The Arctic Stan Part 3

Ford struggled among the ground as the large Eye-Slugs continued to crawl and squirm all over him. His face was currently stuck under one of them and could no longer see anything. He could barely even breathe. His arms and legs were all restrained by the heavy bodies of the slugs and he was unable to make any sudden movements that could assist in freeing him. He was stuck and almost completely helpless at that moment.

However, one of the Eye-Slugs lying on his left arm continually squirmed among his wrist. Meridian was indirectly being tapped with every move it made, activating many of Ford's in-watch features. Ford could feel Meridian's features being triggered and knew if he could somehow get to it again, he could potentially escape.

He soon felt his wrist getting warmer and warmer. Eventually, the heat he felt grew strong to the point where it was unnaturally hot. He then realized that the laser function had been activated, and it was contained underneath the Eye-Slug on top of it, which was causing it to continually build and get larger and hotter underneath it. Soon, the laser became intense enough to slice through the slug and kill it, freeing Ford's hand.

The laser was still active after the kill, so Ford began aiming his arm back and forth around the room without any clear sight of what he was aiming at. But despite his inability to see the action, he was actually killing and slicing through multiple Eye-Slugs, quickly clearing out the room. He then aimed the laser above his head and neutralized the slugs that were on top of him. He felt the weight of the slugs on him decrease substantially and was able to slide his arms and legs from underneath their dead remains. He used his other hand to push the slug off of his face and took a deep gasp of air as he freed himself. After settling down, he quickly deactivated the laser on his watch and looked around the room.

The place was a bloodbath. There were potentially a hundred Eye-Slugs that had poured into the room and while he was blinded and restrained by a good few on top of him, he had somehow managed to wipe every single one of them out. The place was now oozing in green slime all over the ice carved walls. Ford himself was even covered with the same moist substance that generally coated the slugs. He looked down at his clothes in disgust as he uselessly wiped himself down.

"Revolting," Ford said with a look of repugnance. He then gasped as he made a sudden realization. "Stanley!"

Ford had quickly dismissed the distasteful slime as he remembered the absence of his brother. Realizing he had last been seen downstairs and the slugs had flooded in from there, he began to panic. He then quickly ran for the stairwell past all the dead slugs and rushed down the stairs, skipping down the steps to reach the bottom as fast as he could.

Upon reaching the bottom of the stairwell, he quickly stepped forward and cupped his hands around his mouth to amplify his call.

"STANLEY!"

He waited a good moment, frantically glancing around the room. There was still no response.

"STANLEY, WHERE ARE YOU?!"

He was ready to start running around the entire temple in search of him, but soon heard the sound of an automatic door behind him. He quickly turned around and looked upstairs and caught a glance of the door in the stairwell break wide open before closing again. However, he didn't see anyone who was there to have triggered the door. He immediately knew it couldn't have been Stan unless he was trying to pull some sick prank on him, which wasn't out of his alley. However, he felt they were both well aware of the potential dangers that the place provided and that'd they'd both be serious when the time arrived. And the simple fact that he was nearly murdered by a bunch of Eye-Slugs was enough to imply there was more than a few potential dangers.

He narrowed his eyes suspiciously as he cautiously walked back up the stairs with Meridian armed and ready. As he reached the break, he approached the door and triggered it to open automatically. The room was just as dark as it was when he had first glanced inside it. He knew for a fact he was being lured.

He activated Meridian's flashlight as he slowly walked inside, glancing around at every direction for a potential surprise attack. The room itself appeared to look like some sort of round, spacious living room with ice chairs, ice tables, ice shelves, ice decorations, and, ironically, an ice fireplace. The most notable thing to him upon entering the room was that there was no other door or way out of the room beside the way he came in. The room itself looked like a dead end, and so anyone who had walked inside must've been hiding really well. He began to inspect every open corner for anyone or anything that might've been hidden within the room.

"Stanford?"

Startled, Ford jumped up and turned right behind him with his watch ready to fire. He quickly aimed it down upon seeing that it was his brother standing at the door. "Stanley?"

"Woah, easy there with that thing," Stan told him, holding his hands out defensively.

"What the hell is the matter with you?!" Ford scolded as he walked up to him. "Did you not hear me calling out for you?"

"Uh, no. I didn't," Stan admitted, rubbing the back of his neck awkwardly. "Sorry about that."

"Sorry? I just faced a horde of Eye-Slugs upstairs and was nearly suffocated by them and you weren't even there to help me!" Ford continued to scold. "And all you have to say is sorry?"

"Calm down, Stanford. At least you handled it. You're good at that type of stuff," Stan told him as he walked over to him and put his hand on his back. "I'm here now. We can do this together again."

Ford was somewhat weirded out by the way Stan was speaking to him and acting. He then casually, yet cautiously, walked away from him and out of his grasp. "Riiiight. Anyways, while you were busy doing whatever you've been doing that past couple of minutes, I believe I've traced someone down to this room."

"Where do you think he is?" Stan asked, giving Ford an unusually curious look as he searched around the room.

"Most likely hiding," Ford suggested as he got on his knees and looked underneath the couch. "Maybe underneath one of these seats or in between a bookshelf or something."

"Wrong answer."

Ford straightened himself on his knees and looked back at Stan in confusion. "What?"

WHACK!

Ford was pummeled in the face by Stan, causing him to fall to the ground unconscious. Stan walked over to him and stared at his body as he began laughing maniacally, before slowly beginning to fade away.

