Unsurprisingly, Stan knew far more about the festivals of Gravity Falls than Ford did. He rather suspected that that would be true even if he didn't have thirty years of experience with them.

"I don't understand," Ford told him. "Why does Gravity Falls have a festival where they all build as many storm troopers as they can?"

"Because it looks fucking amazing," Stan said. "And the mayor really liked that movie. And I actually want to catch the end of that once we're done here."

"It might give us an alibi," Ford said slowly, nodding.

"But you know that that has nothing to do with why I want to go, right?" Stan asked.

"Yeah, that was pretty clear. Not so clear is why the Society of the Blind Eye seems to be meeting in the Gravity Falls history museum."

Stan shrugged. "I don't know. But this place is weird and creepy and not at all romanticizing the past so they probably don't get many visitors. Plus, I mean, who even cares about Gravity Falls history? Certainly not the locals and tourists are more interested in, say, getting a quick meal or seeing a three-headed cat than looking at the local lore. Though, really, if I had to pick a history museum for a small town Gravity Falls would be far more interesting than any other place."

"We're not setting up a tourist trap in my house," Ford informed him.

Stan held up his hands innocently. "I didn't say anything!"

"Just reminding you," Ford said.

"If I were a secret entrance, where would I be?" Stan said, looking around.

"Oh, don't say that," Ford said. "It's inane. In all probability, there has never been a sentient secret entrance and if there was one you wouldn't know how it thinks. And chances are it wouldn't have had a say where it was put, either. You'd have to ask yourself if you were hiding a secret entrance, where would you put it. And you would also need some sort of knowledge of the architecture of the building to see where the best spot for that would be, too."

"You are so much fun sometimes, you know that?"

Eventually, they made it to a creepy room filled with nothing but eyes.

"Yeah, I don't need to be here," Stan said, turning to go.

"Wait," Ford said, grabbing his arm. "Is it just me or are all the eyes pointing in the same direction?"

"It's just you," Stan replied. "On account of the fact I don't like looking at creepy eyes."

"Well, just hold on a minute," Ford said. He walked forward. "It looks like it's pointing to…I've seen this symbol before. I'm pretty sure it's associated with the society." He paused. "I'm going to press it."

Stan turned around, trying to ignore all the eyes taunting him. At least they weren't really pointed towards him, Ford was right about that. "Are you crazy? You can't just press it. That's just asking for some sort of trap to activate and kill us all."

Ford paid no attention and pressed the icon.

There was a noise and they both turned towards it in time to see the fireplace, which was actively burning, slide aside to reveal a secret passage.

Ford's eyes lit up. "I love secret passages."

"We are both going to die," Stan complained.

"Hey, weren't you the one who wanted me to come on an adventure with you?"

"Yeah but that was before I realized that you actively court death," Stan grumbled.

Ford chuckled. "Don't be silly, Stan. I'm not Thanos."

"Let's just pretend that makes sense," Stan said, rolling his eyes.

They carefully crept down the hidden passageway. Just because everyone in town should be at the festival didn't necessarily mean that they were. They pulled back a red curtain with the eye symbol on it to find what sort of looked like a stereotypical dungeon with everything made of stone.

There was some sort of weird dentist chair in the middle of it.

"Restraints," Ford said disgustedly. "Why are there restraints if this is so fucking voluntary, Fiddleford?"

"I hope the guns are in this chest," Stan said. "It's not even locked."

He popped it open and took out a gun.

"Excellent. With this we can try and figure out how this works and recalibrate it so we can hit multiple targets at once and take out the entire society," Ford said, pleased.

"And we'll need to work as fast as we can – and by we, I really mean you, this is your area – before the society misses this," Stan said. "I don't know about anyone else but Fiddleford will definitely suspect our involvement since nobody else knows about these things."

"Honestly, I don't know if he told the rest of the society about me," Ford said. "It was just him when he came after me. I guess it was a little personal. He confronted me in my home; he never dragged me down here."

Stan thought about it. "Personal might be good. Personal might mean he still cares and we have a way to get through to him without trying to erase his memory. I mean, fuck all these other people happy to play god with people's memories but I can't even imagine the kind of things Fiddleford's seen. I'm convinced that he, at least, just wants to help."

Ford sighed, looking suddenly older. "That's how it always goes, doesn't it? The most damage is done by the ones who only want to help."

Stan knew what he meant. Just the same…

"And then there's Bill who causes the most damage of all who I'm pretty sure is just a dick."

It took Ford three days before he was confident that he understood exactly how the memory gun would work and could recalibrate it to work on multiple people but not on Stan. Stan thought he was taking far longer than he actually needed to given that he remembered Ford managing to recalibrate it in about two minutes once after getting less time to study it. But that was in 2012 after Ford had picked up on all sorts of things in other dimensions.

