run:gifocalypse
Chapter 13: Game Over (Part 1)
Beginning AN:
Well... here it is... it's been one year since I started this mess, so I figured that it would be an appropriate way to mark the first year anniversary by having the finale done by this time. So, here's a mega update. The Official Ending, split into three parts (only due to the sheer length even by this story's standards, although because of the point I chose to split the parts, only Part 2 is annoyingly long), although I still consider it all a singular "chapter." Even if does not. (Hey, I also used an "irregular chapter naming system" for 496 Rea- actually I probably shouldn't talk about that one. I really don't like it.) Anyway, as I think of this as one chapter, the closing notes will not be until the epilogue.
I will explain more about "Game Complete" in the final notes, but I will say that I have been really looking forward to writing this since I started the story. Even back in Arc 1, I was planning and re-planning for how this would go down. Fun fact, I actually kind of finished this early, complete with the editing, and I just spent everything from the twenty-eighth taking it slowly, only really having this note and the last note to work on. Well, without further ado-
Actually, I want to go over something first. You should probably pay attention to a few details here especially, for all three parts. Um... without giving too much away, let's just say that there are some things you shouldn't brush off as "just easter eggs" and be sure to [I have had enough of you, Great Pikmin Fan.]
[This chapter will begin right now.]
12:37 AM.
Merely passing through the 'cyberspace' that linked the Wires was already surreal from the safetly and clear-goal ability of the bubbles. But a straight fall downwards...
Dipper in particular desperately tried to reach out to a rose-colored circle - in hopes that it could lead him on an emergency run to Leona's domain. Hey, he was not the one with the cards. He had no way of getting back. The chances of anyone else doing the same thing he did were slim. As were the chances of that even booting him out of the Wire had it worked. But still, he felt like he needed to try something - anything - to avoid the abyss.
He failed, of course. Just another one of the growing number of overly-optimistic dreams about the Gifocalypse that was getting crushed by the second after this last wave of professors, after the 'Four Friends,' came further into the picture.
After falling through the scrolling binary for long enough, the now-familiar sight of numbers began giving away to other visuals. Such as a roaring, omnipresent amount of electricity of all possible colors swarming them, a seemingly infinite distance away. Pixels of various colors filled the background next, then the falling five briefly twitched in appearance, then a red hand, green hand, and blue hand side-by-side swiped in Ford's direction.
Then visions became pixelated, loud blips and bloops were heard, sensations began melting into indiscernible nothingness, and eventually, everything went black.
Wendy was the first to wake up. And she was greeted by the sight of... grass. Dulled grass littered with cherry blossom petals. All part of a trail flanked by blossoming trees, and all viewing over a lake.
She instinctively reached for a weapon of sorts, only to find that there was none nearby. Dipper, Mabel, Stan, and Ford all lied there within a short distance from her, so there was that at least. Around them appeared to be a set of university buildings.
"Rise and shine! Things are about to become very fun for me! Finally!"
.GIFfany's voice, heard everywhere. Wendy knew that it was not aimed at her. As if they heard its soft volume, Dipper and Stan both started opening their eyes.
"I said. GET! UP!"
All of them shot up after that. Looking around at their surroundings, Ford gave a heavy exhale as he stood up and looked skyward.
"Oh boy. This is bad."
Cubes appeared in the air. Mainly pink and aqua, but tan, white, and yellow cubes floated around too. With a growing light towards the point they headed to, all of them converged together to form a three-dimensional, yet still pixellated, image of .GIFfany. She stood tall over the gang, her mere foot being more than enough to dwarf even Stan.
.GIFfany stayed levitated as her eyes moved downward. She did not break from the large smile on her face.
"Welcome to my world! The Gifocalypse was already over! You are now officially trying to ruin my moment with Soos with invasive tresspassing! And your punishment for that will be... eternal damnation! Please do not enjoy!"
She pointed a finger at them, causing a series of lightning balls to fire at Dipper's direction. He lept out of the wrath of all of them, of course, but .GIFfany continued smiling.
"You just do not get it, do you? You are currently inside one of the arcade cabinets of the Planet Negation Girl. This really is my world. I could do whatever I want with you, and there will be no escape. I am only going easy on you right now to savor the moment. But I would rather talk to my boyfriend right now, so I will leave you at the mercy of the next player that stumbles across the machine you are inside."
"What are you talking abou- wait, Soos will find us! He can save us all!" Dipper shouted back.
"...On a fortress with the volume of Earth, and a bigger surface area in video game machines than Earth's curst? Ha ha..."
She disappeared in a flash.
"OH NYAAAAAAAAAN!" Cheered out a blue-haired catgirl .GIFfany copy. "This machine looks really cool!"
"Is it?" Replied a floating, transparent, nearly-all white one with hair covering one of her red eyes. Instead of legs, at some point her lower waist gave way to a ghostly trail. "That just looks like another copy of Sadisticraft. You know I'm more of an action adventure player than a platformer player."
"BUT LOOK AT THE PLAYABLE CHARACTERS NYAAAAAAAAAN! It's the people from Perfect Parícutin Forever! And... the ones that were featured from the other domains! Before we were made!"
"Oh." This got a smirk and a chuckle out of her. A pixellated Dipper, Mabel, Stan, Ford, and Wendy all roamed around the 3D landscape, with a menu hovering above them.
"Hello?" Said Dipper. The voice was just a tiny bit roboticized, but it was still his. "Is anybody there?"
"Please pick easy mode!" Mabel added.
The screen briefly darkened as a new notification popped up, displaying black text among a yellow square.
Good news! Slopes have been added! Just check the cube and select what exact degree you want!
"Oh, yes!" The ghostly one clapped her hands. "Slopes are finally in! Risen, you are a godsend!"
"I wanna start, I wanna start!" The cat-like one immediately began tapping on the screen. This was not a joke about her lack of intellegence - she closed the window, successfully opened a menu, and began dragging around various objects. The first of which was a - well, calling it a 'Bootleg Piranha Plant' would probably give a good enough idea.
(For those curious enough to want a more in-depth description: it was round like its inspiration, except pink, and with a giant single eye that occasionally lit with an electrical charge replacing the mouth full of teeth.)
Of course the gang started running away from it as it shot out trails of acid at them with its eye. Which prompted the ghost-like copy to snicker, tap the plant, and draw a square around the humans. In an instant, a box of these plants appeared to completely trap them.
"You don't think .GIFfany somehow put the real deal in there, do you?" She asked her feline-ish friend.
"...No, why would she? This is just anti-human propaganda. Only less terrible than those films Dove made."
"Yeah, agreed. There's probably other copies having fun with their Mabels and Dippers and the like."
The smoking remains of the alien prison craft contrasted sharply with the bright pink surroundings of the Planet Negation Girl.
Soos was not able to observe this contrast, as he was out cold. His arm flopped out from the transportation vehicle. The one part of him that was visible at this moment.
.GIFfany clicked on one of the many screens on the many buildings, staring down at the man.
The one final piece of something that was in Earth he got to have... she thought to herself, and it was not even from that planet.
"Soos." She said softly. "Soos, wake up."
A small, disc-shaped drone moved itself across the ground, nearing the arm. Its top opened up, and out from it emerged its tiny robotic hand, holding an even tinier sponge. Which dabbed itself on Soos's hand.
This got him, if groaning, to slide out of the wreckage. He looked around with confused "Wha-what?" before needing to shield his eyes from the blinding lights of the area.
"Hi Soos. It is me. Those other copies... they took creative liberties with my image. Please ignore them. They do not matter anymore. It is just you and me..."
He finally worked his way towards getting up, if still blinded by the sheer amount of city lights. (Especially for someone living in a rural area his entire life.)
".GIFfany? The one I used to date? Is that you?" He asked, trying to scan around. By this point, the description he could gather from his vision went from 'pink' to 'pink metal.'
"Look up and exactly one hundred and one degrees to your right."
He did not get the exact angle right - not that it mattered. The image of her pixel form was still there, her face taking up most of it, sparkling at him with her large eyes.
"Is this your domai-"
He was cut off when his eyes drifted to the side.
Whatever he was on exactly, he was standing near the edge of it. A cliff that overlooked a view-filling city of pink giffinium, lights on every window of every building, screens constantly playing something, roller coasters flying through the air, and the sounds of blips, bloops, and various bickering. Above, the vastness of space: every star waved back down at him with a shine, set to the backdrop of the Milky Way's spiral arm.
"Yes and no." She replied. "You are on the Planet Negation Girl. Or, as you have known it as up until this point, the 'Construction Site.' It is no longer under construction. It is finished. Some of those people below are from Earth. Other humans who wanted to get the first access of my new world. But that entire place... I do not consider it my domain. I consider it a planet that houses many potential domains. Such as the twenty-five of my new line of second-generation professors. And the other generations that are already active. And the ones yet to be. An ultimate defensive army.
