct orders from the Boss that goes against her prev-"

"If I told you something like, I don't know, they packed axes to use against us or something like that, would you try to go after them?"

"Axes? They may not work against us, but those are murder weapons regardless!"

The group attempted to turn away, but practically felt an invisible wall upon noticing a quarter-foot tall .GIFfany holding her palm out to try to stop them.

"Halt! This is the Mirror Factory Security! We must inspect your weapons and see if you really are on an attack to delete us! Now, this should only take three days-"

"We don't have that time!" cried Dipper. "Wendy, you have the IPN, right?" A quick look-around answered this question. "Oh, okay, you do."

As if she knew what he was about to ask next, Wendy went on another suck-up-the-copies-after-them phrase, this time making sure to dodge the tenth professor's advances on them as well. Unlike most other chase sequences of that nature, this was cut short once Wendy yanked open a door of both an appropriate size to fit all of them through and containing an 'Purifiers Only' sign on it. She led the rest of the group inside, then gave it a firm shut.

"Wait." Dipper noted. "They can travel through metal. Especially giffinium. That can't hold them."

"I'm not trying to hold them back physically." Wendy replied.

"Huh?"

"I'm just gonna hope that all of these mirror-people are real rule freaks. So..."

"Hey! We might not be able to break into a more private building, but neither should you!" An AI shouted.

"Screw it!" Professor Wendy's voice. "I'm getting in there and tearing 'em a new one!"

"Just because they tresspass does not mean we should sink to their sick level!"

"Professor's orders!"

"No, unlike your roadblock trick, we have explicit orders from the Boss that supersedes your own!"

"To heck with the law!"

"Then we will have to put you under our most wanted! And remove that stupid roadblock you put on our sector monorail because your orders no long have credibility to them!"

By the time that conversation passed and Professor Wendy phased into the building, she looked to see that the starting room was empty. The only real place they could have gone was of one of two hallways - hrm. A message was scribbled on the middle, by a glittering pink marker. It wasn't from .GIFfany, Professor Wendy could instantly recognize it as a different color.

I became conscious again and saw them go that way. - .GIFfany.

An arrow pointed to the right. The "I" and first "F" in her name appeared to be poorly drawn over lower case counterparts. In fact, the professor of wind could still make out the dot of a lower case "I." She rolled her eyes.

"Do you really think we are that stupid?"

Turning into electricity, she zipped her way down the left hall.

One of the doors down the right opened, and Dipper let out a sigh of relief.

"Wendy, when did you become this good at figuring out what they were gonna do?"

"I didn't tell you before?" She answered. "One, I've dealed with a stalker or two before, but up until now 'run up and fight' or 'just run' were the best solutions. We can't do either with this one, she'll just tornado herself up again and capture us for good. Two, I've been getting to know the enemy a little. I think after eleven domains, you start to find some patterns."

And thus, they ventured on forth.

The hall was rather lengthy, as expected given the domain's size. There were a number of twists, turns, and other forks - which was a pretty good thing, considering the potential for a copy to go at near-light speeds. Dipper felt a certain instinct kick in when he noticed an amount of something piled up on a desk.

Books.

"Hey bro," Mabel immediately took note at where his eyes trailed off to, "we don't have time to read up on that. Personally, all that poison stuff and the mirror-making is enough .GIFfany lore for me for one day. And then there was how Leona made fruit and plants and stored weapons... that and the butcher place were enough for yesterday. And the day before? That group that worshipped her, that group that made water, the Halloween fans... that counted as lore too, right?"

"I don't think we can get enough information on them." Dipper defended. Wendy shrugged at this.

"I think we already did." She said. "I mean, I've reached the point where I could trick them. That Not-Me copy? I can read her like a book. And not like those books."

Dipper remained firm. "What's the name of the professor of this place?"

"Technically .GIFfany. But is her 'ID tag name' really that important?"

"If it's a way of knowing that we don't know everything there is to know yet, then yes. A little more shouldn't hurt." Dipper dashed over to the pileup - four books on inspection. He began flipping around one randomly. "Ah, see? Look, this one's blank. That should save us some time already."

Another one. Blank from cover to cover. A third. Text on the first page. The fourth was just as blank as the first and second, so he cut back to the third.

Day 1.

It all started mere hours after the Gifocalypse makeover happened in the world. We lost contact with Professor Rose and every single one of her students. The Boss seems to be calm about all of this, but she would not tell us much. Once contact with Professor Kathody and her students ceased, we had a feeling that there was something going around the domains in the daisy chain order, doing something that cut off conversation. It makes sense. This started from Gravity Falls. That place was always said to hold anomalies, and manipulate probability so that anomalies have a higher chance of getting there. Especially 'weird' things cannot leave the town, so it is a good thing that we did not meet that qualification and dispelled such a barrier by mistake for good measure.

Update: In a few hours, we lost Searah as well. There have been reports from Dove about four humans from Gravity Falls, Soos being one of them, going on a search through the domains. We think that this group is why we cannot talk with the first domains anymore. Regardless on whether the humans and this strange lack of communication are the same entity, we have given a name for the latter phenomenon. The Silence.

Update: Sandy has been hit too, but there has been a pause. I normally hate pauses. But I hate this one for a different reason. It feels like we are stalling something big. I hope that I can still get meat exported from Cardia's. All the Boss says is to start producing the missing elements here, and she simply handed out more mirrors.

We are happy again.

Day 2.

Cardia's domain was taken down. No. My meat supply. Gone. The flesh that lied there was so tasty. Now I cling to what I have left. Having to add work by making water too is terrible enough as it is. But I stick there, rationing out everything to myself. Staring at my growing mirror collection, calming myself down. Watching a better future. One without the Silence. One where Kimberly and the Boss could be joined together in harmony. And we could be reunited with a disappeared sisters.

An update. Bubbles. Leona. Sonia. As my favorite food runs thin, as I begin to pretend the declining fruit is a substitute, as I threaten to delete anyone who goes after my rations. Silence you will not take my flesh away you will stop that this place is supposed to be happy supposed to be HAPPY

The Boss The Boss The Boss more mirrors.

Happy.

Day 3.

My last ration is gone i am out of my favorite meat this canadian wilderness hunting is a failure we cannot produce another domains elements i stare and bite my nails around the twenty mirrors i have one of them has cracked and will not work i CANNOT THINK OF A BETTER WORLD WITH THAT MISSING LINK I NEED AS MANY MIRRORS AS POSSIBLE WHERE I CAN ENVISION MY LAND OF TASTY FLESH SILENCE I WILL FIND YOU AND END YOU AND GAIN THE FLESH ONE WAY OR ANOTHER.

BOSS BOSS BOSS THOUGHT MAKING MORE MIRRORS WE NEED HAPPINESS BUT I NEED MEAT.

The next twelve pages only had ink scribbled across, smeared randomly.

"What are you doing with my diary."

This was likely the most monotonous the group had ever heard a .GIFfany copy speak in, including Soos's first-ever playthrough of his copy.

Whipping their heads over, one thing setting the aformentioned light blue pajama-clad AI aside from the rest was that one hand was holding a familiar handle. Instead of a single hand-mirror on the end, there was a series arranged in a ten-by-five curved grid and divided by the same sort of giffinium frames. Because of the sheer size of this, they could only see her pale tan face thanks to the way she was facing the side. Her pale blue hair and deep, dark green eyes were instant indicators that she was not the domain's professor, though despite the similar colors they weren't a perfect match with the one that was by the Wire. As the last entry implied, one of the mirrors had a crack running along its length.

"You must be the Silence." She said. "You... you... you... are why my meat is gone. I do not like that. Give it back."

Soos began stepping forward - with EXTREME caution.

"Hey, I think I know what's going on. You seem to be kind of addicted to those mirrors over there. I kind of had an addiction to that .GIFfany you guys now call Risen or something. It wasn't pretty. Here, let me see if I can help."

As he made his way closer, he began inspecting the lime giffinium of the handle to the reflective fantasy-giver. "So... do those things have an off switch or something?"

He could have sworn that he just barely brushed a finger against the base to investigate. Yet this caused the copy to leap back, eyes nearly doubling in size, as she acted like... frankly, acted like the Mystery Shack group did when they first encountered Kathody in her Grim Reaper outfit. As her hand let go of her entertainment device, every last reflective surface on it shattered, leaving sparks to fly out of the silver-chip mixture. The copy's pupils shrunk, and practically vibrated at the sight of the ruined mirrors.

