Tales of the Falls
I OWN AND REGRET NOTHING!
...III...
HAPPY HALLOWEEN!
...III...
Puma shirt?
Panther Shirt?
Puma shirt?
Panther Shirt?
Puma shirt?
Panther Shirt?
Puma shirt?
Panther Shirt?
Puma shirt?
Panther Shirt?
Puma shirt?
Panther Shirt?
Puma shirt?
Panther Shirt?
Puma shirt?
Panther Shirt?
Puma shirt?
Panther Shirt?
Puma shirt?
Panther Shirt?
Puma shirt?
Panther Shirt?
Puma shirt?
Panther Shirt?
Puma shirt?
Panther Shirt?
Puma shirt?
Panther Shirt?
Puma shirt?
Panther Shirt?
Puma shirt?
...Panther Shirt?
Grunkle Stan groans as he has to listen to Tyler Cutebiker going back and forth with his crap. He was originally going to go with the kids to have Breakfast at Susan's diner...but he wasn't able to find his wallet.
So he did what any responsible uncle would do...give his keys to Mable and have the twins drive ahead while he looked for his wallet.
Sure they weren't 'technically' old enough to drive...but who cared what some stuffy bureaucrats opinion? They could drive a golf cart, why not a car? What's the difference, really?
...Meanwhile...
"GAH! WHY ARE ALL THESE PEOPLE ON THE STREET?!"
"SIDEWALK MABLE! THEIR ON THE SIDEWALK! AND SO ARE YOU!"
...
"Yep, nothing to worry about." Said a satisfied Stan.
Puma shirt?
Panther Shirt?
Puma shirt?
Panther Shi-GAWK!
Stan chuckled, "What, did you choke on your mustache again?" He teased as he turned around...then his eye's went wide. Tyler was currently being chocked by a gaunt, half-dead looking man who looked like he'd just walked out of Detective noir convention...that just suffered a riot and burnt down...
"Out."
Tyler whimperd, but quickly obeyed and ran for it...
The man glared at Stan...a cold, dead, empty stare that Stan had only ever seen in the faces of the Columbian prisoners...right before they SHIVED him...
Stan chuckled nervously, "Hey, buddy? You know I'M the one who supposed to abuse customers around here? But hey, buy twice his weight in merchandise and we'll call it even." Said Stan putting on an air of playful conversation...all the while cautiously reaching for his gun hidden under the counter...
What did you do with Ford Pines?"
Stan's eyes went wide, but he tried to play it cool as he grasped the now VERY comforting gun barrel...
"Uh...buddy? Your looking at him? Geez, and I thought I had bad eyesight-
"SHUT UP! Snapped the man as she slammed his fist on the counter. "Thirty years ago I MET Ford Pines. You might wear his form, but your personality couldn't be more different! So what are you? Some new form of Wylebeast? Or are you just another patsy like Glenn?"
"Whoa there buddy! I don't know what your on about, but I'm just a simple Man of Mystery!" Said Stan as he slowly brings his gun up. "So why don't we just all take a deep breath and talk this over MY GUN!" Screamed Stan as he whiped his shotgun out-
CRASH!
Unfortunately, Charles Winfield Reed was just a little too fast for Stan. Tackling him to the ground AND knocking the gun away. He tried to bring out his own revolver, but Stan was fast too. He knocked that away as well.
Soon the fight broke down into an old-fashioned slug-match...
...
But let us leave this fight of mortals...a much more important battle is about to take place.
Hastur- AKA "The King in Yellow" -was not happy. To say things had not gone to plan was a severe understatement.
He'd set up the perfect plan in Oakmont. Isolate Oakmont from the rest of the world, fill it with madness and monsters to gradually break down the social order, lure the latest Seed there through promises of money or answers regarding his 'condition'. Either the seed saw the futility in humanity's continued existence and used the seal to free him and the rest of his 'family', or they killed themselves and he just waited for the next seed to arrive...he was patient...he could wait.
But then Reed did the unexpected...he found a way to LEAVE Oakmont...WITH the seal...
He'd tried to send nightmares, monsters, his own men, even great floods to force him to comply.
Large portions of the United States were now monster infested marshlands...but yet the man refused to give in!
Hastur then tried to take a different approach... Having suffered through the first war. He gambled that him seeing all his efforts to keep humanity safe made naught by a SECOND war...well, it would be PERFECT to break his spirit.
Thankfully humanity already had the ball rolling without his help, but he figured a few tweaks to draw out the war...make it as BLOODY as possible wouldn't hurt things.
First he gave those idiot Japanese the knowledge on how to make atom bombs YEARS before the war was set to happen...their limited resources meant this scheme would take awhile to bear fruit however...
