And thus, it begins.

Thanks to GneFeng for the Fav and Follow!

Chapter 28 – Weirdmageddon

It was the end of summer.

The sky was clear, the weather was warm but not unbearably wet or sticky, and there was a calm over the town that could only be felt in summer. Nothing pressing for children to worry about other than playing in the sun and at the public pool and spending time with friends.

At least, that's how it was two years ago, when the only people who had known the apocalypse could be coming were Fords and Dippers.

Now, there was a tension in the air that caused the calm to feel more like unease. And everyone felt it.

Sixer could feel his instincts screaming at him to run for the hills as soon as possible as he and Maria walked through town. There was a pressure in the air, an uneasily balancing stillness, that he had felt so many different times that he had long ago lost count. Or never counted in the first place. He knew what it was that was coming, just as much as everyone else did.

If they hadn't known Cipher was coming, they would have only been aware of an unusual tension that no one liked the feel of, much less wanted to be anywhere near.

Sixer's tails twitched in agitation as the local Gravity Falls population moved quickly from place to place, never wanting to stay out in the open for long.

They had to be thinking the same thing he was.

"He's close," Sixer said under his breath. "He has to be."

"We woke up this morning feeling like this dimension was waiting on baited breath; of course he's close," Maria replied. "I've been feeling like there's something in my chest waiting to burst."

"Then why aren't we waiting in the Shack?" It was arguably safer there than anywhere in town. Unicorn hair would keep them safe.

Unicorn hair would keep away Cipher and his want to take Sixer back.

"There's too much energy to deal with," Maria replied. "If the two of us had stayed in the Shack we would be pacing and would rather be outside. Being in town in case it goes off today is better than waiting."

Sixer swallowed. "Maybe, but we're still out in the open."

He didn't like this.

Maria rubbed at her chest and winced. She shook her head. "Maybe. But we're prepared. Things may get rocky, but things are—"

Maria cut herself off with a grunt and stumbled. Sixer was immediately on the alert.

"Maria?" Sixer hovered over Maria worriedly. "Are you all right?"

Maria righted herself and shook her head. "I'm fine. Just feels like someone tried to gut-punch me."

There was no one nearby who had, or would even consider daring to.

Then that meant….

Maria stumbled again and wrapped her arms around her middle.

"He's coming." Sixer's voice trembled.

He had known that Cipher was coming for an entire year. But spending time with Maria – Maria helping him climb out of his shell and become more himself – had caused him to not think that the arrival was this close.

But all the same, suddenly, it was.

Maria hissed from between her teeth. "He's testing the dimensional walls. He has to be. And the fact that I'm feeling this much pain means—"

Maria abruptly cried out and fell to her knees as a ripple of something ran down Sixer's back and into his tails, causing his fur to stand almost on end. Sixer quickly braced himself as he looked up at the sky, ears pulled back.

There came the sound of something ripping that was never supposed to filled the air as a large, circular rift was torn into the sky from somewhere beyond this dimension. The kaleidoscope of colors on the other side would have hurt the eyes of anyone else, but not Sixer.

He had been trapped within them for far too long to be concerned with them.

Familiar laughter echoed from the other side as a familiar, glaring yellow triangle appeared on the other side of the right.

"AW, LOOK AT THAT! GRAVITY FALLS! SEEING IT ALL IN ONE PIECE IS MAKING ME NOSTALGIC FOR ITS DESTRUCTION!"

Sixer saw the eye-smile and knew they were in for a bad time.

He saw Maria looking up at Cipher and quickly moved to help her to her feet. She didn't say anything in response, so focused was she on the chaos above their heads.

"SINCE MY LAST GRAVITY FALLS IS NOW NOTHING BUT INTER-DIMENSIONAL STARDUST, I'M MAKING THIS PLACE MY NEW BASE OF OPERATIONS." Cipher floated through the rift and into their dimension. "I HOPE YOU'RE ALL LOOKING FORWARD TO WHAT I'M GOING TO DO TO THIS DIMENSION, BECAUSE I KNOW THAT I AM!"

Sixer glanced around and noticed that the townsfolk were frozen too, staring in horror at what was happening above them. "We need to go – now."