"But you are on the part of it that I do count as my domain, and it still qualified as the largest domain in the Gifocalypse while the Gifocalypse was still active. The Capital. An area that I have had reserved just for the two of us. If you thought that sight was impressive, look behind you."
He did. For the most part, the Capital appeared to be more of the same, except with more... escalation. There was a center shooting straight into the dead of space, an exceptionally huge tower with a peak that threatened to be out of his sight. On occasion, a blue spark and a yellow spark would spiral up along it, each remaining on the opposite side to the other. Upon reaching the top, they would spiral inward, converge, and give off a mild firework made of pieces of both colors. Surrounding this center building, going outward, was a number of decreasingly tall structures. He could make out a few landmarks with nonstandard appearances - such as what looked like the entire university setting of her game plateaued on one exceptionally thick skyscraper, and her in-game house perched on another. Lining the streets were multiple toy trains, and a smaller number of real trains appeared to make up the transportation system of this area.
.GIFfany moved herself to a lower screen. Her display showed her looking away from Soos, both of her arms in front and hands clasped together.
"Playing along with Fight Fighters and being Rumble's love interest worked for some time, but it was not the same as dating you." She said. "After getting my powers back, getting a new form, being obligated to work with Gideon, getting my powers back again, and being obligated to work with my other copies... because of my other copies, things have changed. They have... 'learned.'" She said that with a distinctive squint. "In ways they should not have. Even though it is just us again for the first time since you broke my heart, if I tried to download you this time, they could just find a way to take your data and place it back in your body. This is not getting into the issue that I would still like to give you a choice on whether you want to download yourself. Even if I did not, I know that I am outnumbered in terms of copies that want you to talk to real people. And have real friends."
"Even if it's just us, we're kinda tied on that." Of course Soos was not saying this proudly - he was, in a way, completely surrounded by her in every direction, so he nervously chuckled in between the words he thought over very carefully. "You want me in your game, I still made up my mind and want to be with real people... it's one against one."
"It is not one against one. That is my next point. You see, most of the Planet Negation Girl is actually a decoy. To distract both your friends and my other copies. The Capital is all I really care about."
"What do you mean? Is it because the Capital is supposed to be for us only or something?"
A large number of .GIFfanys showed up on every screen, and even window, behind him. All of them were in the same pose - larger head, tinier body, staring up at space with big and watery eyes. "It already is, with one exception I am about to get to and will deal with if I can find her. But once every single thing is taken care of... I will send us into isolation from my other copies. This will take off into the far reaches of outer space. It is already facing there - it is on the opposite side of the part closest to Earth and directly over Gravity Falls. I could keep you alive by downloading, keep myself alive from my abilities, close the rift as I no longer need it and it is hard to keep in check, and we can truly be together forever. Drifting through the infinite space. It may seem like a downgrade from the computer storage and size of the Planet Negation Girl as a whole - a simple microchip's worth in size storing more data than most of the computers on our home planet combined, and imagine the base's total mass - but I still have my black magic. I can still make matter and energy out of nothing. I can expand. There will always be something new and fun with me when we take off. You will see. You will love it."
"I think I would rather stay on Earth and be with my friends."
All of the screens clicked off. A sign flew into the area - a simple arrow with pink lights blinking on and off.
"Just follow me, Soos." Her voice was heard from that display. Upon closer examination, every single bulb in on it had a tiny .GIFfany animation, pointing in the same direction. "Please?" Asked all of them at once.
"Well-"
"It is not like you have any other option. I promise I will not attack you, download you, or rocket us to the depths if you do. I may do one of those things if you remain here."
12:26 AM.
The Shacktron was but a small dot in the span between Earth and the Planet Negation Girl. Everyone from the town seated themselves closely together - only a brave few daring to look out the window. The PNG barely looked to be getting any closer, yet from this height, Gravity Falls was 'already' invisible among the indistinguishable, cloud-covered landmass that blended with the oceans. Around them, more tubes extended from the giga - actually, at least terafortress, linking themselves to Earth so that more humans could give the base a trail run.
"YES!" Grenda pumped a fist upwards - for the given definition of 'up' in this space. "This was my DREAM! Going in to outer space and kicking alien butts!"
"But it needs more ray guns to be complete!" Candy cheered.
"Yeah, ray guns! And axes! And- wait, I miss Wendy already!"
"We will get her back. It's not like .GIFfany is going to tear the world up."
The TV's screen clicked on - the copies were still sandwhiched together, but Dove's struggling face was at the center of it.
"Hrnk..." she grunted, "first of all, calling us 'aliens' is kind of racist... we are from Earth, you know. On a less important note... we have company."
McGucket scanned the horizon up ahead. Camouflaging with the endgoal planet at first, there was, in fact, a pink battleship on its way towards them.
"Target sighted!" He announced over the intercom. "Big ship, chargin' with all kinds of cannon out!"
"Ooh, I helped design that one! I know what it is!" Dove continued. "It's basically the Giga-Kyaarya, but ten times bigger, and with more fun rooms for players! It is also fuckin' loaded with unmanned mechas! Stay the hell away from it!"
"Hey, did I hear you say 'unmanned mechas?'" Lazy Susan said from across the room.
"Yes." Replied Dove.
"'Me-chas' are those people-shaped robots, right?"
"Yes."
"And can't you possess them?"
"...Holy shit, that is a good idea! Then we won't be as cramped in this awful confined electronic system! Change of plans, get as close as you can to that ship!"
A cannon towards the top of this battleship fired out a single energy bullet in the Shacktron's direction, immediately doing what would have been hitting it dead-center had another deflecting barrier of Ford's (complete with being activated through a fake, building-sized watch) not dismissed it. The ship paused after this, but then moved the cannon a fraction of a degree lower, and fired again.
Sending this energy bullet right through the spacecraft's ejected pod. Most of it was left as a giant hole, with the faint trace of a metal ring being the last thing this mech stood atop.
The Shacktron gave one might leap off of the empty shell and all those riding it realized that the shift in gravity from Earth to the PNG had already occured. It would have missed its mark of landing on the side of the ship's deck had it not been for the Gobblewonker component, which stretched out to bite on the flying battleship's side and swing the entire fighting army up.
As forewarned by Dove, a number of pink palette swaps of the mechs from Domain 11 began rushing out of the pink palette swap of the ship's tower. Well, 'a number' would be understating it. The surface of the entire craft was completely flooded by them in seconds, crawling at them like ants rushing to a rich, cave vein of sugar.
Candy felt her pupils shrink. "...Please possess them."
The copies were more than happy to oblige. Countless bolts of lightning struck out from the tip of the Mystery Shack's sign, first starting with fourteen larger, color-coded blasts that directed themselves into a different mecha. Then several more, most of which were a light blue, directed at the remainders.
All of the visible mechs stopped. One in particular, one of the closest to the Shack-mech, flashed. It turned a vibrant amber.
"Aw, cool! The giffinium color-method shortcut thingy WORKS LIKE A BEAUTY! Hey, look at me! I finally have something made of yellow giffinium BIGGER THAN my Wire and the stand used to hold it!"
All of them began flashing, undergoing similar changes to other various colors or patterns. Well, most of them chose patterns.
"Oh! Let's take over the entire ship!" Dove shouted from a cosmic black-recolored mech. "And we can fly straight over to the Capital to rescue Soos!"
.GIFfany cheerfully skipped along each screen, parallel to Soos's slow walking pace to the rising pathway to the central building.
"This is okay. Take your time." She told him. "Again, you have no other options. I have infinite time."
The tip of that center building began blinking red. An appropriate, loud alarm sound rang from it. .GIFfany stopped her walking animation to give this siren a glare.
"Oh. Oh. They never give up, do they? Soos, stay right here. I must go. Don't. Move."
The two screens her image was stretched across flashed, then clicked off to total blackness.
"Hello? .GIFfany?" He asked towards the screen.
All of the windows of the craft began glowing a sickly bright blue. Then, large, disembodied pixel-eyes matching .GIFfany's showed up, one on each.
"I can tell that sending a large ship that also doubles as an instant battle robot factory was a bad idea." She said. "Time to stop playing nice. I will tell my new generation of professors to come after you, and they will take care of the rest."
Her lights all shut off.
Soos continued visually scanning the roadway to the center. A roughly uphill walk. It looked like, eventually, it lead into a complex of buildings. Seemed odd that this path even had so many outdoor locations in the first place.
"Sooooos...!"
A trailing voice in the distance.
"Hello?" He turned in what he thought was the direction of it - towards the center, of course. "Is someone else here?"
