A/N: Aaaaaand here we are ladies and gentlemen: the climax! Hope you enjoy it, ladies and gents: it's been a joy to write.
Anyway, without further ado, the latest chapter. Read, review, and above all, enjoy!
Disclaimer: Gravity Falls is still not mine.
The Grey Professional smiled, unmasked for the first time since he'd arrived in this wretched little dimension: he'd doffed his hat, cast aside his scarf and pocketed his shades, and now he finally allowed himself a smile as he took in the sight of Mabel Pines cowering in his shadow.
It had taken long enough to get this far, but at last, he'd won the right to gloat. He'd already recorded the moment when her will to resist had crispbread and she'd abandoned all hope of victory; now it was time for him and the mysterious William Yard VIII to drink in every drop of her despair.
For the last two days, he'd been waiting for his moment, gathering new footage for the client and assessing the state of the ongoing situation. To his delight, it was looking decidedly apocalyptic. By now, the last vestiges of organic life within the borders of this town had been converted into Mabels and the Forger Wasp Queen was preparing her forces to expand across Roadkill County: trucks from around Gravity Falls were being repurposed as troop carriers for deployment in the neighbouring towns that very evening, while the first of many hitchhiking infiltrators were making their way to the highway – having been made to look as waifish and sympathetic as possible so as to guarantee the help of passing Good Samaritans. The copier clones loose in the wilderness were a temporary annoyance, easily destroyed and just as easily dismissed. The few visitors who'd made the mistake of trying to investigate the now-deserted streets of Gravity Falls had already been captured and converted, and their vehicles were being modified to serve the Forger Wasps in their own special ways.
From what the Grey Professional had seen of their workshops, steps were already being taken to sabotage larger cities over the course of their offensive: some cars were being remade with new fenders and engines that could be used to ram gas stations; others were fitted with devices that could project electromagnetic pulses strong enough to knock out power stations; there was even a number of panel vans designed to funnel tranquilizing gas into homes and buildings, either to knock out the inhabitants or to force them outside – into the waiting arms of the swarm. And these were only the most pedestrian designs that the Queen had conceived of since Stanford Pines and Fiddleford McGucket had been assimilated; with their genius on the side of the Forger Wasps, the world would be theirs in a matter of days.
By then, Grey would be long gone, enjoying his reward, his bonuses and the well-deserved acclaim this victory would win him. As soon as he left the area, the cameras he'd brought along would spread themselves across the globe in a self-replicating fleet, providing the client with up-to-the-minute coverage of the ongoing extinction of the human race and the torment that Mabel would no doubt experience as a result. Until the day the pathetic human brat expired – in the unlikely event that the Forger Wasps failed to prevent her death – her life would be the client's entertainment, to treasure, cherish and enjoy for as long as it lasted. And if all parties concerned had their way, it would last unto infinity.
In the meantime, though, Grey had needed to find an opportunity to gloat over Mabel's final downfall, a chance to look her in the eye and bask in the warm glow of victory. He knew he couldn't trust the Queen not to stab him in the back now that she had the technological brilliance of two geniuses under her control, so he'd avoided making any additional agreements with her. Instead, he'd waited for the moment when the Forger Wasps were secure enough to leave Mabel unattended.
To his surprise, the opportunity had arrived much sooner than expected, thanks in no small part to Mabel's last desperate gambit: though her copier clones had failed to break through the blockade surrounding Gravity Falls, they had definitely gotten the attention of the Forger Wasps. Pursued by a squad of angry Mabels, the animate photocopies had gone blundering past the Mystery Shack, drawing the attention of the garrison and adding several dozen angry Forger Wasps to the pursuit; while Grey was normally exasperated by the Wasps' instinctual fixations, he had to admit that they were definitely working in his favour. As the need to defend their Queen superseded even their overwhelming hatred of artificial life, they wouldn't have dared leave Mabel unattended unless they were certain that she was either pacified or restrained (preferably both).
And with the house empty for the foreseeable future and the basement entrances locked behind him, Grey would be free to indulge himself for as long as he pleased. And if the Wasps returned to their nest, he still had his Mistifier; one press of a button and he would be out of their reach.
