Chapter Ten: To Tame A Hand

Author's Notes: Been busy with school since it's begun, so I didn't really have time to write much. I'll definitely make up time for the next chapters so I can write them ASAP!

Enjoy!

"Putting a bottle of water within my tools was not funny at all. – Cliff."

Stanford laughed at what was written in the note he'd just found in the walkway. "Oh, oh, so he realized it!" He said in the middle of his laughter, struggling to keep it low so no one in the gift shop would hear him.

The old scientist had been waiting for his clone, Clifford and his nephew to leave the shack, off to a world-saving mission since half an hour ago. He needed to make sure they would both leave, just for the sake of his anxiety wearing off, and since the periscope had been fixed, he could just be alert sitting on a chair.

Thankfully he had no worries about whether Clifford was going to make this mission or not, because, having the old scientist's memories, his clone knew all he needed to know; what to look for, where to find it, how to take it home, and so on. The only thing he didn't know if Cliff would accomplish was to tell Dipper about his apprenticeship – They highly disagreed on that one subject.

Having no worries, he put the note down and walked down the small stairway that led to the elevator. He was heading to his study room.

His study was the same dusty, old room with its special scent. Only there was one difference, and that was the big device with a large sheet on it, which was sitting in the middle of the room.

He had brought it there the night before, when Mabel began playing Dungeons, Dungeons And More Dungeons with his paper clone. It was initially supposed to be Clifford's task to do the work they had previously discussed with the copier while Stanford took Dipper out to the Crash Site, but Clifford was hesitant, so he insisted to go with Dipper in search of the adhesive, while Stanford stayed home. The old scientist could only hope this decision was right for his world saving mission.

"Ahh, here my weapon of choice is." He said and walked to the thing, removing the sheet, which was half-covering it. He smiled at what was in front of him. On the copier, there was all the things he would need. He saw five crystal bowls, a big load of plastic bags, around thirty cans of Pitt Cola – which he initially thought wasn't enough, but neither the fridge nor the vending machine had any cans remaining, so he decided to deal with what he had – and a lot of number shaped patches.

Even in case he forgot what he was going to do, the tools on the copier spoke for themselves. He had another good load of experiments to do.

The old scientist was going to create backup just in case something with his clone's mission went wrong and the rift shattered and they had to save the day. They needed to be prepared for the worst.

At first, what they were going to do was to create more clones and make a horde of Fords, which was actually a great idea, according to both Fords, but they then found another idea as well. They could copy body parts and use them against whatever the enemy they would be up against was.

And that was what Stanford was going to work on…

Dipper followed behind his great uncle into the borders of the small town. The two were walking to the hills, where the cliffs and the bridge connecting them were – at least, that's what the twelve year old had guessed. Dipper had no clue what they were looking for, and despite what he expected, the old scientist leading him was not speaking a word either. That could be because of anxiety, but Great Uncle Ford acted pretty calm when they were going to Bill-Proof Dipper's mind, even though it was actually a matter of life and death of a world.

So why he would act so anxious now, Dipper didn't know.

He looked at his great uncle again, who was carrying a small, but seemingly safe briefcase with the cracked rift in it. He was clutching the handle of the briefcase tightly, which was enormous of him. He also walked much faster than the twelve year old, even though he was probably carrying around twenty pounds of tools in lab coat pockets. And that was why Dipper would be left behind every few minutes.

The old scientist would usually yell at him for being left behind so often. He seemed to be in a big rush, in a much bigger rush than Dipper thought he'd ever see him be. The Ford he knew believed in keeping your cool, even through the most stressing times.

"Dipper!" Oh boy, here it goes again. "Keep up with me, my boy!" the old scientist said and began walking again. Dipper ran the small distance between him and his uncle, again wondering why he was acting so different.

Meanwhile, Stanford was close to figuring out the way to copy a hand and control it as some sort of weapon, an idea which Cliff had come up with the night before. Still, neither one had a clue on how to control the disembodied hands, especially Stanford, who was in charge of figuring it out. He had been working on few ideas and theories around the subject for almost ten minutes – which he considered a short period of time – and he was already close to figuring out the answer to his question.

One of his ideas that made the most sense was to find a way to stop the hand from moving, then undo it. There was a slim chance for the hand to act differently afterwards.

Of course, the thought of the hand obeying him after undoing the paralyzing was too much to think of, but he needed to find out if it made the hand act any different, because if it happened to be so, he could vary his way a little bit and he could get the hand to obey him after a few more experiments. Every little bit of progress was worth giving his idea a try.

The only problem for him was to find out – rather remember from his old, biology classes – the way to temporarily paralyze the hand. It could work if he pressured one of its veins, but he just couldn't bring himself to do what he knew would be painful to a copy of his own hand, so he put that solution aside. It could still be a last resort.

He also knew that an electric shock could knock someone out, and/or bring them back to consciousness. So why wouldn't it be the same as the hand being paralyzed?