They waited another week to actually go after the cult because the perfect opportunity had dropped into their lap.

Tate was apparently in his school play or something ridiculous like that and Fiddleford was driving down to go watch it and then staying a few days. That gave them a guarantee he wouldn't be present and then a few days before what happened was discovered.

The next step was to have a hapless townsperson see something and alert the society to this fact. Stan still wasn't entirely sure how they even knew when to show up but they did and often enough. And if their first attempt didn't work, they had a few days they could hang around waiting for the society.

He and Ford had argued about whether it was really necessary to involve an innocent townsperson in this and risk having their memory erased (as well as whatever might happen to them with a forced encounter with typical Gravity Falls weirdness) and ultimately decided it was the only way to be sure the entire society would be there at once.

There were eight of them excluding Fiddleford. Blind Ivan (who was now going by Jeffrey Cannuck and had far less tattoos) and that weird woodpecker guy (whose name he should really figure out since no one understood why he kept calling him that as he did not appear to have developed his woodpecker thing yet or at least was deeply in the closet) were the only two who he knew were still members when Dipper and Mabel had destroyed the society. If not all of them showed up they could pick off the last one or two individually but it really was best to try and hit them all at once so there was no way they could figure out what was happening before it was too late.

They could have chosen anyone to be the bait. Ford literally couldn't have cared less and still knew appallingly little about the people in town and so it was up to Stan.

He chose Bud Gleeful. He couldn't resist. He really hated that guy and he hated Gideon more but he didn't exist yet so he had to make do with what he had. It was like how Dipper always chose Robbie for that kind of stuff. And he'd be fine. Probably.

Then they just had to tell the gnomes that Bud was actually a beautiful princess looking for a kingdom to marry into and give them direction to his house that led past the shop of one of the members and they were set. Gnomes were stupid.

When the society showed up, Bud had the situation well in hand. He was busy picking up the gnomes with a shovel and tossing them away. They tried to stagger back to him but they kept getting dizzy and disoriented and falling down.

"Remarkable," Ford muttered, scrawling furiously in his journal. "Shovels. Why didn't I ever think of that?"

"Probably because you were looking for real weaknesses like 'can't be out in sunlight' or something, not just 'these people are tiny and easily kicked' or whatever."

"Kicking!" Ford continued to write.

"Yeah, yeah, and leaf blowers," Stan said. "Keep it down, will you? Hey, uh, are you really not bothered that Bud Gleeful of all people managed to figure out how to beat gnomes when you didn't?"

"Why would I be?" Ford asked, looking confused. "I didn't get mad at you because you figured out how to beat the unicorns and I didn't. I was mad at myself for falling for their scam, sure, but not at you."

"Yeah but, even if that was when I first got here, I'd like to think me figuring something out that you didn't isn't as bad as Bud Gleeful doing it."

"I have to admit, Stanley, I don't quite understand what your issue with this man is. He seems like a perfectly normal person."

Stan shrugged. "I can just sense that he'll be a terrible parent and husband and have evil offspring is all."

Ford rolled his eyes. "Oh, if that's all. But no, it doesn't bother me that other people can figure out things that I haven't. Why would it?"

"Because you're the Author of the Journals."

"I really don't understand why you keep saying it like that or making it out like it's something big," Ford said.

"Never mind," Stan said. "But you're the one who has spent six years studying this stuff. Bud is an idiot and I arrived here a few weeks ago."

"Yes but the way I see it, I'm a sort of pioneer. Not to sound vain, but look at Sigmund Freud. How many of his theories haven't been discounted or modified in some way? Does that take away from his brilliance or his importance? When you're the first there will always be things that you get wrong. When you're the first, there will always be holes in your research that other people can come along and find the answers for. I figure out five things and miss one and then maybe you see one question to be answered and can answer it. I'm just glad that the questions are getting solved."

"You are such a nerd."

Ford just rolled his eyes again. "Okay, let's go."

The society, all dressed in those really creepy death cult robes, had chased the gnomes away and were in the process of kidnapping Bud.

"I don't know," Stan said suddenly. "Should we wait until they get him back there?"

"What do you mean?" Ford asked. "That was the plan. I see no reason not to stick with the plan."

"Yeah except we have the gun ready now. Why follow them all the way back and risk getting caught when we can just point and shoot now? And this way we have less of a story we need to concoct if we don't have to explain what that room is. And they won't be able to go back to investigate. I mean, yeah, Bud is in the blast radius but he might be anyway and if we erase 'the Society of the Blind Eye' he doesn't know anything about it so he won't forget anything. Or…he might forget that he's being kidnapped, I guess, if he makes the connection or if the gun doesn't require him to make that connection."

"Or…we could just do that," Ford said, nodding. "Right." He stood up and pointed his gun at them.