Once again, he grinned down at the helpless Mabel, still cowering and chained to the bed as she was.
It was time for the gloating to begin.
"You probably want to know who I am," said Grey. "That's they always want to know: who are you? What are you doing here? Oh, and my personal favourite: why? Well, I won't keep you in suspense: they call me the Grey Professional… and my business is revenge."
Mabel hung her head in despair, briefly regretting having heard Grunkle Ford's briefing; now she'd have to sit through Grey's explanation and pretend she didn't already know just about everything about him. Worse still, she'd have to listen to the man gloat about everything before that craziness was over and done with. And it wasn't that she was feeling especially confident in her plans or that she didn't take Grey seriously or anything like that; it was just that she was so done with this mess, so tired of being screwed over and toyed with that she could barely stand another minute of undefeatable scumbags lording it over her. She just wanted it to be over. Right here and now, though, all she could do was cower, hang her head, and pretend to be wholeheartedly terrified.
Of course, that wasn't too hard: Mabel was scared, just not to the extent that Grey would have preferred, and definitely not for the reasons that this mercenary scuzzbucket believed. Right now, her jerry-rigged little plan was at its most pivotal stage and the stakes had never been higher: if she slipped up now or if Grey figured out that something was wrong, then it was all over. So she had to make him believe that everything was going his way.
Swinging the cell door open, Grey stepped inside, grinning hideously as he crept past the barrier of curtains and into the light. Up close, without his scarf, shades and hat, he didn't exactly look the part of the menace behind the Forger Wasps: his pallid skin was almost as grey as his clothes, as were his granite-eyes and dull pewter locks, but other than that there wasn't much about him that seemed especially distinctive. He looked more like Tad Strange than anything else, except where Tad's face was sharply angular and smiled largely on reflex, Grey's face was smoother, more rounded, and the smirk now etched across it looked almost painfully triumphant – as if being this smug physically hurt.
But however smug he was, he wasn't stupid: though he could clearly see that Mabel was securely manacled, he stopped at least five feet from her before continuing his monologue.
"We of the Retribution Squad are only hired for the greatest acts of vengeance in the multiverse," he continued. "Whenever someone is wronged and desires revenge beyond the realms of possibility, we are there to ensure that blood is paid in recompense: perhaps you've heard the saying "an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth?" Amateur nonsense. We have blinded entire civilizations for the sake of one being's vengeance; we have left dynasties toothless and broken-jawed so that a score is settled – and we've done it without ever showing our hand until the very end. And I am the greatest of them all: everything that has transpired these last two days has done so according to my design and my direction. When the human race finally collapses into extinction and this world becomes the seat of a new Forger Wasp empire, it will be at my behest… and that of my client. Now, I'm sure you're wondering who could possibly want to see you suffer so terribly, and why their vengeance demanded the end of your species. Well, wonder no more, Mabel Pines, for I am at last permitted to introduce you to my client…"
Reaching into the depths of his coat, he held out a tiny octagonal device no bigger than a pocket watch. With a press of a button, the little shape sprang into the air, opened a lens in its miniscule face and began projecting a life-sized image into the air directly in front of Mabel. The cowled shape that emerged was only a silhouette at first, its features completely obscured by the shadows it was lurking it, but with every passing second, the image grew clearer. And as the figure drew closer to the light, it spoke. Mabel didn't recognize the voice... but then again, she didn't need to.
"Good to see you again, Mabel," the figure rumbled. "It's been too long since I last saw you in the flesh – but hey, time has a funny way of stretching out here: a few days for you feel like a year to me… and I've had plenty of time to think about everything I'd do to you if I ever got the chance for revenge." A harsh bark of laughter tore through the speakers. "You probably don't even remember who I am; in fact, I'm betting you forgot all about me from the moment I was forced out of your pathetic little world. But I never forgot you. And now here I am again, the greatest of the-"
"Hi, 8-Ball," said Mabel quietly.
She hadn't meant to cut him off. In fact, she hadn't meant to say anything at all; the words had just rolled out of her mouth, and Mabel couldn't work out if she was still loopy from the Queen's Smile or if she'd just suffered a mini-breakdown at the prospect of hearing yet another monologue. In any case, she did her best to look downcast and miserable, hoping that would be enough to waft away any suspicion.