Ford's eyes slowly began to open as he started coming to. He glanced around the room with his weary eyes until he started comprehending where he was and what was happening. He then violently shook his head to straighten out his thoughts and realized that he was trapped in a grasp of some sort, as his arms and legs were completely immovable. He looked down and noticed he was being held in the hands some giant beast.

"Huh?" he said as he turned his head around to see what looked to be some type of ogre, but it was wearing some interesting apparel. It wore a backwards baseball cap, sunglasses, a white T-shirt under its blue flannel, jeans, and wore socks with sandals. It then noticed Ford wake up and looked back down at him.

"Oh, did I wake you up, bro?" the creature asked in a deep, yet innocent voice. "Sorry 'bout that, bro. My hands tend to be kinda shaky and stuff. Think I need to get them checked out at some point."

"What the-?" Ford questioned. "Where am I? What is this?"

"You're at the top of the mountain, dude!" the ogre said excitedly with a friendly and relaxed smile. "Also in my hands, but I figure that's obvious. By the way, name's the Brogre. I'd shake your hand, but ehh," he said as he glanced back and forth between his own hands and Ford within them. "Ya know how it is right now."

"Brogre! Stop making friendly banter with the prisoner!"

Ford looked forward at where the voice had come from, and his eyes bulged at the sight the creatures that began to approach him. He immediately realized he should've seen this coming after encountering the Eye-Slugs. In front of him stood an entire group of Bill's old associates: Hectorgon, Paci-Fire, Keyhole, Kryptos, and Pyronica. Alongside the five were two other associates that he hadn't seen before. One appeared as an ongoing string of pure white electricity with a feminine shape and the other was some type of gray ghostly figure with a short body.

"Sorry, boss," Brogre apologized to Hectorgon for bantering with Ford.

"Stanford Pines," Hectorgon named as he floated up to him. "It's been quite a while, hasn't it?"

"Bill's cronies..." Ford named, absolutely shocked by the sight of them. "How is this possible? We shut you all out to the Nightmare Realm when Weirdmageddon ended!"

"Well, you see-" Hectorgon prepared to explain.

"HA! IT WAS EASY!" Kryptos intervened. "WHEN THE RIFT CLOSED, IT ACTUALLY ENDED UP CREATING THIS LEAK THAT ALLOWED US TO COME BACK HERE!"

"QUIET, KRYPTOS!" Hectorgon ordered angrily.

"SORRY!" Kryptos apologized dejectedly.

Hectorgon slowly turned away from him and looked back at Ford. "Anyways, it was easy. When the rift closed, it actually ended up creating this leak that allowed us to come back here!"

"Not before spending a year going through a bunch of other dimensions first that is," Pryonica added as she crossed her arms.

"That's correct," Hectorgon confirmed. "The randomness of the leak's warps made returning to your dimension a bit of a complicated task. Because of it, we lost a few old faces you may recall. 8 Ball? Amorphous Shape? Teeth? Zanthar?"

"We lost Teeth and Zanthar in a dimension where the floor was lava," Keyhole explained with a mournful look on his face. "But Amorphous Shape actually went back home to his family in the Amorphous dimension," he continued as his eyes then narrowed angrily at the thought. "Sentimental piece of garbage."

"Yes, yes," Hectorgon agreed. "8 Ball, however, actually did end up here with us. It wasn't until he and Kryptos ended up getting into a petty argument about what the best shape was and Kryptos pushed him back into the leak."

"HE SAID CIRCLES WERE BETTER THAN RHOMBUSES!" Kryptos attempted to defend. "I HAD TO PROVE HIM WRONG!"

"I SAID 'QUIET', KRYPTOS!" Hectorgon scolded again. "Anyways, considering that was two years ago, we just assume he has died as well."

"Two years? And a year between dimensions right after Weirdmageddon. So that means you all got here three years ago?" Ford questioned.

"Correct. Smart, you are," Hectorgon nodded. "We spent about a year in between dimensions before we all ended up meeting up here together. But because we don't have Bill to bridge the Nightmare Realm with your dimension, our powers can't be amplified and so we're weaker on our own. We decided to hold here and wait for the leak to continue expanding and for us to eventually take on an opportunity to take on the world for ourselves."

"So I furnished the place!" Keyhole intervened. "Doesn't it all look great."

"Yes, Keyhole. It's lovely," Hectorgon replied in a sarcastic voice before turning back to Ford. "Of course, the leak exists across dimensions, so there were occasionally other beings that would end up here. Most of them were no use to us, so we tossed them into the ocean."

"Huh, well that explains all the giant three-headed lizards failing to swim on our way here," Ford realized to himself.

"But some that came from the leak made plenty of use," Pyronica added as she gestured toward Brogre. "Brogre..."

"Sup," Brogre greeted with an acknowledging nod.

"...Electora…" she continued, gesturing toward the female figure made of white electricity. Pyronica then gestured over to the ghostly one. "...and her husband, Haunter."

"The best husband ever," Electora said as she flew up to Haunter and tried to hug him, but accidentally shocked him with her electricity. She flinched backed and gave an apologetic face toward him.

Haunter huffed angrily as he glared at her with disinterest. "You too, dear."

Pyronica then flew up to Ford and grinned at him. "Not to mention an entire horde of Eye-Slugs."

"Well, those things didn't make enough use," Ford rebutted. "They only held me down for about a minute before I destroyed them all. If you really wanted to stop me, then you should've sent in creatures that weren't as discounted."

"We did, actually," Pyronica said, glancing over at Haunter. "Haunter?"

"A little demonstration?" Haunter asked with a chuckle. Suddenly, an image of the man that the twins ran into on their way to the mountain was projected in front of him. "Howdy, Stanford!" Haunter's body movement and speech were mimicked by the projection of the man until Haunter made the projection fade away.