"Let's get these guys to the Shack or the mansion," Maria said as Cipher turned to face the rift. "They're facing down their most terrifying nightmares. We have to snap them out of it."

"ALL RIGHT, HENCHMANIACS! YOU KNOW THE DRILL – TIME TO GET OUT THERE AND HAVE SOME REAL FUN MESSING THIS PLACE UP! PARTY TIME!"

The cackling, crazed sounds that answered him only sent more chills down Sixer's spine. How many of them did Cipher bring here for this?

"Guys, we have to move – now!" Maria barked. "Get to the Shacks or Fiddleford's mansion, but we have to move! We can't remain as sitting ducks here!"

That got the humans on the street moving, thankfully. The townsfolk turned and scrambled in all directions as a crowd of creatures and humanoid monsters came from the rift.

And there were so many of them.

Sixer knew how many humans had come to Cipher and asked for a deal for power of their own. He had seen them come forward and shake hands with Cipher while he had looked down on them in sly triumph.

So when he saw the multitude that was crowding the rift, he went a little pale.

"All of them?" Sixer asked. "Why is he –"

And then it hit him as to why.

"Oh no."

"ANYONE WHO FINDS MY RUNAWAY PUPPETS GETS DIBS ON THE PINES IN THIS DIMENSION!"

Cipher was going to hunt them down and find them, if they didn't do something.

But, wait – Pines? Did he intend to hand over all four sets of the family?

Or was there something else going on?

Maria and Sixer exchanged looks.

"Back to the Shacks?" Sixer asked.

Maria nodded vigorously. "We can't take them all at once. We need backup."

Sixer nodded in agreement, and the two took off down the street.

Explosions went off as the Henchmaniacs hit the ground and started going after the buildings and people in town. Not many of them landed in Sixer's and Maria's path yet, and of the ones that did they found themselves quickly distracted by the townsfolk.

Above them, the sky turned an angry and unfortunately familiar red as Cipher cackled madly. A ripple of weirdness rolled across the landscape, turning the buildings into a sudden kaleidoscope of colors and shapes that made some of the buildings look like they'd been pulled out of an abstract painting.

Maria shuddered, but Sixer wasn't thrown off by the sudden change. This was the sort of thing he was used to seeing from Cipher's work.

He'd lived through far too many Weirdmageddons across different dimensions to really be able to say he was startled by this.

People were still running screaming in all directions as they tried to avoid the monsters spewing from the rift. Some shot at the monsters, getting roars of pain from the creatures. Those roars quickly turned into anger as the weird creatures retaliated.

A familiar purple lightning demon – the same horned, purple satyr-monster that once been a cameraman, the first to take Cipher's deal – took an axe to the face from Manly Dan as they passed.

"About time," Sixer muttered. "Couldn't stand that damn attitude of his."

The creature hissed and spat, then turned and snarled, electricity sparking from his fingers. "How dare you, you—"

Maria shot a fireball into the monster's face, forcing him to shut his eyes and screech in pain. "Dan, run!"

"No way!" Dan readied another axe. "I'm not letting these things turn me to stone again! I'm gonna carve this thing a new one for thinking he could turn me inta barbecue!"

The lightning demon hissed and turned, tracking where Maria's voice had come from. The scorch march across the bridge of his nose and the whites of his eyes suggested he had gone blind at some point. "Who—"

The demon was promptly cut off with another axe to its lower jaw, bringing out another howl of pain.

"GO!" Dan bellowed. "I'll be fine!"

Maria hesitated, then nodded and took off running again while Sixer followed suit. She jumped over an animated charcoal grill that Sixer quickly skirted around. He was tempted to punt the round sphere of metal with its unusually short legs, but decided against it. They didn't need more attention.

"That was one of the new ones?" Maria asked.

"What do you mean?" Sixer kept pace with her, glancing back over his shoulder to make sure they weren't being followed.

"A minion Puppeteer made after Weirdamgeddon started."

"Ah. Yes, that's…one of them." Sixer frowned. "The first one."

"Really? Well, I hope he gets what's coming to him."

"COME ON, FELLAS! LET'S GET THAT FEARAMID MOVED IN HERE FROM THAT CRAPPY DEAD DIMENSION! MY PUPPETS' PLACE HAS LOST ITS LUSTER, YA KNOW? THIS DIMENSION'S GONNA BE MY NEW DIGS!"