There was a pause, as the Henchmaniac blinked.
"Okay," he grumbled. "I'll bite: how the hell did you figure it out?"
"I guessed; I mean, I couldn't be sure with that cloak you were wearing, but I don't know anyone else with those kind of feet."
Once again, the performance was everything: quite apart from lying through her teeth, her voice was kept as deliberately low and monotonous as possible, just to make sure there would be no doubt that her spirit was well and truly broken… until the moment arrived.
8-Ball frowned, clearly disappointed that his big moment had been spoiled. Eventually, he shrugged and the tusked smile returned to his face.
"Well," he said briskly, "I don't know about you, Mabel, but I've been having the time of my damn life watching the video input Grey's sent me these last few days: you running around from one end of Gravity Falls to the next, trying to stay ahead of the swarm and trying to find a cure for the Forger Wasp infestation… it's been a laugh a minute, watching you slowly losing your mind and losing all hope. And that stuff about you accidentally infecting Dipper and Soos? Priceless! It couldn't have been better if I'd planned it. Believe me, Shooting Star, when I saw you break down and cry like a baby in the arms of your clones, I knew I'd got my money's worth. And I'll continue to get my money's worth for as long as you live, because I'll be watching and rewatching every last minute of it until this universe finally burns out like a cheap firework. I'd buckle in for the long stretch if I were you, Mabel, because your life is now my entertainment… and I hope the Forger Wasps make it last for all time!"
All things considered, Mabel wasn't too surprised by the gloating or the sadism. She didn't know 8-Ball extraordinarily well, having only met him exactly once – and on that occasion, he'd spent most of it trying to kill her – but at the time he'd struck her as being pretty typical as far as the Henchmaniacs went: brutish, cruel, slavishly loyal to Bill, and not especially imaginative. With all that in mind, it wasn't surprising that he'd want revenge, nor was it surprising that he had to hire someone else to carry it out given that he was still stuck in the Nightmare Realm… but there were still a few things that needed clearing up.
"Why?" she asked.
"You'll have to be a bit more specific than that."
"Why me? I get that you're after revenge for stopping Weirdmageddon, but why didn't you have Grey here go after Stan or Ford? They killed Bill and sent you back to the Nightmare Realm, so why did you single out me to be the Queen's host?"
8-Ball chortled mirthlessly. "Oh-ho-ho-ho, you really are an idiot aren't you, Shooting Star? You've got a skull like a can of spam and a mind to match, plus maybe one lonely brain cell still working in spite of all the glitter paint and paste you've eaten in your pointless little life. How someone as stupid as you ever got this far is a mystery to me, but somehow here we are. I'm stuck here in the Nightmare Realm, and you're out there being a dumb cow. Still, that's life."
As exhausted as she was, Mabel actually felt genuinely stung by this, and it took a lot of effort to keep herself from answering back. More to the point, she couldn't tell if 8-Ball was really as angry as he seemed or if he was just messing around with her.
"I don't understand," she said at last. "Please, just… just tell me why you picked me over everyone else who helped stop Bill."
"Because I'm already getting a different kind of revenge on every other one-lifespanned, five-sensed skin-puppet on this wretched little planet, idiot: your species, including your two deadbeat uncles and your scummy little freak of a brother, are all being wiped out of existence. Believe me, having the great Bill Cipher's murderers slowly rendered down into nothing is more than enough for my tastes. As for why I wanted something different for you... well, you didn't just help bring down Bill. You betrayed him."
"Wait, what?"
"Bill made a deal with you, Mabel," 8-Ball snarled. "Remember? You came to him miserable and left as the happiest girl in existence: he gave you your own private world where you could have everything you could possibly want, made sure that you would always be perfectly contented, and guaranteed that you would never ever have to leave unless you wanted to. He was very generous to you, Mabel… and what did you do with that generosity? You threw it away! You abandoned that perfect world the moment your asshole brother came calling, you helped him spur the survivors of Gravity Falls to rebellion, and you ruined Weirdmageddon! Dipper's plan would have come to nothing if not for you spurring things on, and all that crap with the Wheel and the memory gun would never gotten off the ground if you hadn't been there! All would have had to do was lie back and let Mabeland tempt everyone into submission, but no, you had to get a conscience and betray us all! Bill didn't just promise you everything: he gave you everything and you spat in his face!"