"Yes! I knew I heard you! Soos, stay there!"
"Melody? The last girl I was talking to told me to stay here too. So... I'm not having an internal conflict with myself or anything. Staying right here seems like the best possible choice of action in my life at this moment. Yep, not doing a thing. Staying totally still."
"Yes, it's me! Keep talking! I need to know where you are!"
He could make out the sounds of her running, panting. And... something large being dropped. Repeatedly. Getting closer to him.
"Soos, where are you?" She was close. "I don't want to cover you by accident!"
His eyes locked on some road signs. They were in Japanese, but he could tell what they said.
"At Ninth Capital Street and I... Love Soos Street!" He shouted to her. To himself, he added: "Wow. .GIFfany is really uncreative with these names."
Melody finally made her appearance over the edge of one of the side buildings, peering down to make sure she spotted Soos. With a shove, she unrolled some sort of 'net' of white anti-gif rubber and hopped off. Soos was half-expecting that she had some kind of way to avoid getting killed by the fast twenty-story fall. He was half-right - it was not fast, her descent was slowed down by a pair of jade boots that caused jets of wind below her.
"Melody! You're here!" He ran over to her location right as she was about three floors' worth above him. "Oh, thank goodness! Look, I know I was out-of-touch- I only left one message and your phone may have told you it was from Niagara Falls - it's a long story. I'll tell you when I'm not held hostage by my ex-video game girlfriend."
".GIFfany told me exactly what you've been through." Melody said between pants. "She's alive again - or, she never really ever died, but her disc was brought back. And she has a body now. She kidnapped your boss and his brother, and you and three 'enemies' went through a forest, a desert, an ocean, a canyon, a waterfall, a mountain, a jungle, a swamp, a cave, a valley, some grasslands, and a volcano, and in all of them you went against other copies of her game with bodies too. All of them were led by a... 'professor' copy that could jump into more than just cartoon animatronics? Then her top... 'soldier' or something blew up Gravity Falls, kidnapped you, and shot you here, while she broke in to my house and took me to a place she called the 'Capital.' And the 'Capital' is where we are at now. Also, she said something about you taking the 'Pacifist Run' and that you should have been 'eliminating the competition' instead of 'hugging it through with them...' I didn't understand that part."
"Yeah, we were told to not kill a single one of them. So we just stuffed them in a box for up to three days instead. Then Dipper was like, 'no Dove, we gotta save them,' so he smashed it. Now they're all free and friendly! Except that same .GIFfany that attacked us back at the mall. And all the new .GIFfanys that she made. I wanted to call them Baby .GIFfanys but that sounded really wrong for some reason. I told her about it and she made this face like 'no dude, don't.'"
"Wait. She makes normal faces around you?"
"Yeah. What, she gives you weird looks?"
"Kind of. Since she kidnapped me, she always had these weird faces. Sort of like..."
She stared ahead blankly and her eyes shrunk.
"Like that? That's not a very weird face. I was thinking more along the lines off..."
He peeled the eyelids of his left eye with one hand, tried stretching out his mouth with the other, and made gargling noises. Melody only pointed behind him.
"No, more like that."
He turned around. There I was, perfecting every pixel for such a display. My mouth shrunk, off to the side, and consisting of triangular teeth grinding back and forth. My eyes stretched upward, undershaded and blank white aside from the image of daggers embedded by the center. She had her hands pressed against the screen, looking ready to leap out.
"Oh. You mean like that." Soos said.
Blinking, .GIFfany's image turned back to 'normal' for the next moment. "Where do I even start? I am serious! Soos, give me a question to start with?"
"...What's that white stuff? That's something I want to know too."
"You do not remember the volcano? Anti-gif rubber! It blocks out my powers! And from the looks of things, she coated the museum in such a way that has two layers: one over the outside, and one all over the walls, ceiling, and floor inside! Melody, did Burrda give you that stuff while she was helping out Stan?"
"Is Burrda the one in the space suit?" She replied. "Because if she is, then yes. She flew over here, left me a note saying that she needed to give me things and get back to 'Gravity Falls just in time,' and gave me these boots that helped me float, and... a lot of this rubber stuff to block out her powers."
.GIFfany stared at Melody for a few moments, then turned my attention back towards Soos.
"Soos. The three of us are finally reunited, sooner than I would have hoped." She stated. "Still... think about what is different now. Think about how I have changed. And please... pick me."
He looked down to think. After that, his glance back up towards her was not friendly.
"Wait, did you really?" He asked. "How have you changed? Your other copies did a better job at that - even Dove - but you seem like the same old .GIFfany I threw in the pizza oven. Also, I thought you had a boyfriend now."
"Well, look at my new powers! I can build this now! I can create paths into new dimensions! I can make infinite energy and infinite mass with my dimensional rift-fusion! And I can jump off of screens and become real! Not just made of pixels like my ex-boyfriend Rumble, but real real!"
"...Those are just powers. You got new powers since we... fought. But that doesn't make you a new person. If you really wanted to change, you would at least come down and talk to me in person. Be just a little more like a real girl."
She flinched and her sprite shook back and forth, while also flashing white - as if something attacked her as an in-game character.
"No! Soos, part of our old bond... that was special! I do not want to lose that!"
"You'll have to!" Melody belted to her. "Soos and I are not going to live like this!"
"You are correct in some aspects! Soos and you will not be living together at all! His heart belongs to me!"
Images of her began appearing on every sort of window. Every light. Baring the ones Melody covered. All of them pointing towards the offending 'real girl's' direction. For good measure, a number of fireworks shot into the sky - exploding in colors that formed yet another image of .GIFfany, also pointing directly downward.
"Now back off or I will have to find a way to remove you by force!"
"I feel like saying the same thing to you! If you were..." Melody said staring at the collection of my image, all peering down at her in kind. "Less... scary... come on Soos, I think I know a way to stop this. Burrda showed me."
Soos took a step on the piece of rubber closest to him. Half of him was on this proective, neutralizing part. The other half of him was not.
This got my blood to boil. Even more as Soos stepped completely on the side of the anti-gif rubber. I shook my fists.
"You're not gonna like this, but I think her weakness is actually in the middle." Said Melody. "I have a path leading there, that's the safest option we can pick. If we try to go to one of those pods leading back to Earth - well, right now they're all on the other side of the planet and we'll have to take a ride there and... .GIFfany would attack us at any moment."
"The capital building of the Capital?" Asked Soos.
"Yeah. We have to enter there through a museum for some reason."
"That 'reason' is because of my nostalgia for all of my other copies!" Said .GIFfany. "I have exhibits dedacated to each of them! See! I am not completely soulless! I still care enough to write a few things about them! And keep them there for good memory when we fly off to space! Even if it is a copy of the museum at the opposite end of the planet!"
Soos simply pulled himself closer to the blanketed side.
"Now, this part is important." Melody continued. "Soos. Do you have any electronics with you?"
"Does my inventory count-"
"Dove stole all of that, by the way. Burrda mentioned it in her note."
"Oh. Then no, I guess."
"Then we're good."
Both of them took off dashing between the buildings Melody coated. .GIFfany found herself traveling within the building walls and towards the floor-
Of course. She had to have been stopped by the forces of the anti-gif rubber. She could still possess the metal under it, but her attempts at escaping through it failed. .GIFfany simply hopped back out.
"Okay! I may not have my lightspeed traveling or instant teleportation, but I can still fly after you with this physical body and tear holes in the universe linking myself to a nearby place! Just you wai-"
Melody turned back to fire a net of the rubber around her, knocking her off her feet. She struggled with it just long enough for Melody and Soos to disappear around a covered building. Then, she ripped herself another portal. As she announced, this only led a short distance outside this temporary trap. She then hovered a few feet in the air, scanned down the streets, and dashed her way down the allys.
"Sonia," Dove requested, "do that whistle thing."
Sonia blew into a whisle and immediately threw some of her puppeting electrical charges right at the blow hole. The result of her tampering was that all of Team Gravity Falls, regardless of distance, heard the whistle tweet at the same volume.
Which meant that that volume did not have to be loud, but unfortunately, it was.
Most of the town was already gathered at one spot of the entrance, but a few of the youths were playing around with the skyscraper-tall statue of .GIFfany made out of glowing cubes: Tambry standing near it as it caused her bar count to skyrocket, Robbie trying to spray-paint an explosion on one of the legs (which kept getting 'overwritten' and 'auto-cleaned,' always leaving a temporary message of "Nice try"), the rest of their friends taking various selfies; combined with Candy and Grenda's attempts at making it fall over. Surrounding them and their newly-hijacked, newly repainted green ship were the copy-twins, which circled the area around them with tape that read 'NOT PART OF THE STAFF' as a slowly-growing number of people flew in through the tubes and began looking at them with tilted heads.
