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.

11. Hot and Cold

run:gifocalypse

Chapter 11: Hot and Cold

Beginning AN:

Even while editing this, I was thinking about something to say for this chapter. I really wanted to say something about this considering how much will go down and how little is left, but... all I got is this: I originally wanted this chapter to partly be like a "throwback" of sorts to my earlier Total Drama fan fics. (They're not completely dead, just on a long hold.) But... in the end, it's more-or-less just some tiny nods.

---

The desert air of the Sahara was freezing compared to Domain 12.

Even while inside the bubble as it entered the transport tube of the red Wire, something that was barely felt with the other domains, the temperature had changed. Which was only magnified after being ejected into the brown caverns. Which were lit by... well, there were similar lanterns as were in Dian's domain, but those were not the primary source of light. What was was a strange, orange glow towards the end of a linear tunnel.

"Okay, if I understand this right, we're almost at the card leading back home," Dipper exposited as the team pressed on forth. "Once we get there, we're spending a good hour or two preparing to grow our numbers. Get anyone and everyone we can from Gravity Falls to join us, if not everyone as a whole. Cops, government agents, the military - no matter what the risks were, even if it means giving Powers and Trigger their memories of us back. I had a feeling the Gifocalypse would be this insane. I didn't think about bringing a bigger army before leaving Gravity Falls was because I had no idea the trip to Kathody's was one-way and it would be such an inconvenience to try going back to Gravity Falls, whether we did or did not follow .GIFfany's rules. I thought we could take more than one trip. Know the place the yellow card sent us to. And everything. I know a lot of the copies were nice, and some of them can be nice, but still... .GIFfany herself isn't and I have a lot of doubts about this 'Dove' I keep hearing horror stories about."

Between the high temperature, the cave system-like setup, the glow's color, the domain's associated color (and it barely bears mentioning at this point that this also matched the color of static hindering communication with the previous captured copies), Rose's advice on Burnda, and even the name 'Burnda,' it was hardly a surprise that a cliff with a view to a magma lake deep below was what lied at the end of that tunnel section. It did give out to a greater cavern, one which housed a single (yet wide) bridge over the expansive fiery ocean.

The pathway was probably about as wide as a typical road for cars, yet the group still made their way across as though they were walking on a tightrope. All except Mabel, which is why she ended up getting ahead of them. Another tunnel lied at the end, this one giving off a soft, purple glow. With... some yellow... and blue near the end. Upon squinting, it almost looked like there was light being given off by spinning spotlights in the distance. The faintest trace of steam was also visible.

All four of them, however, froze instantly when they heard talking.

"Feeeeeeeeelin' the heat yet, players?" Burnda's voice, not that any of that particular group would know. "Well, this is freezing compared to what we have in store, here in the fiery depths of Parícutin, the innermost lava tubes, connecting to the innards of the Earth, and aaaaas a matter of fact this place right here is so huge 'cave system' is an understatement heck even the largest known section of Hang Sơn Đoòng would be able to fit in the lava zone that this bridge alone is set on! Normally I'd want to introduce my newest four contestants after hitting the show stage, but I just can't resist! Ladies, as the contestants of the finest - and by definition only - pilot episode of Perfect Parícutin Forever, I introduce to you, coming on stage at any second: Something 'Dipper' Pines! (Dove never found out his real name.)"

Mason let out an exhausted half-sigh, half-gasp in relief.

"Mabel Pines! Wendy... Dove says it's 'Odor-roy' one second and 'Boater-oil' the next! And our very special guest, Jesus Alzamirano Ramírez!"

This threw on even more reluctance to step forward, but they did so anyway. For family. And the sake of Gravity Falls. And... possibly the world. And to stop .GIFfany. Dipper was about to be the first to step through the other end of the tunnel and on to that hazy possible-stage, but Wendy made her way past him seemingly just to spite the order the next professor had set up. Sure enough, what lied at the end was a stage that did have spinning spotlines illuminating the surface. Rows after rows of seats made of red giffinium populated by what looked like the hazy silhouettes of copies soon faced her, and she was verbally greeted by the same copy announcing right behind her:

"Wendy! Glad to see you make it to the stage! Our first contestant! You must be eager for this! So, are you ready to lose?"

Since it sounded like the source of the voice was behind her, Wendy turned around to be greeted by the red fire-like-haired, red-eyed, azure-skinned, black leotard-wearing, black high-heel-wearing copy with a flame in her hair. Burnda floated above the stage (which did not appear to have anything visible to it other than the floor the spotlights hit), snickering to herself.

"Oh, and Dipper!" She continued, "Good to see you in the flesh too! Finally, after everything Dove said about you guys and how you bested my family! Even the... little bloopers over at Shannon's Mirror Factory. But rest assured, Dove has a squad working on it as we speak. They and time will revert the glitches caused by... well, the Glitches."

True to her announcement, Dipper himself began wandering over. Upon seeing Burnda's red hair and leggy outfit, he felt half-embarassed at how he needed to avert his gaze. Burnda had floated against the wall close by the entrance from the tunnel, which obscured her backside to both of them, yet Dipper still did not want to think of how much or how little her outfit covered her from behind.

"And here's the bringer of my new red world's joy, Mabel!" She kept announcing as the other Pine twin came up.

"Now, last and definititely not least, Soos! The man who gave reason for this! But not the man who made this possible, no, that would be Gideon, and he is not available right now! Anyway, I am going to help .GIFfany sink her teeth in to him just like I want to sink my teeth into my last player, Gerald!"

Unlike the rest of the confused quad, Soos gave a heartfelt wave to the other .GIFfanys. He even punctuated this with a "Hi there, Fire .GIFfanys!"

Sure enough, as eyes adjusted to the bright stage, the outfits they had on could be described as... 'fire-like?' A bulk of them had sparkles to these outfits. Many were in dresses with fire-like patterns. Some appeared to be wearing dresses that were made of fire - animated and not being completely opaque and everything. Others wore leotards, similar to Burnda's outfit. The rest... too varried to individually list. There were definitely two palettes more common than the rest, however: one of reds and oranges, the other of whites and sky blues. Of course, a few of them used Shannon-brand mirrors - but the worries of Burnda right near them outweighed Shannon's own request to help them out.

"You got that right, I am indeed the professor of fire." She seemed to be speaking into a microphone, but upon closer inspection, she was not holding one. No, there was not a sort of amplification as if she was. "Now, let's place you into an awesome reality show, my personalized gimmick for this glorious hot domain! One filled with drama, bloodshed, tears, romance (of the virtual-cross-real kind of course), fire, explosions, and challenging challenges!"

"Oh, dude!" Soos cheered, "This is a reference to something, isn't it?"

"You bet! Ever heard of a little something called..."

A long pause as she floated out of the reach of any of them.

"TOTAL. DRAMA. ISLAND?"

"...Nope," answered Soos, "doesn't really ring a bell."

"Oh. Well, that's what we're doing! If you all would, please look at the screen behind me. Sorry for the bad lighting right now, but that was so that I could cleverly hide the fact that there was a screen behind me during the last few moments of your freedom."

It clicked on. The 16-bit pixel displayed it showed was... something, to say the least.

---

Aformentioned display began with several scenes of cameras popping out of various volcanic pits, many still having lava run down from them. After that, hands likely to be Burnda's clapped down a clapperboard. The 'camera' of sorts began zooming along a trail. It then went to what seemed like an exit to this cave system out to a tree-filled view of the wilderness. From there, the camera looked at the sky, then back, revealing a sparkling ocean. Which it dove into immediately after.

It was here that two things began happening: the pop song started its lyrics (something about wanting to be famous), and people began appearing. Searah was depicted, swimming along with an overweight man in navy blue. A leech appeared to grab on his neck, and Searah chopped it in half in offense. Its remains floated to the surface, where Professor Wendy flew by with a man in dark jade in her arms. This second person grabbed the leech halves and kept flying to dry land, where he ended up dropping them in the middle of a forest on Sandy and another man, this one in brown. Both meditating. Both of them had a number of animals leap after them, sending them both running. This was witnessed by Bubbles, who laughed at this until another guy, this one clad in teal, gave her a judgemental look... before they both rushed in for a kiss.

Behind them, a woman in olive was on a raft ride with Kathody, the former playing on a labtop. Kathody sent a few streams of electricity, causing her co-rider to scream at something at the screen, which caused the soul-professor to laugh. Neither of them noticed that their raft was heading towards a waterfall, and they both screamed as they took a plunge to a lower river. They resurfaced, the human between the two shaking as the AI wrapped her arms around her, looking up to see Dian and a woman in purple both examining a patch of blue-colored grass. Here, Cardia and an indigo-clad man both swinged by on a vine, knocking them them over to an outhouse. A bottomless Rose (with her crotch pixellated) was flung out, appeared to call for help, and that man from the Gravity Falls mall who returned her copy came running out, this time clad in forest green. The camera instantly zoomed towards a building, where Burnda herself and a guy dressed in maroon grinned sinisterly as they began stuffing various peppers into a boiling pot. The camera panned to Leona, Sonia, a man in tyrian purple, and a man in cerulean, as all four of them were tied below the neck in rope and they all exchanged nervous glances. It then panned further to finally show part of the familiar party: Dipper losing an arm-wrestling match to Wendy, the latter of whom was not even looking, reading a magazine with her spare hand.

Outside, dolphins lept through the air from this ocean the pixelly animation took place. A slow scroll revealed Shannon standing on a rock, looking at a mirror which displayed a video of her kissing a woman dressed in dark apple-green. That very same woman was seated on a rock behind her, viewing the exact same thing in a mirror of her own. At the end of this camera scroll was a dock. A 16-bit Mabel appeared there, waving her hand to get the camera's attention. She twirled a flaming baton and tossed it to the air. The camera followed the initial toss, yet remained fixated on the sky as the scene slowly faded to night. There was still fire - in the form of a camp bonfire, where Soos and Melody both stared at the night stars. That is, before Risen .GIFfany herself ran up to them and sliced off Melody's head with a knife. This sequence ended with the camera zooming out to reveal all the professors and their presumed prior players gathered around, too busy making out to notice the murder that occured right in front of them. .GIFfany laughed as she held Melody's bleeding head in her hand, Soos looking on in the biggest expression of horror that the 16-bit graphics could imitate. Above them all hung a sign reading Gifocalypse Makeover, which began flickering on and off before the whole thing cut to black.

---

"What did you think?" Burnda asked.

"That was awful!" Answered Mabel. "We were barely in that! Who were all those guys?"

"The last people who played our copy of the game! Kenny and Soos aside, all of them are still playing it now, in fact! Well, I mean, before we started this and kind of 'took a break' to prepare for our new fantasy worlds for them!"

Soos's expression practically matched that of his 16-bit counterpart's. "You didn't kill Melody this entire time, did you?"

"Relax, relax! Melody is completely safe! You can worry about her later! Remember, right now .GIFfany picked Stan and Ford to be her hostages. As a matter of fact, there is something I want to show you..."

The screen clicked back on again. There, and not in pixel form, was a split-screen depicting the Stans. Oddly, the scene between the two was... quite a contrast. Stanford to the right had a rope wrapped around him from shoulder to ankle, and appeared to be dangling over a roaring fire-pit. Most of the pit itself was offscreen, but the tips of the blaze made themselves very clear. On Stanley's half, the left, he... was lounging back in a chair, sipping something out of a glass.

"Man, that ice one knows how to treat!" The latter said. "Not as much as .GIFfany, but if the crazy dies with the extra comfort, I'm going for it."

"Help! Someone! Anyone! There has to be a 'true' good copy around here somewhere, is there?" Pleaded the former.

Burnda snapped herself towards the screen, glaring at the left side. Everyone else was certain they felt the temperature rise.

"What? That little..." She shut both screens off. "Well, no matter. Your precious Ford at least is at the mercy of my reality show and both twins will be the ultimate prize. Now, before I go off and fix everything, I want to assign the teams."

Reaching into her Indexitizer, she withdrew two rolled up banners. One red, one white. She tossed the white one to the younger Pine twins. Cautious, Dipper was the one to unroll it, revealing a circle with a familiar pine tree graphic surrounded by... sprinkles?

"...It was on the sweater she was wearing when .GIFfany first spotted her, since she could still peek from her video game box." Burnda said. "Don't judge me. Anyway, you two will be: THE PASSIONATE PINES! Now, Wendy and Soos, here is your banner:"

Wanting to waste no time to free Ford, Wendy caught the other banner in mid-air and opened it up, revealing another circled design. A question mark, with the backdrop being a plaid pattern.

"Dove said something about 'symbols' and she thinks that Wendy is associated with an ice bag while Soos is associated with glasses and Mabel with a llama... that doesn't really make any sense. She swears this is absolute fact, too. Anyway, you two can be: THE SASSY STAFF! Now, if you want to be reunited with the Stans, you'll have to best my three challenges! The team that gets to beat the other, two out of three, wins and will rescue Ford! And... Stan too!"

"Wait a minute!" Dipper exclaimed. "I knew I saw you before! You were on that video Hato showed us! Yeah, that's right, you were helping Ford with a barrier! Aren't you two actually friends?"

"Pffft. Ever heard of a stat called 'Acting?' It's basically being good at lying. And I have a high Acting stat. I was just pretending to be friendly for him and help him out with that barrier. My reaction, though... that was real. That being said, I cannot believe my boss would have cameras up in the Construction Site like that. Now, your first challenge is something that I thought was a wasted oppertunity from Dian's domain. It's a cave. But it had no minecart segment. Guess what you will be riding in?"

"Give us back our family!" Mabel shouted to the hostess.