"You...you were the man we ran into?" Ford asked, appalled by this revelation. This reveal also made him come to another realization. "WAIT A MINUTE! You made a ghostly projection of my brother too, didn't you?"

"Oh! That was a good one!" Haunter realized. He then projected an image of Stan right in front of him. "Durr, I'm Stan Pines. I have a super smart brother who's just as dumb and gullible enough to fall for a fake version of his brother, who was made by a ghost who can create tangible ghost clones of anyone and anything he wants."

Ford gritted his teeth together angrily as Haunter, his ghost projection of Stan, and everyone else began laughing loudly. He'd clench his fist too if he could even move them in Brogre's grasp.

"Good one, darling!" Electora exclaimed to Haunter.

Haunter immediately stopped laughing and groaned out of slight annoyance, rolling his eyes to the side. "Thanks, dear…"

"What did you maniacs do with my real brother?!" Ford asked angrily, getting impatient.

Hectorgon grinned, before snapping his fingers at Electora, who nodded and flew back down the hall behind them. After a few seconds, she came back rolling a metal table over with Stan lying unconscious on top of it, his hands and legs strapped down to the table with metal cuffs. Brogre then proceeded to back up to make room for them to set up.

Kryptos then floated over to a wall with a lever on it. He let out a light chuckle before pulling it down. At that moment, the icy floorboard in the center of the room opened up and inside was a large glowing multicolor portal-like rift. Ford stared down at the multiversal leak as it spun irregularly in horror. He looked back at Stan on the table, as Electora pressed a button that triggered the table come off of a lift that protruded up and forward.

"We never thought this moment would ever come, Stanford," Hectorgon said. "And so we never prepared for it. But we knew what to do should this time ever arrive and the second Haunter informed us that you had two were coming, we realized this was our chance to finally strike back."

Ford continued to watch in horror as Stan was still being automatically protruded forward toward the leak. "What are you doing with him?!" He quickly turned his head to look at the Brogre. "You! Let me go, this instant!"

"Sorry, bro," Brogre shook his head. "I mean, you're kinda on the other side here. Letting you go would be, like, betraying these guys."

"Indeed, it would," Hectorgon confirmed. "So you're going to hold him tight, Brogre, and never let him go."

Electora pressed a button on the lift, which caused the metal table to stop moving forward, which left Stan's body paused directly in front of the leak. Paci-Fire, who had been the most silent one of the entire team so far, then walked over in front of Stan on the other side of the leak and gave a thumbs up.

"STANLEY!" Ford yelled frantically. "WAKE UP, STANLEY! YOU HEAR ME?! WAKE UP!"

"Don't worry, Stanford," Hectorgon said as he floated up to him. "I can assure you- he won't feel a thing."

Hectorgon gave Electora a thumbs up. She then positioned herself right behind Stan's table and charged her hands with electric bolts before blasting a continuous stream of electricity against the back of the metal table Stan was strapped to, which began to shock him. Paci-Fire's gold forehead began to glow red as he focused on the bolts. The white electricity then turned red for a moment before Paci-Fire pulled Electora's electricity into making contact with the leak itself. As the electricity made contact with the multiversal leak, the color of the electricity surrounding Stan's table began to change continuously through many different chromatic colors, similarly to the leak itself.

As the process continued for a few seconds, Stan himself eventually began to scream in agony, shutting his eyes tightly. Ford began to panic and struggle whilst in the Brogre's grasp as he watched his brother suffer due to whatever the Realm creatures were trying to accomplish.

"NO! LEAVE HIM BE!" Ford cried out frantically. "WHAT HAS HE DONE TO ANY OF YOU?! IT'S ME THAT YOU WANT! NOT HIM!"

"I can assure you, Stanford!" Hectorgon called out to him as he watched the procedure take place. "He is exactly the one we want."

Ford couldn't stand to see Stan in pain any longer, nor did he care what the Realm creatures were planning at that moment. He just needed to save his brother. Brogre was clearly not going to let him go so he had to take things to desperate measures. He opened his mouth and bit down as hard as he could on Brogre's finger.

"YOW!" Brogre cried out in pain, flinching his hand open, dropping Ford from his grasp. "Not cool, bro!"

Ford did a roll as he landed on the ground. He rubbed his mouth and spat on the ground in disgust of biting Brogre's finger. He then looked back up at everyone else. While Brogre was too busy caring for his hurt finger, Hectorgon, Pyronica, Keyhole, Kryptos, and Haunter immediately noticed Ford free himself and looked at him. Electora and Paci-Fire, however, continued their procedure on Stan without involving themselves in the matter. Ford looked down at Meridian and began pressing a variety of different buttons.

"I know this feature is unfinished, but please work right for me this one time," he pleaded to himself.

He then pressed a final button and raised his hand up. At that moment, Meridian transformed and expanded itself into a bunch of metal and cyber parts that wrapped around Ford's hand to his entire forearm. As the parts finished assembling, Meridian was now transformed into some sort of cyborg exoskeleton arm for Ford.

Ford frowned and gave a frustrated look. "Dammit! Just the arm?" He then looked up at all of the Realm creatures, who were in battle stance. "I guess it'll have to do."

Hectorgon looked over at Brogre, who was sucking on his finger. "What's the matter with you? I said not to let him go!"

Brogre stopped sucking on his finger and smiled apologetically at him. "Sorry, boss. I'm on it!" He then looked down at Ford and began to slowly walk over to him, raising his arms out in front of him. "C'mon, bro. It doesn't have to be like this."