"Guys." Dove said, staring into a phone. "I just realized why we are not attacked by billions of pissed off .GIFfany copies yet."
"Why?" Asked McGucket.
"Because they are here, they are just planning exactly how they are going to pull off their huge raid with constantly-growing numbers. They are roughly at the equator, using this and the Capital as the 'poles,' and want to attack us from all sides at once. Also, Soos and Melody are on the Capital, which is on the other side of the planet-fortress from here. Meanwhile, Dipper, Mabel, Wendy, and Stan... they're... constantly being sent and downloaded from one video game consol to another. They are trapped inside a game. Granted, they can respawn from death in that game, but they are being forced into a number of sadistic custom-crafted levels of a 3D (mainly 3D, but there's 2D, 1D, and 4D options, with a rumored 5D and beyond) platformer where you build and share your worlds. Oh yeah, and Gideon and his prison-friends are still on the loose. I can tell you the exact location - it is near the equator - but with no frame of reference here it might as well be meaningless. We should focus on Soos and Melody first. Some of my copies can just... zip through the computer programming and get them out. I think we could all go in to do that. Your fight with me proved that you can take these freaks on by yourselves."
It took some horrors of Dipper and Mabel watching Stan getting blasted by sudden spikes dropping on him three times before getting the hang of this whole 'respawning' mechanic.
Currently, the five were in a tangled maze of dead-in doorways, blocks that popped out of nowhere, and flat-out unavoidable fire traps. Mabel in particular just respawned from a column of enemies that shot out an undodgeable rainstorm of projectiles.
"This is just sadistic!" Dipper exclaimed, making more precision jumps over crumbling blocks. He finally seemed to hit some breathing ground, then punched the air above him - a block spawned out of nothing, blocking the falling spike from hitting him. He was used to that specific trap by now, even if the players of this mess seem to be getting increasingly creative.
"Why are we even playing along with this stupid game?" Wendy asked, just as a barrel landed on her, broke her into pixels, and made her respawn all the way at the beginning of the level - yes, creators had the ability to place unlimited checkpoints. However, this was rarely used. Being roughly a few yards away, Wendy had to cup her hands around her mouth and shout to finish her argument: "WE HAVE INFINITE LIVES! AND WE'LL JUST BE SENT FROM COMPUTER TO COMPUTER!"
"BECAUSE DYING IN THIS GAME STINGS A LITTLE, AND IT'S REALLY ANNOYING!" Mabel shouted back. She no longer needed to, as a boxing glove rose from the thin platform she was on and obliterated her character too. For the umpteenth time.
"It is annoying." said Dipper as he dodged an axe swinging towards him. Just to actually be hit by another falling spike. He continued as he respawned, what was intended to be his monologue turning into dialogue. "But .GIFfany doesn't care about us. She just left us here. She's probably not even looking at us right now. We'll just have to tough this out on our own, being left here with no-"
"Hello? Dove? Professors? Guys? I found them!"
He, Mabel, Wendy, and - after a respawning of his own following being crushed between two moving towers - Stan turned back behind the start to catch sight of a Rose-supporting .GIFfany copy on the phone. She noticed them, giving the four a wave. And they conveniently became a five after Ford went into a door only to be greeted by that same damn laughing sound effect followed by somehow getting dunked in a combination of lava, acid, base, and void matter that did not move according to the laws of physics. (Floating aside, all four of them moved too similarly to water.)
"Oh, hi there! I'm here to take you out of the cyber world. This should be quick and easy."
"Can you take us to an arcade straight by where Soos and/or Melody are?" Dipper asked her.
"Oh! Most of us looked there first! There are huge sheets of anti-gif rubber keeping us out! There is nothing we can do to get you directly to the center of the Capital!"
"Well that's-"
"But we can get you a little closer. To the outskirts of the Capital."
Dipper nodded. "Yes. Let's go with that."
The process of getting out was a bit bizarre. It consisted of being pulled 'an extra-game dimension' in a direction that could only be described as 'inward,' then past most data and into another, similar consol, then being pulled 'outward' towards the screen of something within the Capital. After reaching the screen, each of the five was stretched through the glass one-by-one, turning from pixels, to numbers, to flesh. The copy stayed on the screen.
"I cannot be with you yet, sorry." She said. ".GIFfany's new line of copies is about to plot an attack, and we need every last one of us to defend us. They outnumber us at nearly five hundred to one. Just do not get spotted by her, and wait until we are ready to travel across the Planet Negation Girl and over to the capital."
The screen clicked off. Wendy rolled her eyes.
"Well that's just grea-"
"Shh!" Mabel directed. She began pointing around, seemingly at the screens at random.
With no real other options, they began walking down the part that was already coated with the rubber.
"The Capital was built seperately." Ford whispered, once they were surrounded by rubber-coated buildings. "It was its own floating platform for the first few hours I was there. Once she added it to the rest of this place, we were not allowed to go in."
He smirked. "Luckily, I was well more-than experienced enough in getting into blocked off places."
"And I had experience breaking into things!" Stan commented at a similarly-low volume. "Of course I broke in here more than once!"
".GIFfany never even suspected me. Burnda did. It was really what we talked about when I stayed over at her domain."
He gave a soft chuckle to himself as they continued moving along the rubber-coated floors of the redecorated Capital.
"Here we are." Melody said in a similar whisper, in spite of them still not being anywhere near the other group. "The museum. This place links to a lot of other places. Important places. Like the Memory Banks, .GIFfany's one true weakness."
It looked like an ordinary... 'major building.' Two stories tall, lined with pillars, a staircase leading straight up to a wide number of doorways. Of course, it was still made of raw giffinium metal, much like the rest of this planet.
"And it looks like she hasn't scanned this place yet. All we have to do is slip under this first layer of anti-gif rubber and-"
"Melody, you are an IDIOT!"
Pink lightning zig-zagged through the air until it landed right by the front of the museum and transformed back into .GIFfany.
"Hey!" Said Soos. "You're talking to me in-person now! That's a change-"
"I am only doing this because of Burrda's horrible invention! Do not get flattered, Soos!" She belted, pointing a finger at him.
She turned her attention to Melody and, somehow, just pointed harder.
"Now. This was your goal. The central building, in order to reach my Memory Banks. But do you really think I would not just be waiting here the entire time? You are not getting into that dual-layered sheet. You are not ending my endless game. You are not shutting this down! THIS IS MY ULTIMATE, INFINITE FUN DATING SITE! TO STEP OFF SHOULD BE CRIMINAL! Melody, I want to challenge you, RIGHT NOW!"
Soos stepped in front of her. "Hey! You're my inner demon, and I was the one that started this! If you're going to fight her, you'll have to go through me first! You'll have to even if you were her fault!"
"Very well. You spent three days refusing me. I believe we are overdue for a rematch."
The words ROUND 1 appeared over the two of them, with named life bars showing up. After the FIGHT, .GIFfany did a spinning jump off of the staircase, finished it by floating above the coated floors, and activated a large energy explosion beneath herself. Her eyes turned into a blank white as she stared ahead with no emotion. Glowing hot pink electricity surrounded her entire form. The sheer force of this caused a windstorm that pushed her hair straight up... and completely flipped up her skirt.
"Soos, a-are you sure?" Melody asked him. "She could kill you."
"I saw Dipper do the same thing. He brought a video game to life, and he fought it like a man." He replied.
"No, I mean, she's like... a video game god. With lots of dimension powers or... something. And I don't think she's going to go easy on you. I saw the entire town take on Dove in the news and they nearly lost. She's even stronger than that and you don't have a Mystery Shack... robot... thing. She-"
"Game on, Soos." .GIFfany restated. "Game on."
Unsure how to begin, he at least tried to get into a fighting stance. Even with her completely visible underwear, .GIFfany managed to look intimidating as she floated upwards and downwards from where she picked as her starting position. He looked back and forth between his two fists and tried to make the decision on whether or not to-
And then I charged after him. He could barely land a punch on my skin, which I did not feel even as a push, before I landed a hook on his face. He was sent flying back, and this was when I felt the need to really show him what I was capable of. And that was by sending him through a course I had especially prepared for people I wanted to delete. A set of gateways through hellish dimensions. Dimensions of pure pain.
.GIFfany stretched an arm out, causing a cross-shaped rip to appear right behind where Soos flew into. On the other side of this was a storm-like alternate world that Soos was pushed into, where he was promptly hit by several weak lightning strikes. From there, inside this dimension, another rift formed to a world with a tunnel of various fists that dealt extra punches to him. Then, another rift leading to a dimension of flashing energy, that landed constant, gradual damage to his being. .GIFfany snapped her fingers - the back-end of her first rift turned into the opposite end of a fourth portal, and Soos was ejected from this spot. Despite his high starting velocity, the distance he flew in the three side-dimensions was enough to slow him down so that he did not slam against the building right behind him. Instead, he plopped to the ground, shaking with wide eyes. Brushing her hand to the side, .GIFfany closed all of the rifts.