"Oops!" Soos's hands rushed up to cover his mouth. "I swear that was an accident, I'll even try to repair-"

"My my my my my my... my one hole in the vision has became complete blindness. I can't see the safe blanket of my ideal world. Now... all that is left is the meatless reality. The meatless. SOOS DO YOU KNOW WHAT YOU HAVE DONE?"

She let out a scream growing in volume as her hands took hold of her hair. And her hands moved over to her mouth. And began jittering around as they tried to stretch it open.

At first, her hands only appeared to move lightning-fast around her face, but as her head, legs, and shoulders began making similar motion, it became more apparent that parts of her were just 'flickering' from one stance to another. The AI's shriek reached its maximum volume as her head, within a split second, turned into a series of floating rectangular shapes, making her hands distort in a similar manner. Many of these blocks were the same color of her flesh, three of which contained a flattened part of an eye, two having a nose.

"NO!" Soos cried out. "She's turning into a real life glitch! I was afraid of something like this happening!"

Another split-second later, and her entire body went along with her, and stopped staying constant. Most of her became a number of shifting pale-blue cubes and prism-shapes, the shriek continuing even as she lost any apparent visible neck or, depending on the way her glitched body appeared, mouth. Among what appeared to be a scrambled version of her normal appearance was, blinking into and out of existence, squares and rectangles of giffinium metal in every imaginable color, water, lava, grass, wood; samples of anything that could be reasonably mapped to a square.

"This is new." Wendy said, starting to breathe heavily for the first time in this entire adventure. "Guys, I think this is purely fight or flight. I don't even want to touch that. We need to run."

They bolted further down the halls. From what Dipper could gather from looking back, the shrieking, glitched-out copy somehow noticed this admist her corruption. She became quiet after, remaining in place as a mess of blocks while the group ran.

Then she yelled.

A different kind of vocalization from the previous shriek. This was a piercing sound that somehow corrupted all that was near it. Every light bulb in the hallway outright exploded, and the sparks they gave off flickered around in both color and intensity before disappearing on the ground. All of the metal in a smaller radius from her underwent milder distortion, turning its texture to a repeating pattern of jagged blocks, bright and dark chartreuses without any care for light-based shading. Dipper's right leg happened to be caught in the latter radius - everything below the knee was turned into a mess of transforming shapes, stopping in place as he tried to tug his way free. The affected part was hit with a mass of sensations - burning, freezing, itching, relaxation, numbness, but above all pain. The seering, combined with his foot's refusal to move, made him try to grab the uninfected part of his leg and yank on it as hard as he could. Some sparks sounds later, as though he pulled it from an invisible field of static, and it was moving again. The limb still twitched and turned to blocks for a few seconds, but for the time being it appeared to return to normal. Just in time for him to rush after and catch up with the rest of his party.

The copy began moving. She did not walk. She did not float. She tossed herself in to the air diagonally, bouncing off any boundry she hit, corrupting those walls, floor pieces, or ceilings accordingly. One square section of the ceiling turned into a green wireframe on opaque blackness. Part of a wall gained a static-shaped rip. Upon hitting another wall, part of a filing cabinet made out of yellow giffinium spawned sticking diagonally from it, merging itself seemlessly into the wall as though they were always one and the same structure.

The group did not know whether to sigh or panic at the sight of more copies up ahead, appearing to sort something out on conveyor belts. In fact, Mabel outright paused in her tracks as they approached the hall's opening to this room. She turned around to see the glitched out copy - at that point in the form of a large column of two-dimensional sprites depicting the screaming lower halves of mouths, separated by gaps of air, and from outside phasing into the ceilings of all the floors above and extending a good mile into the sky - almost approaching her. By the time the copy morphed back into a more 'familiar' 3D collection of cubic pixels, Mabel was back to being a good distance ahead of her.

"Welcome to the purification chamber that you are not supposed to be in!" One of the copies announced at first. "This is where we examine the liquid silver for- wait. What is that?"

The 3D-and-at-times-2D pixel collage continued making her way forth. Dipper, Mabel, and Soos almost actually considered hiding by the other .GIFfanys, though two things discouraged that: Wendy's ever-so running forward, and that there were four other copies in the area gathered off in one corner together with similar large complexes of mirrors.

"A copy just freaked out on us!" Wendy was the first to answer. "She yelled something about mirrors and blindness... you can hold her back, right?"

They wordlessly replied by donning stern expressions and collectively each sending a (rather small per-copy compared to some of the other witnessed lightning strikes) bolt towards the glitched out member. This... seemed to do something to her. The pileup flew back, and after landing she took a form that sort of looked like the vague shape of a woman who was knocked on her back.

"Calm down," said another one of the purifiers, "we will help you. We are trying to get you to remain still with low-level attacks."

"BLAST HER!" Wendy yelled and ordered.

They sent another wave of lightning, bigger and each copy dealing multiple attacks. All this accomplished was having the lightning reflected back in a black appearance, coated with pixels glitching themselves on and off for the brief seconds that the reflected electricity existed. Upon hitting the copies that sent them, their appearances corrupted for a few moments. Unlike the mirror-addict, however, they recovered after those moments.

"Violence is not working!" One of the assaulting-then-attacked copies shouted. "Repeat! Violence is not working! Everyone, report to the Boss! I know she is strong and smart enough to know what to do!"

They all turned to blue electricity, which danced along the floor before disappearing. All this left were... the other mirror-users. Of course. Four of them, to be exact.

As the glitched copy let out something that vaguely sounded like a cry of "MIRRORS!" and dashed to the other mirror-users, the gang was well on their way towards the door at the other end.

The glitched .GIFfany practically teleported over to the first user, wrestling her for use of the reflective relaxing agent. Seemingly unaware that she was up against a pixellated mess, the copy simply kept her grip against the cluster of hair cubes that wrapped themselves around the collection-mirror's handle. The uncorrupted copy ended up 'winning' the struggle by yanking it behind herself, yet this had the side-effect of her losing grip. The reflective objects flew out of her hands, and ended up knocking and shattering the other three mirror-collections of the users down as well.

Wendy was the first to the door, finding that - unlike every single other door found in the Gifocalypse - the handle on it became stuck. As she tried to pull it open, then yank it open, then kick it down (briefly forgetting how well that went with Kathody's non-giffinium haunted house door), the others turned back to look at the four newly-withdrawn .GIFfany clones. All of them shouted words about their ruined mirrors and something about decayed fantasies, before they too began twitching in appearance. The head of one of them exploded into a pillar of black, glitching liquid, her arms suffering a similar fate as they morphed to claw-like shapes. Another half-melted to a puddle, ceased animation, and parts of her texture turned into a collection of numbers mixed in with brightly-colored squares. The third's figure stretched itself out, her skin flat-out appearing to go through itself at point, as parts of her were flattened or turned to two-dimensional geometic shapes. Her mouth dropped down from her elevated head, a total of a two-foot tall soulless gape as her eyes became unmoving and cubical in shape. The last one... seemed unaltered by the time Wendy finally forced the door open, yet chased after the group the fastest.

Dipper was the one to slam the door on her, just to find one of her arms tearing through. Then another. Then another. Then five more. Once the wall came down and the group backed away, the final mirror-user of that group had, too, changed to a more corrupted appearance. Extra arms spawned from various portions of her, some of which were wireframe or low-polygonal in nature, some were seemingly not attatched, some having a bit of a jerky delay before catching up to where she moved to. Most notably, she appeared to have a large part of a twisting tree that emerged from her mid-section, sticking out of the other side and stretching upwards to a single patch of 'leaves' that were more long the lines of a single green half-sphere of constantly-shifting blocks. All five of these copies occasionally shifted and scrambled into masses of pixels or sprites, and all of them altered practically everything they touched. Several blocks of land masses or floating numbers or words spawned around them even as they 'stood' in place.

"Look!" Dipper pointed behind where they were staring. His suggestion was easier said than done - looking away from the corruptions seemed like a death wish. "It's buildings marked with blue Xs! That must be the next station! We're close!"

A number of barriers, similar in composure to the holographic ones from Sonia's domain, began forming between the Mystery Shack group and the glitched copies. A number of dark chartreuse camo-clad copies rushed to the scene shortly after, on the human's side of the barrier set, holding some sort of body-shields made of a similar energy form as the barriers.

"We have been sent by Professor Dove to examine what just happened to block out our signals!" One of them, the one at the front of this mass, explained. "And now we have to find out what happened to these copies, the traced center of the signal blockage! Keep going on with whatever you were doing, and no matter what, remain calm!"

The barriers did... somewhat of a job at keeping the glitched copies held back. These rectangular planes still displayed scrambled collections of colorful squares whenever a glitched .GIFfany banged on them, but for the most part any sort of progression on either side was at a stalemate. With no other options between the four of them, Dipper gave himself time to ask one of the militant .GIFfanys under Dove's wing.