"Unfortunately, 'bro', it does," Ford mocked as he leaped forward and used his cyborg arm to punch Brogre in the face. The other side of Brogre's head then smacked hard against the ice wall and he came falling to the ground behind him, knocking himself unconscious.

"No!" Hectorgon exclaimed angrily.

"I GOT HIM, BOSS!" Kryptos exclaimed as he began rushing after Ford.

Aware of Kryptos coming after him, he quickly ran over to Brogre's knocked out body. He looked at his cyborg arm curiously. "Please tell me that I remembered to install the ability to lift heavy things in here," he pleaded to himself. He then used both his cyborg arm and normal arm to grab onto one of the Brogre's feet and then toss his entire body to the side at Kryptos, using his normal arm merely for support.

Kryptos was immediately hit by Brogre's heavy body, which sent him flying across the room. He ended up in the corner of the room with Brogre's body flat on top of him. Kryptos attempted to push Brogre off but found him too heavy.

"SOMEONE HELP ME! I'M STUCK UNDER BROGRE!" Kryptos cried out.

"Someone go help Kryptos!" Hectorgon ordered.

"You do it!" Pyronica talked back as she flew up beside him. She glanced down at Ford. "I got the brother!"

She flew after Ford while Hectorgon looked at his own arms, which he knew wouldn't be any use in helping Kryptos out. He then looked back at him as he continued to struggle under Brogre.

"SOMEONE! PLEASE!" Kryptos cried out again, still struggling underneath Brogre.

"Don't worry, Kryptos! Someone will come!" Hectorgon called back. He then gave an unsure look. "Eventually..."

From the air, Pyronica lunged right at Ford, but he ducked down and she crashed straight down on the ice. She got up and put herself into a fighting stance. Ford turned back toward her and aimed his cyborg arm at her, expelling a blast of fire from the palm of his hand at her. She covered her face from the flames with her arms, but being somewhat made of fire herself, she was completely unscathed by his attack. He finished shooting fire at her, the blast having formed a perfect ring of fire on the ice around her.

"Ha! You know I'm resistant to fire, right? My name's Pyronica, for Pete's sake," Pyronica reminded him. "I thought you were the smart one."

"Oh, I know. I wasn't quite aiming for you," Ford assured her with a grin. He then pointed down below her.

Pyronica looked down and realized that the ring of fire was actually melting and cracking the ice beneath her. She then fell straight through the ice and fell downstairs, where she crashed through another floor of ice and into a pit of thick snow. Being partially made of flames, she was progressively becoming more and more extinguished as the events transpired. The snow put the finishing blow on her and completely burned out her flames due to its intense cold giving off on her. Too weak to move, she finally collapsed within snow pile.

Ford looked down at the whole he had sent Pyronica down before looking back up at Hectorgon, Keyhole, and Haunter. He grinned at them. "That's three."

"I got him, boss!" Keyhole shouted as he began running up to Ford.

Hectorgon zoomed after Keyhole and stopped him in his place. "NO! Stop trying to solo him!" He looked over at Haunter. "The only way we're going to beat him is if we work together!"

"You're right," Haunter agreed. "So stop talking and get to fighting!"

Haunter then created projections of a bunch of large pointy ice picks and sent them after Ford, who began to quickly do rolls to avoid them as they made contact with the wall and immediately disappeared. He continued making projections of the picks to go after Ford but was still unable to get him due to his evasion skills. Hectorgon then lunged at Ford and prepared to punch him, but Ford caught his punch with his cyborg arm and threw him at Keyhole, causing them to fall back violently into a corner together.

Getting considerably more annoyed each passing second, Haunter sent an even larger ice pick after Ford while he wasn't looking. Ford quickly turned around and noticed the pick, quickly using his cyborg arm to grab ahold of it. He then jumped over at Keyhole and shoved the tangible ice pick into his keyhole, before quickly turning it, causing a clicking sound as if he had just unlocked something. He then jumped away from him, leaving him lying beside Hectorgon in the corner.

"Uh oh," Keyhole said as the ghostly ice pick disappeared from his keyhole. His pupils then disappeared and his eyes began to glow blue as he began to shake uncontrollably.

Hectorgon then got up beside Keyhole and glanced over at him. "Keyhole, are you okay?"

Keyhole didn't respond but instead shook more violently. A yellow light then began to emit from his keyhole.

"Keyhole?" Hectorgon repeated in a nervous tone.

Before Hectorgon could react, Keyhole promptly exploded, creating a large hole in the corner of the room that also went through the mountain itself, revealing the outside and even docked in the distance, the Stan O' War II. The explosion also sent Hectorgon flying across the room and into another wall of ice. He then fell out of the wall and collapsed on the ground, also getting knocked unconscious.

"That's two more down," Ford stated. However, he was suddenly knocked down to the ground violently. He rubbed his face, where he had felt himself get hit. He looked around and didn't see anyone. He suddenly felt himself get punched in the face a couple more times, getting knocked around on the floor.

"I'm glad you're enjoying this, Stanford," Haunter's voice crept as his visibility suddenly faded in.

"Ah, so you can turn invisible too?" Ford asked as he got up and wiped some blood from his mouth with his hand.

"I can do a lot of things," Haunter said. "Why I waited until now to use them? I don't know. But now I'm gonna do what the others couldn't and end you."

"We'll see about that," Ford said as he lunged his cyborg arm forward at him. However, Ford's hand phased straight through Haunter's body, not harming him. Haunter then punched him back against the ground, catching him by surprise. "What the-?"

"That's right! I can turn intangible too!" Haunter gloated. "You can't touch me…" Haunter stated as he began pummeling Ford in the face a few times against the ground. "...but I can touch you!"