"So that's what this is all about?" Mabel asked, unable to keep the incredulity from her voice. "I wasn't grateful enough for being tricked into starting Weirdmageddon and being imprisoned, so you think I deserve to be kept alive until the end of the universe? Does that sound like it makes sense to you, Grey? Did that actually sound like a good reason for making a deal with the Forger Wasps when he hired you?"
Grey shrugged. "He didn't give me a reason," he said flatly. "I don't have to know his reasons or his identity until the job is over and done with. Besides, he didn't specify what I should do: all he said was that you should remain alive until the bitter end while everyone else dies – or worse. I suggested Forger Wasps, he thought it sounded like a cool idea, and that was it."
"…he thought wasps that kill entire universes sounded like a cool idea."
"Hey, I don't make judgements."
"Nor should he," hissed 8-Ball. "Not with the rewards I'm paying. Bill left behind a sizable fortune in hidden assets across the multiverse, along with a means of controlling it even from within the Nightmare Realm: for the last few decades, the only thing all that money's been used for has been the bounty on Stanford Pines. Now that Bill's dead, I've got exclusive rights to do as I please with that cash!"
"And you couldn't use it to find a way out of the Nightmare Realm?"
"Of course not! If Bill couldn't find someone who'd be willing to let him loose for a fat paycheck in the last few billion years, what makes you think I'd manage it in less than a week? Revenge is the best I can hope for at this point… and it'll keep me going until the Nightmare Realm finally collapses. The other Henchmaniacs might disagree, but right now I don't care. I'm just going to enjoy the moment: you sitting here, broken and defeated, a prisoner for all eternity – just like me."
Mabel took a deep breath as she slowly digested all this information. She had all the answers she'd ever needed, but she was no closer to turning the tables on Grey. She needed to get him further into the cell; he was already blind to what was going on behind the curtains, but if she was going to pull this off, he needed to get within arm's reach.
And for that, she would have to take a very serious risk: if Grey or 8-Ball looked too closely at the handcuffs around her wrist – or realized that she had her eye on the vent hidden behind the curtains – then the jig would officially be up.
By doing this, she was walking a very slippery tightrope, but she had no choice. If the human race was to be saved, this had to be done. She was in absolute last resort territory now, and right now she didn't have the option of playing things safe: as Grunkle Stan would have put it, it was All In time.
So she took a deep breath, plastered on her best smile and said, "I gotta say, I'm kind of disappointed."
There was a deathly pause, as 8-Balls' grin slowly slid back down into first gear. "Scuse me?" he asked.
"I mean, I thought this had to have been cooked up by somebody really impressive; for a while, I was actually worried Bill might be behind all this… but now it turns out he's still dead and it's not been cooked up by someone really impressive. And it turns out the guy behind it all is just one of Bill Cipher's flunkies, and he didn't even think of the plan himself – he paid someone else to come up with the plan and do all the dirty work. Seriously, 8-Ball, even you've gotta admit you're not really ultimate nemesis material."
"… WHAT?"
"Seriously, you don't have to take it so personally, pal. You're just not that interesting. It's not your fault: it's just that someone else was in the limelight, being a bigger danger than you."
Grey chuckled, visibly swelling with pride. "Nice to know my contributions have been appropriately observed."
Oh my gosh, he actually took the bait. He's taking the bait! Okay, here we go. Stay nice and calm, Mabel: you know what to do and what to say. It's just another Sock Opera. You have nothing to worry about. Here goes nothing…
Mabel gave him a pitying look. "I'm sorry, Grey, but I really wasn't talking about you."
Now it was Grey's turn to stop smiling. "I beg your pardon?"
"I hate to break it to you like this, but you're just not much of a real threat. You haven't even been a player in this whole revenge scheme; you've been sitting in the background while the big boys do all the impressive stuff. I mean, I haven't been running in fear from you these last few days, have I? If you want something really dangerous and scary, look at the Forger Wasps."
