Credit for this installment goes to Kraven the Hunter - It wasn't quite what was suggested, but thanks nonetheless for giving me the impetus to give the general idea another go.
"...Yeah all you have to do is get outside." Stanley Pines explained as he gestured to the ancient photocopier. "Soos will swing around later with the truck to take it to the dump."
In any other household, in any other family, a genuine (if accidental) cloning machine would've received much more respect than it was getting at that moment as its final fate was sealed. But the old man's great-niece and great-nephew took only one look at the copier and nodded understandingly at his order, without so much as a single peep of protest.
To be fair to the Pines, nearly everyone in their clan had eventually suffered misfortune from the device in some shape or form over the years. This included Stan's short-lived and utterly disastrous counterfeiting scheme, a scientific examination by Ford gone so horribly wrong that he still didn't want to talk about it to this day, and an accident during the twins' second summer in Oregon where Wendy ended up fighting herself for the second time in her life. For most of the last decade it had banished to a corner of the office collecting dust, until now. Finished with his delegating, Stanley shuffled on off. His great niece and nephew prepared themselves for the task ahead without hesitation.
"We probably should have done this years ago." Dipper remarked as he rolled up his shirt sleeves. He looked forward to sending the dreaded copier off.
"Ohhh, totally agree with you one-million percent there! What do we ever need a clone-copy thingy for? Especially now when we can basically do it ourselves, and with waaaaay better quality!" The proud parent scoffed at the machine. "Hey, guess who melts into nothing when they get wet? Eh? Not my hun-buns, that's who!"
Dipper laughed at his twin's criticism. "Good point, actually. Okay, on the count of three we both push, okay?"
"Ready when you're ready, bro-bro!" She flashed him a double-thumbs up.
"Okay, one….two….three!"
The two forced their bodies against it as one, and promptly failed. Both siblings strained as they gave the effort everything they had.
"Dipper, you're supposed to be pushing!" She snapped.
"I-I am!" He groaned back. The two went at it like two horses, but the hulking old machine stood as firmly in place as a mountain. They paused, took a deep breath each and tried again. And again. Then again.
Then again.
"Break?" Mabel gasped as they pushed with all their might for the fifth time, still to no result whatsoever.
"Break!" He squeaked hoarsely. The beaten twins nearly collapsed with exhaustion.
"This think….is….the worst!" Mabel wheezed.
"Maybe we could…." Dipper mulled. However the idea just barely entered his mind before he quickly disregarded it. "Nevermind."
"Nevermind what?" One fact about life as a twin was that it never took much for one sibling to read the other. All Mabel had to do was notice the look he was giving the copier and in no time she on the exact same page as him. Her chocolate brown eyes lit up bright. "Hey, yeah! Yeah! We could just make-"
"No." He waved his arm "No, no, no, nooooo, no."
"Dipper we could-"
"No. No. It's a bad idea. Just forget it."
"But think how much easier this will make everything!" She gushed excitedly. "And it's so simple! We plug it in, one of us crawls on top, we go beep-bop-boop here, make a couple extra you or me, and ta-daaaaa! Instant temporary work crew!"
"The entire reason we're throwing it out precisely because this thing gives us nothing but trouble." He flatly objected.
"But we haven't used it in years. And so we're not just kids messing around with it, we're both rational adults." Argued the eternal optimist. Dipper was still reluctant.
"I just-"
What, are you afraid of a repeat or something? That we're going to get another big Dipper brawl over a girl?" She grinned and playfully elbowed him in the side. Her brother squirmed at the memory.
"This thing has literally given us nothing but trouble." He repeated.
"Oh it'll be fine! And we definitely won't have another round of sweaty and awkward guys fighting like dorks, especially since Wen-Wen's already spoken for now with her stinky, sweaty awkward husband!" Mabel grabbed her brother's hand and pointed to his wedding band. "C'mon, we're not doing going to do anything too crazy! We'll only use them for like, five minutes tops."