"Well, that's fair," Ford said sarcastically as he groaned a bit in pain.

"You just took out over half of the whole team. You think I care about fairness?" Haunter questioned with a laugh.

From behind the metal table, Electora suddenly noticed Haunter taking on Ford by himself. She gasped in fear and stop firing electricity at the metal table, flying over to him. No longer being electrocuted, Stan settled down and his body went limp, going completely unconscious again. Paci-Fire looked up in confusion, seeing Electora get away from her place.

"Electora!" Paci-Fire called out to her, confused.

At that moment, Haunter created a few projections of various metal spears that were pointed directly at Ford. Haunter grinned sinisterly at him. "Goodbye, Stanford."

Electora then flew up and approached Haunter. "Is this man bothering you, my love?"

Haunter turned to Electora in confusion. "Electora? What? No! I was about to finish h-"

"Don't worry! I'll save you!" Electora cut off as she charged a bolt of electricity.

While Haunter wasn't looking, Ford quickly got up from the ground and stepped away from the projected spears. At the same moment, Electora targeted him with another continuous blast of electricity, to which Haunter and his spears were in the way of.

"NO, DARLING! DON'T!" Haunter cried out. "THESE ARE METAL SPE-eEeEeEeEeAaAaRrRrSsSs!"

The electricity had attracted itself to all of Haunter's spears, which ended up bouncing off one another and electrocuted him as well. He was electrocuted for a good moment before Electora herself was able to figure out that she had targetted him instead of Ford. Once she realized, she stopped her stream of electricity, leaving Haunter completely burnt up as he fell to the ground, knocking him out.

Electora cupped her mouth with her hands in shock. "My love?"

"Well, that's quite a shame," Ford said as he stood behind her, a position he managed to grab when she wasn't paying attention.

She quickly looked behind herself and stared directly at him. Her eyes narrowed angrily as she began charging another blast of electricity. "You!" she screamed angrily as she blasted another stream of electricity at him.

Ford stuck his cyborg hand out and caught the stream of electricity in his hand and began to continuously absorb it at the same rate that Electora blasted it. He himself, however, was not affected by any of the electricity besides the occasional shock, but they didn't bother him. Electora was getting angered by his resistance to her attack and began to strengthen her blast. This caused Ford to get knocked back in his place a little but found himself able to absorb the blast with his hand and keep his stance.

Electora soon began to grow weak and tired of firing continuously at Ford, but she fought against herself and continued to fire as hard as she could. Ford, however, wasn't showing any signs of stopping and kept a straight face the whole way through. Eventually, Electora's eyes began to grow weary and her electricity blast slowly grew weaker and weaker until it stopped entirely. She then collapsed to her arms and knees, attempting to pull herself up again, but found herself collapsing entirely.

Ford took a series of deep breaths as he held all the electricity absorbed from her blast in his cyborg arm. He then looked around quickly, not spotting anyone else right away. "I think that's everyone."

"You forgot about me!"

Ford turned around to spot Paci-Fire charging at him with his giant bullhorns.

"Oh, right," Ford said casually as he remembered him.

Ford then pointed his cyborg arm at Paci-Fire and blasted all the absorbed electricity at him with one large blast. Paci-Fire screamed out in agony as all the electricity quickly flowed through him at a similar rate as someone getting shot with a minigun. After Ford's blast finished, Paci-Fire stood standing on his feet for a moment as his red aura faded away. His heavy body then slowly fell backward before crashing violently against the ice floor.

Ford glanced around the room once more and finally verified that everyone was neutralized. "Very well, then." He then pressed a button on his cyborg arm, which caused all the metal and cyber parts of Meridian to retract back into the formation of a wristwatch. Ford then gave an uncomfortable frown as he began to shake his hand off of an unpleasant feeling. "Yikes. Gotta remember to fix the numbness after reversion."

He then looked up at Stan, who he saw was still unconscious and strapped to the metal table, hanging dangerously close to the leak itself, which was spinning more rapidly and sparking bits of electricity.

"Stanley!" he yelled as he ran over to the lift. He pressed a button to retract the lift, slowly bringing the table back and away from the leak. He wasn't sure what Electora and Paci-Fire were doing to him, but he hoped it wasn't anything severe or permanent.

After a moment, the table finished retracting and laid Stan flat in front of him. Ford quickly undid his cuffs and put his hands on him and began shaking him.

"Stanley, get up!" Ford demanded as he kept shaking him. There was no response, and so he placed his ear against his chest. He heard a heartbeat, so he knew he wasn't quite dead. He continued to shake him on the table. "Stanley, please!"

Suddenly, Stan's eyes opened wide at Ford, causing him to gasp in fear. Stan's pupils were completely gone and the whites of his eyes glowed yellow. Stan stared at Ford for a brief moment without making a sound or any other movement.

"Stan?" Ford asked fearfully.

After a brief moment, Stan's eyes went back to normal. His pupils returned and his eyes stopped glowing yellow. He blinked constantly a few times before looking up at Ford wearily, groaning in pain as he sat himself up on the metal table.

"Sixer?" Stan questioned as he looked over at him.

"Stanley!" Ford said joyfully as he quickly hugged him.

"OOOH!" Stan shouted in pain as Ford wrapped his arms around him.

Ford quickly flinched away at the sound of his cry. "Sorry."

"God, what happened?" Stan asked as he scratched his head. "I honestly haven't felt this messed up since the morning after prom."