Sixer closed his eyes and sighed at Cipher's words. He didn't need to look back to know what he was doing.

The monster's words were enough to confirm it.

"'Lost its luster'?" Maria repeated. "But then – that means your dimension is—"

Sixer grabbed Maria's arm and yanked her off the street and into an alley, just as a bubble of weirdness energy moved up the street in the opposite direction. Screams came from the direction the two had come from as it disappeared.

"I've…seen the decay from his throne room," Sixer said carefully after a moment. "I…suppose it was only a matter of time."

Watching the planet come apart beneath their feet, taking the people and changed landscapes with it, had been confirmation enough over the centuries: Sixer's dimension did not have what it took to stay together and support someone as crazed as Cipher at the same time. If Cipher was moving his base of operations here, then that meant Sixer's home dimension was collapsing into the Nightmare Realm, never to be recovered.

He didn't like thinking about it.

"Sixer—"

"We should keep moving, I think." Sixer peered out of the alley as what looked like a muscular cthulu stomped by, crushing buildings on the other side of the street. "We're sitting ducks out here, Maria, and as much as I could tell you, I would rather not do it in the middle of all this."

Maria's expression became more determined. "Right. Sorry."

The two waited for a head being dragged by its attached arm to move past them before bolting out into the open and down the streets of ruined buildings. Only a few minutes into Weirdmageddon and it was already starting to look like the world was in an accelerated ending stage.

There were shouts and gunshots going off in the distance. People were fighting back, but how many? And for how long before the Henchmaniacs got the drop on any of them?

The town very quickly gave way to a red-dirt wasteland, the trees pushed a fair distance back. Monsters of every shape and size dotted the landscape, occasionally fighting each other or chasing after humans and creatures that normally only live in the woods.

"We're too exposed," Maria said grimly.

The look on Sixer's face said he agreed. "We'll need to move quickly."

"And not get caught." Maria flipped backward onto her hoverboard, activating her armor as she did. "Let's roll!"

The two of them bolted out from the half-decent shelter of town and towards the woods. Sixer pushed in order to keep up with Maria as she flew, making sure that he didn't fall behind.

The first group of monsters they happened to cross paths with were rather promptly met with twin spheres of fire to their faces. They fell back screaming, scrambling to get away from the two while the townsfolk in front of them blinked in surprise.

"Get to safety!" Sixer barked. "And quickly!"

"I sure hope you two are, too!" Lazy Susan piped up from the group.

"That's the plan," Maria muttered in reply. Her gaze moved around to the other groups.

Sixer didn't follow her gaze as quickly. They were slowed down. If they were going to get to the Shack before they were caught up to by one of Cipher's Henchmaniacs, then—

"There you are, Fordsy!"

Oh, no.

Sixer stiffened up as a deep chill settled into the back of his spine.

He recognized that voice.

He turned slowly and looked back, and there she was.

Pyronica was standing not far behind them, looking just as smug and terrible as she had when he'd last seen her.

Oh, no.

Maria stepped forward and moved between the two of them. "Sixer." She kept her voice low and even. "Remember what we talked about?"

Sixer shifted. He remembered. But he didn't think it was a good idea now, not with Pyronica standing right in front of them. "Maria, you can't—"

"Distraction, remember?" Maria glanced back at him, expression serious. "Go. I'll be fine."

Sixer hesitated, and Pyronica made a cooing noise that caused him to stiffen again.

"Fordsy, is that your new master? Boy, she looks dull. I don't suppose she plays with—"

Maria yanked a modified super soaker out of her subspace and shot a blast of holy water at Pyronica.

The blast hit her in the stomach, which resulted in a screech of pain from Pyronica and the sound of sizzling skin. She wrapped her arms around her stomach and doubled over.

Sixer's jaw nearly dropped.

Maria gave the scene a nod and glanced back.

Sixer was looking between the two of them, still wide-eyed.

"GO!" Maria yelled, snapping him out of his stupor. "Get to safety – I'll catch up with you later!"

Sixer jolted and nodded quickly, then turned and ran for the woods. He shifted to fox form mid-stride and disappeared into the trees without looking back.