"The Forger Wasps wouldn't even be here if it wasn't for me!" Grey snapped indignantly.
"So? That would have been easy for you with all the tech you've got. I mean, they wouldn't have even been able to touch you with that gizmo that can turn you into fog-"
"It's called a Mistifier."
"-so when you get right down to it, you didn't have to risk anything or even work all that hard to get them on your side. And the same thing happened once they got here: the Forger Wasps did all the work while you wasted time. They started off with one queen and a drone, and they took over the entire town in just a few hours; they've been hunting us all over Gravity Falls, picking us off one by one, breaking down their defences, nearly driving me crazy… and then there's you. With your Mistifier and your cheap suit and your boring hat. Seriously, you didn't even make the plans yourself! The Queen was the one making all the plans."
Grey's ears turned a vivid shade of puce. "I didn't need to make the plans!" he snarled. "I gave the instructions! I was managing every moment of this little epic from behind the scenes and making sure all of it was filmed for posterity; the Forger Wasps were just the actors – the stars of this little production, doubtlessly, but they were not running the show! I give the orders, I set the stage, and I made all of this possible! I am the director!"
"You didn't give any orders, Grey: the Queen was the one directing everything, and 8-Ball was the studio suit in charge of all this. The only thing you did was record stuff. You know what that makes you? A cameraman. You're really not blowing me away here, Grey."
For almost half a minute, the Grey Professional could only stare in utter incredulity. Then he took a deep breath and smiled in a way that suggested someone was slowly ripping his toenails off with pliers.
"I don't know exactly what you're up to by trying to get on my nerves, Mabel," he said through gritted teeth, "but it's not going to work: you might have salvaged a few shreds of confidence, but it won't do you any good. At the end of the day, you'll still be a prisoner of the Forger Wasps, and I'll be rich enough to buy my own private moon; in a hundred years' time, you'll still be a prisoner, while I'll be retired and living it up as one of the wealthiest men in my home dimension."
"Maybe," admitted Mabel. "But you're still going to look pretty weak next to the Queen, aren't you?"
"What?!"
"Well, what are you gonna say to people who ask you where you got all your money from? You're going to say 'I let in the Forger Wasps and got paid a lot of money for it,' and all the other crazy retired billionaires are going to laugh at you because your flunkies ended up with even more than you did. You got a lot of money and your own private moon, great. You know what the Forger Wasps will have? An entire universe. That's gonna be your retirement, Grey: you spending the rest of your life being laughed at for being weaker, lazier, stupider, poorer, and a whole lot less interesting than a bunch of wasps."
Right then and there, Mabel swore she actually heard the sound of Grey's temper snapping: before her very eyes, the mercenary's face went from to grey to red, from red to purple, and finally to stark white. For a moment, he could only splutter incredulously, arms threshing the air as his immaculately-combed locks unravelling into a disorderly grey mop as his grew more and more enraged: "You… I… what… less interesting?!" His voice rose to a hysterical screech. "LESS INTERESTING?!"
He threw the hologram projector across the room, narrowly missing Mabel's head; it landed on her bedside table, leaving 8-Ball's image projecting upside-down on the wall next to her.
"LESS INTERESTING?" he bellowed. "Do you have any idea who you're talking to? Do you even have the slightest clue who or what I am? I'm the single greatest operative the Retribution Squad's ever known! I'm a champion in their history – I was famous for my work long before I even heard of them! Authors on countless other Earths have written novels about me: they've been doing it ever since I bricked up one of my enemies in a cellar and left him to rot! I've changed the course of history! I've made history! My name will live forever in the archives of the Retribution Squad, and my deeds will be eternal in the annals of every civilization I've served or laid low! I'm a legend, you metal-mouthed little pissant! A LEGEND!"