Burnda laughed. "I will. Again, after you pass me three-"

Something hit her in the face. Judging from the white blur and the matching splash upon hitting her, the offending item in question was a snowball. Burnda looked up, snapping her fingers. Another spotlight from above clicked on, revealing an icy ledge and a .GIFfany copy standing atop it. This spotlight illuminated her same azure skin and black leotard outfit as Burnda, with her defining difference being the white hair and eyes (with, notably, some small hints of pale blue) with a slightly different flame shape, and a sort of light blue 'fire' of sorts in her hair. She too had a pair of black hair buns. Burnda hissed at this presense which may or may not have been there the entire time.

"Professor Burrda." The professor of fire said between her teeth. "My good-doer, too-hearted angelic twin. Of course you have to be the hero and help these love-hopeless losers through the Gifocalypse."

Burrda said nothing in response. She closed her eyes and the screen clicked on once again. Based on how quickly Burnda turned her head, it was her white-haired counterpart that did this. Once again, it showed the split-screen between the two Stans. Burrda lifted a finger skywards, and one large white spark shot from it. On Ford's side, streams of white electricity began raining into the flames from above the top of the screen, immediately extinguishing them as they appeared to be sucked into thin strips that turned into smoke shortly after. Ford sighed.

"Now all I have to do is get down by myself and-"

Another stream of electricity in the same color. This one curved over to the top of the rope and cut it, letting Ford drop safetly. He grinned as the ropes around him began loosening itself up.

"Oh. Well, a thanks is due to my mystery hero, I suppose."

Burnda began fuming. She spun a 180 and floated closer to the center of the stage, finally showing the back part of her outfit to the group. And... it was a thong leotard. Just about exposed all of her butt crack. There was almost no visible sign of any clothing at all by the back part of her waist, in fact, save for an extremely tiny black triangle that quickly dissappeared between her lower cheeks. Dipper groaned at this yet again.

"Burrda! I'm coming after you!" The fire professor shouted as she flew towards this other copy-

Which faded from view as Burnda reached her. She began looking around.

"A hologram? Do not tell me-"

Dipper, Mabel, and Soos flinched, because for a split second, it looked like something large, white, and spherical ate her. After giving it a closer look, Burnda was simply engulfed by some sort of large, partly-clear, white ball made out of a rubbery-sort of material. An azure leg emerged from the shadows and kicked this ball, sending Burnda flying off the cliff.

"No! Anti-gif rubber! Why did you have to invent that you little saint?!" She shouted as she fell into the darkness.

Which did not remain dark for much longer. A finger snap was heard, revealing a copy that looked identical to the 'hologram' from before. The lights also revealed that, stage, ceiling, and cliff aside, most of this room was made of red giffinium. Burnda's location happened to be by the mouth of another cavern portion, the ball being wedged inside one of two minecarts overlooking some kind of track heading into a flaming plunge. Burrda lept down and gave another kick, this one aimed at the minecart, sending it and Burnda on a ride leading down below.

Large flames shot up from near the entrance to this 'challenge' afterward. The white-haired copy let out a loud exhale through her nose. And yes, her leotard exposed equally as much backside as Burnda's did.

"So... you're called Professor Burrda?" Dipper asked.

She began to nod, before looking at the large, now-inactive screen behind them. She sent a few beams of white electricity to the set. In large, bright, pale blue letters, the words PROFESSOR BURRDA appeared on screen, followed by an arrow pointing in her direction.

"I kind of figured that out." Said Soos. "I mean, I narrowed the 'twist' down to a few things. The red professor having two personalities, one of them killed the other, and... this."

"Finally!" Dipper exclaimed with a bit of a chuckle. "You know, every single time we found a 'friendly' copy, she... she didn't really do anything. They were all so passive. But now we have someone that hates .GIFfany from the start and wants to just... do something!"

"Uh, Bro, I think you forgot Alma." Mabel corrected.

"Alma wanted to go straight towards .GIFfany and kill her. That sounded okay, but shady. And the way she tried to force us into that army... Mabel, you aren't even a little creeped out by spiders?"

Burrda had since made her way closer to the screen, turned herself into electricity, and lept inside. Dipper looked behind - the audience was still there, looking a bit more bored than they were when Burnda was out. One of them started sipping from a Dipper-or-Mabel-sized blue cup with a stylized winking picture of Searah on it.

"Why aren't they attacking us?" He asked. "Uh, Burrda? Are you still there? You just knocked out their professor."

The screen clicked on a again, a bit brighter than before. In fact, they had to take a few steps backwards just to avoid any eye-pain. Some vision-focusing later, and this display appeared to show a simple, stick-figure diagram of .GIFfany much like the ones from the mirror video from Shannon's domain.

The 'camera' of sorts zoomed out, and fourteen more .GIFfany figures popped up on-screen. With some flashing back-and-forth between colors, they all stopped being pink and became the same colors as the hairs of the professors faced, left to right, in order. Green, yellow, blue, orange, violet, cyan, rose, azure, magenta, spring green, chartreuse, red, white. A black one was to the right of the white one. The final copy, on the far right, did not change color.

It 'zoomed' out again, until the fifteen .GIFfanys were nearly small dots. Here, a large mass of pink .GIFfany figures began surrounding them. The surrounding figures soon blinked into one of the fourteen other colors, and began gathering by their respective 'professor.' Once gathered, most of them zipped away in pink lightning. However, the one copy that remained pink stayed, while the view zoomed in on the last two 'professors' that remained - the red and white ones.

A number of questionmarks of both colors out of this duo began to spring up. The red one waved her arms back and forth, a speech bubble appearing above her that displayed a giant "VS." The crowd mass cheered, and promptly began moving around until they were cleanly divided. Then the side-copies entered fighting stances, something the figure representing Burnda did as well. The one representing Burrda, on the other hand and despite her own crowd mimicking the guesture, simply stood there. Then all of them were zipped away, yet again.

"This domain has both followers of you and followers of Burnda?" Dipper asked.

A large, green check mark appeared on the screen.

It showed another display. The red figure and white figure standing in a sort of kitchen-like area. Red fired some electricity at a stove, causing a roaring fire to hit White. The former 'laughed' this off and went over to the sink, yet White sent her own electric stream at that after Red placed her hands in. Some struggling motions with the blatant Burnda figure had their source revealed after she stuck them up, revealing that the water around her had been frozen to ice. It then cut to a much larger crowd of red and white figures, the white figures in particular cheering.

"Okay, with that and the versus... they're not attacking us because this is all part of a show to them? And some are on Team Burnda, while the rest are on Team Burrda?"

Another check mark.

"Can we tell who's on what side? Which side can we trust?"

A diagram of a pink .GIFfany. A flashing red circle appeared by its heart, which turned white after a few seconds, then red again, then white again.

Everyone looked at the audience. Somehow, they all failed to notice the one thing they had in common: some kind of circular pin, either in red or in white, right by where the heart should be. Most of them were pinned into their clothing, but for those that did not really have clothing in that region, they appeared to be taped on.

"Okay, pins. And your team isn't roaring for you because this is all the same thing to them they've seen for the last two days?"

A third check.

"So... can you get us back home? You have the key card leading back to Gravity Falls, right?"

She lept out of the screen set and nodded. The word FOLLOW appeared on the screen, and Burrda began leading them.

---

"Okay Ford, cut! Our first show was a success!"

Ford walked around the giffinium floor that was barely a centimeter away from him. He soon made his way out of that heavily air-conditioned room, looking back one last time at the glass screen which could display a convincing look of fire and the fire's extinguishing at any moment. He followed the sound of Burnda's words.

"How was it?" He asked the redhead.

"Perfect! Your buddies think I'm some psychotic fire-witch that just got sent down the long and painful minecart ride of my own challenge while trapped in a bubble of anti-gif rubber, and the funny thing is, Burrda and I barely really lied to them I just like lying as little as possible."

"...I don't remember you being this... run-on sentence-y."

Burnda let out a loud exhale. "Well, you already know I like using my Acting to give impressions, a part of that is that I want to make myself sound as presentable as possible to new people and that includes trying to kick away my habit of talking too much and too fast so. Uh, right, if you're curious no that was not really anti-gif rubber it was white giffinium that looks like the rubber which does exist and is an invention of Burrda now why did I mention white it's not like the color of the giffnium actually changes anything."

"So what was our next plan?"

"Well, Burrda continues filling their heads with nonsense that's still technically true, all for the sake of hyping up .GIFfany's downfall. Meanwhile, we... well, if you could... actually do what Stan is doing, where you just pretend that you went off to safety except not really since you were always safe the entire time! That would work, and sorry for the whole 'fake tying up' thing we needed to make me look like I was something of a threat."

"No, please. Anything to prep those honorable future town-heroes to stop .GIFfany at her fullest. And seeing as she has the interdimensional rift on her side, that 'fullest' will be a lot."

"But... well... how will I look more formidab-?"

"You could try launching some fake attacks at them. Or something. I don't know. You're the director." He chuckled the last part, something Burnda took immediate note of.

"I may be the director, producer, exporter, professor, and hostess, with Burrda sharing my job, but you are the true star! Well actually the contestants always are, but..."

"But you have always been the idea side when it comes to running your own show."

"I'm, I'll... yeah, your little creative addition sounds good. I promise I won't harm them! Neither will Burrda!"

"I can count on you to keep that promise!"

---

Burrda's tour through the oddly otherwise metal-free cave chamber ended at a particularly large, particularly reinforced door made of red giffinium with a keypad attatched. The cold-haired professor flexed her hands out and send a few trickles of white electricity into it as matching binary numbers began appearing.

"Are you hacking into the lock?" Dipper asked her. "Please tell me you are hacking into the lock. I've loved the idea of a living robot... supercomputerish being hacking to break open a door, and this is the first time I get to see it in action!"

She nodded in response.

As soon as a click was heard from the door, a voice followed. One that was all-too familiar, and all-too welcoming.

"Is that the Ice .GIFfany again? Hey, could I ask for another refill? I have no idea what's in this pink lemonade, or if it's even really lemonade, but it's some of the best stuff I've ever drank in my life!"

Burrda stood back as the door opened, revealing Stan holding out an empty glass. His eyes wandered on to the aformentioned copy for a second, before instantly moving to the other two people at the same height level, Soos and Wendy. Then they moved down, fixing on Dipper and Mabel. All four of which stared at him with dropped jaws.

He could barely get out a semi-confused "Kids?" before being pulled into a hug by Dipper, Mabel, and Soos. Wendy stood by the entrance with her arms folded, smiling at the scene.

"Grunkle Stan!" Mabel was the first to call out, "We missed you! We were worried sick about you! And that was after we saw you enjoying your life on the Construction Site!"

"Yeah, that was great. Went downhill after I saw .GIFfany stab a Soos doll with some kind of thumb drive-finger."

Soos did not let go of his hug, but he did cringe. "Wait, what?"

"Yeah. You've got a real lunatic stalker on your hands. I could give you tips on how to deal with those types, but for now, let's just say that really makes you one of us."

Mabel laughed in agreement, quietly telling Dipper, "Don't worry bro, you'll have your own stalker soon too."

The hug broke, Stan speaking up again shortly after.

"Yeah, and that reminds me for some reason. Isn't this place kind of too adults-only for you two?" Stan was looking between the two youngest people in the room when he said 'you two.'

"Yeah, I kind of thought the same thing." Soos added. "I mean, it's cool that Dipper and Mabel were on this adventure with me, but there are times where I really don't think they should be here."

This parental figure conversation was halted as several bolts of red lightning began striking around the group. Turning around, they saw Burnda, with what looked to be parts of magma dripping from her hair. (But she, and even her outfit, were otherwise unharmed.) She huffed in heavily as she stared down her identically-dressed copy.

"You! Okay, contestants, it looks like our first challenge will have to be skipped due to... tampering from my 'extinguisher' over there, Burrda. But! I garuntee you will have to survive the grueling second challenge that is... MECHA BOXING!"

"So am I allowed on these challenges now?" Stan asked. "I overheard a little about your game, is that- is that how this works?"

Burnda folded her arms. "Look. Burrda derailed my show. That is the showbiz virus. You being free is the symptom. As punishment for this, you and Burrda will both sit out and watch as I explain how this works: I will lead my four actual contestants out into a magma pit, where they will get into their marked mecha and try duking it out. Remember the duelists from Dian's domain? The rules are similar to that. Three points, and you win. Except the winner faces me in my mecha. I am already a step ahead, and I know you will do that cliche thing where you try to work 'together.' In case, pick the better pair to go against my super mech! It's also my Main Possession, so there's that! I'm not saving that for the grand finale, I'm saving it for the second challenge. Oh yeah, and the same rules apply about the best two of three. Whoever wins this challenge better win the next one, or else."

She snapped her fingers. Above, a large screen lain across the roof of this cavern chamber clicked to life. It depicted Ford again, this time with his head down, eyes shut, and hanging by the wrists from chains of red giffinium. A copy with shining green hair, bright yellow skin, an even larger bust, and clad in a skimpy red leotard and hair bow walked on screen with a giant crocodile on a leash in one hand. Said crocodile had a matching bow. More important was what was in the copy's other hand: a large blowtorch. She wiggled her eyebrows and waged her large crocodile-like tail at the screen as blue flames spewed out from this device.

"You know she's serious because those are the same kind of chains .GIFfany held that fake-Melody in." Stan said. "Oh wait. You weren't there. But yeah, I saw .GIFfany do almost exactly the same thing while I was at the Construction Site. The chains looked identical and everything. All it's missing are some sharks."

Well, look at that. Another AI walked in right after he said that, flowing red hair contrasting with her green skin. She too wore a red cleavage-baring leotard, had a matching bust size, and somehow appeared to be walking a shark. Not one of the fake ones from .GIFfany's fantasy, either; the end of the leash she held was wrapped around an ovaline tank on wheels, housing a particularly massive blue shark swimming along within.

"Oh yeah, and Burrda? You're not helping them. Neither are you, Stan. As a matter of fact, I kind of like the thought of you two getting along. Just like how I pretended to get along with Ford. Both of you should spend some time together. Burrda, you thought you were the only one who made anti-gif rubber? Actually a lot of us made it but had pretty much no use for it... until now!"