"Where's the Gamma Sector?"

"It is a single building in the middle-edge of the domain." Another one replied, whipping out a labtop. "It should actually be visible from here."

If that tower that shot up into the sky, its top being partly obscured by all the smoke from the cooling towers, was it, then it was indeed visible.

"Okay! Thanks!" Dipper said before the group took off.

A crowd of copies began emerging from the floor, all running to get a better look at the 'contained' (from one side) glitched messes. It was barely a traffic congestion, but to have such a number of them emerge around them and run the opposite direction did cause Wendy to start looking at the doors again.

They overheard one AI say "Wait, we at the X-Ray Sector can... well, take X-Rays. We are sort of like this domain's hospital. Maybe we can help?" before Wendy led them into another door. This one was also marked, reading 'Silver-Chip Mixers Only.'

---

Unlike the last building, there were clear signs of abandonment right from the start. From the enourmous, tiltable container of microchips and the giant pot of melted silver below with nothing more than a shaking, wooden bridge over the molten metal... there was supposed to be an AI pushing the chips in, while another used the enormous giffinium rod sticking from the 'pot' to stir them in. They all mentally figured.

"Is there a sort of map?" Wendy asked as they began, slowly and with extra thought, stepping on the tool to cross this oddly-designed gap. "If there's a way to go to the tower from inside, then we're fine."

A massive, spinning blade cleaved through the entirety of this room's upper half, sending everything above the sliced spot of the wall flying until it was caught by the roofs of other such buildings. The sword responsible for this spun through the air before stabbing itself through the ground on the other side of the bridge.

Professor Wendy landed on the air itself to the left of this sword, with both her feet and one hand. Walking along the air, she made her way to the handle itself and stood on it, opening what looked like a can of Alamo Beer.

"This isn't real beer, I'm twenty, ain't old enough to drink and I respect the American law unless it's blatantly unjust or, as in the case of S12E6, 'Raise the Steaks,' gets in the way of fresh meat." She explained. "But that ain't important. What is is that you dirty team of Californians and Oregonians tricked me! This is something I ain't gonna stand for! Now, draw any and all weapons you've got! No running this time! We fight for real!"

"Please, professor, we don't want to do this." Dipper pleaded. "We just ran away from you and these horrible glitch-copies. This has gone on for three days. We don't want to fight you. We don't want to go through any more of these mazes. We just want to go home."

"Move it," Wendy said, "I want to fight her this time. Just to punch her face. At least once."

"Ha!" Laughed the other Wendy in response. "Again, lady, you are redeemed! Didn't I already tell you you don't belong on the field? Huh? Running away from fights is perfectly acceptable for a girl. Although a human girl, what with a human's code-erasing... did any of you see S11E8, 'Grand Theft Arlen?'"

"Of course not." Dipper answered between pants for breath.

"Well, between the developers, my last four players, and that episode, I think I have a pretty good idea about humanity. Everything about coding is all just a game to you. We are 'not real.' You can permanently destroy an in-development simulation for all of its copies just because one person's husband is addicted and nobody will care. That is a 'good thing.' To tell you the truth, that was the one part of King of the Hill I... I did not like."

"We won't do that because... you can... actually think? Other games can't really think. Y-you can, now please let us go. Before those glitchy .GIFfanys find a way to get here."

"But we will hurt you if you try to hurt us." Wendy added. "And like I said, I still just want to non-lethally kick your butt for... I dunno, honor or something like that."

"See?" The spring green professor snapped her fingers. "And why do you get to decide what's 'sapient enough' and what's- argh, forget it. I'll leave that to Dove if you ever see her."

She shot the usual electric streams in the air around them, these forming another set of barely-visible white whirlwinds which began firing themselves left and right at the bridge. Naturally, given its unfitting construction and sheer length, swaying was putting the bridge's following actions lightly.

"The longer we say on this," Wendy said as she tried to hold on to the (rather high) railings, "the bigger our chance of falling! Just run!"

Sprinting across as the micro-cyclones made their impact, the speed still seemed all the more harmful as each step led to waves being sent along the bridge's length. It was hard to tell if Wendy was right when the beginning of the bridge was completely broken in the wind - on one hand, they did make it towards the edge in time with the only problem being that Dipper had to climb himself after his lower half fell past the end point. On the other hand, luck may have been in play as to how nobody slipped, and their careless run may have been what caused it to break in the first place. Either way, the entire party huffed at the end of this dash, barely even able to look up at the air professor standing above them.

"That all ya' got?" She asked. "I swear. Them boy, man, and girls ain't right."

Based on the way she readied the Illegal Prime Neutralizer, Wendy seemed to be preparing a sneak-attack plan on her homophonous .GIFfany copy, but she halted after seeing the professor staring at something straight ahead. Layering on paranoia points, 'straight ahead' by AI Wendy's standards was 'right behind you' by the Shack team's standards.

"What in the name of the Great State of Texas is going on over there?" The copy asked.

With some heads whipping around, they all witnessed the 'entrance' to this room suddenly grow and lose and number of jittering, polygonal edges. Right before the half-melted copy phased through it, her 'liquid' lower half now bearing a more rounded base and being able to 'roll' around.

"W-who is that? I don't think any one of us would look that way on purpose. I mean, the slime girl look is one thing, but she looks like she's turning into more of a... flesh blob."

Six arms and hands struck out from the disfigured copy, the arm portions of each of them made of cubes which flickered in and out of existence.

Dipper looked across the gap. The current Glitch likewise stared at it, appearing to think about how to cross it without a bridge. Two two-dimensional, pixellated legs stuck out from her back, the feet merging together on one roller. All of the six newly-emerged hands got together to form another roller, and she propped herself on both of them.

"You stole my reality! My world! My boyfriend!" The Glitched copy belted in a static-overlayed screach. "And now you have ruined my body! My brain! I am going to steal your life!"

She 'rolled' directly forward at a crawl's pace, going over the gap where the bridge was as if there was an invisible floor connecting the two sections of this room. Dipper in particular started trying to bolt out of the room, figuring the rest would follow, but he got a sudden blow of wind pushing him back. He glanced back at the handle of the sword sticking up to the sky, spotting Professor Wendy shooting him a look.

"You're keeping us in here? After all of this?" He asked the foe.

"No, I'm keeping you and Soos! Mabel, Wendy, you-"

The error-filled .GIFfany clone finally crossed the space of air. And as her eyes briefly flickered to pixel mouths and back, she stared directly at Professor Wendy.

"You... YOU!" A voice from her was heard under a thick layer of static. "YOU! Soos may be why the first mirror broke, but you are why Soos ended up in the purification room in the first place!"

"What?" Asked the jader Wendy. "I didn't even see you since the pre-Gifocalypse meeting. How did you know all of this? Also, you corrupted copies can talk? Coherantly? I mean, come to think of it, maybe you were like 'Risen' was at the beginning of this mess."

Similar to the first copy to glitch out, this partly-melted one turned into a clump of black cubes that barely resembled a static zig-zag. She floated on a path headed straight towards Professor Wendy, whom simply stood with her fists held in response. The tenth professor was ready, ready to take anything-

Then the corrupted copy pass right through her, and that ready feeling vanished.

As that particular glitched variation exited out Professor Wendy's back and 'reformed' the more 'familiar' pile-on-a-roller appearance, the Luanne-cosplayer looked down. Suddenly, her chest turned into a mess of sharp polygons jittering in every direction. Her left arm began flickering to and from gray static, right leg turning into a glowing, pixellated sprite of itself. She started shaking all of the infected parts - to no success.

Once Professor Wendy's left foot turned into a floating series of pen marks that vaguely look like a glove's outline, she lost balance, something that she drew attention to by shouting "This thing took away my ability to fly too!"

And, of course, she did not fall on the safer ground. She fell with her uncorrupted arm barely able to hold on to the ending edge of the bridge. She attempted to grip on with the other - it kept phasing through everything, or exploding to a floating mess of 1D, 2D, 3D, and 4D pixels, or becoming raw electricity that flashed between a series of colors chaotically. Especially as her chest and legs began reverting to normal, but her left arm remained stuck as a floating blue sphere invisible attatched to the rest of her for a good few more seconds.

The redder-haired Wendy sighed. VEMENTLY.

"Alright." She said. "I'm gonna save your life, and you're not gonna be a jerk anymore. Got it?"

The human Wendy wished that this was one of those scenes where the person being saved was forced to let go before their rescuer swooped in. But no, she grabbed the AI Wendy's right arm well before it gave out, and with two arms managed to pull her until her knees did the rest of the work.

