"Wots up, luv? Look, I'm busy here-"
"I know your secret, evil fishy hydra man! Everyone listen up! You're being scammed!"
"Someone come along and bladdy take this child before I crack 'er!" Curzon snapped. "She's crazy, lads, don't listen to this little human!"
"What are you going to do, fish hydra? You're just a fish hydra. Taunt taunt!" Mabel grinned, her hands on her hips in her finest level of patent Pines sass.
"I'm not a bleedin' hydra, I'm just an honest market seller, ya little creep!"
Mabel grinned and folded her arms. "Prove it."
Pacifica and Dipper stopped running – and flanked Mabel at either side, curious at what was going to arise from her blatant baiting of the monster. Curzon's eyes widened as everybody in the market seemed to simultaneously turn towards him – every eyeball fixed upon him as the altercation continued.
"I don't 'ave to prove bladdy nuffin!"
"Why don't you leave your door, Curzon? Why don't you ever go to the bathroom? Why doesn't Angus, or Gertrude, or the flat cap guy?!"
Curzon chewed his cigar furiously, even more smoke and vapour than usual erupting from his little doorway as Mabel challenged him in front of his customers. That was his business! His livelihood! Across the marketplace, Angus was now being confronted in the same way, as was Gertrude and the others – the entire plaza beginning to erupt into argument.
"You're all bladdy crazy! I'm just an honest bloke selling curses and bewitchments, not some kind of demonic multi-headed market beast!"
Mabel gave a scandalised gasp and leaned forwards, her hands on her hips. "I didn't say anything about you being a demon! What else do you have to tell us?! Huh?! Huh?!"
The gnomes all gasped in a similarly scandalised refrain, prompting the Manotaurs to start bellowing. The cacophony only caught the attention of more passers-by and built more of a crowd,comprised of everything from fairies to giant caterpillars.
"Guess it's just as well that gnomes are so gullible," Dipper mumbled.
"Your sister is pretty awesome," Pacifica replied quietly. "I don't think I know anyone else who'd be so… fearless to go up and taunt that."
"Yeah, she's uh…pretty charismatic."
"Or dumb."
"Yeah. Or dumb."
"And let's not forget, Mr. Cankerblight, if that is your real name, you said Weirdmageddon was good for business! These poor manotaurs and gnomes lost their homes in Weirdmageddon, and you supported it! You sold products to the likes of Bill Cipher!"
The anger from the crowd built exponentially at the sheer mention of the evil triangle – prompting Curzon to recoil, his grin now forming into a seething frown. The gnomes, by now, were beginning to arm themselves with pitchforks, while the Manotaurs were adopting a battle formation.
Jeff the gnome was proudly giving orders from the shoulders of Paul, his new left-hand man. The right-hand man, Mick, was off work today.
"I didn't sell nuffin' to Bill Cipher!" Curzon replied. "He's powerful enough without my curses! I just sold a lot to his troops, that's all-"
By now Mabel was beginning to veer into lawyering territory. "The troops who evicted our wonderful population of mythical creatures! And kicked a stomach faced duck at least once! That's animal cruelty!"
"Not the duckies!" Pubitaur gasped.
"You bladdy Manotaurs eat the feathery sods anyway!" Curzon shouted back.
"That isn't the point!" Pubitaur bellowed back at the top of his lungs.
"You want a bladdy piece of me, you bovine joke?!"
Pubitaur roared in response and started pounding his chest.
Pacifica smirked at the chaos that was erupting – and shocked herself by throwing in her own remark. "Why, what can you do, Curzon? You're just a little guy in a door in The Crawlspace, he's a Manotaur!"
Dipper turned to her in surprise and grinned, wrapping an arm around her waist. "Pacifica! ...Nice."
"Heh. Thanks."
Curzon spluttered out a thick cloud of smoke, his eyes now beginning to glow red with anger at the confrontation from the three teenagers that dared to stand up before him.
His facade had now well and truly fallen - Curzon Cankerblight was no longer the amiable, helpful curse seller of Gravity Falls - he was a livid creature who shouted and spat at those who stood ahead of him - human or otherwise.
He was becoming increasingly loud and unhinged. It would be hard to deny they were finding it… intimidating.