"It turns out Bill's old buddies emerged from the multiversal leak and spent their time cooped up in this mountain," Ford explained. "And for some reason, they needed you to perform some sort of experiment. I'm not quite sure what it was exactly, but how do you feel?"

"Everything hurts," Stan groaned as he slowly stepped off of the metal table. "But it's somewhat bearable, at least." He then looked around the room and saw all the unconscious bodies and the blown up corner of the room. "Um, are these guys all dead or…?"

"I'm confident that at least half of them are just unconscious," Ford assured him.

A sudden spike of electricity emerged from the leak and hit the ground right beside the twins. The two quickly looked down at the leak and saw it was spinning at an incredibly fast speed.

"Oh no," Ford said worriedly.

"What? What is that?" Stan questioned.

"That's the multiversal rift," Ford told him as he backed away from it and started tapping away on Meridian. "And it's destabilizing."

"Speak English, Sixer," Stan said, unable to understand what Ford meant.

"Jesus Christ, Stanley. That means it's becoming unstable!" Ford explained irritatedly. "Electora probably overloaded the leak when she was electrocuting the table."

"Electra-table, who?" Stan asked, trying to comprehend what Ford was explaining.

"We need to seal that leak now before it creates an implosion on a global scale," Ford told Stan as he tapped various buttons on Meridian while also dismissing his previous statement.

"Well, don't you have those elements to seal it up with a contained nuke or something?" Stan asked.

"Yes, but it looks like I've drained out too much of Meridian's main battery to be able to do that," Ford said, frowning at his watch.

"Drained battery? Really, Sixer?" Stan asked annoyedly. "You can make a lightbulb last a thousand years, but you can't make a decent battery for an overblown wristwatch?"

"Prototype, Stanley! I'm working on it!" Ford reminded him aggravatedly. "At the very least, I installed a lifelong emergency toast backup battery for emergency food situations."

"A lifelong...emergency...toast...backup battery?" Stan questioned, incredibly dumbfounded by Ford's design decisions with his prototype of Meridian.

Ford sighed. "Look, now's not the time to start mocking my inventing decisions."

"Fine. How are we gonna seal this thing then?" Stan asked, crossing his arms.

"Well, luckily I have just enough power to at least utilize my backup plan. Unfortunately, toast feature aside, Meridian will be essentially dead until we get back to my lab back home," Ford told him.

"That's fine. I can do a trip home eating nothing but toast," Stan said, rolling his eyes.

Ford then tapped a button on Meridian, which triggered a few green laser lights to project a three-dimensional image of some type of box. The lights started to merge and sculpt the box, before creating a bright flash of light. After the light faded away, Ford was left with a metal box in hand.

"What's that?" Stan asked curiously.

"It's formally called a DB, or a dimension-bomb," Ford explained as he planted the box on the floor. "It's a time bomb that blows anything within a two-mile radius into a random dimension. It will also seal the multiversal leak at the same time."

"How the hell do you make these things?" Stan asked, absolutely flabbergasted by Ford's ability to produce such items.

"I actually don't make these," Ford clarified. "These things are considered terrorist devices across the multiverse. This one I snagged pretty early on during my time in the portal from a group of criminals who were actually planning to do some real dimensional terrorism with it. In our case, the next two miles isn't anything but frozen wasteland and mountains. Not even any famous ones. People may wonder what will have happened here, but no one will miss anything. Wherever everything ends getting sent to, however, let's hope isn't an issue for anyone else."

"No one will trace this back to us, right?" Stan asked. "I mean, I've been arrested for some dumb stuff before, but annihilating a frozen mountain is a whole 'nother level."

"I doubt it," Ford said as he tapped buttons on the bomb. "There, the bomb is just about armed. But here comes our main issue- we only have five minutes before it blows."

"WHAT?!" Stan asked, completely shocked by the amount of time. "Sixer, you know for a fact that it did not take us anywhere near five minutes to get here! Five minutes to get all the way back to the Stan O' War?! That's impossible!" Stan walked over toward the blown-up corner and looked out into the distance to see the Stan O' War II docked beside the plot of land. He then turned back toward Ford. "Of course, it wouldn't be if someone had put a teleporter feature on their fancy, techno-watch!"

"Dammit, Stanley!" Ford shouted angrily. "Even if I had put a teleporter in here, there wouldn't be any battery power to use it!"

"So what do you suggest then, smart one?!" Stan asked, also getting somewhat angry. "You wanna use one of these monsters as a sled to get down the mountain all the way to the Stan O' War?!"

Ford looked at him to make a rebuttal, but Stan's ironic suggestion made him glance at the unconscious Realm creatures considerably. He then glanced back at Stan with a wide grin. Stan realized what his grin meant and felt immediate regret at coming up with his suggestion.

"Ah, crap."

Paci-Fire's body was laid out on the ground right next to the giant hole in the corner of the room caused by Keyhole's explosion. Stan sat on top of Paci-Fire's back with a terrified look on his face as he stared outside and down the mountain. His fear of heights has been long since cured, but the sight of the bottom of a mountain from such a high altitude was very unsettling to him.

He glanced over at Ford, who was still tinkering with the bomb. "Hey Poindexter! What's the hold-up? I thought you said that thing was just about armed!"

"I'm just ensuring that all I need to do is press one button," Ford explained. "The last thing I want is to activate it and it doesn't go off after five minutes or there's a glitch that messes up the timer or some other inconvenience. I just want to be safe."

"Yeah, you want to be safe," Stan said with an eye roll. "Meanwhile, I'm not feeling so safe just sitting here on this thing." Stan then placed his hand on Paci-Fire's back. "Also, this guy's name is Paci-Fire, right? Because for a guy with that type of name, his body is surprisingly cold."