"But you're not a legend here, are you?" said Mabel, barely keeping the smile off her face. "The only people who know what you've done are me and the Forger Wasps, and I don't think they care all that much about you. I mean, they don't respect you, they're not scared of you – you're just another target to them. And once you're done here, if anyone finds out about what happened, it'll be another horror story in the legend of the Forger Wasps, and you'll be the doofus who gave them the keys to another universe. You won't be a legend: you'll just be some loser with a big mouth and an off-the-rack coat-"
Grey let out a howl of rage and lashed out at Mabel with one gloved hand, backhanding her hard across the face. Reeling, she lurched backwards, banging her head on the cell wall and nearly slipping out of the manacle as she did so – but thankfully she was able to keep her position.
"And you know what?" she added, blearily. "I've met third-graders who can hit harder than you, Grey."
"Oh big deal!" Grey screeched, arms threshing the air like an out-of-control windmill. "You're still going to spend the rest of your life in prison!"
Meanwhile, 8-Ball – who'd been fuming about being so casually overlooked for the last few minutes – suddenly eyed Mabel suspiciously. "Grey," he murmured. "I think you really need to calm down now-"
"Yeah," Mabel interrupted loudly. "I'm going to spend the rest of my life in prison… and the one thing that's going to keep the smile on my face is the thought of you sitting in the corner of some billionaire's party, getting laughed at by everyone in the room-"
"Would the two of you shut up and listen to me-"
"Because the great big scary Grey Professional is the biggest joke to hit Gravity Falls! I mean, at least the gnomes managed to put on a show and do some damage before they got taken out with a leafblower; you can't even do that!"
8-Ball's eyes widened in horror. "Grey, that handcuff isn't-"
But Grey was no longer listening.
"I'LL SHOW YOU DAMAGE!" he thundered, and began stomping towards Mabel, rolling up his sleeves to the shoulders, drawing something that looked uncannily like a flick knife from his pocket… and in that moment, Mabel saw her opportunity.
Yanking her arm free of the manacle, she jumped to her feet and lunged straight at Grey with an almighty shout of "SURPRIIIIIIIIIIIIIISE!
The Grey Professional had just enough time to realize that he'd made a very serious mistake by getting within arm's reach of his target – right before Mabel crashed headlong into him. In a panic, he tried to force her off, tried in vain to swat her away from his undefended face or switch on his Mistifier, but the girl was too quick for him: she was already scurrying up his lapels, grabbing him by the tie, inching towards his head.
One hand clamped down hard on his left ear, while another caught him a stinging blow across the chops. Yelping in shock, he staggered backwards, accidentally banging the side of his head against the cell door, dropping his knife and stumbling helplessly out into the lab; as if to add insult to injury he then went crashing spine-first into an equipment bank, sending a hail of loose equipment rain down on him, diodes and powerboards and spare parts of all descriptions bouncing mercilessly off his head. And then, just as Grey thought he had reached the absolute nadir of pain and humiliation, Mabel just lunged forward and bit down hard on his right ear.
Screaming in soprano, he grabbed Mabel by the scruff of the neck and threw her across the lab, bowling her right back into the cell; she landed on the bed instead of crashing facefirst into the wall, thankfully, but in that moment, Grey didn't care all that much about the girl's safety. Here and now, his attention was focussed solely on his own health.
She'd infected him!
She'd touched him, permeated his skin with gods only knew how many Forger Wasp eggs – and that was before she'd taken a bit out of his ear! Had she drawn blood? Had she gotten more of the Queen's spores directly into his bloodstream? Would the stash of cure serums he had with him be enough to purge the infestation?
Heart hammering, he looked up at the cell before him, where Mabel was now sitting up with an impressive-looking smirk on her face. The little shit must have planned this, he realized, deliberately goaded him into losing his temper… but if that was true, how had she managed to unlock the handcuff? Surely she wouldn't have been left unsecured while the Forger Wasps were out of the house.
He shook his head, resolving to focus on the matter later. For now, he drew his thunderbolt pistol from a pocket and aimed it at Mabel, tweaking it to the most painful incapacitating setting; then, with his free hand, he reached into the hidden pouch of vials at his waist for a dose of cure.
"You think you're so clever," he hissed furiously. "But you're nowhere near as smart as you think, you little brat. You really think I wouldn't have come all this way without countermeasures in place? You really think some half-pint brat like you could ever best me?!"