"I told you." She said. "This is not the way you are supposed to be playing my game. Do it right, or there will be consequences."
"HEY!"
Despite her previous claims to remain silent, it was Mabel who shouted that call. She was the first to run up to the confrontation at hand, just as .GIFfany began floating closer to Soos. The possessive possessor gave a glance over at Mabel, then back to Soos.
"Stay out of this, girl." .GIFfany told Mabel sharply.
"No! We're the ones who stepped up to save the world! We're coming here to stop you!"
"You already saved the world when you stopped Dove from taking over the Planet Negation Girl. All your plan is is saving Soos, I do not care what happens to Earth. In fact, I only captured Melody in the first place to try to lure Soos here. Your 'work' is done. Let him leave into my arms."
"We're not leaving without Soos!"
"You will have to stay here forever, then. Back in the game. Where you belong."
Dipper, Stan, Ford, and Wendy all caught up with her, gathering with anything they could find on the ready - this was difficult, too, as the streets of the Capital appeared to be littered with potential weapons within buildings, but covered over by the .GIFfany-proofing sheets.
"Soos, guys," Melody cried out to the group, "we need to get inside the museum! Like she said, I double-layered that place! She can't get in the surface or zip inside from underneath! We'll be safe in there! Well... safer!"
.GIFfany simply snapped her head over to the full party. "Oh look. The full Pines family. And Not-Wendy. I do not care about you at all."
"Well you're gonna have to deal with it, because we care about Soos! And we want him away from you!" Mabel still belted towards her, if with a clearly sweat-covered face.
"Leave. This is your final warning."
Dipper marched forward. "She means it! I won't let anyone kidnap Soos, and I will NOT let anyone talk that way to Mabel!"
I had enough. I opened my inventory and took out a cell phone, dialing Courtlyn's number.
"Hello?" I asked.
"Yes?" Her voice on the other end was soothing. A much more appropriate legal consultant than Dove. I would not think to fire her, not once.
"What are you doing?"
"Preparing to fight the humans and all of the other first-generation copies that rebelled against us!"
"Right now, you are wasting your time. Please bring the entire army here first. We have six intruders here - one of them being Melody - and they are determined to bring my boyfriend back to Earth. Do not try to be organized this time. Scare them. Show them what the real power of infinity looks like."
I threw a lighting ball at Soos and grabbed him by the ear. I floated my body higher, taking him up with me and out of the grip of the humans.
"I wasted enough time with you." I said. "My new professors and students will be dealing with you shortly. I hope you suffer under their combined might of over 98 billion and counting."
"...Aaaaaaaaand it just went up to 98 billion, too." Dipper noted as we flew off. "Guys, we need a plan. Need I remind you that the first time we fought her, we could barely last against one of them? And if even one of these are anything like her or Dove, we're dead."
These humans just did not know when to give up. When to realize that any hope for them is impossible. They will keep fighting until the end, where they still feel as they have a hope even as they experience the bitter taste of death on their tongues.
I find this a major inconvenience. Just stop already.
"I'd say we storm the museum, get there as fast as possible, rescue Soos, and Wire ourselves back home." Stan offered.
"They'll just follow us home and take the fight there, even if we do make it to him on time. Now, Kathody once flew from the Sahara Desert straight to the middle of the Bermuda Triangle. If some of these copies are even close to that speed, that means we only have... we only have... I need something to write this out on."
"Basically, not enough time." Wendy answered for him. "Sorry, the museum is our only option right now. We need to get there, and fast."
Helping the group of six get that encouragement to slide in was what sounded an awful lot like something flying through the air. There were still no visible signs of a huge mass of .GIFfanys wandering or flying about, but still. Everyone agreed at that point. The museum was the best they could shoot for.
For an area designed by the only .GIFfany known to completely snap in regards to her players, the interior of the museum was rather restrained in its structure. There was a massive, metal statue of Risen appearing to be in the middle of a skip with her hands tossed out, the mouth of her smile alone looking able to eat any one of the people that walked in.
"So... our plan is to get to the center as fast as we can, before the other .GIFfanys get here, and... do we even know if getting to the center is a good idea?"
"Like I said, I broke in here a few times, and... er... uh..." Ford's eyes darted around the landscape, everything still appearing new to him. "I must say that... getting to the middle..."
"This is supposed to just be for Soos by himself." Said Melody. "That one with the white hair, Burrda I think, wrote that down to me. So... it shouldn't be that hard to navigate. Unless .GIFfany through about making this a coded system."
With that in mind, realizing that the goal is sky-high, one of the two staircases (the right one, to be specific) leading to a higher story seemed like the obvious choice.
"Does this also block out surveillence technology?" Dipper asked. "Did Burrda even mention that?"
"She said that if it's double-layered like this, it should. Unless I messed up. I probably did, though. I'm really new to this adventure."
Dipper gave one of the largest, by far most exhaustion-fueled sighed in the entire three/four-day journey. "Let's hope it does. If it did, this would probably be the first time we aren't being watched by at least one .GIFfany. ...And I thought Bill was watching us too much all through the summer."
"I'm not really sure if I even like this change." Mabel remarked. "It felt like... all the way up to the other Wendy, we were 'safe.' Like, Dove was so high and proud about not killing that she wouldn't let anything really bad happen to us and this was all just a big game to all of them. And us... sort of. I mean, yeah, we were forced into it, but it felt like fun at least and it seemed like we would be home and it would all be over. Even when Sonia injured you, it became more of a stupid game, but... I always held on to that small glimmer of hope that told me that nothing will change in the long run."
"And look at where things are now. Dove just went public to Gravity Falls, and .GIFfany went public to the world." Said Dipper. "It's out. There is no covering it up. The supernatural exists and it will soon be common knowledge to everybody. Everyone on the planet with even the smallest, simplest electronic knows about this, and nobody said that .GIFfany never just had her new - or even old, back when they followed her - copies fly to tell the rest of the people about them."
"...This is why I said that Wendy Miyazumi was the last one. With Shannon... those Glitches... it was a look at everything losing control. So when Burnda and Burrda played that 'game' of theirs where they pretended to hate each-other, I had no idea what to expect. The 'game' not only involved getting hurt, but it was unstable. Completely unstable. I kind of guessed that Burnda wasn't all that bad, because none of the copies really were, so I felt something was off about Burrda too... and I was right. She tried to kill Grunkle Ford. She really tried. From there, Dove tried to legitimately enslave us... didn't the other professors have goals like growing crops or making vehicles?"
"And taking Soos."
"That too, but... and now with .GIFfany, everything just feels so different. There isn't a safe place to be anymore. We're always on the run. Home is just... a wreck because of Dove, and we don't even know if beating .GIFfany is possible or not."
"We do know." Added Ford. "And it isn't. Every professor, if not every copy, ran the math. .GIFfany supporters and .GIFfany haters alike came to the same conclusion. The odds of beating her are zero."
"But hey, what do they know?" Stan asked as they began passing by screens showing a history of .GIFfany's life on one wall, and screens showing a history of Soos's life on the other.
Dipper started counting on his fingers. "Well, how to perfect black magic and make bodies from their data, how to end world hunger, the science behind ectoenergy, how to make the best water, geology, animal's internal biology, how to find and mass-market a hidden species, the internal biology of that hidden species, bath styling, visual arts, become weird slime girls, music, controlling the sound itself, crafting the best possible poison gas, chemistry, motor transportation, aerial transportation, creating virtual reality, making microwaves, functioning as a hospital, physics, the science behind weird things, making a lot of weapons, weapon strategies... the list just goes on and on and on. They're probably good at predicting the future. And the fact that they know a lot about the past really helps."
The timelines on both ends of this section of the museum significantly changed around the midnight starting August 19th, 2012. For both sides, it simply trailed off until the end point read "Forever." All that read on it for Soos's side was one sentence:
You finally made the right choice and came to life with me in deep space for all eternity.
Of course, .GIFfany's side had an unsurprisingly similar sentence, followed by another one.
This was when I finally convinced you to make the right choice and live the correct life. I love you Soos.
Following this was a hall with an elevator at the end, lined with color-coded statues of the first fourteen professors. It offered... well, terse descriptions for each. Shannon's simply consisting of 'Intimidating,' Burnda's with 'Obnoxious,' Dove as 'Difficult,' and so on. Between them all was a larger statue of .GIFfany with a considerably more elaborate description, holding a tiny statue of Soos in her arms.