"Alright!" Ford exclaimed as he stepped away from the bomb and ran over to Paci-Fire. "It's active! Now let's get the hell outta here!"

"Well, we're waiting on you, Sixer," Stan told him as he made room for Ford to sit in front of him.

Ford took a seat in front of Stan and grabbed ahold of Paci-Fire's bullhorns tightly. "Alright Stanley, get ready to hold on tight."

"STAN PINES!"

Stan and Ford quickly turned around to see Kryptos still stuck and struggling underneath the unconscious Brogre. He looked in their direction and gave them an evil glare.

"YOU HAVEN'T WON YET! ORMINEOUS IS COMING BACK!" he warned. "IF YOU THINK YOU'VE WON, THEN YOU DON'T KNOW WHAT'S COMING! YOUR MIND ISN'T SAFE!"

The twins glanced at one another with confused looks until looking back at Kryptos.

"Well, I have news for you- I have over sixty years under my belt," Stan told Kryptos. "Therefore, my mind was never safe before today and it never will be again."

"Hope you find paradise wherever you're going, Kryptos!" Ford waved, with Kryptos responding with nothing but an annoyed glare.

Ford then kicked back against the ground, propelling Paci-Fire's body forward enough to lean forward and start sliding against the snowy slope. The body began to gain momentum and they started sledding faster down the mountain. Stan wrapped his arms around Ford's waist as tight as he could, fearing for his life more and more each passing second. Ford used Paci-Fire's horns to steer them from side to side, avoiding the large rocks and gaps in their way.

The bomb's timer was now at four minutes, each passing second another second closer to detonation. The twins were sledding down the mountain fast, but also cautiously. Ford made sure not to take any needlessly risky jumps or skips that were more likely to fail than to succeed, especially considering their 'sled' wasn't actually a sled. Stan continued to hold onto Ford for his life, with his own trust his brother becoming something to hesitate about each second.

"We're almost there!" Ford called out to Stan.

Stan looked down and could see they were nearing the bottom of the mountain, but saw that the Stan O' War would still be a good ten-minute run if they were reach the bottom now.

"No, we're not!" Stan told him. "The Stan O' War's still too far!"

"So, you're saying I should be riskier then?" Ford asked.

"Wait, what?!" Stan questioned panickedly. He was not entirely sure he heard Ford correctly, but began to panic at the idea that he had heard him right.

"Hang on!" Ford called out as he began aiming for a rock that looked like a ramp on the side of the mountain.

"Oh, dear god," Stan said to himself as he saw the ramp Ford was aiming for.

Ford then sled up the ramp and with their current momentum, the two went soaring through the air. Despite being relatively close to the bottom, they were still high enough for the momentum to truly carry them farther than they could imagine. They eventually skipped the edge between the bottom of the mountain and the ground itself, which meant they wouldn't land on the mountain's slope.

"HOLY CRAP!" Stan shouted once he came to this realization. "FORD, WE MISSED OUR SHOT!"

"I got this!" Ford reassured him.

Ford then began to aim for a small hill in the middle of the ground. He leaned forward, giving Paci-Fire's body some downward momentum so it would start leaning down as if it were to land on a slope. After a brief moment, Paci-Fire made perfect contact with the slope on the small hill and slid down toward the ground, sliding forward as its momentum slowly gave off and eventually put the twins at a complete stop.

Ford looked relatively calm, yet somewhat energized. He stepped off of Paci-Fire with a smug look of victory on his face. "Yes! We did it, Stanley!"

Stan, on the other hand, looked like he was about to have a heart attack. He took multiple deep breaths and tried to calm himself down, the experience proving too much for him.

"If I counted in my head correctly, we have just a little over three minutes to go!" Ford announced, he looked over in the direction of the Stan O' War and saw it was a running distance. "The Stan O' War's not too far either! C'mon, Stanley! We gotta move!"

Stan got off of Paci-Fire with a groan. "Jesus, Sixer. You gotta cut me some slack. This is a lot of pressure you're putting on me. I'm gonna need to take a break."

"You can take a break when we're not about to get bombed into another dimension," Ford told him as he began running in the boat's direction. "Now c'mon, let's move!"

The Stan O' War II was within mere yards away from Stan and Ford as they ran up to it. Ford jumped over the short gap in between the land and the boat onto the deck, while Stan followed shortly behind, but was a lot more out of breath than Ford was.

"Quick! I'll raise the anchor! You start the engine!" Ford ordered as he ran into the boat's cabin.

Stan took some deep breaths before slowly making his way toward the steering wheel. "Great. A job that doesn't require strength or speed or whatever. I can do that."

"C'mon, Stanley!" Ford rushed as he pulled up the lever to bring up the anchor. "We have a minute before that bomb blows and we're less than half a mile until we're out of its radius!"

"I got it! I got it!" Stan grabbed a key from his pocket and inserted it into to keyhole beside the wheel. He turned it, and the engine made startup noises. However, the engine failed. Stan raised an eyebrow in confusion and tried turning the key again, causing the engine to make noises yet again, but still failing. "Uh oh."

Ford quickly heard the failed noises ran up to Stan at the steering wheel. "Stanley?!"

"I'm trying!" he assured him as he continued turning the key. "It's not starting!" Ford pushed him aside and tried turning the key himself, but Stan was right. The engine wasn't starting. "You see?!"

"DAMMIT! The engine must've froze or...something!" Ford suggested.

"Well, what're we gonna do now?" Stan asked, getting panicked. "Swim?"