"No," said a voice from the shadows. "But maybe Larry King could."
Grey very slowly turned to face the source of the voice – just in time for two pounds of animate wax sculpture to come hurtling out of the darkness and nail him squarely between the eyes.
Stunned, bewildered and punch-drunk from the impact, Grey dropped his gun and slumped back against the wall in a daze. He tried one last time to switch on his Mistifier, just long enough to escape this sudden new onslaught and find a little time to recover. But no sooner had he reached for the switch, there was a sharp pain in his hand, and he looked down to see that someone had just smacked his fingers away with a baseball bat.
Then there was a blinding pain in his left knee as another bat swung in from the right, sending him toppling to the floor, where a third baseball bat hammered into his jaw, and a fourth caught him a stunning blow to the temple. Then all he knew was a merciless procession of baseball bats crashing down on him from all angles.
The last thing the Grey Professional saw before he lost consciousness was a small crowd of Mabels grinning down at him, braces gleaming in the dim light.
The plan had gone off almost without a hitch.
Back when Mabel had made her way back into the Mystery Shack, she'd made twenty-five copies of herself for the plan ahead: fifteen had been seen leaving the new base of operations and led the Forger Wasps on a merry chase across the forest… but with Mabel's memory of the copying erased, nobody had realized that this had left ten copier clones unaccounted for.
While the diversion team had continued making their way from tree to tree and the Queen's drones had secured Mabel in her newly-rebuilt cell, the ten remaining paper clones had hidden themselves away in the vents on Mabel's orders – trusting that nobody would think to look for them in there. After all, Larry King's wax severed head had been hiding in there all summer, and even Dipper's best efforts to catch him hadn't worked. Once there, all they'd had to do was wait until the Forger Wasps trusted Mabel enough, until they believed that they'd completely broken her spirit; in other words, the very moment Grey would be most likely to pay a visit. Then, as soon as they were alone in the house, they'd unlocked the manacle securing Mabel to the bed.
But in the end, the biggest advantage had been delivered by the Forger Wasps themselves: in the efforts to make Mabel as comfortable as possible, they'd shrouded her cell in curtains to keep out the light and to prevent her from seeing what they were up to in the laboratory beyond the glass. With the curtains still lowered, Grey hadn't been able to see the copier clones sneaking up on him until it was too late.
Now the Grey Professional lay in a heap on the floor, unconscious, infested, and surrounded by a gaggle of victorious paper clones – one of which had already retrieved the vial of serum he'd been reaching for, along with five other vials hidden in the pockets of his coat.
Sighing in relief, Mabel got to her feet and snatched up the hologram projector, making sure to give 8-Ball a good view of Grey's body as she staggered out of the cell.
The racket from the other end of the camera was nothing short of incredible.
"How?" 8-Ball shrieked, after several seconds of indecipherably enraged gibberish. "How?! How is this possible?!"
Mabel winked. "Beats me," she said with a grin. "Feel like sticking around to watch the grand finale? I mean, I've got to actually find a way of making more of this cure serum now; I bet you'll never guess how we manage it."
"I will murder you for this, Mabel! I swear to all the gods and demiurges I will eat your skin!"
"Not while you're locked up in the Nightmare Realm, 8-Ball, and like you told me, nobody's going to be breaking you out of there anytime soon. Hope you've got cable in there!"
"YOU BITCH! YOU CHEATING, CHEATING BITCH! I'LL HIRE EVERYONE IN THE MULTIVERSE IF I HAVE TO! YOU'RE DEAD, YOU HEAR ME? DEAD!"
"That's nice. Now, I'd love to stay and chat, but I've got a date with the Queen. Buh-byyyyyye!"
A/N: Well, that was eventful, wasn't it? Any guesses as to what's going to happen next? Feel free to let me know!
The soundtrack for this chapter is Hunter by Jesper Kyd. And as for the code...
HGLK SVI HGLK SVI HGLK SVI HGLK SVI HGLK SVI HGLK SVI HGLK SVI HGLK SVI HGLK SVI HGLK SVI HGLK SVI HGLK SVI HGLK SVI HGLK SVI HGLK SVI HGLK SVI