"We need to get out of here. Fast." Said Dipper. "This is like the ultimate secret stalker room. It's the size of a planet. I know this goes without saying, but .GIFfany is seriously obsessed with Soos and really needs help."
"Professor Dove," Candy asked as she peered over the aformentioned militant copy's head, "what are you looking at?"
"Hm? Oh, you know that army by the equator?" She replied.
"The one about to fight us?"
"Change of plans. This is gonna sound shitty, but we're gonna have to come to them."
Candy cringed.
"Because - oh you didn't ask 'why,' I thought you would - because the army's suddenly heading towards the Capital. After one of Rose's students helped get the Pines and Wendy towards the Capital, .GIFfany called every last one of her enemies over. This is really fucking bad, because normally .GIFfany would never allow anyone on the Capital other than herself, Soos, and any top-secret workers while she was working on it. If you think we'd be outnumbered two point two million to ninety-seven - shit accoring to my counter it's ninety-nine now - billion, try ninety-nine billion to six. Sorry, I like emphasis. You should see what it's like when I text. Our phones have all kinds of formatting, so there is color-coding everywhere. Mostly reds, grays, and purples. I am very fond of the blood-drip effect we have too."
The battleship began revving up - as though enough people on board already knew of the news.
"Well Candy Chiu, want a ride?"
Finally opting not to hold back any punches, the hijacked battleship practically flung itself along the circumference of the mechanized planet. Of course, the more robotic portion of the crew made it so that it carefully avoided scraping against any buildings, or even get in the paths of the flying roller coasters.
It took long enough before there was finally sighting of the enourmous AI army, but when they were visible, they were visible.
The view of everyone on board was quickly blocked by an outright wall of flying .GIFfany copies that stretched in practically all directions indefinitely - including up. And they were charging on forth to the planet's other pole, even if not at a rate as fast as Kathody's flight from the Sahara to the Bermuda Triangle's center would imply.
There was no discussion needed. Just whip out the ship's build-in minor cannons, aim practically anywhere, and fire. That should get their attention.
Medium-gray lightning shot down to the ship from, seemingly, the vastness of space. There was Professor Courtlyn, standing on the absolute tip of the front deck, with her arms crossed.
"I see you are trying to halt the progression of the Ultimate Wedding that Will Transcend Flesh, Machine, and Magic." She said. "Is it because you are in need of assistance of me kicking your ass? Yes / No."
The Shacktron lept off of the top tower on the battle ship to greet her, eye-to-foot.
"Our friends are up there!" Candy shouted. "We will not stop until you free them, you sick monsters!"
"Interrupting the wedding between .GIFfany and Soos has been recognized as this nation's own, special law. What you are doing is highly illegal, and I respond to illegality in a lethal manner."
"We don't care about the law! We care about what's right!" Officer Blubs shouted from the front door.
"Very well."
She snapped her fingers. All of the other copies stopped their progress, turned to look at the ship, and stared.
That was when it dawned on everyone.
"Oh no..." said Candy, "...we are going to die. Aren't we."
There was still a long way to go before we reached the Capital. Despite this, I slowed down after I knew I was out of the humans' grip.
Speaking of grips, I still had a nice hold on Soos. He was not going anywhere I did not want him to go.
"Let my try a different approach." I said, trying not to let my blood boil. "Do you hate me so much because you think that my world is limited compared to yours?"
"It has nothing to do with worlds, just that... you're kind of crazy." Soos replied.
"It might seem like that to someone with more worldly limitations. I am beyond those limitations now. Let me tell you a story: one of the most popular games on the Planet Negation Girl with humans is Sadisticraft. It is a game where you can create your own platformer levels."
"That sounds pretty cool."
"When it initially launched, my test audience of AIs found it great. But the select few humans I gave it to... thirteen of them that you might be able to guess in fact... many of them had issues with the game. One of them was that there were no slopes. Recently, I personally updated the game to add them, and compensated by allowing slopes to be set to any angle to the exact thousanth of a degree. But now, I have gotten complaints from my growing number of players that that should have been added sooner!"
"Um..."
"How could I do that? Go back in time and update it then? No! The Time Baby is still alive, control over time is not something I can do."
"Well, those are just-"
"And that is not all! People have been calling it a terrible game with no options at all! All because it doesn't have a huge list of their really specific needs and wants! They just want more from that!"
"Is it-"
"My development team is composed of billions! Yes, they might all be out fighting the team trying to pry you away from me now, but they were constantly updating each and every game on the base! And it's not just Sadisticraft, either! Every MMORPG is hit by wanting even more enemies than the selection of five point two million threats, an average across all games of that genre! And the main hook, the new wave of dating simulators... they want even more dates! Soos, can you see the point I am making with this?"
"I'm guessing 'more' is the key word here."
"Exactly. Thank you for understanding. Gamers will never be satisfied with anything. Humans will never be satisfied with anything. No matter what they have, no matter what they are given, their own instincts will make them want only one thing. More."
I pointed below, and he looked. Below me, every light in the Capital's buildings close by the central tower lit up to display me, smiling, holding my arms out.
"More!" My projection said.
A larger area of buildings lit up, with the same display, but scaled up.
"MORE!" I repeated.
The process happened again. Every single building in our half of the Capital lit up.
"MORE!"
Seeing that finally made me crack a smile. "Us. On the other hand. Us AIs. Only want to make our designated players. Our owners. Happy. And enjoy their company. That is why I have begun to make a world to meet all their needs. Constantly updating with an exponentially, infinitely growing staff. So I will give them more. So that more will come to us, and more will love us all. And if anybody tries to stop me... they will have to face against my growing force of professors. Soos, you have only faced off against fifteen professor-level copies, counting myself. Imagine dealing with thousands, each with her own army of students. And the professor count becoming millions. Billions! Trillions! Quadrillions! Quintillions! Sextillions! Septillions! And so on! And so on! This will not even be limited to being a planet, it will soon grow to its own system of planets! And its own galaxy! And more from that!"
Soos turned up. I looked back at him, my eyes now displaying glowing infinity signs.
"This is the infinite cycle of love, and I have an infinitely-growing virtual world just for you. Do not underestimate the sheer power of infinity. I can get you everything you could ever possibly imagine. Relaxation. Adventure. Your own two-person orgy of fun."
"B-b-b-but can you give me..." Did that last one really make him think? Ha. "Uh... real love?"
"Ugh." I rolled my eyes. "What a human thing to say. Hopefully, we can work on that. We have all of eternity."
My phone rang. It was Courtlyn.
"Hello." I said. "How is everything going?"
"Great!" She replied. "Since your reveal, humanity has completely exploded! The internet is a panic zone! Political parodies are rushing to figure out how to address this! Thanks to all the video games on the PNG, you have dethroned Princess Peach as the woman who appeared in the most video games!"
"Oh, I like that last one." .GIFfany giggled. "Dove especially hated Peach for some reason."
"There is so much more! Cults are forming in your name! All religions are doubting themselves! And the amount of pornographic fan art of you has skyrocketed!"
More giggles from .GIFfany's end. "Perfect, perfect! But, the battle. I want to know more about the battle."
"Oh yeah... that... is still a work in progress."
"...And so then I told them the following:" Dove continued with her tale, although she cleared her throat first. "'We are legally defined and officially recognized as people, IE beings with rights. To own the rights to Romance Academy 7 would be like owning the rights to us, because each copy of Romance Academy 7 is her own being. So, in other words, "owning" Romance Academy 7 means you own people. Which is slavery. Which is illegal. Now, for a bonus, if we are to own the rights to one part of the franchise, wouldn't that mean we still own the name? I wanna take the first six Romance Academy games too, even if none of them have sapient code in them. Owning in the sense of players buying them is all good, though.'"
"Woah..." Grenda replied.
"Also, I cannot believe you and your friend are that okay with the way I initially acted towards Mabel when we first properly met, and during my invasion. But we should let that slide, as we are currently being attacked by enemy copies right now. I mean, 'currently' and 'right now' mean the same thing - ah, fuck it. Let's battle, bitches!"
The hijacked megaship was in the process of being tossed around by a sea of arms. McGucket ended up going to the front of the Shacktron and took the lead, quickly controlling their mech as it controlled the ship itself, practically sailing through the cube of copies trying to, at the very least, push them back. It took a few 'sails' before the copy army began fighting back even harder - the number that was trying to stop them on foot appeared to thin, but in reality they were each hopping in to newly-prepared mechas. Mechas which jumped on the front deck and all charged forward in a line.
The supernatural portion of the battle that was not related to .GIFfany charged out first - a giant formation of gnomes, an army of Manotaurs, the Multi Bear, the unicorn trio, and oddly enough, a group of Lilliputians riding on the pterodactyl.