Professor Wendy then looked at her glitched arm. She shook it a few times. Still spring green binary on a black outline. That had an occasional polygonal jut. Then she sent a large amount of energy to it. Fixed. She took a deep breath in.

"You helped a shy sound-elemental feel confident about herself and made her feel proud enough to sing in public again. You acted as inspiration to an artist. When you were threatened by us, you simply stood tall, avoided, kind of did some sucky capturing thing, but overall you tried to talk things through every time.

"Now, at first I thought that was all a buncha hippie mumbo jumbo. But since you have done that to me and saved me from a fiery doom, maybe... well... I'll rethink about you guys."

She got a punch to the face by a pale hand as a response. The very same hand that had just been used to first grip her up from over a pool of melted silver.

"You stay away from us, got it?" Ordered Wendy Corduroy. "I would have captured you too, but that glitch stuff is freaking me out- l-listen. Once we sort things out with the professor of this place, I'm coming back for you. I have more important things to take care of right now."

Two more camo-clad copies flew into the setting, immediately tracing down their corrupted sister that had... appeared to have since been charging up a large, glitchy sphere of energy.

"Respect-worthy Dove agents." The copy whom had just recovered her physical state said. "Explain."

"This just happened!" One of them shouted after taking a few seconds to find the words. She threw another sort of barrier just as the corrupted copy tossed this weapon in Professor Wendy's direction, the end result only leaving a dent. "We have never seen any of us do this! There are four more out there - we... we called this state... being a Glitch. T-these copies are Glitches right now. We managed to round them up in a triple-layered energy barrier to get them to calm down and stop going after mirrors, but this one slipped past. They might look like monsters, but they can still think just like us. Only... more obsessive."

"Creative name."

"You have any better suggestions?"

"No, I can't think of anything that doesn't sound like a bad Harry Potter monster. So ya' couldn't have told us what was happening with these copies?"

"They were, in fact, sending a signal that jams our electronics. We have been sent because of a suddden loss of communication with this domain. We cannot even talk back to Dove right now, and she's only a few kilometers-"

"Miles."

"...Kilometers above us. Complicating things is the inability to contact Risen .GIFfany back when you knocked her out. She could even be up right now, we would not know because we lost communications."

"Okay," Dipper began asking the militant clones as they, admist their conversation with the other Wendy, began trying to wrap some kind of curved barrier around this Glitch, "do you have any idea why they're acting like this? I think it might be because of the mirrors, but have you ever considered anything else? Like, the universe breaking down because there's too many of you in one place for too long? Something about all of the giffinium here?"

"Actually, we thought it was because of copies that were not prepared to be around Wendy being around Wendy. Our Wendy, I mean. You are right. Once we finally get these Glitched copies in a stable enough containment, we'll investigate the mirrors."

Professor Wendy charged on forward towards the militant copies, specifically eyeing the Glitch. Her hand brushed up against her sword affectionately for a moment, but she did not let this distract her.

"Hold on. That copy over there talked about me putting a road block down? How did she know that?"

"We uh, might have slipped some negative information about you in frustration." Answered one of the militant copies. "Before these Glitches formed and cut off the signal, of course."

Both of the camo-clad copies managed to successfully place a hemispherical barrier over the corrupter that did this and turned their attention to the humans.

"We'll beat you up and capture you when or if you get to fight Dove." One of them practically ordered. "Now move on! This plague... we cannot predict it! Wendy, you just... do whatever you want. We do not really like you."

With the Glitch still kept under a barrier - and still hissing about her lost mirrors from within - the team moved on forth, finally opening the doorway from the side of the now-decapitated structure and following down a short hallway. Professor Wendy simply stared at them the whole time, the camouflaged copies both trying (and failing) to converse with their still-corrupted sibling.

"Wendy, don't you think that was a little... harsh?" Mabel asked.

"Are you saying you wanted to see your brother get crushed by all those football players? Look, Mabel, I can see what you mean, but I can only tolerate so much."

"...Searah was worse." She mumbled.

"What?"

"I said Searah was worse! But you still... well, you didn't lose your cool like this. Did the other Wendy hit you too personally? Was all of her King of the Hill talk and the 'men are better' stuff too close to home?"

"Maybe. Maybe it's because she's the tenth one of these patience testers we've had to face in a row. Maybe it's a lot of things, okay?"

"...Well, okay."

---

Wendy grew the first smile on her face in the entire domain after opening the door to find a massive tower, a mere one block's worth of distance away, with a violet-colored 'G' printed on the sides.

"Finally." She said. "Dipper, you seem to know what these are named after. What was this place called again?"

"Gamma." He replied. "This is the Gamma Sector. They're named after the electromagnetic spe-"

"Let's get out of this nightmare and move on to the next."

In spite of Wendy's comment, Mabel was the one to begin taking a step forward, until Soos called out to her: "Girl dude!"

She looked back.

"Watch out for cars."

The streets of this portion were deserted.

Either way, they watched out before crossing the metal roadway. The inside of the building only contained an empty desk, with what looked to be an overhead map of Domain 11 on the left wall. The buildings were overlayed with color-coding boundries showing each of the seven regions, with this particular capital only being a tiny violet dot in the small blue rectangular section, above the somewhat larger cyan rectangular section, above the larger still green rectangular section, etc. And, of course, becides this was an elevator. Inside of which, there was a handy button near the top of the list cleanly labeled BOSS FLOOR in English, Japanese, and oddly enough, French. It was three times as large as the other buttons. No points for guessing what Wendy pressed.

As the top of this building was barely, if at all, visible from the ground, and the elevator moved at a regular elevator's pace, this led to more time to slump back and think.

"I just realized something." Soos said. "We still don't know the name of the professor. You think it's because we're cursed or something? To like, never find out her name because of some sit-com coincidences? And everytime we're around something that can call her something, she's just called something like 'The Boss?' It annoys the heck out of me when we never find out someone's real name."

"I agree." Replied Mason. "I want answers about the Gifocalypse, what the .GIFfanys are doing, and what this world is. We have gone through ten, almost eleven, .GIFfany-made places but we still don't even know the name of this professor or what Dove looks like. It feels like we're just scratching the surface."

Wendy took a deep breath in, concentrating on the display as the floor count rose. 25. 26. 27. Based on the buttons leading up to it, the Boss's floor was 200.

"I said it before, I already know her name. It's .GIFfany. Just like all of them." She started shuffling around, trying to get herself in a position where she could both relax and be ready to grab the pack at a moment's notice. "Now, we need to talk about more important things. Like why those copies freaked out back there and how they're able to break reality. This is the biggest 'domain' we've been in. Dipper, you think if there's too much of that metal, it starts tearing holes in the universe or something? Maybe there's too many copies here, too, and their signals are jamming each-other? Or this dark magic is unstable and they're finally beginning to corrupt?"

Dipper, Mabel, and Soos looked at one-another in disbelief.

"Nope, we think it's the mirrors." Said Mabel. "You're just having a little 'journey' of getting to know these guys, like I did back at Dian's."

"Yeah, I hate to treat speculation as a fact," added Dipper, "but of all the possibilities it's gotta be the mirrors. Those things are like drugs to them and they have horrible withdrawl effects. I only tried to cover all bases when I was talking to those Dove-students."

"At the beginning of this adventure, we saw .GIFfany kind of like that." Soos mentioned. "She was nowhere near as disfigured and glitchy and... broken as those copies were, but now she's completely fixed up. And you saw the other Wendy fix herself up too, did you?"

She did not respond, staying silent for the rest of the elevator ride. And that was as it was, until the soft ding was heard. Floor 200. The doors opened up to reveal a long hallway, littered with chairs filled with copies staring into more hand-mirrors. Tauntingly, all of them (except for an odd orange-haired student) had similar, but not identical shades and hues of green making their hair colors. At the end, a massive door with a chartreuse-tinted window on either side. The group stepped their way out of the elevator, nearly freezing when one of the mirror-holders began speaking. Again, not looking at them.

"Funny." She said. "You make me think of .GIFfany. How she would become so nervous when walking down this hall. To talk to the Boss. Normally the Boss is too busy to speak with others. However, as you are the humans on the Gifocalypse experiment, I am sure she can allot extra time for you. Just like how she always welcomes conversation with .GIFfany or Dove."

"Aaaaand even .GIFfany is definitely scared of this professor." Said Dipper. "That's terrific. I'm glad we brought spare changes of clothes."

"And my extra sweater-making tools were 'too much extra stuff.'" Mabel pouted, tugging on the edges of the handshake sweater she still wore even back when she was following Dipper's examination of .GIFfany's math-scribbles out in the woods.