Her choice of adjectives notwithstanding, Dipper was slowly won back over to his original idea. Granted, their past experience with the machine had been anything but productive or even remotely pleasant. However, it had been quite a few years since they had given it a try. Things had changed.
Also, on a much more practical note they hadn't even moved the blasted copier out of the room yet. For that matter, they hadn't even budged it five feet. And his wiry muscles were already killing him.
"Okay…." He plugged it in as he relented. "We'll try two or three and see how it goes from there."
His sister clapped her hands and whooped excitedly. "Rock paper scissors for who gets to go first!"
"...Frog butt!" Finn Pines squeaked.
"Kitty butt!" Gladys gleefully chirped back. Together the tiny twins turned expectantly to their aunt. Seated with them on the edge of the porch with she bounced her baby daughter on her lap, Wendy mulled for moment before having a go at it.
"Elephant butt." She one-upped the both of them, and her niece and nephew were automatically stricken with shrill laughter.
"...What the heck are you even playing?" Stan finally asked from his seat on the old weatherbeaten sofa.
"No idea at all." The young woman honestly replied with a fat grin. "But I think I'm winning-"
Horrified screams cut interrupted what had been a fairly low-key afternoon. Moving like the devil himself was hot on their heels, the elder twins tore outside. Mabel whirled around and slammed the door tight behind her as a terror-eyed Dipper tried to gasp out an explanation.
"Couldn't fit...too big now…..button…..stuck….unplugged it, b-but…."
His sister yelped as the door was battered hard from the other side. The young man tried to help her brace it shut, but even their combined strength wasn't enough. It was battered open by a barrage of furious kicks and the panicked siblings immediately tore off. They were fiercely pursued by an entire troop of copies of Dipper, each one completely perfect to the last detail.
...From the waist on down only. It looked like a gang of skinny jeans had gained sentience as they chased down the Pines twins. And with no upper halves to weigh them down, the partial clones quickly caught up.
"Ooohh no." Stan noticed the clones faded coloring, and nearly had a post-traumatic flashback to the fateful day when a bunch of angry photocopied twenty dollar bills attacked him. But the old man quickly snapped out of it when one pair of legs raced on over and started menacing him. "Don't even think about it-OW! Hey! Oh you little…."
It aggressively stomped right on his slippered foot. He growl as he tried fending it off with his eight-ball cane. "I could use a little help over here! Wendy? Wendy!"
Almost as soon as the half-clones had appeared, her reflexes had fired up into overdrive. By the time Stan realized she had vanished, Wendy had already raced around to the gift shop, bolted inside and up an old ladder and clambered all the way to the roof with a speed that would have been the envy of most Olympic athletes. She didn't exactly know what they were all dealing with, but she quickly guessed that whatever these things were, climbing was not one of their strengths.
"Watch your cousin!" She hurriedly ordered Finn and Gladys. The tiny twins nodded dutifully as they sat perched in the center of their aunt's old hideout. Then with experienced ease she jumped off rode a slender pine tree all the way back down to the chaos. Several of the clones immediately broke off from the pack and rushed her. The lanky woman stared them down boldly as they started surrounding her.
"All right, you-OW! Hey-OW! OW!" The angry lower halves went right for her shins, and began awkwardly dancing about trying to evade their kicks. As soon as she recognized the scrawny noodle legs attacking her she glared accusingly to the older twins. "You guys messed with the copier, didn't you?!"
"We know, we know! It was a bad ide-" Dipper was tripped over onto his stomach, and several of the clones began jumping up and down on him. "OW! Stop! Stop! Seriously, where's all this rage coming from?"
"Jealousy?" Mabel breathlessly suggested as she dodged several of the foe, only to be hemmed against a tree by several more. "I mean, we have arms and-"
She suddenly let out a shrill shriek as one of them grabbed her hair, somehow. As she yanked her brown locks free, suddenly it hit her. This was actually quite the easy fix. "Guys! Guys! I got it! We can hit them in their weak spot!"
"Where?" Dipper grimly fought his way back to his feet.