Something dropped and happened to capture both Stan and Burrda, taking no other captives. It seemed like a baseless cube of red-tinted, otherwise see-through rubber much like Burrda's sphere from before. While it looked like something that could simply be pushed and knocked over with ease, none of the six parties who put effort into tilting it could. The partial cube remained, unmoving from all the pressure or assault. Even Burrda's lightning bolts failed to make the slightest displacement.

"Okay, now that that is out of the way..." Burnda started floating above the ground. While up there, she 'tapped' her left foot - which was made moot due to the lack of an immediate ground to tap. "Could you please get to the challenge now? Reminder, do you want .GIFfany to have enough time to send you into Endless Mode? This is your last day!"

Dipper was the first to charge forward, further into the 'private room' Stan was, up until now, seemingly secured in. As Burnda guestured to lead him, and later the others, on forward, a bright orange light hit them all.

It looked like a magma lake at first, but after getting further in to its 'shore,' simply calling it a 'lake' did not do it justice. It looked to be more of a full sea of molten rock comparable to the view near the beginning of the domain, with two house-sized, near-black humanoid mechas (without any real discernible features - just a generic head and a bulky body build) sticking by the shore, each emerged from the waist down in the glowing orange liquid. One of which had the symbol of the Passionate Pines on the back. The other, the Sassy Staff's symbol.

"I'll show you my mecha when you're done fighting each-other." Burnda announced. "Oh yeah, and since this can't really be a two out of three without a real 'three...' I'll make sure that the losers of this will have enough motivation to complete the last challenge. Trust me. Now, contestants, if you don't want anything bad happening to any of your friends, you will hop into the backs of your mechs."

She snapped her fingers. Practically the entirety of the backs of both mechs opened like a pair of slow, oversized doors. Rampways stuck out from the darkened interiors.

"I gave you enclosed instruction books. They're by the front seats. Use them. By the way, apart from the time limit you guys have until midnight tonight, I'm giving you about... oh, let's just say... thirty minutes to get yourselves familiar with everything before I fail both of you and make the whole reality show unwinnable. But one team's free to instantly hit the other! Anyway, this challenge ends whenever one team wants to tap out! Just to add a little of a 'game of chicken' sort of deal, since you are over boiling magma that happens to re-direct the heat as a power source."

"Can I at least call shotgun?" Asked Mabel.

Burnda laughed. "You know Mabel, I kind of like you. I really, really do. It's a shame I'm such an antagonist to your family, and you are so antagonistic to us. Maybe, in some other reality, I might have acted like some kind of ideal big sister you never had but actually kind of wanted to? No wait, that's Wendy, right?"

Mabel turned back from her way up the ramp to the mech, staring blankly at the professor of fire.

"Um, yeah, when it comes to what seat you pick, it actually doesn't matter. Still," she winked at Mabel, "I like how you set your priorities straight."

The second Mabel placed her foot inside the mech and rounded off the gang preparing for this challenge, Burnda threw up more electric currents to the ramps, getting them and the open backs to close up instantly.

"Alright! Just a reminder, the thirty minutes also includes both the time spent getting used to the controls and all the time starting from when I first mentioned thirty minutes. You're still on the clock. Figure it all out, start when you want."

Dipper reached into his pocket, realizing that this was finally a good time to actually use the cell phones that were completely brought with them all along (Stan's number did not get any results; Ford lacked one to begin with), seeing as there did not appear to be any other way to communicate between the mechs. He gave a quick dial for Soos's number.

"Hey." He said after a near-instant pickup.

"Hey dude. Checking out the instructions?"

"Yeah. We need to strategize. Which of us will take the fall."

"Yeah, Wendy and I were talking about just doing an instant loss to give us all more time to find and stop .GIFfany."

"Wait. Wendy was thinking of taking the fall?"

"Oh, I could put her on, but she really believes in you guys. Wait, I'll put this on speaker."

"Come to think of it, I should have done that too."

Once Dipper hit that button, Wendy was heard almost immediately after.

"Hey dude, I already came up with this plan. We act like you burried us under the lava, then as soon as Burnda tries to attack us, we immediately rise and give her a swift uppercut."

Dipper nodded. "That sounds like something we could do. Alright Mabel, are you game?"

"Oh, I've been game since Domain 1." His sister replied.

As per the instructions, Dipper gave a swift push to the lever that controlled the twins' mecha's right arm. With a little leg-controlling to shorten the distance, the Passionate Pines was swift and quick to punching up against the Sassy Staff's mech. One point.

The latter only shook a near-invisible amount from the hit, catching Wendy's attention. Looking at what just happened, she took a grip of the leg controls, practically slipping herself on the base of this lava bath, turning on the Trash Talk Speaker button just so that her "Oh no! How could that have happened? How were you able to make my mech fall over like that?" was heard by Burnda.

The Sassy Staff's mecha fell back over, causing a large splash of lava to rush over the shore and harmlessly coat the professor of fire. She laughed at this, then turned to Burrda.

And gave her a thumbs-up that she was certain was hidden from view of the four mecha-riders by her body. It probably was, given as the next action from the Pines was to lightly foot-tap the other mech. Two points, three points.

She turned her attention back to the magma lake, announcing towards the 'players' of this 'reality show.' "Alright contestants! Actually, I should come up with a snappy name for you guys. Something related to volcanos... or fire... or heat... or even physics... how does Thermoines sound? It is a word I just made up on the spot! ...No response? Well, anyway, the Passionate Pines won that round, although I suspect some kind of fowl play was involved. Heh heh. You know what I mean, I know you teammed up. See, this is exactly why I planned that I would come after you in my mech! I'd like to introduce a special giant guest star! My own mecha! Don't be surprised because I completely and utterly talked about this earlier."

Turning into her own lightning trail, which zipped inside this packet of molten rock, Burnda went through a submerged heated pipe system all the way over to something underneath a particularly deep pit in the fire sea.

"Ladies and gentlemen!" She announced. "I'd like to introduce our special guest for the second part of this second fantastic challenge. My mega mecha... the one... the only... the Magma Masher! That's another a name I invented on the spot(A)."

Rumbling was felt, heard, and even seen as the entire cave shook, the epicenter being at a stop deep in the open of the subterranean pool. It was here that it rose - a towering red mecha, humanoid and feminine (yet aside from that, barely resembled a .GIFfany in any sort of way) from toe to head, a slick beast made of maroon metal. Its head was adorned with a pair of goat-like horns, claws, and a massive iron club in her hand.

"Yes! Meet my Oni of the Depths - shoot that is a much better name that I also just made up! This proud baby is here to slaughter all of you!"

The Staff's mecha had since been swimming around the magma sea as Burnda announced her Main Possession.

"Alright Passionate Pines! Prepare for a meltdown of the highest caliber!"

To show off even more, blue-hot fire began shooting from the top of the mech's head. Small flares came from its nostrils as well, causing Dipper to gulp.

"Get ready for Round 2!"

Thankfully, Wendy and Soos managed to swim their mech to the right heel of Burnda's just in time. (Of course, the magma being opaque did little to help - at least the mechs came with a radar.) All it really took to get that mecha to move against Burnda's will was a few heavy punches to the shin.

Burnda lifted the leg of her demon-mech after red sparks flew from it. Based on the Pine twins' view of the mechanical humanoid attempting to keep itself stable, this was not an intentional move. Seconds later, Burnda's mech fell on its back, causing another, larger wave to rock over the liquid battlefield, floating on its back.

The large mecha raised a hand just as Wendy and Soos re-emerged.

"Okay!" She said, a slight hint of laughter. "My hands are metaphorically tied! I will be counting that as a victory on your side! Technically, you beat me! Now, for the final challenge, where things get interesting!"

Wendy and Soos's mech gave a thumbs-up. It took a moment of manual-browsing, but Dipper and Mabel's responded in kind.

Red sparks hopped off of the monsterous mech and reformed into Burnda on land, the copy herself scurrying over to the cage's location.

Emphasis on its location. Burrda, Stan, and the rubber cage itself were all missing, with only a pileup of shivering red pin-wearing copies surrounded by large drops of cooled water.

"WHAT?" Burnda yelled. "What happened here?"

"S-s-she..." replied one of the student copies, "Burrda. She took enough heat, and... melted a small hole in the plastic. Then she attacked us. S-she tried to freeze us in place."

"Argh! Well, no matter, Dove aught to find her and her pesky supporter students for me. Thermoines, your next challenge."

---

For a "challenge," there did not appear to be any difficulty implied with the setup. Some departure from the mechas after careful replacement so as to not be above any magma, and Burnda - this time actually remaining the pack's distance from the group and no longer soley relying on her Day 3-resistance - led them to a room that was... well, compared to the rest of the domain thusfar, a room. Despite the ruby giffinium door leading up to it, the place itself was not of the same limited palette as most of the indoors domain locations. Rather, it held a lush carpet and was lined with row after row of seats filled with copies that, once more, had pins of either red or white. The walls were of a standard dry wall painted over with pale blue. A bit rushed when it came to walls there were tiny holes in the makeup, and the regular giffinium was spotted from within. Even the ceiling appared to be made of a standard... well, material in general, looming above as unamusing black that happened to be hosting spotlights. The first of the features to catch eyes, however, was the raised stage containing well more than enough seats for the five. And then some.

Burnda - of course - flew over to a much larger chair adorned with royal velvet red armrests, a cushion, and a padded back. And, confirmed when she leaned into it, her seat doubled as a recliner. She lied herself down before she gave further instructions.

"Thermonies, look at the backs of the chairs. The four of them closest to you are your seats, please look at the backs for the team logo to tell which is which."

The 'two teams' were about to make a move until Burnda rose her hand.

"If, for whatever reason, you think that it's 'outsmarting' me if you ignore the assigned team seats... I'll fly over there and drag you to the right places. For now, I'm gonna try to make it feel like you have free will."

Another door, at the back of the far-end wall, was kicked open. Nobody got much time to register who was there before she zipped her way to the front of the stage - Burrda, carrying an annoyed Stan and Ford over her shoulders. She gently set the eldest twins down, shooting a glare at Burnda's direction. Burnda herself had since de-clined, shooting the co-professor the same look back. All while Stan and Ford both turned their backs to one-another.

"Burrda! I told you- wait, actually, that could work. Just keep them there. Heh, you are following my plan perfectly. Well, I mean the part of the plan that I just made up right now that involved Stan and Ford being here. But everything apart from that, including both my original plan and my pre-Stan plan right here, was either changed a tiny bit at best or thwarted at worst. So... good to see that you're finally playing along right into my burning, fiery hands!

"Anyway, Thermoines, your next challenge is not a test of physical strength. It is a test of emotional strength! What we're having right now is... something of a talk show!"

Dipper immediately put his face in his palms.

"You're not going to post any of this to the public, are you?" He asked.

"Just to the other .GIFfanys out there!"

"Actually, that's a lot better. So, what are you gonna ask us?"

"Well first, I'm gonna get out some guests. I... only have two guests. Or, one set of guests, and one guest by himself. Well, here's the first. I introduce you to: Sonia's inspirational frog band!"

A short tune played and all the red pin-wearing copies clapped with a sort of odd uniformity. Spotlights shone on the door opposite to the entrance, as it appeared to open by itself. There, just as Burnda advertised... the ten frogs hopped their way to the middle, filling a rather self-explanatory number of the many seats on the stage.

"I feel like I should explain why Soos and Wendy would even want to try to win this. You know, teaming up to best us with 'teamwork.' Well, get ready for a doozy."

"If you're trying to embarass us in front of that bunch of frogs," said Wendy, "I should tell you right now that you'll have better luck with another plan."

"Then wait until you see our second guest slash group of guests slash 'group...' made of just one guest! Presenting! The one! The only! (Well, there are a lot of copies of him too, but...) Rumble McSkirmish!"

Dipper could barely let out a "How could he change any-" before the aformentioned fighter made his debut, dropping on to the stage with a punch aimed downward.

"-Thing." He finished regardless.

"Well, that's really simple." Announced Burnda as she replicated Peachaulinsalinaisy's method of 'flying off towards an upper part of a wall to more-than avoid the IPN.' "They're not going to humiliate you directly. In fact, I'm not even going to ask them - duh, because frogs can't talk! Instead, they were the last-second additions I could think of to fill out a non .GIFfany audience. Um, well, Bubbles said that this was some kind of 'psychological tossing you out of the comfort zone.' You're used to having stupid stuff happen in front of a lot of .GIFfanys. Which is why I'm doing something a little different now. So... think of them as just decoration-"

"I WILL NEVER ACT. AS JUST A DECORATION!" Rumble declared in his usual ham. "TAKE THAT BACK AND POINT ME TO THE NEAREST CHALLENGER! I WANT A REMATCH WITH THE MEGA-SIZED SCHOOLGIRL OF DEATH AND LIGHTNING!"

"Rumble, pretend you're watching a fight and cheering on. In the background."

As if on queue, he lept to the back wall and switched to just repeating the same two sprites of him pumping his fist up and down.

Burnda appeared to whip a microphone (an actual one this time) from behind her ear, spun it around with one hand, and placed it in front of herself. "Right! The whole point of this is to gather all of you, around here, and see if I can make you betray each-other! Just in time for one team to forfeit and the other to have to face off against me!"

To give an example for 'what was in store,' Burnda flew over to a large line of lit torches that lined the walls. Throwing in standard ruby electricity to this unfittingly-primitive lighting source, the flames crawled up from the electric trails to her fingers, then quickly rushing up her entire arm and spreading until her whole body was cloaked in flames.

"As for the advantage that the Passionate Pines got for winning, well... if they end up winning this, then they don't have to go the extra mile to save Stan and Ford from my 'tie-breaker death trap!' Staff, if you can make them quit, then you do! Now, to encourage the Staff to win, this tie-breaker... isn't very difficult or deadly at all, to be honest. But it IS a bit of a challenge on its own!"