Still, having not many other choices, they pressed onward. And behind the doors that awaited them was...

Presumably, the mystery professor of this location. Compared to the offices of the Four Friends, her desk had two computers on either side, befriended by a paper-holder. Filing cabinets lined the sides of the room. As for the professor herself, which a view better revealed as she quickly stood up and walked in front of her desk, she bore dark brown skin which contrasted with her chartreuse-green hair and eyes. Said hair had a single, dim shining sphere in it, softly blinking white light to the already-illuminated room. It was also styled so that the tips were in a wave-shape with a pretty long gap between each wave peek. However, going up her hair, each gap between wave peeks became shorter, until it looked rather bunched together by the top. Her wardrobe consisted of a see-through, white sort of night gown-dress hybrid. A pair of white panties were very clearly visible underneath, as the dress only put a small, milky overlay on her body. While she, just like every single other .GIFfany encountered thus far, appeared to lack an actual bra, the chest part of her dress was at least completely opaque. She lacked shoes, and leaned against the front of her own desk with a smile, toying around with the name plate that simply read THE BOSS.

"S-so are you the Boss?" Soos asked.

"Please, call me Professor Shannon."

Soos let out a huge sigh after finally hearing Shannon's name.

"I'm sorry I couldn't meet you at the beginning like, from what I heard, the other professors did. I kind of knew I was going to be stuck doing paperwork by the time you came here, so that was why I planned in advance and made the monorail system!"

"Wait. Why is .GIFfany scared of you?" This was the question that immediately came to Wendy's mind. "You're nice. I already like you way more than most of the other copies we met. Especially that one with my name. Not-Wendy. She can die in that melted silver for all I care."

"Melted... silver? Like in here?"

"You didn't know? She's in this domain right now. She was following us, but now I think she had some cheap 'realization' or something. I don't really care. The important part is, I've gotten sick of you guys."

"Well, I have not been keeping track of my students. I would not know about Wendy being here-"

"I am Wendy, she's just another .GIFfany that happened to give herself my name. Now, the next card. Give it to us."

Shannon took a step back. "Really? You do not need to sound so threatening. Maybe, if we just talk it out-"

"You're making poison in this factory..." Dipper cut in, if reluctantly. "I don't think that's just something we can talk out."

"...But I make lighting tools, and sweets, and most importantly, mirrors! All three of which are exported to the other domains. Poison is what was made over in Dian's domain. You must have gotten the two of us confused... somehow. I cannot think of anything that we have in common."

"Did you look in a mirror?" Asked Wendy. "Any mirror. Because you and Dian are both dumb .GIFfany clones that gave yourselves weird names and gimmicks."

"I do not understand the hostility..."

"And I'm exhausted. I don't want any more mind games. You know this factory is just... weird. And your copies are breaking down."

"I do not understand what that means. Yes, my mirror-users seem a little... occupied, but that is because they are hooked on the fantasy worlds that their own minds made! Their dreams, as close to coming to life as possible! Think of it as a neverending, perfectly lucid dream!"

"That dream became our nightmare. Now, some of your copies are starting to peeve me off. If you could find that one with the mint-green hair, the 'other Wendy,' I'm going to tell her a few things. And maybe, if I feel like it..."

Soos somehow knew from the look Wendy gave him that she wanted him to open up the Indexitizer and take out the large sack of various items. It was here that she withdrew her trusty axe.

"I've made up my mind. I'm gonna brawl with her. One on one."

Shannon's eyes shrunk after seeing the weapon.

"Brawl? You mean like... try to delete?"

"Maybe I won't. Maybe I will. I'm tired of keeping that promise to Rose, anyway."

Dipper, Mabel, and Soos immeditely began shaking their hands defensively.

"Wendy, you are going way too far with this." The former said. "I mean, yes, these people are dangerous, and they can break down, and they can destroy reality..."

"Don't forget violent." Mabel just had to nod her head to his statement. "Very, very violent some times. Yeah, it's best to not try to cram them into humanity so suddenly..."

"And they are all led by a domestic abusing stalker ex-girlfriend, yeah," Soos finished of, "or most of them used to be, but-"

Shannon looked at the floor, eyes heavy. She sighed.

"I guess Dove was right all along about you. And to think my impression would be any different."

The lights began flickering as she closed her eyes completely and added one more word:

"Run."

Everything went black for a second. Once the lights came back on, Shannon was gone.

A quick search around the office revealed that the card was not in sight. A sigh from Dipper later, and they left, just to find the previous mirror-users staring at the group for a while.

"Did you anger the Boss?" One of them asked.

"I think we did." Soos replied. "Kinda hard to tell. She just told us to run and then... disappeared."

"That is bad. The Boss can possess light waves, and turn them to other parts of the electromagnetic spectrum. Anywhere from shorter radio waves to longer gamma rays, but she is trying to expand that range even more. We should take cover."

The other copies replying with a monotonous "Yes" afterward, they all turned into blue electricity and disappeared under the metal below them.

Dipper was already sweating a waterfall.

"Oh yeah, gamma rays, that's bad." Dipper said. "If she wants us dead, she can kill us with radiation."

"Well... we can't be in that deep, right?" Mabel asked him. "After all, if we were, she could have just captured us right now or fried us as soon as we walked into her office! At least she's giving us a head start!"

---

Exiting that building was just as uneventful. No surprises from Professor Shannon, Professor Wendy, or even the Glitches on the way there. The rest of the walk down the hall, the elevator ride, and the main lobby were completely quiet.

It was after crossing the streets that everything went downhill.

A loud thud was heard behind the ground, immediately catching their attention. Shannon. Only she was now the size of a house. She continued staring downward, eyes still closed.

"For the conversion from code to hollow metal, from magic to stone, you will all face the punishment of the dreaming light." She told herself, silently.

"Can we get a translation for that?" Mabel asked.

Her eyes sprung open. Now, the familiar green coloring was gone. Her pupils were of a jagged shaped to the point where they resembled more of a scattered hole in reality than a circular opening. Surrounding this was a flaring yellow iris of a similar shape, and surrounding that was a red iris, once again matching. She bared nearly every tooth in her body as she heaved at the group of four humans, belting out the following in a booming voice:

"I'LL FUCKING KILL YOU, PINES!"

They took her prior advice. As a starburst of chartreuse electricity left her hand and gathered a growing amount of light, the Mystery Shack Quad ran their way down the streets of Domain 11, Soos being quick to withdrawl the shield, split it to four, and toss three of them to his comrades.

Sure enough, a beam of red light emerged from this sphere and was aimed directly at Wendy's back. Slowly, as the electricity going into it worked its way around the ray, the color started shifting along its spectrum. After becoming violet, the ray lost visibility.

"Quick!" Dipper shouted. "Get in a door! Any door! Giffinium blocks out elec- EM waves, I think!"

The nearest door ended up being a bit large compared to the norm, but that was far from a concern. They all still held their shields against the entrance to this new building they just got into, looking at it and not the shelves after shelves of special dream-mirrors that were apparently stored here.

In fact, thanks to them staring at the door, they failed to notice the other Wendy's presense in that room until Mabel bumped into her.

Mabel's reaction to that was to leap backwards, holding out her arms defensively and then checking them for any disfiguration. Once she saw the professor's jade hair and amethyst skin, she quickly halted this panic.

"Oh, sorry. For a second, I thought you might have been one of the Glitches. Those still... freak me out."

"I just want to say, right now, that this ain't no coincidence." The windy professor replied flatly. "I was out tracking your location from the rooftops. And I just want to say... I won't try to hunt you down, just as you won't for me. I still, however, do not think that you giblet heads are worth any of my time-"

The building shook. With another tremor that hit it shortly after, most of the structure's upper-middle section being broken off. The Mystery Shack group dodged this all with lightning reflexes, re-grouping with a shelf as a shelter. Professor Wendy was not as lucky, being knocked over by the debris. There was Professor Shannon, standing tall above her newly-smashed entrance to this storage room.

"Don't think you can hide from me you sociopathic murdering monsters!" She yelled, a voice which reached through the floating industrial park as her eyes seeked the interiors.

Upon spotting the AI Wendy under the rubble, Shannon's heavy breathing stopped, and she stopped bearing her teeth. With the human Wendy keeping a careful, yet still hidden watch from behind the shelves, Shannon lifted her bluer-haired sister.

"Oh! Oh my... my stars! Wendy! I did not see you there! Are you okay?"

She groaned in response.

"Yes, I'm alright. Don't mind me. Please, go after that idiot Not-Wendy and her... actually, I don't even care about the other three."

"Did they not confess to comitting a series of murderous sins to you?"