Except for Mabel. Mabel maintained her sassy exterior, seemingly getting far too much enjoyment out of taunting the growling, wheezing creature in the shadows.
Curzon was beginning to growl and rumble as he spoke. "That's what you bladdy well think, blondie! I'll crush the lot of you under me foot if you don't get outta my face!"
"You can't even get out of your fish tank!" Mabel shouted back.
"Right, that just about bladdy does it! I'm not some kind of ruddy fish, I'm yer worst nightmare!"
"That's just a cliché," Mabel scoffed.
Curzon suddenly spat a thin, watery spray of liquid from between his teeth - missing Mabel by inches. The ground that it hit began to bubble and hiss. The chipper brunette stared as the corrosive liquid melted into the sandstone, allowing the cobble to crumble. She looked up and gulped.
"Jeez. What kind of market seller spits acid?"
The others in The Crawlspace all looked up at Curzon, murmuring breaking out amongst even the most bizarre of the customers and clientele of the black market.
Dipper glanced at Pacifica and shrugged, not really knowing how to proceed with their assault upon the now seemingly aggressive - and acid spitting - market seller. What on Earth could they do?
Pacifica was not used to thinking under pressure, and was beginning to trawl over every thought she had. There had to be some way to get things moving. Some way to get Curzon out of his hollow - while minimising, preferably, risk to themselves.
She glanced at the gnomes and grinned.
Bingo.
"He's a monster!" Pacifica squealed, clasping her hands together. "If someone defeats him I'll almost certainly be a gnome queen for them!"
Gnomes are not particularly intelligent, not particularly difficult to manipulate and tend to suffer from a short term memory loss. Their behaviour is also extremely predictable. Jeff promptly leaned over at the other gnomes and mumbled some instructions.
It took only the prospect of a new queen - even if it was one they had attempted to seduce before - to get Jeff to begin arming the troops.
"Let's go get 'em! Paul, cue the lasso!" said the little man with vigour.
"Lassoo?"
"Lasso. Wait, is it lasso or lassoo?" Jeff asked, looking back at the teens, who just shrugged and ushered them on.
"Look, Jeff, just… do the freaky gnome monster thing, okay?" Mabel protested.
Jeff sighed. "No. No, I need to check this. Steve, do you have the dictionary?"
Steve brought the dictionary as Jeff took on his reading glasses.
Pacifica, Dipper and Mabel all gripped their temples, trying to resist the urge to kick the useless little creatures into Curzon's doorway themselves - however, they had forgotten the now enraged Pubitaur, who promptly ran towards Curzon's doorway with the wrath of a speeding goods train.
"Whoa there, whoa there matey! Hang about! Hang about!"
Pubitaur was not a creature likely to listen to protests - he hammered his fist into the doorway and gripped hold of whatever was in there.
"I'll crush you like a bug!"
"I'm not a bladdy bug! Honest, guv!" said the stammering shadow creature, for the first time reacting with a genuine anxiety. "I'm yer mate! I'm yer mate!"
"CRUSH!"
Dipper watched curiously as the creature's enormous fist seemed to disappear briefly into the darkness. Even Pacifica couldn't resist glancing from behind Dipper's shoulder as the furious beast began to pull Curzon from his hollow.
Curzon protested loudly, screaming and yelling.
"Fackin' 'ell, you little bastich! What 'ave yer done?!"
The Manotaur tugged Curzon firmly - and, rather than emerging from the shadow, it travelled with him. An elongated shape of tangible, fluttering smoke and tendrils, surrounded by vapour. A pitch black shape, with no light, no features, only those eyes and teeth.
Somehow Pacifica found that scarier than if there was a grotesque creature in there. She gripped Dipper's shoulder tightly and stared as the shadowy black mass just...kept coming.
"Ach! Whit in the Axolotl's name-"
She looked up and stared as, before her eyes, Angus flew from his doorway, his voice seeming to travel around them - as if he was inside the walls. Gertrude followed, passing through Angus's stall as she was yanked through the labyrinthine channels that seemed to surround them.
"Ooh, dear-"
"What in the-"
"BASTICH!"
Seller after seller seemed to follow the same circular course around them - doorway after doorway suddenly losing the faces that filled them, echoing around them in muffled shouts and screams of argument.