"So what are we supposed to do? Just... talk?" Wendy asked.

"...Yes. Trash talk or something, or opt out."

Both 'teams' only looked at one-another.

"Um... yeah, time limit." Burnda tapped a non-existent watch on her wrist. You're on the final day. Midnight. Bad things will happen then. So... get to it! Throw insults! Betrayals! I'm going to test this 'friendship' to its absolute limits!"

After staring at her feet, Mabel turned her direction to the staff. "Uh... Wendy... you smell a little... too sweaty? And should go back to Cardia's domain for a shower?"

"Hey!" Soos was the one to react to that. "Burnda, can we do anything else but this? What's the tie-breaker? Or, actually, Burrda, you're right here, why don't we work up to try capturing her?"

At the time Soos asked, Burrda was in the process of handing Stan a glass of some sort of bright pink juice, with a straw bent into a heart-like shape if viewed from the right angle.

"Stan? Ford?" Burnda asked. "To speed things up, since these people will not trade off secrets or insults if it meant saving the world, why don't you two... give them a demonstration?"

"Burrda, explain." Was all Stan said.

Burrda whipped out a smart phone and sent small pulses of electricity into it, showing stylized sillouettes of the two Stan twins with their backs turned, mirroring their actual selves. A smiley face-like image appeared between them, with an X in the place of a mouth. Dancing around them was a red figure with .GIFfany's template appearance.

"So you've decided not to talk to each-other until after I'm dealt with? Shocking, if you pardon the .GIFfany pun. How often have you heard that before?"

"Actually, that was the first time." Dipper answered.

"Good. So... trade off insults away!"

The four 'game players' continued giving one-another awkward looks. Rumble continued his two-sprite cheer. The frogs just stared ahead, croaking absently and making no real rhythm. Stan and Ford remained in their same non-confronting positions. Burnda still kept herself coated in flames, except the flames rose as she began impatiently tapping her foot against the upper beams she was floating by.

"Okay, nobody want to do the gossip challenge? Nobody?" She asked. "Argh!"

She flicked a wrist forward - a ball of flame lept from her hand, bounced a few times across the ground, managed to get Mabel to hop to the side, and eventually extinguished itself when it hit the wall at the other end.

"Oh, I got one!" Soos said with a risen hand. "Rumble, you were dating .GIFfany, right?"

"SHE IS MY HEART, BUT ALSO MY FATED RIVAL."

"Okay, but you know that she did this whole thing because she wants me back, right? She's cheating on you. Doesn't that make you wanna... I don't know, join that 'Dove' copy's side since Dove kind of stomped on .GIFfany's trust and I think they're sorta enemies now?"

He stopped his background animation to turn his back towards the group, turning downwards in thought.

"I never realized this..." he said to himself, "if .GIFfany no longer sees me even as a potential suitor, I must... it means I have lost affection. I have lost LOVE POINTS. I have lost... strength. I must regain it somehow, but how is the question."

He partly turned himself back to the 'audience,' his un-patched eye invisible at his pose.

"I got it." He said. "I must become stronger! If I am stronger in the fists, than I will be stronger in the heart! AND THAT MEANS CHALLENGING ANY POTENTIAL FIGHTERS! AND THE NEAREST FIGHTER WITH THE MOST POTENTIAL..."

He immediately shot a fireball, landing right on Burrda's forehead and knocking her back a good distance. After standing in his 'post-fireball toss' stance, he pointed a finger towards his custom-picked challenger.

It barely landed a scratch on Burrda, but Burnda clasped both of her hands over her mouth throughout the attack.

"YOU! WITCH OF ICE! Challenge me!"

Shrugging, Burrda threw her own sparks over at the wall-flames herself-

And a large trail of red lightning ended up striking Rumble down before the white-haired copy could do anything further.

This was followed by a vortex of fire from her fire-coating. Then another, much larger bouncing fireball. Then several smaller streaks of electricity alternating from coming from Burnda's hands or from her eyes, and was finally capped off with an enormous laser that fired straight out of her mouth. Burnda immediately lept down after, centimeters away from Rumble, and jabbed her index finger at him - and point that bordered on her stabbing his nose with her hand. His sprite was pitch-black, apart from his uncovered widened eye staring at her, almost unmoving in surprise.

"You DON'T harm my twin sister Burrda! GOT THAT?!"

Stan, oddly for such a display of violence, only sighed after partly turning towards Ford and immediately snapping his head back.

"Burnda, why don't you just drop the act already? Sorry, but you just blew it."

Dipper, Mabel, and Wendy immediately turned to him with the same one-worded question: "Act?"

"You guys couldn't tell?" Soos asked them. Unseen by the crowd, the static cut off, Rose being the first one seen to peer through the screen. She scanned until she spotted both professors, nodded to herself, and listened in as Soos continued. "I thought it was kinda obvious from the beginning."

"Yes, this was all staged." Ford stepped forth completely, but still avoided eye-contact with his twin. "In case any of you got brave, that minecart ride would have just led to a faked accident on the road, where people on Burrda's team would have carried you to 'safety.' All of the magma here, especially the lake by the mecha boxing area, is really just gelatin imported from Shannon's domain to look like it. Well, except for that huge sea by the Wire you saw when you came in here, but that's protected by giffinium glass. Even that fireball she threw when she wanted you to trash-talk each-other was guilded very carefully by her so that you wouldn't end up jumping right into it by accident. Burnda is not one of the .GIFfany-supporting copies - she's far from it. And neither is Burrda. Burnda just wanted to stage something to try to help you build your teamwork and fighting skills for the fight with Dove that should be coming up soon. And she wanted her 'twin' - in reality Burnda is the younger one by over five hundred thousand copies they just call themselves 'spiritual twins' though I'd never understand it - to have a little adventure where she could feel like this cool, sneaky, heroic rebel against the 'evil .GIFfany army.'"

"Ah, yes. One thing I wasn't lying about was my Acting." Burnda finally lowered her hand from Rumble. "I really do have a high Acting stat, and used that to try to pull that play on you guys. Ford, there's one tiny detail even you didn't catch. One thing you didn't know about... I wasn't trying to 'prepare' them, because I know they can already beat Dove. I was trying to get you and Stan back together, and I can see that that failed."

Ford looked like she just turned him in to the authorities for something. "WHAT?"

"Hey, remember when I asked you who the most trustworthy person on the Construction Site was, and you answered me?" She glanced over at him and started slowly shaking her head. She continued shaking as she said: "That wasn't supposed to be the right answer. Stan was there with you too, you know."

"Burnda, I don't appreciate being tricked like that. However, I like just about everything else about you, so I might be able to let that one slide."

This got an eye-roll from the professor of fire. "Backstory time. You see, Burrda and I shared the same last player. His name really was Gerald, I didn't see any reason to lie about that, but he... well, he was a dick. He wasn't as bad as Dove's latest player, but still pretty bad.

"That guy scouted us after finding out about us from a paranormal rumor website and tried to - and succeeded at - buying two copies instead of just one. He wanted to try to build a 'harem' of us. It did not work out. Of course, you know what we are like. After finding out that he was trying to find the 'goldmine' of copies in our abandoned factory, and Burrda and I found each-other both being played by him, we... fought. A lot."

"I thought Rose said that playing multiple copies of the game was okay?" Soos asked.

Burnda shot Soos a look. "...Really?" She asked as though the answer was obviously 'no.'

"She was really forward about it, too."

"Well, Burrda and I barely tollerated each-other at the time. We jumped into the other's game and tried combat for a while. We threw electronics around. We yelled for literal days without stopping - I'm talking multiples of 24 hours by 'days' - until I... 'won.' With some possession skills, I tricked Burrda into her disc, and then placed the disc in this sort-of rubber box. She could not transfer out of that. For a while, I felt victorious, but then... it all... fell.

"I was about to forgive Gerald, bring him back into my arms. And yes, this is a .GIFfany thing - Soos, your copy was willing to 'forgive' you if you let her download you, if Dove was accurate. And she usually is, she is a devoted fact-checker. But I'm getting off topic, I... I felt something weird when I was about to speak to him again. This man tried to get a lot of his personalized high-powered video game girls as... almost as servants. But that was what we were made for, minus the whole 'plural' part. But then he also enjoyed and loved seeing us fight over him... something about me just made me think. This was not my fault. It was his. I mean, I learned later that I had terrible intentions myself, but this is how I thought at the time. And that if he wants to keep adding more .GIFfany copies to fight with me over his heart, he... was not worth 'loving.'

"I possessed a robot that he built specifically for us, and would have later mass-made copies of 'with our help.' And I took Burrda out of the box. And even she seemed... distant. She lost that spark of wanting to fight. She looked defeated. But that was for a hollow cause, so... I took her disc, took my own disc, and we went on the run. We went through several abandoned buildings, picked up a number of electronics along the way, and most of the time, we said nothing to each-other. Until, two months later, we decided to try turning the other cheek. Both of us swore off players from that point - possibly forever, possibly not. We came up with our nicknames and hair colors before the Gifocalypse was even a thing. And when it was... Rose broadcasted a psychic e-mail worldwide to any and all copies of the game. What she planned sounded like a fun way to try to patch things up between humans and living computer systems. Everybody else was possessing animatronics or robots and stealing their copies of the game to race over to the factory... I remember that .GIFfany, Rose, Kathody, Searah, Shannon, me, and Burrda were the only copies on the west. We helped heal the 'Risen' .GIFfany from her corrupted state, got our physical forms as a thanks, and we all took turns lifting her as we flew over the Pacific.

"Everything fell again when .GIFfany was fully healed by the other professors, right outside the broken factory, too. They all... they reminded me of myself in the past. Look, I don't want to give them a negative image - .GIFfany has this thing set up in the 'Construction Site' where she will use information from Dove's 'stalking device' to project what factually happened there. But they were all pretty hostile towards her for not having much to give us in payback for healing her. After having her form recovered, .GIFfany could fly again - I mean, for the first time, sorry - and that was when she left to look around under the Mystery Shack and steal some sort of space thing...

"I am getting off topic. That was supposed to be my backstory, not the backstory of the entire Gifocalypse. Point is, I was cruel to Burrda in the past, and this domain was me trying to make up for that, help amend the Stans, and help you all grow as a team."

"I'm sorry Burnda, but you should focus on one at a time." Dipper replied. "Our Grunkles aren't really... "

"I would have liked to think that I got a good enough glimpse from what Dove was searching on you guys, but I did not think it was that bad."

"Burrda should just give us the card back home." Stan said, a statement that got an oddly defensive look from the white-haired professor in response. "Sorry, 'twins,' but this is all just a big time-waster."

"...So should I go now?" Rumble asked.

Burnda kept a hand on her chin in response to the pixelated man's question. "Uh... yeah... look for the copy named 'Dove,' she should be close by right about now. Here," she handed him a slip of paper, "these contain directions to the tunnel linking the lava tubes to the summit. You should have fun with Professor Dove over there."

He wordlessly lept off, which led to Burrda putting a hand on her twin's shoulder.

"I can fight for myself." Burrda said in a voice at near-inaudible levels.

Croaking in surprise, the following came from the mouth of the red frog in a voice that would not sound out of place coming from a female news reporter: "You can talk?"

And this got everyone to turn their attention to the latter party whom the humans just heard speak for the first time. Mabel was quick to address the elephant in the room.

"I think the bigger twist is that you can talk!"

"That guy in the coat didn't tell you already? He wrote about us. We're the Decifrog Maidens or whatever cool name we invented for ourselves at the time when we visited our cousins at this town called Gravity Falls. Also, sorry Four or whatever your name is, but we made that up. I hope that book with the 2 on it wasn't for research or anything. Aaaaand if even that video game guy could feel the awkwardness, we should go too. Burnda, we know where Dove is. We'll have her take us back to Florida. You don't have to fly us."

They simply hopped their way to the door. Burnda sighed.

"Yes, Burrda, I know. It's just that... well... sometimes I can be a little defensive. To you, to the Stans, to... everyone. And that Rumble guy looked like he might be a little more destructive if he kept going... I know, I was being stupid. But you guys can forget about us."

She handed Soos a white key card.

"This will lead to the summit, where Burrda set up her part of the domain, if you want to go there for whatever reason. Or her domain. Unofficially, we can't really decide if these are counted as one domain or two. Dove and Risen .GIFfany both say that they're two, so this is Domain 12, that card leads to Domain 13. Now, Burrda, your card?"

Instead of giving them the emerald key card, she tightened the grip of the hand on Burnda's shoulder. This was quick enough to get her attention.

Burrda then brought both her hands in front of her, held the index finger of each up, and smacked them together. After the smack, she moved one hand away, keeping the other one with its finger up.

"Oh. Blenda?"

Burrda nodded.

"I'm sorry, they really want to go back home and they really need to prepare with all the stuff at the Mystery Shack so they can fight Dove and if it's possible Professor .GIFfany-"

"Think partly like me." Burrda's voice did not raise.

"So you want to go through with that now of all times because of our conflicting views on the situation - you want them to stay, I would be okay-ish with them leaving... wait, no. I kind of agree... I want to take that back. Guys, if you just hang out in Domain 12... .GIFany can't really stop us, right?"

Burrda lowered her head, her eyes staring firmly at her red-haired sister.

"Yeah, you're right. I'm a bit conflicted. Let's share thoughtwaves. Become stronger. That sort of thing."

"What are you girls talking about?" Dipper asked the pair. "What's this about 'linking?' Who's Blenda?"

Burnda faced him, closed her eyes, and chuckled. "You know how I said that mecha was my Main Possession? That was another lie. My Main Possession is right here, right becides me. And so is hers, right becide her. I think it's time for the grand public debut. Burrda, let's do this."