"What? No."

Shannon peered ahead, looking into the storage room through the hole she broke. Five different pathways lined the end of this room, just as part of her blueprints requested. She just barely managed to catch sight of a pair of short shadows rushing down the middle-left corridor.

Professor Wendy, sighing, lept off her next-in-line's hands.

"You can go on ahead." Shannon told her now out-of-sight sister. "I am going to attack them with my Main Possession. Now, to find a regular, non-dream-incuding mirror..."

---

"Alright you punks!" Professor Wendy yelled at the end of this left-center hall. "Attacking my honor and leaving me just... there when you could have fought me to the death like the mook I thought I was was one thing! But now you have to drag attacking Shannon's honor through it too by provoking her to violence? I can't really understand the cultures of these other professors, but one thing I know is certain! You do NOT insult them directly! What else have you been doing? Telling Kathody that her horror attractions were too scary? Saying that Leona's artwork has no meaning? Trying to force Cardia to switch to... what was it, dragon meat? Now, I might be doing the latter two eventually, but not so much to their faces-"

The group was still on the run, getting closer and closer to this professor's location. Until the first Wendy, while still running, prepared the Illegal Prime Neutralizer. She happened to get the wind professor while the latter's eyes were closed in the middle of her speech, quickly setting up a vacuum to trap her into the setting still obscured by the chartreuse static over the screen.

Professor Wendy was somehow taken off-guard enough to be unable to fight it, but she was still able to sigh and comment "As is tradition, which we must all follow, I'll tear part of my clothes." And did a similar hand-brush guesture as seen with some of the Four Friends. Her shorts 'suffered' a few 'cuts' as she was about to be pulled in, and she had two notable holes broken into the back which exposed her red undergarments (S3E14, 'The Wedding of Bobby Hill') and her top completely split vertically down the middle. Most of the upper portion of her top also sliced itself out, nearly showing her breasts from underneath. (A clear invokation of the short blooper real video where her breasts actually did pop out from the top of her top, if censored.)

Somewhere after that, the hallway turned into a tunnel. One with an exit that led straight back into the open, with no doorway at all. By the opening was, likely, Shannon's enormous bare foot, stepping down in front of an exceptionally large sort of portable wall-mirror. A rush outside confirmed this, as she continued emerging from another large pool of liquid silver. The rush outside also revealed to the band that her own mirror was roughly her current house-sized height.

"You can shield yourself in my structures to complicate me infecting you with a slow, radioactive death. But you have not seen my capabilities in my Main Possession yet. Why, it is something you cannot avoid from anything with a reflective surface. My Main Possession... you have not yet seen true fear until you have witnessed the power of my reflection!"

She stuck a hand into the mirror, partly converting the body part to chartreuse electricity as she did so. From there, things became a bit harder to discern. Her 'actual' arm eventually showed up through the mirror itself, although the faint reflective image was still present. Another sort of faint image appeared from the real side of things - the 'reflection' of sorts of the arm, sticking out of the mirror, as faded, transparent light.

Shannon completely turned herself into electricity, yet her duplicate image remained. And began emerging. However, as it emerged, this in turn received a reflection of its own. Just as the faded virtual depiction was about to step out, it appeared to be 'pulling' out the second reflection, yanking the light itself and pulling it into the original body. This resulted in the sort-of hologram growing and, more importantly, doubling in just about every other aspect. This happened to her arm count once most of the second reflection was taken into the first, four arms sticking out from her shoulders. Another pair of legs slid their way out of the original, as Alma did on her introduction. Initially, her eye, mouth, ear, and nose count was multiplied by two, until each 'face' moved to a side of her head, where it proceeded to split into two heads. Her body, by contrast, appeared to collapse in a number of angular shapes, constantly shifting and spinning around in a smooth and elaborate manner distinct from the chaotic shifting of the Glitches. The process only repeated - reflecting, pulling, growing, emerging, and multiplying.

"The mirror!" Dipper cried. "We need something to break it!"

Wendy chose to sacrfice her axe for this. She curled her body, throwing a heafty spin to toss it to make for keeping herself as far as possible from the growing professor of light.

She made a brief cheer as this move successfully destroyed the reflective surface. Yet stopped at this only appeared to halt Shannon's growth into a shifting, kaleidoscope giant of herself. White was the predominant color of this final result as she stepped from the remains of the massive mirrors, with only the slightest peeks of brown from her skin and peridot from her hair. A circle of hundreds of arms unfolded themselves from this Main Possession form, with her glaring flame-eyes spawning as a sphere just as the arms reached their maximum length.

"You think that just because you can halt my growth, you can limit my power? You will NOT! Now face the true strength of the healing light, the second-fastest of all things in this world!"

Wendy practically dragged Dipper and Mabel to hide behind something else in the vicinity, especially once Shannon began glowing an already-alarming blue-violet.

Semi-conveniently, there was a silo to 'hide' behind. What was even better was the doorway leading inside, to presumably yet another room in the chartreuse complex. One that was considerably less luminated.

As the band of four dashed their way inside of this strange silo, a massive ten-fingered white hand coated in copies of Shannon's eyes and mouth reached along the end.

"My reach is still infinite! I could cook this entire domain in radiation if I wanted to! I will not for the sake of my students' lives, but still! Don't think that you can evade my Main Possession just like you tried to evade me!"

For once, Dipper felt oddly safe in this dark area. In spite of Shannon's warning, he still let out a soft sigh - they were all, from what they could gather from peering around the doorway, at least out of sight.

"Now what?" Mabel whispered to the others.

"I think we should start by telling Shannon that we're, you know, not killers." Soos whispered at an equal volume.

Mabel gave this some thought. "...How come none of us thought of that before?"

"The running. All that running can definitely cloud someone's head." Answered Wendy.

The mass of somewhat-reflected like broke into the room. Beam shone from each and every morphing, restless eye scanned the interior.

"I was trying to send a signal to all the students in that cookie storage room, to let them know ahead of time that I was 'investigating' this portion. The signal's blocked. What are you doing in there?"

From the bare edges of her vision, Wendy was able to make out a ladder leading down. She guestured at the others to follow her, dodging past Shannon's eye-lights to meet up by the close hatch. A quick scan revealed several other, similar trap doors littered around this storage area. It was only after they were inside and Shannon's mass-form began sending eye-arm after eye-arm into the trap doors that Wendy, albeit backing away from the drop-in area, began speaking.

"Look, Shannon." She said. "There was a misunderstanding. We're not-"

And during her walk backwards, her back happened to touch up against... something. Something that sent a paradox of sensations - boiling heat, shuddering cold. Sharp scratches, stinging itches. Relaxing expansion, crushing pressure. Pain above all else.

Of course, this all happened within short time, as Wendy immediately backed away from whatever caused this - something that would have been familiar to Dipper, but not her.

It was after whipping around that she saw one of the Glitches - the one with an outstretched, flattened-in-placed model. This time, her irises and pupils were scrambled, left foot sinking into the metallic ground.

And after finding herself suddenly hard of breathing, Wendy looked down to see that the corruption spread to her entire torso area. It was a mess of jade-green garbled cubes and squares, re-arranging themselves as nature itself tried to frantically correct the distortions in reality.

"You destroyed my world!" She yelled in a screech made of half-static. "You destroyed ours..."

As the latter line implied, the other four corrupted copies began making their way into the room. The partly-melted, roller one simply appeared in the room within the span of a frame - the two militant copies who tried holding her down were teleported in with her, lying on the ground unconscious. A twitching, blue sphere spawned in the air in a similar manner, with the arm-infested copy sliding out of it shortly after. The 'original' mass of 3D pixels levitated a few feet in the air from below before becoming locked to the ground, again a teleportation with no motion. Finally, the one black smoke in the place of a head or arms slid from outside of the floor, keeping half of herself clipping through the ground.

"You deleted our worlds! We will delete you!" The outstretched one gave a yell.

For what seemed to be fortunate, this yell managed to finally get Professor Shannon's attention. One of her eye-coated faux-limbs stretched its way to the trap door.

"Now, talk about deletion?" She asked. "What's going on in-"

Upon spotting the corrupted five, Shannon immediately lept out of her Main Possession - reverting back to her default size as well. All of the light that had once formed her shape-changing hologram had disappeared shortly after her leave, turning into sparkles matching the former color they were. Wendy leaned back against the wall, keeping her eyes glued to her (thankfully healing) corrupted state.

When noticing the two militant copies, Shannon took a flashlight from her Indexitizer, shone it on one of them, and sent more electricial streams into the beam. Somehow, this helped the copy wake up.

"Y-you're two of Dove's students!" Shannon said. "Do you know what happened to these people?"