Dipper, Mabel and Pacifica stared in amazement as Curzon was pulled through his cavern bit by bit, protesting head by protesting head, Angus, Gertrude, the guy in the flat cap…
"Is he… a freaking… millipede?" Pacifica grimaced.
She clasped her hand over her mouth and recoiled as she watched more and more of Curzon's body reveal itself. Mabel was not so lucky and was already throwing up her cricket soda.
Dipper just stared, mouth agape. Curzon was weird, but this weird?
Sure enough, the creature had legs. Hundreds of spindly little legs at his base, smoking tendrils above - a sliding, slick creature of several hundred feet of shadow - metre after metre of strangely wet vapour that left a glistening, moist trail of fennel scented liquid in the hands of those that grabbed and clenched the pitch black form, wrenching it out like a length of pre-chewed liquorice from a creature's throat, or miles upon miles of damp, black hosepipe.
Curzon was no longer speaking; he was hissing and roaring inarticulately like a bona-fide beast, like the millipede Pacifica had likened him to - his cigar still teetering delicately on his shining teeth that now slathered and dribbled in thick strands of dark saliva.
The gnomes set themselves upon the faces of the other sellers, ripping off masks and latex features, wigs and hats. Nobody was really certain if it was to aid in the investigation or simple thievery.
Every one of them was like another Curzon; another collection of white, glowing eyes and impressive, overburdened jaws that bit and gnashed at those who got too close, spraying their acidic spit in a desperate attempt to see off their assailants.
Pacifica's theory was correct. Curzon, Angus et al were connected - physically connected beyond a link; they were one in the same - coiling up before them and, seemingly, wrapping around them in voice after voice.
Pubitaur punched Curzon repeatedly in the face while screaming. The other Manotaurs were unsure if it was from sheer testosterone or unadulterated terror, but were all too happy to join in.
Pacifica groaned and held Dipper's shoulder tighter still. "I… I think I'm gonna puke."
"What is it?!" Dipper cried out, clenching his head. "What the hell is Curzon?!"
"Fish hydras are even scarier than I imagined," Mabel whimpered, clenching her stomach.
"That isn't a fish hydra," Dipper said. "I don't know what it is but that isn't a freaking fish."
From the centre of the Manotaur's punching circle, there came a throaty, wheezing chuckle.
"You don't get it, do you…?"
Any London accent had long since dissipated from the bizarre monster they had once seen as so amiable. He spoke in a voice that sounded like fingernails scraping down silk; a deep, haunting tone that grated upon the ears - not deep; not high pitched. A strange, echoing drone that stung the eardrums and rattled the skull.
The manotaurs parted in surprise as Curzon rose upwards, towering before them, two teeth missing from his jaw as he glared at the kids with furious, bright red eyes that seemed to pulsate and quiver in his shadowy form - his eyes and jaw simply floating and writhing in the darkness that made up his pitch black, featureless body.
Pacifica stared in awe as the enormous, multi-legged creature seemed to swell in size, the walls and structures of the Crawlspace beginning to creak and groan around the entire plaza.
"No way…" Dipper almost fell to his knees at the sheer magnitude of what developed before him.
Brick walls began to crumble and fall in towards the square, buildings, staircases, bridges and trees falling to the wayside as more and more of Curzon grew and swelled around them, revealing his true scale - and several more screaming, floating faces - behind him.
The gnomes and manotaurs, plaidypi and fairies - all yelled in terror and tried to escape the falling bricks and masonry as their marketplace caved in around them. It was carnage. Pipes and cables were revealed as the ceiling fell, hinting towards the human world below, a dull rumbling echoing across the underground space.
The ceiling above them began to fall in, the floor collapsing in to show the creature's writhing mass and the deep, green, herbal pools that sat deep under Gravity Falls, addled with tree roots and hollows - a veritable rabbit warren that scattered beneath the town, Curzon Cankerblight - or, at least - the creature that claimed to be Curzon Cankerblight - flitting, wrapping and curling between every street, every highway, every sidewalk.
He was no mere market seller; he was like an artery. A bulging, grotesque grinning artery that travelled the length of everything they knew.
"I'm not just a creature in the Crawlspace, Dipper Pines… I am the Crawlspace."