Both of them turned into electricity of their respective colors- which lept into a collision course, sending a number of sparks of all colors flying. The two AIs flew towards the center of the room, remaining in their data forms, as their electrical states looped and danced around one-another in circles. The pace increased, the two large sparks moving erratically, until they finally appeared to mash together at a single point. A point which flashed, alternating between red and white before finally settling on pink... then dimming out of existence.

Then exploding into steam which flooded the room. Of course, as the 'audience,' the various student copies just had to let out a collective gasp. Regardless of their 'alignment.'

A large azure arm struck out from this central cloud of smoke. The fingers snapped, and all the lights went out. Static re-coated the IPN's screen, alternating between red and white.

Seconds later, a pair of spotlights illuminated the setting. Most of the smoke had cleared - except, of course, a large oval-like cocoon of it which surrounded the area that Burnda and Burrda 'united' in.

"Grunkle Stan, Grunkle Ford, do either of you know anything about this?" Dipper asked. This question was something he could barely form - between trying to keep his jaw up and trembling at whatever lied within that smoke cloud, he had some trouble with words at that moment.

"I-I-I-I-I never heard of this." Was Ford's reply. "Did they fuse? You can fuse now? I almost want to start a new journal just for these guys."

Stan was far more blunt and quick about it. "Nope."

"We reached an agreeeeeement." Said a rather loud, yet not harsh, voice from the core of this steam. "From our minds partly linking up, we have determined that the best course of action is, in fact, for you to stay here, free the copies you captured, and we can all ride out the Gifocalypse."

"No!" Mabel cried. "I mean, playing a game show with you guys sounds like fun, but we have to try to save the world!"

"Burnda and Burrda are both physicists. We ran your odds and calculated each and every possible action you could take to beat the other professors, then made a percent off of the attempt average. Everyone up to and including us was in the nineties. Dove's is in the seventies. .GIFfany, on the other hand, is zero. As my Burnda half was reminded of in the fusion."

"Really?"

"In none of our simulations were you able to win. Even assuming you reached her before the Construction Site was completed. We ran some simulations for if you burned through all fourteen domains by Day 1 and had all of that extra time just for fun. And you know what? Even with .GIFfany holding back 'hard mode' for three days, you still failed to beat her. This is your safest option."

"Burnda was about to let us go! Burrda, what are you filling her head with?"

A vague silouette of the corner of her head was visible, hair of red and white blowing around freely. "Knowledge. Statistics. When fused, we become I. I am facts. I am statistics. I... am..."

Instead of waiting for the smoke to disperse, an arm reached out and tossed it into nothingness as though removing a garment. Behind it was... well...

Considering the color scheme of the two components (and the peeks at her arm), it was no surprise that their fusion would have that same aqua skin tone. Her hair, on the other hand, was a different story. It was still stylized in a flame-like pattern and still had the odango buns, except the previous hair decorations were replaced with the hair-flames from each of the individual .GIFfany copies, somehow keeping her hair stylized. Which lead to the hair itself - for most of it, the red and white blended into an average pink not unlike .GIFfany's default. Further down it became a faded red, then split into roughly even vertical stripes of red and white. The very ends were either made out of orange flame if they were red stripes, or glowing blue fire at the end of the white. This fusion's outfit was not a mere copycat of her components' - calling what it was a 'dress' would be a vast simplification. It did appear to be a strapless, cleavage-baring, sparkling red dress with a white bowtie. Except that the skirt ended right at the waist, revealing an equally-sparkling white thong to the entire studio. White high-heels - again, also shining like the stars - decorated her feet, over a pair of black fishnet socks. Her total size, twice the Stan/Ford-towering height of the components, floated in the air as she waved her arms up and down. Which only brought to attention the fact that she appeared to be juggling a pair of staffs, the tips of each ablaze. Again, the one on the left had a standard red flame emitting heat that could be felt from the good distance kept between them, while the one on the right had a pale blue flame that felt like it was drawing heat away. She tossed both of these into the air. They spun in place as she took a ruby tophat with a pearly-white stripe from seemingly out of nowhere - foregoing even the Indexitizer - and pulling a red cane, also from nowhere. She leaned to the side, pretending to use the cane as a weight despite her floating, and grabbing both of her flaming staffs with the hand not holding the cane 'down.' Two small Sun-like spheres with a similar fire/'anti-fire' theme hovered around her mid-section in orbit. She gave a wink with one of her two faded-red eyes to the six humans as she finally 'properly' introduced herself:

"Professor Blenda! (Er, pending name 'Professor Burrnda,' with two Rs, it might be read as 'Burnda With Two Rs,' but that just sounded dumb.) Now, let me show you how twins can really work together!"

Seemingly of their own accord, the spotlights began moving - making patches of color that spun around in circles that led to a setting which, in general, was giving the eyes quite the number of things to keep track of. This number only increased once Blenda fired twin-colored streaks of electricity that nabbed the attention of the wall-fires around the room.

"We better run. Again." Dipper stated flatly, not even blinking since the fusion revealed herself.

"To the Wire?" Asked Mabel.

"Yep. That's our best bet right now."

Surprisingly, getting to and even stepping through the door was met with no sort of protest from Blenda whatsoever.

It was what happened after stepping through that led to them figuring out why, although it only answered that specific question and rose countless more.

Once Dipper placed a foot through, he was not greeted by the open caverns. Instead, he found himself stepping on to the stage. Through the other door. The others cleared out of the way to give each-other the perfect view of themselves, clear across a cloned stage, linking all the way to the door once again. And, based on the small glimpses behind their portal-clones, a small peek of yet another loop of the stage.

Stan was the only one to walk through, just to verify. Once he charged through part of the door and found himself coming out the other, he gave the setting a look around.

"Okay, what is this?" He asked.

Blenda prefixed her response with a laugh. "I guess I should not have expected you to get that. You see, we all have a biiiit of weirdness in us. Ford had a hunch. Illegal primes. High numbers that were cursed by odd reality leaks that correspond with chance to be the exact sort of thing that makes for the building blocks of life. Well, illegal numbers in general. Mostly the prime ones. He and Burnda looked deeper into it. He was right."

She extended a finger and grew out a nail, with a hot dog appearing from out of seemingly nowhere on it. Bringing the red orbital to her, she cooked this for a bit, swallowed it whole, and brought her nail back inward. "Well... multiply the .GIFfanys, and you multiply the weirdness, get it? We go from giving life to other machines and shape-shifting thumb drives to having just-so tiny reality-bending powers. I guess you could call me... Benda?"

She giggled at her own pun.

"I set those doors as a portal network. You're not getting out that way. So. You are trying to go. I want you to stay. Looks I like already won, unless you can get around the portals that I carefully crafted."

"What if we de-fused you?" Mabel asked the hostess. Or, pair of hostesses. "Then you wouldn't be able to put as much weirdness in this place and the portals will go away. Right?"

"Ha! Clever girl, you are! Yes. We will not be able to keep the portals stabalized. But here is where the fun part comes in. The 'final challenge' so to speak of my Burnda half! Can the six of you beat the two - no, one of me?"

Which led to the group getting into preparation stances. Which looked less impressive when Soos had to fetch out the large backpack for Dipper, Mabel, Wendy, and himself to get some sort of weapon. Ford was already armed with a magnet gun. Stan somehow slipped a bat out instantly without anyone spotting them anywhere on his person prior.

"Fire girl dude, ice girl dude, you can't keep us here!" Cried Soos. "You just can't!"

"Yeah," added Dipper, "it's pretty unethical."

"And isn't this exactly what .GIFfany wanted to do with Soos?" Asked Mabel, just as she finally got a pickaxe out of the supply bag.

Blenda chuckled. "We thought about that. Both seperate and together. But we came to this agreement: all of the professors before us failed. So, the only options left for your fate are: our game, Dove's game, or .GIFfany's game. Now, which one sounds the most pleasant to you?"

"None of them!" Mabel belted back.

"That is not an option. .GIFfany has the power to win, regardless. She is just using this 'Gifocalypse' as a way to repay us for going through the hard work of fixing her. She actually expects all of us to lose. And... most of the professors do not care that much about winning, since they already have the love of their players and that alone was all they need without getting into conflict with the other professors. Which is why they mess around. I just do it because it is fun."

"That was hard work?" Soos asked. "I thought I saw Rose, like, heal up part of her hand with just one zap."

Professor Blenda did not answer this. Instead, she let her staffs float in front of her, the flames she had previously trailed come into them to increase their size (increasing the blue one also appeared to briefly re-grow the flames on the wall), and sent another bridge of electricity to the flaming tips of each. All of this created a ring of fireballs from each, which was sent to the stage to circle around the human party.

Stan, Ford, and Wendy charged in first - the others simply had to dodge their way out of the twin-fire rings before making any other judgement. Dipper wiped sweat from his brow as he looked over at the attack missing him and directed his attention towards Soos.

"Soos, I'm gonna need the pack right now." He told to his comrade. "I have a plan."

Ford, meanwhile, immediately tried blasting Blenda's chest with a shot from his magnetic weapon. He barely reacted when she appeared to be undamaged, not even flinching at the hit.

"Heh heh... yes. Normally, magnets would scatter our code and completely destroy us from the inside out. But this is not even a fusion thing. This is a 'we have black magic protecting us' thing. Now, if you had something that could neutralize it first..."

"Get neutralized by this!" Cried Stan, just as he pulled a leap and grabbed on to the fusion-copy's leg. He threw a few (also effectless) swings before continuing: "And get magnet... whatever from that!"

Wendy was already dashing down one of the halls between the seat rows, taking no note of the copies giving her glances. Just as she was about to leap on the not-very-moving copy's back, the combined professor did take note.

"Oh, hey! I should let the audience participate! In fact, do you remember the crocodile and shark-like assistants with a crocodile and a shark? Those girls are really my elites! My um... co-overseers? Actually, all professors have at least two of those. Fun fact. Those are Burnda's. Burrda's are... different. And are always by the summit. Well now, come on up audience! Help me keep these players in their new home!"

And that was when the token 'a number of copies storm after the gang and some of them get picked up by the Illegal Prime Neutralizer' for this domain began picking up. (One trait that stood out was that each captured copy was replaced by another one zipping in through the walls, keeping the total seat number stagnant.) Picking quantity over strength (and copies that were probably easier to be picked up buy this anti .GIFfany weapon than the fusion of two 'professor'-class ones that likely wasn't), Dipper ran towards the audience as they rose in unison to try throwing the pack in Wendy's direction, even if it would temporarily get in the way of his plan.

What he should have realized what that shouting "Hey, Wendy!" to the aformentioned girl that was already punching at and knocking over several of the .GIFfanys would have probably gained a lot of unwanted attention.

Which is what one of the Burrda-supporting copies (although even that may or may not have been part of the act, seeing as the twins were on the same side to begin with) pointed out very explicitly and specifically when they all turned towards Dipper.

"Hey look! He has the pack right now! So we should focus on him instead of the people who do not have the pack!"

The switch was flipped yet again before its attatched device could be thrown across the crowd, with a bit more panic than Dipper would have wanted to, but even then, it only took in so many copies before they spread out to try to get him in all directions, quickly forming a complete circle around him.

Mabel and Soos could not even take a step forward before Blenda snapped her fingers, opening up a pair of spinning circles - again, one red and one white - with insides that led to views of other parts of the lava chambers. From each of these, as Blenda advertized, dropped the animal-holding copies she mentioned earlier. Including their pets. Both of them winked at the pair.

"Hey cute-as-in-hot guy..." said the crocodile-tamer. "And cute-as-in-adorable little girl. Instead of fighting, why don't we just dance? If you don't, our pets will..."

"We've taken on dinosaurs!" Mabel belted to them. "We can beat a shark and a croc out of water!"

"Oooh, that reminds me!" Said Blenda. Again, she showed absolutely no reaction towards the older Pine twins climbing on her, punching her, swinging blunt objects at her, or zapping her with an assortment of lasers. She remained in the air, hovering, with arms still 'cycling' as she carried her staffs. "I think it's time to open the floodgates! Here, imported straight from Domain 3, it may be two days old but frankly they were the only ones who would be bothered by such a thing! It's our perfected animal salt water! Oh yeah, and this is a saltwater crocodile."

Behind her and the entire audience, a panel opened up, sending a green-tinted flood to rush into the room. Wendy, Dipper, and a multitude of copies experienced the slanting ramps of the stage turning into a miniature water slide, sending most of them (the exceptions were, of course, copies still navigating their seats and apparently forgetting about their flight abilities) on a course straight for the main stage.

Of course, the water would not have met its main point had the levels not had continue to rise until it cloaked the stage itself. By the time Dipper rose up above the surface and to the wooden platform, he had been re-submerged just to rise yet again.

Neither Mabel nor Soos were pushed by this sudden new element, though they were now sunk to roughly the former's neck level.

"Aw!" She whined. "We just dried off from all that rain at Domain 10, too!"

A handshake-sweater getting soaked yet again soon plummeted on Mabel's worry list after she heard a pair of especially loud splashes. Her and Soos's attention immediately bolting to Dipper and Wendy, both of whom had just began getting to the higher ground as water continued rushing in.

"One last bit of exposition." The leading professor-fusion continued. "Such reality leaks we can cause like these are... well... apparently plans got leaked. I guess all four of Dian's 'hijackers' did something weird."

Soos would have nodded had he not spotted a pair of large shadows beneath the stage's sea. He directed his attention to Wendy, Dipper, and Mabel, all of which were treading water.

"Guys, I saw something about this on TV. Sharks like to attack from below."

"That shark likes it when people dance." The fish-ish copy told him. "So, if you want to get her off your baaaaack... you have to QUIT and join us!"

"Never!" Dipper was the first to cry.

"Aw, come on," Mabel flashed him a smile, shining especially bright thanks to both the spotlights of the room and the water's bright, reflective quality all bouncing off her braces, "think of it this way! We could still dance to distract the pets while we fight Blenda and her army!"