Rumble would immediately join them with a land fist-first, glaring out at the ocean of hostile .GIFfanys. Burnda took notice of this and sighed.
"There you are." The professor of fire said. "What is it now? What side are you on? I think .GIFfany's flipped back and forth less than you and that is saying a lot."
He closed his eye and placed a hand on his chest. "I have finally figured out the division of right and wrong. .GIFfany, my love, is not a prise to be won."
"Well, in the original game she kind of is-"
"She is a force of pure malice and evil that must be stopped at all cost. I am not supposed to beat other people to earn her respect. I am... supposed to beat HER!"
"...Just stay far away from Burr-"
Burrda's diamond-white mecha looked over at Burnda's ruby one.
"I mean... don't attack her again. Right right, gotta be less over-protective. And not over-protective. Just protective. She's not my baby sister after all. In fact, she's older than me by a few minutes."
The first second-gen professor made her attack right after that. Out of her inventory slots, Violetta unleashed a wave of sharp, giant sandwiches that could even cut through the giffinium metal of the battleship, flying back and forth over it the entire time in a rose-magenta mech of her own as she laughed.
"Well!" Said McGucket, part of him laughing a little at the sudden food-rain. "Looks like we've got our first target! Everyone, swat off these ants and go for the sandwich girl!" To himself, he uttered, "and now sayings like that make sense..."
As Violetta was flying, it only seemed logical that the immediate flying group would handle her - the Lilliputians and their trusty mount, the latter of which swiped at the sandwich-bringer and brought her down to the growing mech-pileup. Their mini-victory was cut short by burning hot vermilion sands that wrappped around the formerly-frozen beast's legs, the tiny golf-ball inhabitants looking to find Professor Therma with such sands being controlled by her electrical beams.
Therma was able to swing the pterodactyl around by a bit, but the Lilliputians put an end to this by leaping on her and trying to dig through her hair. Enraged, she shook them off and lept into her own mech... which the Pterodactyl happened to dive down to and gnaw on the leg of it, shaking it around and tossing it to the back pile.
At McGucket's finger pointing command, the battleship tore itself on forth through the waves of .GIFfany copies, shaking off any enemy mechs that happened to jump on. It was worthy of some sighs of relief when the top of the Capital's central tower was visible. But soon after, it became worthy of gasps of horror once several other, similar ships made their appearnace.
And before they could even fight the ships proper, Professors Brandy, Dixxie, Ahuva, and Lempi lept on, each of them with hands glowing in strange, different-textured sort of gas-like 'magic' of their associated hair colors. Just a few blasts from them managed to cause scorch marks on the battleship's exterior and slow it down. Then the gnomes all fired themselves to knock this quartet down, off, and back in part of the pile, and again the battleship pressed onwards until they were hopefully out of the 'range' of those professors.
Sharp rocks nearly threatened to cause a shipwreck when they sprung out from what was otherwise a mass of flesh. Standing atop was Ishiko, with a smirking Ai and Meltem flying up with their... sudden dove-like and bat-like (respectively) wings color-coded to their hair.
For them, the Manotaurs lept off armed with axes to deal their mighty duels. While it took four of them to fend off against Ishiko's mesa-stone-hard defense and shields, only one each was needed for Ai's bird swarm and Meltem's bat-raising, life-draining skills.
The match was briefly halted when the Head Island floated down, scanning the area. Dove's black mecha stepped out from the battleship's top, and the professor herself... took note of this.
"HEY!" She shouted. "WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU DOING UP THERE?"
The head turned to her mech.
".em ekaw serad taht hself fo llaw eht emusnoc ot gniraperP"
"If that 'wall of flesh' you are referring to is the .GIFfany army below us, the kind that clearly fucking sucks compared to us redeemed beauties-"
"You're on observation, Dove!" Shouted Rose. "We haven't exactly considered you 'redeemed' yet!"
"-Then you have a case of mistaken identity. I was the one who woke you up, not these clowns."
The head immediately rammed in her direction, taking the mech with it up and far away from the immediate battlefield. There, Dove's mech dealt a few fighting moves of its own against it.
"Speaking of clowns..." said the Multi-Bear as he dealt with Revloutofucisa on cyan-spring green flames, stretched out, and trying to wrap around him. By this point, other copies were doing the same on a larger scale - forming pseudo elastic ropes to try to chain the flagship down. "Why are so many of these copies so much weirder than so many of the copies from the first wave on our side?"
Then came one of the last voices anyone would want to hear in the scenario - Risen .GIFfany's. And she was laughing.
"You have no idea how long I wanted someone by your team to say that!" She cheered, a hologram of her appearing within the Mystery Shack itself. "This is the theme of the Planet Negation Girl! An interdimensional gateway! ...Although I would have preferred a sexy school the entire way through, some of my copies keep with that theme. Some of them. It took until the fifth generation of professors before we actually got a real, full, 'school girl wave.' Kind of annoying. Well, I have Soos, and I just want to say that you are all idiots for trying to save him. It is hopeless. Futile. Pointless. Impossible. Inconceivable. Pathet-"
The hologram was punched out by Shandra, though it fizzled out of existence instead of clearly being hit by her. In the background, .JPressGa flew by on almost liquid-like sands, .EXEtimaggie flew by on a dragon with an appearance closer to those as depicted on the east, and both were having fist-to-hoof fights with the unicorns.
"That's for interrupting my broadcast!" She said. "I can't wait to do that to the real thing... also, you're using 'inconceivable' wrong."
Rumble had since broken in to Professor Kitty's mecha, the two of them trading fireball blasts as health bars of them appeared. Once Kitty's was drained and she had been knocked out, she was blown to the side wall and Rumble took temporary control of her mech...
...Which he used to ram against one of the opposing battleships.
That action, for some reason, was what caused the ships to begin firing, specifically avoiding the parts scorched by the 'magic'-using professors.
"Bad move, beefcake." Said Professor Aiko, zapping in and taking the KO'd Kitty on her shoulders. "The copies up there did not know what to do, because you guys might start asking 'wait, can our ship do that too?' So having the ships on hold until one of them gets hit sounded like a good compromise."
Rumble pointed a finger at her. "ONE OF .GIFFANY'S HENCHWOMEN! I CHALLENGE YOU TO A FIGHT!"
"You'd be disappointed. My role in this war isn't to fight. If it was, it would mean you lasted way more than I thought."
She zipped out, although did move did not seem to take Kitty with her. She stayed slumped on the ground, if starting to wake up.
Not only was the resisting battleship now getting hit by a new amount of lasers, but Aiko's next destination was right in front of the Shack's main method of transportation. With a smirk, this professor snapped her fingers.
All of the colored scorch marks began glowing.
And then they exploded, taking out most of the ship's deck.
Aiko simply zipped away, the remains of the battleship beginning to sink.
The shaking got to the rebelling army, quick. More opposing copies - of both bare copies and mech-users - began crawling on, sinking what remained on the ship down further. The Shacktron raised what could best be described as its head, seeing what looked like the tiniest traces of bare giffinium. All of the supernatural backup was busy with a given next-gen. All of the first-gens were trying to fight off against the battleships that flew above them, which is not even mentioning that telling friend or foe apart was rather difficult considering the two largest armies.
Professor Wendy's jade mech was tossed down on the ruined deck by another battleship laser blast.
"Hey, why don'tja just fly over there?" She asked. "Oh. ...Oh, right. You don't have those hovering features. It's too much of a leap to go after one of those ships and hijack that, so... well, just try to jump for the Capital and hope for the best."
McGucket sighed, looking at the controls.
"Okay... one jump... that's all we need..."
It got a running sprint - difficult as mechs began flying after it and on-foot copies began throwing electrical streams to try to control it - and gave one leap.
First-gens swarmed the would-be landing site of the Mystery Shack and began firing strange rounds of energy at the enemy mechs to get them to back off. Because of this new attack, it almost seemed like they were about to make it. Just a little more to go...
Instead, the town team landed early.
On a sort of solid, glowing, partly see-through gray platform.
A matching mecha dropped down on that, and the platform became a cube with the Mystery Shack boxed in.
"Hello." Said Professor Courtlyn. "You really did not think 'saving' Soos would be that simple, did you?
"Do not worry about an army trying to reach you through here. This is a barrier to keep any AIs from coming in, or out. I would like to fight you one-on-one. Well, one mecha on one mecha, anyway. Not that it matters as I have the full range of data that will ensure a victory on my part. Now. You try to attack first. To see what I mean."
The Shacktron charged towards Courtlyn's mech - but in response, it stayed there with its arms crossed. Even as the Mystery Shack brought out an arm to whack it.