"Their weak spot!" She shouted back above the chaos. "If they have all your downstairs stuff, then that means they-"
"Oooohhhh, no!" Her brother yelped. He knew all too well where she was going with this. "No, we're not-"
A hideous crunch rang out. After overhearing her sister-in-law, Wendy had impatiently wasted no time. Her booted foot now lay buried deep between the legs of a very unlucky half-clone. It trembled and dropped to its side like a sack of stones. Everyone paused and stared. This included the badly startled copies, though how they were doing that without eyes was anyone's guess.
"Uhhhh…." It was so close to attacking her own husband that the lanky redhead couldn't help but shoot him an apologetic glance. Dipper winced painfully at the sight of the downed copy.
"...Ow." He whimpered. It honestly hurt to look at it.
The pause in the madness didn't last long. Once their shock wore off, the partial clones went right on the attack again, goaded on by strength borne of desperation. Unfortunately for them, the Pines now had a battle plan. Loud thwacks began filling the air as the non-clones quickly gained the upper hand through their dirty tactics, though some of them fought back with more reluctance than others.
"Sorry! I'm sorry!" Dipper yelled to each copy that he vunhappily took out. "You're not giving us a lot of choice here! Sorry!"
His sister however threw herself into the fray with gusto, yelling dramatically with every kick like the starlet of a kung-fu flick. "Hi-ya!" Hi-ya! Whatchaaa!"
"Behind you, Mommy!" Finn yelled from the roof.
"Lookout! In font of you!" Gladys squealed as they watched.
"Thank you, sweeties!" She thankfully yelled back before whirled around and letting fly with her foot. "Hi-YAH!"
"Ah-ha! Not so high and mighty now, are we?" Stanley swung hard, catching one full-on in the crotch with a satisfying thud. "All right, which of you leggy jerks wants some?"
It wasn't long at all until the last one was stomped down into a cringing heap. Once the battlefield was cleared, Mabel and Wendy bolted for the hose. The brunette turned it on full force, and with the redhead aiming the nozzle they soon reduced reduced all their fallen foes to melted puddles of soggy paper pulp.
Now that victory was theirs, everyone took a moment to recover. As he wiped a sweaty brow, Dipper surveyed the scene and declared without the slightest hesitation, "Well, that was the least dignified thing we've ever done."
"Eh, not for me it wasn't." Stan wheezed. His great-nephew shot him a blank stare of disbelief.
"...How?"
"Well, if there's one thing you should know about North Dakota-"
"Story!" They could hear excitedly Gladys cheer from above. Wendy slapped a hand over the old man's mouth before he can regale them with how he had been banned from that particular state.
"Hold on guys, I'm coming back up!" She headed off to go fetch the kids. Stan wisely turned the conversation back to the matter at hand.
"Yeesh." He stirred at the closest puddle of former-clone with his cane. "How'd you two knuckleheads turn a simple move job into this?"
"Pretty easily, actually." Mabel cheerily replied as she wiped the sweat from her brow. The indomitably-spirit woman proceeded to turn it to their favor. "But hey, at least we learned a real good lesson!"
"Eh?" Stan raised a thick caterpillar eyebrow.
"Yup! Always, always be careful of shortcuts!" She declared loudly like she was a character in an after-school special, and with good cause. Nods from her children high above signaled that they had heard her moral as clear as bell.
"Yeah, definitely never again." Dipper wearily vowed as he nursed fresh bruises. But as soon as he watched Wendy dutifully climb back down into the Shack he realistically wondered out loud, "How long until you think we go back on that?"
"Oh, I give us one and a half days." Mabel optimistically estimated with a smile. "You?"
"I'd say we have until tomorrow morning."
"Ten seconds ago." Stan already had a plan cooked up for the infernal machine behind this mess. "Can one of you run down to the basement? Should be at least one extra can of gas down there."
The twins grimaced shot each other a look. They knew pretty well what he had in mind.
"You sure about that?" Mabel checked.
"Hey," The old man prodded each one in the stomach. "If we've really learned anything over the years, it's that fire takes care of everything…."