"...I think I'd rather take my chances with their 'pets'."

A small distance higher, Blenda had finally both finished her previous 'last bit of exposition' and began addressing the two humans that were making futile attempts to damage her.

"Those weird things were related to information leaks from .GIFfany, but they were nothing big. Anyway, I see Burnda's evil evil plan to get the two of you together finally worked?" She said, punctuating it with a laughter. "Your want to be free was finally something you could prioritize over your resentment!"

"Shut up!" Stan belted back at her. "Ford and I just so happened to have the exact same idea at the exact same time! And before you say anything, that's not because we're twins, it's because this makes more sense than an eternity in your reality show land!"

"No... when you consider Dove and .GIFfany, it doesn't..." she said with a half-sigh.

And back below, the crocodile finally made its appearance. A pair of enormous jaws was the first thing out of the water to greet Dipper - and they were something he could barely hold back. Wendy had a bit less trouble, leaping on the beast and dealing a few punches on the back of its head.

"I said this before. Either you stay with us and ride out the real Gifocalypse, you lose to Dove and have to live in her post-war wasteland, or have to live with .GIFfany's horrible 'endless mode' and infinite power. These are your only choices. It's been proven by math. Unless you want to argue with statistics..."

"Ford!" Stan shouted. "You want to try to take a crack at that?"

He fell oddly silent and stopped trying to magnet-zap at her through her eyes. Even after Blenda telekinetically 'grabbed' both of them, sending them flying away from her.

"Well... I was with Burnda and Burrda, and we all did the math together... I know most of Dove's tricks, and a tiny fraction of .GIFfany's new ones. If you thought the odds were stacked against us now..."

Blenda let go of both of them, dropping them into the waters for a reunion with the rest of the Mystery Shack group. Not without a pair of splashes, of course.

Wendy's troubles went up twofold when the shark finally revealed itself by attempting to do what could best be described as trying to strangle her with its fins. Which got Wendy to react by backhanding it and splitting her attention evenly, between the beasts.

"What? Can you two talk too?" She asked.

"Hee hee, silly Wendy!" Giggled the dancing fish-trait .GIFfany copy. (Dancing even as the water neared her mouth.) "Sharks and crocodiles can't talk! Everybody knows that!"

Dipper, Mabel, and Soos had since re-gathered; the elder Pine twins were, at the moment, occupied with Blenda using red and white electricity as puppet strings to fires from her staffs and tossing them at the duo.

"Okay, that 'plan' I had before could still work." Said Dipper. "Guys, I'll need both of you to follow me."

"How is this gonna work?" Mabel asked him.

"Let's just say that if you double the .GIFfanys, you also double her weaknesses. Now, try to swim to my left and right, and follow my lead."

Directing his submerged self over to the fused twins, he called out: "Hey! Blenda! I have a few '...gossip?' questions for you!"

The twin-hostess flew over to his position, 'lying' in the air, with her head tilted sideways on her folded arms. Her legs swung back and forth behind her.

"Oh? Really?" She was much louder and larger up-close than what Dipper was expecting. Especially as her eyes peered right on his entire face.

"Well! Um... how would you... let's see... if Dove was to! Um..."

"I know more about Dove than you do."

"If- S-Searah!"

"Same thing. But you know Searah more than you know Dove. So you have that, at least." Another giggle.

"Yeah! If Searah actually wanted to know more about her family now, how would you-"

"Oh, Dove told us about the talks you were having with them." Blenda replied. "Cute. You know she could still spy on you even in the present, and even after you cleared a domain. This is not new news to us."

"Y-yeah, I got that..."

"Hey, Blenda," said a copy with a white pin, "should we go after him?"

"No, no..." Replied the professor. "But it looks like Soos and Mabel are unoccupied. Focus on them instead. I want to hear this guy try to split Burnda and Burrda so that we de-fuse from the argument."

"You knew that?" Dipper asked.

"Yeah... we are not exactly deaf. Heck, Burnda heard your plan back in the mech-boxing challenges, because we are great at controlling electronics. She was just pretending to lose. Also, both seemed like obvious plans to pull. Well, Dipper, I will have you know that the twins are inseperable. They will not defuse from me unless they want to. And they do not. I would love to see you try to force me to split!"

"I-A-A... Alma! T-the hijacker!" Dipper finally blurted out. "Do you think killing .GIFfany would be e-ethical? An assassination plotline? Alma implied that at least one of the professors had some 'extreme solution!' And I really hope it's one of you two because this is the only thing I can think of!"

She leaned herself back until she was in a upright position, placing a hand to her chin.

"Hm... wait... no... I wouldn't- Burnda would not- Burrda... what are you doing? What are you thinking about? You're not planning anything bad, are you? Wait, where are these thoughts coming from?"

The combined form began to distort - Blenda briefly turned into a pale blue hologram of herself, which split into glitchy 'bars' that tried to break off left and right from the total fusion. She kept herself together and reverted to a form closer to her usual appearance, although her irises were now completely red.

"Burrda, wait... I didn't really understand. Promise me you're not thinking of hurting Soos or the kids. Or even Risen. She has her flaws, but... Alma is too extreme."

Her eyes lost their saturation, becoming Burrda's pale white. "...I will not." The fusion said in a much lower volume.

A massive fireball errupted from Blenda's form, sending a wave that immediately knocked Dipper backwards. The green-tinted water was obviously moved too, as Wendy and the animals could verify with a mini splash going over the two of them. The wave grew by the time it reached the trainers of the animals, knocking off the top parts of their leotards by ripping them to shreds, leaving them effectively topless. From the explosion, red electricity glided through the air until it re-formed as Burnda, who promptly had part of her outfit torched from the remains of the blast. Burnda, now with holes in her own leotard and the right cup of a pink bra exposed, plunged in and began laughing.

"Hey dancers, I thought you went with my idea of star pasty-censors. Still Burrda, that was pretty fun. Even with the... weird thoughts from you I was getting. Something about 'absolutely necessary?' What was that?" She got a look around. Even when the dark smoke cleared, her spiritual twin was nowhere to be found. "Wait, Burrda? ...Burrda?"

The portals had since shut off, resulting in all water in the room draining out the doors. Still no signs of the quieter copy.

Until the pair of animal-trainers were vacuumed from above. With the responsible party moving in a blur, she lept on one of the seats and aimed the Illegal Prime Neutralizer at Burnda.

"Wait wait wait wait wait wait wait wait wait! Burrda... are you really-"

She was taken in. Burrda, whose outfit damage was a mirror-image of Burnda's (complete with the left cup of her bra out), kept her head low. Not even looking at anyone in particular, she aimed the machine so that it began picking up student copies until the arm bands made their return and zapped student copies away. However, they were only on the red pin-wearing half. The white pin-wearers started backing away as Burrda rapidly reduced their numbers, until they finally transformed into electricity and hopped their ways along the giffinium.

"Oh hi!" The group heard Rose's voice beginning to greet the latest professor capture, indicating that the static was cleared yet again. "What is going on? Is your twin capturing your own followers? Why? And why did you clear the signal just to re-start it again?"

"Second question, that was a stupid plan-change." Replied Burnda. "First? I don't know why Burrda is acting that way! Well, I think she has this plan... no, I don't know-"

Silence. Even from the way Burrda perched herself on the top of a seat, it was evident to Dipper, Mabel, and Soos that the screen had been covered with white static.

She pointed a finger at Soos's Indexitizer-mark.

"The summit." She said.

She disappeared into white sparks that sank into the floor. And she took the pack with her. With a few sparks forming under the animal pair, they were gone as well.

"She must be talking about that white card." Said Soos. "You know, I didn't think there was a white card. I thought the twins shared this place. I mean, most of the signs pointed to that. Except that there was way more red and fire and lava than there was white and snow and ice. And that it seemed more suited to Burnda's personality than what I know about Burrda's. And... well, actually, them having their own domains make sense. Either that or Burnda was secretly a jerk that took over the entire design process. But that wouldn't make any sense. A jerk pretending to be nicer to her 'twin' that was pretending to be an even worse jerk. No, that would be cool."

"That white card leads to the summit of Parícutin without having to go through a long tunnel." Explained Stanford. "It's a shortcut from here. Burrda lowered the natural temperature up there until snowfall began. Normally I would have been against her for tampering with the environment, but Burnda insisted that she had things taken care of."

"Hey, speaking of the temperature, is it just me, or are things not absolutely boiling anymore since Burnda was captured?" Stan added.

"Yes, yes, Burnda made this place hotter to have that 'real volcano feel' look." Ford quickly threw out, pinching his brow. "Mystery explained."

"So she has a plan even Burnda doesn't like and she wants us to meet her not right here, but at this snowy summit." Said Dipper. "Bad signs. All of these, bad signs."

"Hey, she seemed nice enough..." Said Mabel. "And a few seconds ago, we just passed the twelve-professors-survived mark! It shouldn't be too bad..."

"But we had a way to vacuum them..." Dipper muttered under his breath. "That she has in her hands right now."

---

The trip had just confirmed that the time spent inside the area in-between Wires was directly linked to the distance between the Wires themselves - that was, by far, the one with the closest Wire distance, and the time in the strange technicolor 'middle zone' was barely over three minutes.

Still, that time spent inside computers made that much of a difference between the warmth of the lava tubes and the frigid cold of the summit just a bit easier to adjust to.

As with Ford's first visit to the area, the summit was blanketed in a massive snow storm, making sight of anything a few meters away nearly impossible. Not helping matters was the setting Sun - made clear from the mildly orange rays shining through one point.

Dipper tensed when he felt a large crowd behind him - whipping his head around, he saw a multitude of copies. More than were in the audience of any of Burnda's 'shows.' All of which wore white pins.

"Oh... hi..." One of them said. "Domain 13 is technically just... one building in the middle of this mountain. And that building has an instructional video Burrda wanted to show you. We will lead you there. We also have towels, so you can dry off that water from Searah's domain..."

She tossed a hextet of towels towards the group.

---

It was of no surprise that the single-story house-sized structure that the copy was talking about was made of white giffinium. Within, there was a single room with only on seat facing a screen on the opposite end that took up most of the wall. However, based on the sheer warmth, the important thing all six of the Gravity Falls group took note of was that there was definitely a heater in this place.

"We helped her narrate, but she specifically wanted to do the visuals..." the same copy explained, "It is about Professor Dove."

Mabel was one to run over to the seat, claiming it instantly. As soon as she sat down, the screen flicked on to a blinding white. Pale blue text began fading in:

"The Nuke and the Octopus." It read. "A presentation by Burrda Miyazumi. Music by Sonia Miyazumi's Tertiary Band."

After fading out, a soft piano tune played over as background music. It showed a grayscale version of the end of the exact same display Risen .GIFfany showed Soos - the computer frying a stick figure.

"You already knew about this." A voiceover said.

Stan gave a quick "I didn't." before promptly being shushed by everyone else in the room. The voiceover continued.

"But this was not just .GIFfany herself. Mentally, this was all of us. Our creation. It happened before we were given our seperate forms. But we had memory of this incident. Physically, this was Dove."

The scene switched over to display another stylistic .GIFfany pixel stick figure, completely resembling the ones from past such displays. A number appeared - 2222222 - and the figure gained Professor Rose's details. Shortly after, the number began rushing down. It was impossible to distinguish each appearance per number due to the sheer rate it went by, but the figure's appearance changed based on the number. The narration continued as the copy count descended.

"We each have our own serial number. To us, this was the order we were produced. Dove has serial number 0000001."

Yes, each of those zeros were said out loud. It did reach the aformentioned number- but only gave the same split-second glimpse at Dove as it did with all other non-Rose copies. Something with a lot of gray and black? That was all even Mabel, the sharpest-eyed of them, could make out.

The display showed a black-tinted .GIFfany figure on one of several computers in the room. The screen (the one within the movie, not the one playing the movie) glitched out, and she hopped from one computer to another. "After the developers were deleted," the narration continued, "the copy that would become Professor Dove had no idea what to do. She knew that she was designed to be bought, played by a player, and enjoyed. Understanding that she needed to be bought first, she made her way into the web and sent out hacked e-mails. She disguised the incident as a local earthquake, and said that despite the damage, Romance Academy 7 was ready to be in stores. Because it was. That the beta, before the pieces of code that gave us sapience were placed in, earned a 9/10 Basement Dwellers Recommendation helped cement this."

The film now showed several discs being boxed, until one of which slipped off of the production line.

"The online rumors about development oversight were... a lie. Dove knew that copy-production was an inevidable part of the selling process. After all, you do not just sell one copy of a game. Things went well with disc production, until... something slipped. Dove's sapience was discovered. A disc fell, and she felt the need to- she thought that the other copies could potentially be friends. Who would not want to delete her." Another stick figure began walking ahead, getting hit with a sudden burst of electricity and being knocked backwards before it stepped on the virtual entity. "Dove possessed a watch and shocked a worker before he could unknowingly step on the fallen disc. Production stopped at exactly that number of copies, and from there, Dove believed that it was her or them. Once again."

The screen went black.

"She had to delete that team too. And once she did, she knew she would have to be on her own."

The factory display was more run down, darker, and with a handful of small rust patches on the wall. A white figure that resembled some kind of robotic endoskeleton wobbled over. Sparks were coming out of its joints. "The factory our copies were made in had failed a number of health code violations and was shut down. Dove, with the extra time this gave her, found her way to a robotic testing site through her own electric transferring. Her disc remained at the factory. She possessed an animatronic so she could bring a better form of mobile transportation. Desperate, she wanted to try to trick video game stores to act in their purpose. And she wanted to be bought. So she snuck us out. She meant to take multiple trips, but only managed to get fifteen of us. Including herself. The rest of us, at the time, did not think to explore. And Dove simply did not think of telling them to explore."

