Chapter Five

The man with the magic key (and possibly a few loose screws)

Please, if there's any superior being out there with any level of mercy, please don't let this weirdo be about ta do some kind of striptease.

To Stan's relief, he seemed content to remain in the rest of his clothes-and honestly, he could relate to wanting to walk around in just your shorts, sometimes wearing pants was too much effort.

"...Quentin Trembley?" Ford asked, looking perplexed.

"The eighth-and-a-half president of these several United States, my good man!" Trembley grinned at his twin and walked over to him, holding out his hand. "Do they still shake hands in this time period? What year is it?"

"Uh...it's 1978. And yes they do." Ford gingerly returned the handshake. When he pulled his hand back, he looked at his fingers and grimaced, discreetly wiping them on his pants; Stan guessed that being encased in peanut brittle for a hundred years made you a little sticky. He was learning that it also did pretty weird things to the way you smelled.

"We've passed the year 1900?! By Jefferson, this is amazing! My horoscope told me the world might end in 1899-I guess it was wrong."

"No duh," Stan muttered.

"Eighth-and-a- half ?" Preston gave a very bewildered frown.

"Aah!" Trembley let out an alarmed yelp and hid behind Ford. "A small evil accountant! Protect me before he tries to calculate my income!"

"That's a child, Mr. Trembley." Ford stepped away from him.

Trembley gave him an indignant look. "That's Sir Lord Quentin Trembley III, Esquire to you, sir! Former president of AMERICA, and founder of the town of Gravity Falls!"

For a moment they just stared at him, before Preston broke the silence.

"That's a lie!" he squawked. "My great-grandfather Nathaniel Northwest founded Gravity Falls!"

"No, he's telling the truth!" Ford held up the file on the Northwest Cover-up, which had remained clutched in his hand, and which he had just opened. "It says in here that he was the actual founder, and that Nathaniel Northwest was-" the group was graced by the unexpected sight of Stan's normally somewhat dignified older twin snorting, and looking like he was seconds away from bursting into deep belly-laughter- "a-a waste-shoveling village idiot who-choked to death trying to eat an oak tree so he'd turn into a wizard!"

At that he and Stan both burst into loud guffaws. That whole sentence was just too funny for them not to.

"It does not!" Preston ran forward and snatched the file, glaring at it. As he read it, though, his glare changed to shock.

"No, that-that can't be-this has gotta be fake!"

Ford snatched the file back. "Then why would anyone bother hiding it down here? Deal with it, Northwest-your whole family legacy is a lie, and the newspapers are going to love this! Even though we're going to have a hard time explaining how Sir Quentin-"

He looked around in confusion. "Where did he go?"

Stan peered around the corner, and saw the apparent former president standing by one of the cave walls, attempting to stick a key into it.

...This explains a lot about why the laws here are so weird. Ford's gonna have a field day tryna decide on if this town is weird because this guy was the founder of it, or if he was the founder of it because the land attracts weirdness.

...Or somethin' like that.

He walked over to Trembley. "Whatcha doin', slick?" he asked, resting the sword on his shoulder again.

"Trying to make my way out to see how the world has changed since I encased myself in my delicious tomb!" Trembley announced. "This is the President's Key, which can open any lock in America! I don't see why it's not working!"

"...How about you just go up through that tunnel?" Stan indicated the way they'd come.

Any lock in America, huh? A million greedy possibilities flashed through Stan's mind. He wondered if there was any way he could get the former president to lend the key to him for a few weeks.

"Also good." Trembley stuffed it back into his pocket, and marched towards the tunnel. As he did, Ford and a visibly shell-shocked Preston rounded the corner and followed them out.

They emerged in time to see a triumphant-yet-exhausted-looking Dan deal a final blow to Ghost Eyes's jaw, sending him to the floor next to the already-unconscious black guy. He grinned proudly, spitting out a small mouthful of blood.

"And you can shove your theories on mankind being naturally evil!" he told the incumbent figure. Then he noticed the group climbing up the tunnel. "Oh, hi guys. Who's that?"

"The real founder of Gravity Falls, who kept himself alive for over a hundred years in a block of peanut brittle," Stan said, somehow keeping a straight face.

Dan's expression was priceless.

Trembley stared at the big lumberjack in astonishment. "Incredible-he's more than sixteen stacking-turtles high and at least bleventeen Tremble-quarts in diameter! The future has giants in it!"

Ford leaned over to Stan. "Between you and me, I'm beginning to see why he's not in the history books. Mr. Northwest was repulsive, but he seems to have been at least a little more mentally stable."

"Uh, between the one who died trying to eat a tree, and the one who tried ta freeze himself in peanut brittle, which one actually survived?"

"...Good point. But you still see what I mean, right?"

"AMERICA!" Trembley yelled. Stan noticed that he seemed to do that every three minutes or so, for no apparent reason.

"Yeah, I see it."

"...And then Andrew tried to shoot me again, leading me to believe that maybe he wasn't going to let me stay with him after I was thrown out of office, so instead I came here and discovered this quaint little valley. After my horse crashed into it. Fortunately a giant bull-man broke our fall..."

Trembley had decided to tell them his life story as they picked their way back through the cemetery to their car (Dan was dragging Ghost Eyes and the black guy, who both needed to go to the hospital). A lot of it was gibberish, but from the bits he could understand, Stan learned that his term in office had been a major embarrassment to the country, and to Gravity Falls, so both had tried to forget he'd ever existed. And for some reason, that kind of struck a nerve with him, that someone would throw you out and then try to erase you from the world's memory just because you had some quirks and made a few dumb mistakes-

No. No, he was not going to project himself on a hundred-year-old guy who tried to get in fights with eagles. Absolutely not.

Stan rolled his eyes at himself, and looked down at Preston, who was following them, still looking a little like his entire worldview had been shattered and not seeming to care that his expensive-looking shoes were getting covered in dirt and mud.

Stan could almost feel sorry for him if he weren't such an obnoxious little snot.

And then Preston looked up as they approached the gates of the cemetery, and his eyes widened and he let out a tiny gasp.

"Father!"

In some ways, Sir Quentin Trembley is relatively easy to write. You just put together a bunch of nonsense phrases and don't worry too much about whether he makes an iota of sense.