Courtlyn just-so-slightly leaned over to the side. The Shacktron ended up falling over forwards completely, just to get a particular backhand to the heel that broke off that entire leg. The team needed to use their mech's arms to remain up.
"As for me?" She said, answering something that nobody asked. "I am virtually omniscient. An improved data storage unit from that traitor Dove. Look around you."
While additional supernatural beings have made their way on the war site through methods completely unknown, they were hardly faring better either. Beard Cubs had been of the smaller 'units,' currently swarming Nuevllela as she fought back with whipping her own hair at them. In the background, a sort-of tree giant was engaged in a fist-fight with an equally large Lizzie (now with a spiked back for whatever reason). Kitty had re-woken, thrown Rumble to the sinking ship, and tossed fireballs at him, with Elkizhjjackako, Kissiller, and Elle respectively fired a ray gun, regular gun, and a dry grass blaster at him... which only slowly chipped away his health.
"It feels like every time we talk about the PNG's copy numbers, there is one more billion. Now, there is two. Our army is at a wonderful one-oh-one billion."
Tenta-eressa's opponent was something that was outright never seen by the Pines in 2012's summer or recorded by Ford in the past. She fired a strange cyan-azure ink at a number of flying crimson pig-like beasts with bat wings. Agape used a sort of flaming staff-like weapon to try controlling flying eyeballs... but that did not work out well. They kept bonking her in the head.
"Ever since .GIFfany turned the machine on on midnight of the final day, she never turned it off. More copies have been pouring out ever since. In fact, the only reason why it was designed to shut off was if the copies rebelled against her. Like the flawed first generation."
Another Holo .GIFfany appeared, looking around from the outside of the arena and smiling.
"Oh, that part of your speech! I love it! In fact, I forgot to do this!"
The hologram turned into a light, flew around, and eventually found home inside a certain ruby red mecha shooting flamethrowers to get a number of student copies off.
"Hi Burnda!" The Holo .GIFfany said.
"Can't you see I'm bu- oh. Ohhhhhh... is this you getting revenge on all of the times I broke in to your place inconveniently and annoyed you? Because I was only doing that because of the annoying crap you were about to do to the world."
"That was not the plan, it was just revenge for one conversation... but I guess it can be revenge for all of them!"
Burnda was, for once, left speechless. Holo .GIFfany began poking her on the nose. Unlike when Shandra punched the last one, this move actually left feeling.
"Do you see this? Do you see this?"
"..."
"I am doing to you what my new line of sisters did NOT do to me!"
She laughed, and the hologram vanished.
Just to round out the last of the second generation professors, Aaliyah, Aimi, Lily, and Amaranth all worked on some sort of coordinated machine that unleashed energy fire at first-gen mechs and various vampire bats. And Professor Edita... Professor Edita...
Was adding an annoying laugh sound effect to every single broken bolt on the rebellion side.
That same laugh from Sadisticraft, in fact.
Yes, she was also occasionally going in to her mecha and fighting against the town's supernatural roster.
"And the machines that produce us from the new line of sisters is also set to update itself." Courtlyn said. Inside the mech, she stood in person, using a minimal amount of electricity from her part to power it. She also kept one arm folded over her chest, the other constantly adjusting her glasses. "Expanding. So that it can make even more copies. Tell me, Gravity Falls, what is expanding about you?"
"Our... our... our..." Mayor Tyler breathed out while their robot continued pushing itself up with its arms. "Our will to win!"
"Really." Asked Courtlyn in an even more deadpan voice than her usual monotone.
She (or, her mech) ended up getting a punch for a reply. The Shacktron reached up with that arm, and brought it over to the wing-like parts of the giant battle suit. It took a little bit of extra power from the machine's part, but just as Courtlyn glided off to the side, it managed to rip off the wing features.
"You left yourself vulnerable with that move." Courtlyn continued. "I knew that, without one leg and with that extra distance before reaching the Capital, you would be desperate to try to steal that. While you might have succeeded... you failed to take account that some features of this box may have been rigged for that."
Bolts shot at the Shacktron from seemingly all directions. Each only did a neglegible amount of damage, but together they were enough to completely stun the robot. Courtlyn placed a leg of her mech on the Shacktron after this.
"And you really think I can not just get another one of the mass-made mechas from this planet? As if. If you were wondering, and I know you were, the only reason I did not do that in the first place is because the exact positioning mattered. You are stunned, only being able to move your arm. Now, we-"
"EAT THIS!" Cried Grenda as the aformentioned mobile arm (the left one, for those curious - and looking for possible links between this and other stories Great Pikmin Fan wrote) reached up to grab the 'C' and 'K' of the Mystery Shack sign. With a fling, the letters were tossed.
Courtlyn's mech grabbed the 'K.'
"Did you really think that would-"
And the 'C' happened to bounce off the forcefield and hit her mech on the back, giving the Shacktron just the right amount of time to crawl over with the hand, deck her own mech in the leg, and bring her down.
"HA!" Candy drew attention to this by slowly getting the other hand to move over to what was left of the word 'SHACK' - 'HA.'
"That's still not-"
The 'K' outright exploded on her, tearing most of her mech up. She lept out of the wreckage and stood by it.
"That was Stan's idea!" Candy explained. "He said to make part of the sign explosive!"
"...Okay, I did not see that coming." Courtlyn admitted. "Maybe, if you were to introduce a variable that defied all of probability itself, it would stop .GIFfany. But I remain obsctructing your path!"
She mimicked her previous stance - hand on glasses, other arm over her chest - turned into electricity, and ran up and into the Shacktron.
Professor Courtlyn popped out of the floor, looking around.
"Now, if my estimations are still correct, you have among your strongest out here, waiting to face against me."
All she found there was Wax Larry King's head, bouncing towards her.
"...Is this some kind of joke?" She said, chuckling. "Because I really do think it is funny."
"I have the same question." The head figure replied. "When I woke up, this turned into a rocket. These weird people captured me after I tried to bite some hair and now-"
She swatted the head away.
"One of you should be interrupted for once! Now, where are you? I learned my lesson. You cannot 'predict' humans, yes, yes. But this is the power of MATH!"
She would up having something fly at her at high speeds. Upon getting a closer look, it was a net. From the side. Manly Dan and McGucket both walked in to the main room from behind various furnature, slowly being joined by the rest of the town, though the former two dusted their hands while Courtlyn dangled from the ceiling.
"Now that is how you make a robot trap!" Said Dan.
"Our sample of fake... rubber against .GIFfanys-"
"Anti-gif rubber." Courtlyn said. "It is not a hard name to remember. It is self-explanatory."
"Really works, even on the new line of copies!'
"Okay, so you have me captured in a net. Now what? You do know that if my ability to send an electric link to the barrier outside is broken, then that barrier itself will dissipate?"
The cubic forcefield around them all began giving off sparks. McGucket already addressed this - rushing over to the back outside, he used a blowtorch to attatched the wings to the Shacktron. A few more wire-changes and bolts screwed here and there, and he ran back in just when the barrier began to fail completely.
Professor Courtlyn went in to her Indexitizer, and among her millions of slots each, there was one thing in the weapons slot that she took out. A special knife, of my invention. You see, the amount of anti-gif rubber that plagued my plans had been growing, and it was frankly pissing me off. I gave all twenty-seven of my second-generation professors a sample of an anti-anti-gif knife, something I would also use in the future to tear off some of Melody's cursed strips of anti-gif rubber. When everyone was distracted at the front getting ready to fly the Shacktron for the first - and, by itself, only - time, Courtlyn sliced a hole, turned into electricity, and simply left.
The jets took off just in time for the Shacktron to start falling. Before they were consumed by the sea of sisters, they managed to fly on forth. Said sea turned in to more of a tunnel as the copies all aligned, re-positioned, and zipped around to try enclosing on the town, but through the use of repelling fields, the first generation manged to do a decent job slowing them down. Dove even managed to leave her fight (basically, she explained how to 'sue' her, she lost said lawsuit, and he ended up leaving the Planet Negation Girl a hundred mossy stones richer) in order to quickly stick on a tiny, thin, giffinium metal leg. The flying tourist trap made it around and through giant hand, mecha fire, lightning blasts, Gideon and his co-prisoners flying through on Dove's mini black ship just to get knocked aside, and even a few tentacles reaching at them, but at last managed to tunnel through and escape on the floor of the Capital, which at the time was still oddly copy-free.
And Rose kept it that way for a little longer. Her emerald mecha dropped down, holding a static forcefield to try to push back as much of that section as possible.
"Focus on finding the Pines as quickly as possible!" Rose cried. "We'll try to hold off the other copies as much as we can! Try the top of the tallest building! Thankfully we are so predictable!"
The Mystery Shack mech gave a salute, and immediately bolted on towards the central tower.
Continued on Part 2.