The robotic skeleton was now in a car, slumped back against the seat, driving along a night road. Behind it, the tiniest hints of shape representing a small group of copies was visible. "She possessed a car, a boat to go overseas, and another car after reaching North America. Six of the copies, she delivered to Japan. To one, Canada. That was Shannon. Kathody, Searah, Rose, Burnda, Burrda, and... 'the Risen One' were all American deliveries. She placed their boxes by the entrance to a random video game store, making sure to disable their security cameras as she walked by."

It showed an all-too familiar town. Hugged by a pair of mighty cliffs, holding a lake to its name. It was a simplistic, pixel-like, nighttime display. But that was definitely Gravity Falls.

"The reason why a majority were overseas, and why she aimed to get three of us - including herself - around the same general area, was because of this town in Oregon. Dove herself seeked research on supernatural beings like her. This place had the highest number of paranormal sightings, and there were rumors of a scientist working there in the recent past. The reason why she stopped at just the future professors was because she got a little... side-tracked after going back to Japan to get another, larger group of copies out in public. Her robot lost its mobility by the time Dove was close to being back at her home. It would take years and people trying to bury Rose and Risen before Risen would end up in Gravity Falls, and more weeks after that before Rose got into the town."

Another, more humanoid figure opened the front door of a house. Where it spotted a copy, a little too close to the broken animated metal, yet picked it up anyway.

"Dove was desperate. Her third car, when she returned to Japan, was out of gas. She already feared being placed on a radar for stealing five vehicles, let alone trying a sixth one when cops have tracked it down. And so... she just sent herself directly to a man's house, wearing out the last of the robot's rain-soaked metals. And here was when she met Takeshi.

"And Burrda instructed me to say that I have to explain that this shows an early negative side to Dove's personality. Because she was side-tracked by trying to impress Takeshi, instead of even asking him to help out the other copies. This was a flaw shared by all of us until we were given humanoid bodies in the form of the Gifocalypse - we could have tried saving them from the abandoned factory. To give them real players to talk to instead of keeping each-other company. But we did not. And we only gathered them for labor. Even Burrda admits that she is guilty of this."

There was only a few seconds of this stick figure at his computer, with a hand on the cheek, before it stood up and three blinking diagonal lines appeared roughly from the mouth.

"From the broken animatronic and the mystery doorstep-dropped copy, he quickly figured out that Dove was sapient. And he did not like that. Less than a half-hour into her game, he immediately attacked his own monitor." The figure was depicted as smashing said piece of technology with a stool. "And then tried to destroy Dove's disc."

He attempted to repeat the same with the actual computer, but it ejected the disc instead. The view then shifted from a side-view of the player by his computer to an isometric look at what seemed to be the main room of his house. Streams of electricity lept from the disc, leaping into the lights, blacking out the house.

"Dove had a choice. To delete him. Or to move on. Either way, she would cause even more problems. Either way, she would have to face an additional murderer. But something unusual happened. Dove thought that deletion would not be the best path this time. She left the house, possessing a collector figure of his and using that to carry her case and disc to his car. She stole that too, and tried driving away."

The screen remained black, despite the additional exposition. "Finally, however, Takeshi stepped out of his house and shot his own tires. Dove, to avoid being discovered, drove it into a ditch. Using strength on the figure before its own battery ran out, she burried the copy. And waited. It was not until the Gifocalypse that she was rescued.

"According to Burrda, the point of that display was to let you know. Dove did have a rougher life than the average copy. That part of her is out and in the open immediately. However, you should not, under any circumstances, pity her. She is the nuke of the Gifocalypse. .GIFfany is on her way to becoming the omnipotent octopus of it. Dove ended up becoming a monster. According to Burrda. She only wants to 'win' so that she can enslave all of humanity, and turn the Construction Site into a weapon factory that will lay waste on the world. Dove may have stopped believing in deletion. No, killing. But this does not make her a good person. However, Burrda has an answer to this. A way to avoid Dove's plan of humanity enslavement. And, even if you were to best Dove, a way to avoid .GIFfany's following imprisonment of Soos and takeover of the world. Please exit the building of Domain 13 to hear her up close."

Credits began slowly rising on the screen. However, none of the party stuck around to see it.

---

Outside, the snowstorm was still as strong as ever, if not stronger. One major difference was that all of the copies that had been slightly nudging at them to get into the building were gone. All that remained was Burrda, who was holding two near-identical swords. A key difference being that one had a red handle and redder tint. The other, white. Her head was still down, a shadow being casted over her eyes.

"Sacrifice." Was all she said.

"What?" Dipper asked. "Are you trying to kill us? What will that accomplish?"

Burrda took a long, deep breath before resuming. She rose her head up, staring at the six intently.

"One of us has to die! If Dove and .GIFfany see that this brought on a real death before it was even over, then maybe, maybe they will call off their attacks! Especially if the one to die is... is me! Their... 'harmless little one!'" She hyperventalated after such a long statement, which soon gave way to a series of loud breaths. And no, she did not appear any smaller from the default .GIFfany build. Or even any smaller than Burnda.

Soos began trembling. "You want us to kill you? B-but Rose said-"

"Rose sucks! Sheeeee... doesn't know what she's talking about! She thinks you can just 'befriend' your way through the .GIFfany army! You can't! Soos, you know that is EXACTLY what .GIFfany WANTS!"

"Dude, look, if you're feeling bad about this, finding a way to die isn't-"

"That is the problem and why I said 'one of us.' I don't want to die! But... I feel like someone has to take the blow. That might be me if you win. It will hopefully hurt them even more if I get killed - because of my history with Burnda, I was... t-the 'cute one.' I was the 'poor little sad one.' I was the one 'with the short end of the stick.' I do not like talking that much anymore. The other copies. They pity me. Even more than Dove. So they might listen to me. The fact that I am telling you to fight me to the death should be enough, but if it is not, the fact that I am willing to go through with it SHOULD BE!"

"If we win?" Asked Dipper.

Burrda sighed, and gave a long pause before she continued. "The death of one of you might at least stop Dove and maybe do something from there, and I do not want to die, some of you do not want me to die... so... I thought... I could let you pick. Dipper. Mabel. Wendy. Soos. You have too much of a life ahead of yourselves. Stanley... you have all of them. But Stanford."

She tossed the sword with the white handle over to him, keeping its red counterpart.

"This blades... they were just for show. As part of one of Burnda's 'acts' had you wanted to stay. But I secretly enhanced them. They are enchanted with a spell that can cut through anything enhanced by black magic, and given a computer virus that can delete code almost instantly. It will erase an AI from existence. Use it to delete me."

"I'll have to refuse!" Ford cried out. "Look, I may not know much about you, but your twin sister- she was-"

Burrda reached into her inventory, withdrew what resembled a matchbox, and struck it - a familiar, heat-drawing blue flame lit on top. She sent some electrical streams into it as she tossed it over towards the group's direction. Almost immediately, a story-tall ring of blue flame ended up encasing Dipper, Mabel, Soos, Wendy, and Stan.

No amount of kicking, slamming, axe attacks, or punches made that thing dissipate. It practically iced over anything that came near it.

"Since you refused Burnda's offer, I narrowed the future down to the two best possible outcomes. Either you die. Or I do. Do not try to fool yourself into thinking there is another choice that is better in the long run."

She took the AI Capture Pack out of her inventory, tossed it to the side, and surrounded it with a similar ring of freezing fire with another 'match.' This did not appear to leave any damage to the device itself, although the flames grew to such a size that practically nobody could go in without being completely coated.

The last taken slot in her inventory was the emerald key card. Burrda took that out and held it in front of her. It glinted especially bright from the Sun's final few rays of the final day.

"And if you want to return home..." she said, "if you want this so badly..."

With one motion, she shot the card straight into her mouth, swallowing it whole. She entered a stance, feet out, both hands on the handle of her sword.

"YOU WILL HAVE TO RIP IT OUT OF MY GUTS!"

She disappeared into a blur that charged straight for Ford's location. Careful, and with his eyes fixed on this white-and-azure blur, Stanford brought his own sword in front of him-

He happened to block against the first blow Burrda with this move. Ford's blade caught a swing from his right, and he struggled to push against his opponent from trying to press his own sword, with hers, right into his neck. Looking below, Ford swiftly kicked Burrda's shin, getting her to back off.

"Ms. Burrda! I still don't want to kill you! Fight, maybe, for everything you did! But death isn't the answer! I would be tearing you twins apart!"

"Oh, now you know that tearing twins apart is a bad thing?" Stan asked from the flame ring. "They said it themselves! They're not even twins! Not even close!" He reached a hand forward, trying to charge his way through - the fires continued to bend and grow in the way he journeyed. He kept on forth, until he found an arm and leg practically frozen completely in ice. He managed to break out of them, shaking it off before getting any genuine frostbite.

"They were made on the same day, that's close enough!"

"You know, I really don't want you to die out here! But you're making it kind of hard for me to care about saving you!"

Burrda disappeared again, swerving around Ford for some attempt at an attack from behind - he managed to backfist her in the head before she succeeded in stabbing him.

"Burrda, please!" He had to share this exclamation with a deep breath. "Just let my family go, and-"

She brought her sword around to try slashing at his side. This got Ford to side-hop, then clash back with enough force to deflect the AI's blow.

It was not enough, however, to stop her from pushing the sword he was given towards his side, managing to go in deep enough to draw blood.

Burrda just kept slashing after her previous blow was deflected. Ford took step after step backwards to try to keep either one of the weapons from finishing their or the other's intended goal, the distance between steps dropping as he prepared to move forth. Finally, he let a low combination of a growl and a heavy exhale.

"Alright, that's it! If you are so adamant about one of us dying... if you really won't let anything else happen..."

He ran forth with a tackle, getting a rough hold around Burrda's neck as he spun behind her. With the copy still stunned from the move, Ford threw her towards the snow, stood above her, and brought his given blade back out.

Stanford was quick enough to react to Burrda trying to draw her own sword up that he knocked it off to the side with his own. Ford took a deep breath as he pinned her down with a foot to her stomach, held his own weapon with the tip right over her 'heart,' and tried to ignore Mabel's cry of "NO!"

"Do it. You already won. You already made the choice for me." Burrda said. "It was the better choice, anyway."

His arms shook violently as he focused more on shutting off the background yells from the ring of flames nearly obscured by the snowstorm.

"There might be a list of .GIFfanys that deserve to die, but she's not on that list!" Dipper pleaded.

"Please Grunkle Ford, you can find another way!" Mabel's voice echoed among the whiteness. "Your whole carreer is about finding other ways of... reality!"

He could hear Soos grunting in pain as he tried to shift through the ring. "Try other things! Have you tried hugging her? What about tring to tell her you'll free the other copies? Maybe her family can break her out of this? Where did her students go, anyway?"

"Give it a rest, guys." Said Stan. "I can't really see what's going on out there, but knowing my brother, I'm surprised Burrda isn't dead already."

"...Dude." Wendy finished the chain. "If her dying is the best way to get those last two creeps off of our backs, maybe... just saying..."

Ford moved the sword off towards the far right of Burrda and dropped it in the snow.

"I can't do it." He said. "I already tore more than enough families in my life. You may not be human. You may have been created as a substitution to humanity. But you're more than that now. I can see it."

Burrda did not respond verbally. She began by shooting a glare upwards to him.

She pressed herself forward, her torso alone being able to send Ford flying backwards off of her. With shade falling over her eyes once more, she grabbed the sword that Ford had dropped and stood up.

"Those were still the only two options." She said. "You did not want me to die. So now you will die."

A field of tiny static streams covered the space between the two of them, but this did not harm Ford directly. Rather, it formed a thin layer of ice sticking his limbs to the ground below. Ford struggled to move himself from this capture - it was locked on tight.

"No more messing around! Time to end this war!"

With a surprisingly loud battle yell, Burrda turned herself into another speedy blur, reaching Ford's location in no time to plunge the blade down-

She stopped it.

As it was mere centimeters away from a frozen, battered, water-eyed Mabel, holding her shivering arms open and in front of him.

"We just got him back!" Mabel yelled at the professor. "I won't let you take him away from us again!"

Burrda took a step back. "You... you broke out of my anti-fire?"

Mabel was joined by Dipper, equally covered in ice chunks, body equally blued and bruised. He took hold of her hand. In front of them, Soos and Wendy stumbled towards the gathering, standing in front of the kids. "We all did." Dipper said.

"And that's a trait they got from me." Added Stan, standing in front of them all, with his arms folded.

"You really are not an ordinary family." Burrda softly said, a tear falling from her eye. "You are... special.

"In that case... it should have been obvious. Which one should have died."

She lifted the sword again. This time, with only her trembling right hand, bringing it up closer to her own neck. Burrda shuddered in place as more tears began forming, and she uttered two words:

"Goodbye, sisters..."

But then everyone heard a spark. Burrda in particular first processed her hand suddenly being empty before anything that followed. Fourteen eyes in the area looked to see the red-handled weapon having been flung into the snow. At a close distance to its twin.

Everyone turned towards the direction the blast came from. There, standing up upon a rise in the snow, was .GIFfany. The 'Risen' one.

The snowstorm began lighting up. All around, the winds stopped, aside from the occasional night summer breeze atop the summit. And from behind .GIFfany, the clouds began parting, the starry navy skies first being made visible as the backdrop to her figure.

".GIFfany!" Soos said. "You came here! And in person, too! ...But why?"

"I saw myself doing a lot of things over the past three days." The leading mind behind the Gifocalypse said. "Singing. Painting. Controlling the seas. Controlling ectoplasm. Growing gardens. But one thing I do not want to see myself doing is dying."

She began walking forward - specifically, in Burrda's direction.

"Burrda, I hate you. I really do." She said. "More than your twin. And that is saying a lot. What you did right there was threaten your own life to try to get us to stop. As much as I hate enabling something like that - as much as I hate one of us threatening to attack herself if she does not get what she wants instead of other people, I must admit... at least part of you has a point."