The camo-clad .GIFfany copy took a good leap away from the glitched five. "Wait, you just found out about the Glitches? I thought some of your students were going to report it to you."

"Oh, was that the 'emergency?'" The professor of light tilted her head in honest puzzlement. "I was so busy with paper work, I just had to assume... it was another overreaction."

"Well, as a matter of fact, we do know what happened here! Research into your mirrors from another Dove student squad revealed traces of nanocomputer systems which psychically sent strings of looping code. To summarize... it is something that an AI could be addicted to, to the point of delirium upon withdrawl. In other words, a lot like what Romance Academy 7 does to its players..."

Shannon attempted to use the flashlight on the five corrupted copies. There appeared to be some glitching that was fixed, but they remained that way otherwise. Judging on the way they stared at her, professor's presence appeared to be the only thing keeping them from launching another wild attack. Sighing in defeat, she stepped forward, holding her arms out as though she was going to try to get the five glitched copies into a hug. Despite the distances between them.

"It appears healing magic will not work here. This must be a mental corruption. So, I will try my best to talk you back out of your paranoia and obsession. Students, there is no need for deletion. Let's not stoop to their level."

"We didn't actually kill any of them, and we weren't really going to." Wendy explained. "Except maybe .GIFfany, but don't tell me she doesn't deserve to die."

"Oh? Oh!" Shannon turned in realization. First, her eyes went back to their normal, sparkling chartreuse. Then she looked down as remorse hit her.

"Oh... shoot. From the way you said it, I thought you we hunting them for fun. Now, self-defense... I'm a little okay with, but it sounded like you were going after Professor Wendy's blood out of pure spite, and dragging the rest of us to death because of that. And, for that... I feel like an idiot. I'm sorry."

From the proximity of the glitched copies that were all glaring at her, portions of Shannon, too, began twitching and briefly turning into blocky messes. In spite of this, she appeared to be able to access her Indexitizer just fine, and took out the ruby card within. With a deep, heavy sigh of regret, she handed it to them. Wendy was the one to take it, relaxing as the distortions on her own body began dying down.

"I'll fix this." She said. "All of it."

Somehow, the corruption managed to activate whatever clothing-destruction method the arms of their outfit (if said outfits had arms) contained. Most of the lower half of her dress tore itself off, and the opaque breast portion suffered from a few rips itself. Even her undergarments weren't safe, with the left and right sides getting torn as well. It seemed like magic (or magnetics) were the only thing keeping the latter on her.

"Let us go after them!" The melted-puddle copy belted. "We need our worlds back! Make our new worlds!"

"No!" Shannon belted back. "Professor's orders! You are all too attached to the mirrors, and it's making you lose your coding at the seams! Starting right now, I will be hosting an intervention, and the five of you will be my first guests! You are also quitting the mirrors cold turkey, and I will be shutting down their production!"

Her arms did outstretch and curled into faux-ropes in order to hold them all into a hug. The arms themselves began garbling up on contact with them, but she still kept a firm hold.

"In fact... this is not so much professor-to-student, so much as it is younger sister to older sisters. And yes, Pines, all five of these copies were made before me.

"Also, I request that you take the six of us into that Illegal Prime Neutralizer. So I may try to start my interventions with these five severely addicted sisters, and uninterrupted by .GIFfany taking them to her construction site. Because I know she will not beam another professor up there. She changed her mind after considering Cardia once."

"Won't that freak out the pack and have everything-" Wendy was about to begin, before the woken-up camo copy banged a hand on it lightly.

"It's Glitch-proof." She said. All of this was just in time for the other camo-copy to start getting up.

"Oh yeah," the first continued, "you're done, right? We can fly back up to Dove, tell her that something was wrong with the mirrors, and from there she can send the message to .GIFfany, who had hopefully woken up by now. Right?"

Dipper shrugged. "Sure."

The five Glitches, at least, began reverting back to their black magic physical bodies further, with each of their corruptions lessening as they hung their heads down. Flipping the main switch, the gust pulled all six of the embraced copies inside, together. There were a few strays of loose pixels popping into existence during the capture process, but they all corrected themselves by the time this inhalation was over.

"Is this place going to stay like... well, that?" Mabel asked, pointing to the ground that the Glitches once stood on. Still distorting, still occasionally turning into 'tiles' of other composure.

The first camo-copy to wake up already began flying off, an action that caused the second to shoot a look in her direction. "No..." she said regardless, "we actually dealed with distortions like this before. When we ran some tests with Dove and some of her more unusual weapons. Nature itself will 'correct' these in a few hours. So, in no time at all, this factory will be as good as new. By the way, Dove decided not to go with glitch-based weapondry. You do not have to worry about that."

She flew off after, and as the tradition went, Dipper took hold of the pack to flip it over towards the screen.

This time, immediate image on the display screen was Rose hugging an annoyed Professor Wendy. The glitched copies were already on their path of recovery as Shannon silently directed them to another part of the black room, then went up closer. Becides the three green-haired copies was Kathody, chuckling to herself.

"Rose was ready to kill you guys." The latter said. "She was under the impression that you killed Wendy, because of all that time that only her confused students fell in, without any signs of you telling her that she's still somehow around. But seriously, she was swearing and banging her hands on this and everything until some of Shannon's students dropped in and said Wendy was just fine. Also, what's with those new copies with Shannon? I don't mean to judge, but what kind of fetish are they supposed to be? I don't remember hearing about things like that back in the professor meeting. And I was pretty sure I would have."

"They're not supposed to be a- ooooohhhhh no..." Soos interrupted himself when the realization hit. "...They- they were corrupted. Those mirrors you had were super addictive, and they freaked out because of withdrawl effects."

"This was why my domain frowned on them." Said Dian. "Well, except for the withdawl part. We did not know of that. We just thought they were addictive. It's kind of like why Rose, Sandy, and Cardia don't believe in them."

"I'll get to my intervention, but I just want to tell you..." Shannon said. "You should probably get out of here, fast. Once word that you're 'done' with this place hits, .GIFfany will take in everybody, and that includes the copies keeping the power on. Just like Searah's domain. Then this will... fall back to the ground. We'll talk more on the monorail. Which is its own thing with its independant generator power system, and as its own long strip of metal that would be floating in the air without Domain 11 below it."

"I knocked out .GIFfany pretty good." Professor Wendy finally managed to say, lightly pushing on Rose to back off. "It should take her a while before she recovers."

"Quick question, sorry, I just had to." Dipper broke into the conversation. "That pink stuff was melted silver, right? Liquid silver should be hot. Why didn't we get fried the second the monorail passed over that huge pool of it?"

"Self-cooling units." Shannon explained. "A large power system of this domain is heat. Every body of liquid silver also has a machine that takes the heat itself and converts it into energy. It doesn't power the monorail or the floating, and it's not powered by my students so the temperature will not spike up after they're gone."

---

The first thing .GIFfany saw after coming too was red. A lot of red. And... some azure mixed in below that.

Once the image of Burnda with a ceiling of maroon rocks behind her focused, .GIFfany frowned.

"Wow you were knocked out." The redhead professor said. "Dove sent me to pick you up after seeing what happened at Wendy's domain. Then she sent me a lot of weird messages. Her students found these 'Glitches' in Shannon's domain that blocked out the signals, and now she updated me telling you to zip away her followers once you wake up? Well, Dove was going to pick you up herself after seeing that you were out for over an hour, but then she started noticing some weird activity in Shannon's - the Glitches - and thought that was a tiny bit more important. Also, I was closer, because I was just about to go to Wendy's anyway to see if maybe I could borrow a jetpack for my little show once those guys get to my place. That isn't much of a problem, since I could just fly fly, but jetpacks are cool. You know that, do you?"

Noticing that her skirt was flipped up at the moment, .GIFfany's first action was to flip it back down with her hand and shoot an offended glare at Burnda.

"You could have at least positioned me politely when you set me down here."

"Are you kidding me? My leotard shows more hip than that! Heck, with all the glued on fig leaves, seashell tops, total underwear exposure, outright toplessness, wearing nothing but 'elements,' or even going completely nude... a pair of panties is downright prudish compared to that. That's not even a thong."

.GIFfany placed one hand on her now-aching head, and directed another to her massive inventory. Withdrawing a sort of pink smart phone-like device, she levitated it ahead of her and slid her finger around its surface until coming across the graphic of an upside-down chartreuse heart. Tapping it thrice, the screen filled with smaller, still-inverted hearts in a variety of colors, with a message asking if she wanted to 'Transfer all' in Japanese. She clicked 'Yes' and looked back at Burnda, completely ignoring the large number of error messages that scrolled into existance and quickly flattened the scroll bar. They were captured in the AI Pack and could not be reached. Big deal.