He found a solution. He remembered putting an old, small shocker into an old box in his lab two days ago when he was cleaning his lab and organizing some of his belongings, so if he could find it now and use it, he could have his theory experimented.

The old scientist didn't really have a good history with shockers, which was because of it ruining one of his handiworks – which used electricity – as well as an incident that happened with Fiddleford, when they were studying a creature. Stanford accidentally gave Fiddleford the electric shock, instead of the creature, which blew him across the room. The mechanic hit a shelf on the wall, where Stanford kept valuable tools, causing them to fall and break – He later had his colleague pay him for the damage caused, even though it wasn't initially his fault.

Also, Stanley used to prank him with a tiny shocker that looked like a pack of chewing gums. ("Want one, Sixer?" Stanley used to say.)

Even though he had been traumatized by those devices, he still kept those two shockers, hoping that someday, one of them would come in handy.

And, he assumed, now that time had come.

So he headed downstairs to pick up the old box with the shocker – alongside with many other things – in it.

After half an hour, he was still searching for his old box.

He'd entered the lab, not remembering which locker he'd put the box inside of, so he had to search all of the lockers for the box. What made it even worse was, that he couldn't tell the boxes apart, so he just had to pull out every box he found, open it, only to find that it was not the box he wanted.

He didn't keep track of how many times he sighed in the process.

What was not as simple, though, was that he was actually in a rush, because he needed to get a conclusion from his experiments before his clone came back to the shack with Dipper, or else, he'd either be too late to conclude, or he'd be too late to save the world…

At that moment, he found the box he was looking for.

"Ahh, finally found it!" The old scientist said with a sigh, looking at the box which had a variety of old things in it; The mind control tie, a few pieces from the portal, an old lucky charm, some of Fiddleford's used sets of Banjo strings, and lastly, his shocker. Wasting not even a second, he closed the box and went inside the elevator to begin experimenting.

But as soon as he remembered he had a lot of experimenting to do, all of his enthusiasm for the experimenting was gone. Not because he hated to experiment, but because he was experimenting to get ready for a certain event that had a noticeable chance of happening.

"God, why did I send Cliff with Dipper? What if he steps in a puddle of water…?" He said to himself, now realizing what mistake he had made.

He decided not to let bad thoughts into his mind and get ready for the experiments. He needed to keep his cool and focus on his own task, not what the other one could be doing at the moment. So he pressed the button to go upstairs, where a copier awaited him…

"Ah-ha!" Said the old scientist as he caught the freshly copied hand inside a bowl. He kept the bowl on the floor, locking the hand inside, with as much force as he had in his right hand, while his other hand searched for the shocker's handle, to try it on the third hand inside the bowl.

Lucky for him, the shocker wasn't too far away from where he'd caught the hand, so he easily reached it while keeping hold of the bowl tightly on the floor. What he needed was to get the shocker close and remove the bowl, then give the hand an electric shock in an instant. He also had to revive it sometime later, but first things first.

When he came to remove the bowl, the hand took the millisecond of freedom it had and broke free forcefully, surprising the old man.

In the blink of an eye, the hand was on the walls of the study, moving with help of its six fingers. For now, it was too high to be in Stanford's reach, but he'd soon catch it with the bowl. He grabbed the said item, went up to where the hand was and punched the wall to get its attention.

The hand stopped going up, and as Stanford expected, began climbing downwards. The old scientist was ready for the hand to get in his reach. He was so ready for it he even trash talked it. "Come here! I dare you, worthless paper-hand!"

The hand, obviously, heard no words and kept on climbing downwards. When it came low enough, Stanford caught it and was ready to give it an electrical shock.

He then removed the bowl and instantly pressed the shocker on the back of the hand, making the hand fall down as soon as he removed the shocker. Stanford picked up the now "Knocked out" hand.

"It's time to revive you, hand." He said quietly and put the hand on the table nearby. Then he put the shocker on it and gave it a brief pulse.

But nothing happened.

Not only the hand didn't come back to life, the study was filled with an annoying smell. A smell he could assume was… very similar to burnt bacon.

He instantly knew what it was. The strong pulse must have burnt the flesh of hand from the inside.

But that raised a question; If the hand was made of paper, why would it smell like burnt bacon? Was it actually made of flesh, after all?

Since the hand was causing so much smell, Stanford put his thoughts away and opened up one of the thirty-odd cans of soda he'd brought to the study. He needed to get rid of this hand as soon as he could.

He was still worried, though. What if he couldn't conclude his experiments on time?

He could guess the only way to make it easier was not to think of other possibilities, although he kept in mind to be quick.

He opened the can of soda, melted the hand in it, then went on to copy another hand, hoping he could make this one revived…

Author's Notes: I split this chapter in two, simply because it was too long, but I was initially going to write up to when Stanford concludes his experiments in this chapter. Guess it has to wait awhile.

On the bright side, the next chapter should be done as soon as I finish working on a group class presentation. It'd due in a week ;)

I hope you've enjoyed this chapter! Stay tuned for To Tame A Hand II :)

-H80NP