"No, I've already taken enough of your ironic suggestions for one day," Ford denied as he ran inside the cabin. He opened up a control panel and quickly pressed a big red button.

The boat suddenly began shaking, catching Stan off guard and causing him to fall on the deck. At that moment, the side of the Stan O' War ejected a large inflatable boat with a small engine into the water beside them, the boat almost instantaneously inflating. Stan got up in confusion as he looked down into the water at the inflatable boat.

"What the-?"

Ford then came rushing out of the cabin with two backpacks equipped as he jumped out of the Stan O' War and into the inflatable boat. He looked up at Stan, who was still aboard the Stan O' War, looking down at him in confusion.

"Come on, Stanley! Get on board! Quickly!" Ford ordered.

"Wait, what?!" Stan asked, shocked. "What about the Stan O' War?"

"We're leaving it behind," Ford told him flat-out with a hint of his own disappointment in his voice. "We don't have the time to fix it up now. So I pulled out the emergency boat with a one-time-use engine. It's the only way we're going to get out of here in time."

Stan looked hesitant to leave the Stan O' War behind, nervously glancing back and forth between the boat and his brother.

"Stanley, please! I'm not happy about losing the Stan O' War either, but this inflatable is our only way!" Ford told him. "And I'm not leaving without you!"

Stan looked at the boat once more before closing his eyes disappointedly. He then opened them and hopped onto the inflatable boat with Ford.

"Let's go," Stan told Ford with a disappointed tone and mournful look on his face.

Ford grabbed the pull cord of the engine and cranked it up. After a few cranks, the engine started and it sent them off fast. Stan stared back at the Stan O' War as they drifted further and further away from it.

Within a few seconds after, a white blast and flare emerged from the top of the mountain with a large boom soon after. The large, bright flare made it almost impossible for the twins to look directly at the explosion. The blast, however, was growing larger and larger and at a decently fast speed too. The blast eventually reached the Stan O' War and it began expanding over the ocean too.

Ford knew they had to have gotten out of the explosion radius based on the speed they were going at, but the blast still felt dangerously close to them. However, upon reaching the two-mile radius, the blast almost instantly imploded and created a secondary boom that sent the twins riding on a large wave for a brief moment before eventually crashing back into settling waters.

With the explosion complete, the two finally turned back and were able to see the results of the explosion. As expected, the land was absolutely decimated. It looked as though a chunk of the island had been nuked and they were looking at the results of the impact. About half of the island was just gone, including the mountain.

And including the Stan O' War.

"Well, there she goes," Stan said as he looked out at the remains of the island, mourning the loss of their old boat.

Ford walked over to Stan and pat him on the back. "It's alright, Stanley. I mean, at least we made it, right? We get to live another day in our own dimension. The mission's over! We get to head home now and finally see Dipper and Mabel again. Isn't that something?"

"Yeah," Stan nodded as he considered the idea. "I guess it is. But that boat was the last four years of our life. It was our childhood dream come true." He stared out into the distance for another good moment before turning around and walking over to the front of the boat. He sat down and looked down sadly. "But I guess you were right about what you said earlier. The dream's done. Time to move on."

Ford remained silent as he thought over Stan's words and how they applied back to what he had said earlier about moving on now that they had completed their childhood goals. He sighed and sat down across from him.

"I guess that's one way to look at it," Ford said.

"Whatever," Stan said, finally cracking a slight smile as he leaned back against the side of the raft. "You're right. The mission's over. Time to head home and see the kids again." He lied back and put his hands under his head in a relaxing way as he closed his eyes. "It's smooth sailing from here."

At that moment, the boat's engine started to make some strange noises before suddenly dying, which caused the boat's momentum to slow down. Stan opened his eyes and looked at the broken engine.

"I mean, you can fix that right?" Stan asked Ford as he glanced over at him.

Before Ford could answer, the engine itself immediately fell off the inflatable boat and into the ocean. The continued momentum of the boat pushed them too far away from it, making them unable to go back and get it.

"Not that, I can't," Ford said, lowering his eyebrows annoyedly at their crumbling conditions.

Stan sighed before sticking his hand out. "Can I get some of that emergency toast?"

Ford glared at Stan for a moment. "Seriously?"

"Yes, seriously. I'm starving!" Stan assured.

Ford sighed as he tapped a button on Meridian, which began to make a model of a piece of toast. He caught the finished toast in his hands and tossed it over to Stan, who caught it and took a bite out of it. Ford then pressed the button again and began making another piece of toast for himself.

Stan raised his piece of toast in the air like a glass of wine as he chewed. "To new beginnings, Stanford."

Ford held out his own piece of toast in his hand and raised it up the same way. "To new beginnings, Stanley."

They both then simultaneously took their own bites out of their pieces of toast, accepting their current fate- slowly sailing in the middle of the ocean on an inflatable boat to who knows where. And until they hit land, this was their life. Meridian was dead aside from its emergency toast function and the two hadn't packed any real tools within their backpacks that Ford had saved last minute from the Stan O' War.

What was important, however, was that the multiversal leak had been sealed and the creatures from the Nightmare Realm had been sent elsewhere. Their main mission had been finished. But the road home was beginning to look like their toughest journey yet.

And that's episode four! It was nice to focus on the Stans for a bit and get used to writing their dynamic. However, we'll be transitioning back to Dipper and Mabel and their own Gravity Falls adventures again next episode.

Not to worry. We'll come back to the Stans again in the near future. And I already know what I have planned for them then, so prepare yourselves!

No reviews last chapter, so I guess that's just about it for this episode. Tune in next time for the start of Episode 5: Looking After The Wiser

Until next time!

-Absolute Rift

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