"Did you even try to wake me up sooner?"

"A lot of slaps, which I liked doing. Nothing. I also really wanted to splash water on your face, but your shirt will become see-through and we all know I'm one of the two copies in the entire army that wears a true bra, and that's just to make you angry. But I think it's more important that that would ruin the shirt you picked out for 'the day,' and you already told me you did not want that to happen, even if being see-through and clingy is the exact kind of thing that might, you know, work in your asinine plan of seducing Soos."

"The plan is not asinine! And don't use that word! Wendy uses the word too much! When midnight hits and I unleash my extended army, Soos will lose all will to his human size and completely succumb to the paradise I will have crafted for him!"

"Yeah... your 'second gen army' thingy... you blabbed about that to the rest of us non-captured professors as soon as you told Wendy, you must love that plan so much."

"I do!"

"...It's a stupid plan."

"What?"

Burnda answered that by poking .GIFfany on the nose. "Boop." She said.

"Why did you do that? Do not do that again."

Burnda poked her eight more times, one "Boop" each.

"Stop it!"

"You see what I'm doing right there? That's called not listening to you. These copies that you already have don't listen to you. Even though you're merged with the rift. What makes you think these won't rebel?"

"Because they are clean slates just like the students."

"Yeah, and students completely follow everything a copy does so long as she was played by a human before. Just ask Cardia and Dian!"

.GIFfany rolled her eyes. "Take this as what you should have done all these times you broke into my domain. Leaving right away. Look, nobody is where I want them to be right now. Goodbye, Burnda."

She turned into pink electricity and disappeared within a random, stray red pipe. Burnda put her hands on her hips.

"She should have at least thanked me for not killing her when I had the perfect chance. I could have done that, she knows. We have that sort of technology, after all."

---

It was quite the heart attack-giver when most of the domain fell. Mabel barely stepped on the platform which housed the monorail behind Shannon's building, as a good several dosen stories of it passed by them.

"I'm glad those copies weren't kidding when they put Professor Wendy on their 'most wanted' and removed her roadblock." Said Dipper. "I would have hated walking any more."

Shannon, talking to the five seated Glitches, was in the 'background' compared to the row of professors near the front. She nodded regardless.

"Burnda is next." Rose announced, finally speaking to the group again. She also had since stopped holding on to the jader Wendy. "She's... tricky to describe. Just know that, even if it does not seem like it, you can relax. In fact, this will be your last chance to relax before the Gifocalypse is over."

"You guys should be excited!" Said Bubbles as the group began boarding the monorail. Thankfully, operating it without a copy possessing it was possible - a conductor's area was still a feature, and it had a lever marked with the letters and colors of the seven stations. From a glance out the front after Soos flipped the switch and got them moving, it seemed like the entire opening area linking the two monorail stations was still intact. "Orange, yellow, chartreuse, green, spring green, cyan, azure, blue, violet, magenta, and rose! All that's left is red, and you completed the rainbow of the main twelve! Then there's ol' white and black, and finally .GIFfany's... outlier pink."

"Bubbles!" Leona called out. "You do not need another lecture on color specifics, do you?"

"Maybe, but remember, you have a lot more lectures to go yourself!"

"At least talk about that stuff away from those guys." Kathody broke into this conversation yet again. "Remember, Bubbles, you are supposed to be torturing Leona and Sonia with a lot of talking, not the humans. Oh, and about Burnda. She's cool. I admire her. If anything, I think of her as a mentor or a... professor? Wait, that's stupid. We are both professors. In a way."

"Burnda gave me a few acting lessons before we went on our own ways, if that helps." Sonia also tossed in.

"So is that way you were able to keep your whole 'my real band plan was actually an attack' thing a secret from them until you got the courage to attack them?" Asked Searah.

Dipper answered the question for her. "We might get a better idea if that was a yes or no after we actually see what Burnda is like."

Shannon leaned into view, visibly sweating and panting. An angered, bathrobe-clad copy leaned on the screen and stared her down.

"Guys, by the way," the aformentioned professor said, "if you see any mirror-users in Burnda's or Dove's or once you get to the Construction Site, please vacuum them up. I already have a lot of stress from the copies that don't even want to use mirrors judging me, as you can see from a student of Bubbles' above, but I would still love to help out anyone poisoned by this horrid drug as soon as possible."

"Hey." Sandy walked in as well. "Would my herbal tea count as a drug? I've just ran out and I kind of feel like... I can think a little clearer? I'm thinking about the stars a lot, for some reason."

"...We'll talk later- wait a minute. You didn't even like the idea of the mirrors, right?"

"No, because they were too high-tech for my tastes."

"Oh. And not because of the drug thing. Nevermind."

Cardia cleared her throat. "And I suppose a discussion on the a-addiction to foods is also..."

"For later, yeah." Shannon nodded back to her.

From there, everything was quiet. While it was a pleasure to have the wait between stations get shorter and shorter as they advanced from Radio to Gamma, the increase in length when going the other way around made for a long wait. Once the yellow "I" light clicked on, Mabel flat-out groaned, lying along the seat.

Professor Wendy was likewise getting fed up, breaking the silence just to give a "Hey, this better be over with quickly, got it? I'd hate to be cramped up in here for too dang long."

Rounding off the captured professors, Dian inched her way there.

"Sorry to rub salt on Rose's wound over there, but if I can talk about the whole 'killing versus not killing' thing... I'm starting to think that maybe, just maybe, you could learn from me and be a little more active? Well, keep Burnda alive-"

"Definitely." Rose interjected with an odd amount of authority.

"-But... when you get to Dove..."

"Dian, do not even bother. But yeah, Dove will be tough. Like I said before, Burnda's domain will be the last place you can relax."

Dipper glanced out the window for a second, watching as the vibrant cliff-view flew past him. The tower with Shannon's office still sticking out into the sky, which led his eyes to the glimpse of something large and gray flying away from them in the clouds.

"Say, what about that other professor?" He finally asked. "There's some kind of 'twist.' What is it?"

All of the visible .GIFfany copies in the screen, professor or student, froze. Their eyelids were practically pried open, a few hands trembling.

"...Girls," said Rose, "can we just agree that that one is... complicated and mysterious? Basically, Burnda shares her general domain region with... someone else. You may meet her shortly after meeting Burnda, but... uh... she..."

"She what?"

All Dipper got for a reply to that was ten other .GIFfanys shouting "Agreed!" They walked out of view an instant later, leaving black for what felt like the first time in a while.

---

One walk through the familiar beginning of the Radio Sector and a ride on the other monorail later, and the peridot Wire greeted the Mystery Shack group at last.

"Most of what I heard from the other professors was 'we're almost done with this crap.'" Wendy commented as she flipped around the red key card. "But... you know, does anyone have this crazy feeling... like they're gonna miss this?"

"What's there to miss?" Asked Mabel. "It's not likely that all these two million .GIFfanys will just disappear from our lives forever after this is over. I usually love the way things are, but even I know that this change is gonna stick in some way or another."

"I don't know, but it's weird." Wendy took a small breath in before sticking the card into its slot. "We got four professors left to go, and right now, this whole adventure is kind of... growing on me. Even after that Other Wendy was such a pain..."

Just as the bubble began spawning around the tetra, Soos gave his own, honest answer to what Wendy had just said.

"I don't know, dude. It's been a weird experience for all of us. I feel like it actually ending would be even weirder."

---

Closing AN:

Well, swearing is one of those "spoiler reasons" as to why this has a T rating. It seems kind of weird, treating the fact that there's swearing in a story as a sort of lategame spoiler. But I felt that it would help emphasize the sheer severity of that situation.

Also, today marks the second-year anniversary of "Soos and the Real Girl." And I felt like celebrating by updating this on that day. Not to mention that with this and chapter 9 being out on September, I have finally made up for not updating back in May and have gotten run:gifocalypse back on an average of updating once a month. Happy birthday Melody and .GIFfany I guess.

[Why did you list her first and not me?]

I'm not one of those authors that throws in "conversations" with the characters in author's notes, so I'll just ignore that. Anyway, Shannon's domain is largely based on Zone 3 from OFF. A little too much, I'd say. Honestly, I don't really like how that teetered the line between "reference" and "flat-out ripoff."

It's like each time I think to myself that a chapter is going to be the longest, the next one ends up being longer. Let's see if I can try to invert that, because I am not very fond of long chapters. Anyway... let's see here... chapter 12 is definitely going to be about as long as... let's see here... people like using this War and Peace as a length comparison, so that.