They had argued over who got to shoot them. Stan had lost that fight.

"What's-" one of the members started to say.

Ford pulled the trigger and a blue-white light enveloped the society and Bud.

"Okay, what's going on now?" Bud complained. "I get attacked by all these little men who want to marry me and think they know my gender better than I do, which is just rude, and then these weirdos try to kidnap me and now you shoot me with some weird light thing?"

"I guess that answers that question," Stan muttered.

"I'm, uh, testing a scientific thing," Ford said, clearing his throat loudly. "Does having a bright light shined in your face make you feel less depressed?"

"I wasn't depressed to begin with," Bud said. "Just confused. And annoyed."

"I feel less depressed," one woman said.

Three other society members agreed that they did, as well.

Gravity Falls. You had to love it.

Ford looked pointedly at Stan, apparently having felt he had done his part when it came to giving them a cover story. That was fine. Stan was better at this sort of thing anyway.

"Oh man, your face!" he said, laughing wildly. "Man, why didn't I bring a camera? This needed pictures!"

"What needed pictures?" Bud demanded. "I was being kidnapped."

"Nah, don't be ridiculous. We just were drinking a lot and we decided, hey let's do something fun! And, really, it was either dress up in creepy robes and pretend to kidnap someone or cow-tipping and, I mean, come on. Standards."

"I don't feel drunk," Blind Ivan said.

Stan just shrugged. "It's the shock of being accused of trying to kidnap someone. That's a felony, right? Sobers you right up."

Ford stepped forward again. "I will also need to look into if my depression lessener can have an effect on a person's blood alcohol level."

"I don't remember drinking," the not-woodpecker guy said.

Stan rolled his eyes pointedly. "Might that be because of how drunk you got? I mean, really. What do you remember?"

"Um, well…I was going out somewhere," he said.

"To go drinking. Which we did. And I've never kind of kidnapped a person before but of course we couldn't actually take him because that would be illegal. Now, I need my robes back," Stan said. "Nobody ask where or why I got them. I've seen things."

Everyone took off their robes and were fortunately wearing something under them.

"So, wait," another one of the members said. "Was he out drinking with us?" She nodded at Ford.

"No, no," Stan said. "He was wandering around testing his invention, remember? He doesn't believe in having fun."

"That's overstating it a little," Ford said. "I don't hold with pretending to kidnap people, though."

"See? What did I tell you?" Stan asked rhetorically.

"But what about those little men?" Bud asked, confused.

"What am I, a magic eight-ball?" Stan asked, annoyed. "Look, buddy, I have no idea what you saw or thought you saw. Consult your local…whoever it is you consult about these things, okay? Maybe they were just kids. Did you attack them? Were you attacking children?"

He let a little bit of accusation spill into his voice at the end and quickly the former cult members were all glaring suspiciously at him.

"Uh, did I say little men? What I meant was…you guys are jerks and next time go fake kidnap someone else!" With that, he stormed off.

Stan laughed nervously. "Uh, maybe next time we don't try to kidnap anybody. Maybe that wasn't as funny as we all thought it would be."

After a few more minutes, they were able to get rid of the group.

"Nicely done," Ford complimented.

Stan grinned and puffed out his chest. "What can I say? Lying to people is kind of my specialty. And the more outrageous the better. People might catch you in a smaller lie but after a while no one can believe you'd try and convince them of something so obviously not true so they just assume it must be. Kind of backwards logic that something is so ridiculous and obviously fake that it must be true but, what can I say? I ain't complaining."

"We're going to need to go back to the headquarters and clear out their belongings as well as confiscating any memory guns," Ford said. "I don't know if Fiddleford will be able to rebuild them or not but we cannot in good conscience just leave them lying around. We might as well have just let the society continue to operate if we were going to be that careless. And it's really not that hard to figure out how to get in there."

"Maybe not for us," Stan said. "But I think I half-convinced Bud Gleeful he was picking up children with his shovel and throwing them."

"There is that. Honestly, just the fact that you were able to convince them that getting drunk and deciding to go and kidnap somebody is something that was a plausible possibility for them is giving me all sorts of bad feelings about this."

"Yeah, I mean, part of it could just be I'm very good at what I do but this kind of absolute power really isn't good for people," Stan said. "I mean, I know that I for one am already feeling myself go mad with power."

Ford laughed. "Yes, we'll need to destroy these guns."

"Maybe keep one around just in case," Stan hedged. "But only using it if we literally have no other choice like, say, the government is coming to arrest us for something. Not for anything like a rogue unicorn encounter."

"Gravity Falls…" Ford marveled, shaking his head. "Every time I turn around it gets even more fascinating! I'm never going to be done studying this town."

Stan stared up at the sky. "This is the place I willingly spend my time."