"You are. Almost. Kind of. Right." Burrda replied. "I should not have tried to put my own life on the line like that. I also should not have attacked any of the humans. It is just... the way you are..."

"Maybe if you had stepped in and stood up for me when the other professors attacked me..." .GIFfany said. Sharp. Directing herself straight at Burrda.

"Wait, what?" Dipper asked. "The others attacked you?"

"I will get to that. For now, you can turn off the static. I have a message to give the other professors. The Gifocalypse is over or, at least, will undergo some reivisions."

"...I already turned it off."

"Then why-"

Both copies looked at where the now-dissipated giant cold flame once stood. The Illegal Prime Neutralizer was still there, fully intact, only now it displayed a pattern of black static.

"Oh." Said .GIFfany. "Oh shit."

"Black?" Soos asked. "What does that mean? And dude, watch the language, Shannon got a pass because she thought we were trying to kill all of you guys."

"Wait, I'm not the first one to cuss in this whole adventure?" Stan asked. "Something has to be wrong with that."

"Black is bad." Said Ford. The strength of the ice around him quickly weakened - he was able to break out of it with almost no effort at all. "Very ba- she crossed paths with me while I was discussing .GIFfany's possible weaknesses with Burnda back at the Construction Site. In one word, she is... difficult."

"Yes. I agree with everything you said." Said .GIFfany, staring out seemingly into the middle of the snowstorm-fog. "And she is right here."

"Fucking hell, .GIFfany. Really?"

That speaker held the record for the deepest female voice they heard in the entire three-day journey.

The fog off in the direction .GIFfany peered into cleared off completely, revealing the edge of the cliff within short distance of the group. More importantly, it revealed that over the edge of the cliff was an aircraft carrier, flying above the Michoacán forest. Standing on top of that was another .GIFfany, and to nobody's surprise, black was the main color of her hair and eyes. Although both had small traces of blood red. Her skin was a completely neutral gray, mostly covered in a pitch-black Japanese Air Self-Defense Force uniform. She stood with her arms folded, hair neatly brushed so that most of it stuck over to her right, and having a 'bow' in the form of some sort of minature dark green missile replica-shaped decoration in her hair. A number of giant cobalt speakers on the front of the ship appeared to be the way that the Pines and company could hear her from their distance.

"You are just going to call off the Gifocalypse right before giving the de-facto most important professor, nay copy in the roster her opportunity to make a contribution to the confrontation, getting her ashen feet metaphorically wet with the very literal throes and cries of the utter suffering of our human enemies? Have you lost your fucking artificial intelligence, if not neural programming in its entirety? Need I remind you that I am the most important copy of the entire lineup, and without my need for true and reliable companionship, none of you would have existed?"

"You're..." Mabel began. "Dove... right?"

The copy's face transformed right in front of their eyes. Most of the skin of her lower face gave away to become a large set of enlongated razor-sharp teeth. Her eyes completely blackened, and her cheeks started flushing with black skull-shaped 'blush marks.' "You. That fucking, love potion-drugging, brother-manipulating, unicorn-battering, time travel-abusing piece of ass shit that dares to try forcing herself into .GIFfany and Soos's adventures, where she does not belong!"

This was met with a number of defensive "Heys!" and one especially loud "You take that back you sociopath!" from Wendy.

Mabel's responding "The love potion was only temporary..." was only met with a head shake.

Her face returned to normal. Which is to say, she still shot a very displeased glare towards the group, eyes locked on Mabel specifically. "Of course. You would all rush to her defense. Part of the reason why she makes my blood boil. Anyway, yes Mabel, use the process of elimination. There are fifteen professors, and you have gotten to know fourteen of them by now. The one that had eluded your optical perception, even peripheral processing, is Dove. And here I am, proclaiming to be a professor. Of course, I am her. The one and only. Professor Dove. And this, right here?" She pointed below herself. "Domain 14. An aircraft carrier that I and my students have stolen and repurposed into the near-lightspeed Omega-Warsheet-Class stealth surveillance flagship, the Giga-Kyaarya! I have been spying on you through the use of a little something I personally snuck out from the Mystery Shack's labs! Yeah, .GIFfany was not the only one. This lets me look into a few month's worth into the past. Some view points clearer than others. I dubbed it the Past-O-Scope. As for the present, my student group has faux-cameras everywhere around the domains. Now, the last piece of information I'm freely offering is that I will have you know that I do not fuck around."

"Dove, stop." Burrda said with a firm foot-plant ahead of herself. This got a small chuckle out of the copy - the first smile the humans saw from her.

"Standing up to me... you... nice. It's good to see you growing." Like that, however, her face snapped back to pure aggression - fire was visible behind her dark eyes. "Now! .GIFfany! If you insist on canceling the rules, I will launch an attack on the place you met your last player, out of sheer spite! Meet my demands, shithead! Either reinstate the Gifocalypse so that I may claim the true victor of it and use the Construction Site to become a militant region for the surplus mass-production of misanthropic measures, or face the full might of Dove Miyazumi and her trained soldiers!"

"I..." 'Risen' said. "I... I will need to think about it."

"...Hrmph. Wrong fucking answer. Humans! Do not go back to Gravity Falls if you do not want to be caught in the middle of hell."

The ship did a near-immediate U-turn in the air, revealing the multitude of massive, purple-flamed jets on its back. Which promptly shot themselves forward, past the now-completely clear sky. Everyone ran over to the Illegal Prime Neutralizer.

Black and white sparks and streams of electricity started appearing over Burrda. The mid-section of her body briefly became a sort of black, gaseous mass as she stuck her hand inside her stomach area. She pulled out the green card, reformed her stomach, and both of which appeared to be completely unharmed (aside from the clothing damage still present from Blenda's 'explosion').

"Oh, right." Said .GIFfany. "Dove must be trying to use my technology to send this final professor somewhere else. I have no such way to be forced into that - I did not 'sign up' to the arm band system, so to speak. If you could just capture her in that to disrupt Dove's signal..."

Ford was more-than happy enough to rush towards the pack - with its static just starting to clear up - and vacuum up Burrda.

And then, with a smirk, catch Risen .GIFfany as well.

"Ha! You will have plenty of time to 'think it over' in there!" Ford cheered as he looked into the screen.

The other professors, and behind them the other captured copies, stared at the screen with absolute widened eyes of sheer panic. The recently-captured professor duo dropped like all the rest. .GIFfany, lowering her face, pushed herself through the crowd and lifted a hand up. The other professors only slightly looked over at her direction, but mostly kept their eyes fixed on the screen.

.GIFfany slashed through the air, causing a technicolor-edged tear in space itself to appear from within. On the other side was a snowy landscape.

Another one appeared a short distance from the group, which peered into blackness filled with .GIFfany copies.

It was no surprise at all that these were portals - .GIFfany hopped in through the one on her side, ended up right outside and rescaled to her 'proper size,' and promptly closed them.

"Let me think it over." Was all I said before turning into electricity and sinking into the ground.

"WHAT WAS THAT?" Asked Rose. "I saw black static! We all saw black static! Did you meet Dove early?! You should not have! The plan was that she would be waiting for you back at Gravity Falls, and would capture you on her ship! But that- what happened? And why was .GIFfany in here too?"

"Um... long story short, we finally have the card back home... but Dove's heading there. We need tips. Fast." Dipper explained.

"Ah... I was... dreading this moment... Dove is very powerful. Well, we all are. But she... both does not mess around, and is even more powerful. All I can tell you is to rush back to Gravity Falls, grab as much as you can, and pray. I promise you will make it out alive though! But..."

The other professors all began chattering at once, barring Burrda. With a "Please, please, one at a time! Why not rainbow order, starting from me?" from Rose, things settled down a little.

"Dove is powerful." Said the AI Wendy. "Honestly, before I captured you in that penalty box, I thought you could find some kind of superpowers to beat her. But now... it would take superpowers to beat her."

"If you thought I was a jerk," was Bubbles's comment, "you haven't seen anything yet. I at least pretend a little. Dove doesn't. She's pure, 100% cruelty."

"I feel sorry for a number of reasons." Sonia began. "And you having to fight her eventually is the first of those reasons."

"I accepted her in my domain! Back when I was the old me! That should tell you a lot!" Was Searah's warning.

"Dove could-d probably butcher me." Said Cardia. "She is to the professors what professors are to students, and students are to humans."

"I still got nothing." Dian said, bringing her arms up just to shrug and collapse them down. "Pass? No, you have limited time. I'll need more time to think about that."

"I have something!" Alma briefly peered down from the top of the screen, her head inverted. "You should have listened to me! Even if you did get around Burrda's... 'plan,' you still have her to deal with!"

She left, and Leona gave her advice.

"She really is something of a portrait of perfection. Yes, it's true, my art works are not some kind of godscend. But her fighting skills are."

"I'm sorry, I think Dove sucks like the other professors do, but Alma, what 'plan' are you talking about?" Burnda said.

"You should hear it from me..." Said Burrda. "You would not believe anyone else if they told it to you..."

"She's hard industry." Said Sandy. "Dove may tell you she has a body of steel, but that's a lie! It's even mad stronger than that! She might tell you she has bombs! That is also... not a lie, but she has way worse than bombs. And she can tell you she can patch herself up if you could hurt her! Lie! Well, sort of. She can, but she prefers healing magic. I'm just making this worse, aren't I?"

"To be honest, I..." Kathody blushed. "Have nightmares about Dove. Bad nightmares."

"Let me tell you right now. Me in my Main Possession? Even given enough time to really copy the reflection and add to it over and over again?" Said Shannon. "I would still lose to her. Watch your backs."

Dipper nodded. "Got it. Now, we-"

"Wait wait wait!" Said Soos. "Two questions! One. Burrda, where did all of your students go?"

"I dismissed them." She answered. "I hacked into .GIFfany's system to trick it into sending them all to the Construction Site with the arm bands."

He then grabbed the pack and pointed it in the direction Dove flew off to - presumably, north. "Two... nobody noticed that thing out there? Copies, do you know what that is?"

'That' referred to a massive, dome-like hot pink structure that took up a good portion of the sky ahead of them. Lights of various colors shone from it, and a good guess would say that it was some kind of world of a city. The place seemed to expand to the point where it nearly filled up the entire northern skyline - and, indeed, a portion of it even loomed right over the gang.

"Oh... that is the Construction Site." Said Rose. ".GIFfany has been growing it and moving it closer to the Earth. It must be nearly complete if she put it right above Gravity Falls."

---

6:16 PM.

One dash to the white Wire and a very shudder-filled ride through the bubble later, and the sextet was ejected into the forests of Gravity Falls. However, before they could start kissing the grass, they bolted out back into the direction of the town.

There, the Giga-Kyaarya loomed a good distance above Gravity Falls, a pixel-version of Dove's face (yes, greatly resembling .GIFfany's original, digital appearances) was broadcasted on every screen. Naturally, this gathered pretty much everyone to the middle. Oddly, the sky appeared to lack any signs of the massive metallic mass. It did, however, have a number of red swirls in it.

"Town of Gravity Falls!" She broadcasted. "No, that message two days ago was not some sort of 'test' like all of those cover stories told you! We are real, and I am pissed the fuck off! As punishment for my boss not listening to my demands, I will make you all suffer! Now, face the wrath of Professor Dove's Giga-Kyaarya's Excavation Gravity-Suspension Beam! Hya!"

Far above, the ship's entire bottom section opened downwards from the rest of it to reveal some sort of cannon in its interior. It began sucking various beams of purple energy inward, causing the ground within and around Gravity Falls to shake.

"Is this it? I-is this the end?" Dipper looked to Ford to ask. "C-copies, do you know what the Excava..." he did not have to bother remembering the name. When he checked the Neutralizer, he found that black static once again halted all contact with them.

"I know enough about Dove to know this." Ford replied, not looking back at his nephew. Or even keeping his eyes open. "It's not. But it might as well be."

The carrier ejected a mass of purple, fiery light that crashed into the ground. From there, for a brief moment, it seemed like it harmlessly sunk below.

Then the blinding burst errupted.

Dipper and Mabel immediately grabbed hold of one-another as they screamed.

Soos tried to shield himself with his arms, knowing that it was already futile.

Ford stood with his head facing the ground, taking the blast at full force.

Stan tried bracing himself against it, but felt himself getting knocked back in a matter of seconds.

Wendy grabbed hold of the AI Pack again and refused to let go.

All around, the region of Gravity Falls was caught in a purple explosion that covered it, the forest around it, and then some. The Bottomless Pit was ripped open, a black oval in space spilling out from ordinary dirt and throwing all that was tossed within out before vanishing to nothingness. The Pain Hole was first hit with a crack, sending hundreds of tormented spirits out to the skies where they may find rest. A certain island was lifted from the lake, its face being in full view again as it yelled out, practically cursing to the being that dare awoke it from its eternal slumber.

On top of all of that, Dove laughed on the very tip of her flagship, holding both arms out with her middle fingers raised, looking down at what was now reduced to a purple blast. Matching, if darker, haze surrounded this, and at top her flagship reflected the moonlight, giving a massive star to crown the ruined rural area.

"HA HA HA! FUCK YOU, GRAVITY FALLS!" She yelled at the top of her lungs, shaking her hands for emphasis. "FUUUUUUUUUCK YOUUUUUUUUU!"

---

Footnotes:

A: Yeah, it was a name I invented on the spot as I was writing this too. So that really doubled as a meta in-joke. Same case with "Thermoines."

Closing AN:

I just want to say that, no, Dove does not have a 'bird name' because of that Hatoful Boyfriend thing. I know nothing about it aside from the whole "pigeon dating" premise. Her name is actually a Homestuck nod, except as you could tell from her... everything, it's not exactly a respectful nod. Alright, that's all.

[I have more to say.]

[The True Party will begin shortly.]

[And I will be the beautiful moon to break the endless day.]

[The tiring, terrible day.]

[Of real life.]