So the Yellow King turned his attention to Europe in the meantime...
For the most part he did nothing...he allowed that delusional idiot in Germany turn west Europe into a charnel house...
And then his 'brilliant' plan to invade Russia began...
Stalin was an equally delusional idiot, but his army was far bigger then Hitlers. There was no way they'd beat them before the merciless Russian winter kicked in. Which would bring the war to a swift, brutal end. Which wouldn't do at all!
So Hastur called in a favor with Kassogtha to ravish the Russian army with disease a month or so before this 'Operation Barbarossa' was set to happen.
Nothing too nasty mind you, the disease would ONLY target Russian soldiers in the west side of Russia. Even then, only 1 out of every ten infected would die...maybe a couple more of said 'ten' incapacitated though semi-fatal symptoms. But again, nothing BIG.
In other words...not too large to allow Germany to steamroll over everything, but just big enough of an advantage it would allow Germany to last long enough to weather through the winter and continue the war in a bloody stalemate that went nowhere fast...
At least... that was the plan...
Hastur had been stunned at the gains the German army had made in such little time! To get as far as they did was simply unbelievable! The distance between the german border and Moscow was comparable to the distance between Chicago and New York!
And yet...crazily enough he could tell that even without his interference they could've easily at least gotten to the borders of Moscow on their own!
Hastur killed off the disease quickly, but the Germans had already used this 'little' boost to takeover Moscow...
Still, it wasn't a total fiasco. He DID get the stalemate he wished for. Stalin's idiotic purges had left the army run by idiots without the skill to retake Moscow and while Germany now had access to the Caucasus oil fields and Ukranian breadbasket. This merely (barely)secured their CURRENT supply lines. Trying to invade farther while also fighting the British was simply too tall an order.
So Hastur simply left that well enough and looked back at the Pacific theater.
Predictably, the Japaneses attacked Pearl Harbor...with a NUKE.
Hastur couldn't help but be amused as the anglo-saxon world was stunned by the 'backwards japs' mastering a science that caused the 'superior races' to collectively shit themselves.
Now despite this...it was obvious the Japanese were still going to loose. True, mastering the atom had given them the ability to hit above their weight...but that didn't change the fact that in they were still hopelessly outnumberd by the Americans who- despite still suffering from the floods and monster infestations he'd caused -had far better resources then them.
Which Hastur was fine with. He didn't care who won...just that it was long, bloody and the death count was TRIPLED.
And so it was...
For while the Japanese had the bomb, they could only make so much of it so fast. So they were forced to use it as sparingly as possible.
They blew up large concentrations of American naval ships, any island that was taken from them and- whenever possible -sent a kamikaze run to blow up some American Coastal cities.
The American solved the first issue by going out in smaller, less direct traveling, more randomized battle groups...but this made getting to their targets much longer and logistically costly...
They tried to solve the second issue by evacuating the islands they'd conquered...but this was made difficult when the more fanatical Japanese sometimes willingly blew up themselves AND the island just to hurt the Americans or at least render the island unusable for them.
The loss of the Philippines was a particularly staggering loss, to this day it's still uninhabitable...
But despite the countless lives lost...The Americans were winning...it was an agonizingly slow and bloody affair that cost hundreds of lives with each bloody step...but they were WINNING...just not anytime soon...
Which was just how Hastur wanted it...
Now Hastur did have to interfere one last time in the European theater though. After the fall of Moscow, Britain was on the verge of surrendering.
This wouldn't do, so Hastur took away their fear and despair.
Ordinarily, his kind did the OPPOSITE. But they could easily do the reverse when needed. It was actually EASIER, since humanity didn't typically WANT to be afraid. So they didn't subconsciously fight this 'adjustment' as they would the other way around.
This renewed their 'hope'- Hastur snorted whenever that word was thrown around -and they continued fighting...with near suicidal confidence and zeal. Practically throwing themselves into the meatgrinder...which Hastur was of course fine with.
The Germans briefly took some losses on that front, as the Britains threw themselves with renewed vigor and reckless abandon...but they eventually grew used to it and adapted...
Hastur would of course return their fear when the Americans joined the war, wouldn't want to make things TOO easy for them after all...
Eventually, the Americans would unlock the atom as well. So great was their bloodlust, they dropped FOUR bombs on Japan.
Again, Hastur would only interfere one last time in the the Pacifica front. Taking away the fear of the all the Japanese people. They defiantly used what little bombs they had left to damage the scattered American fleet.
Having used all the bombs they currently had, the United States had no choice but to initiate operation Downfall. And invade the Japanese islands directly.
Every Japanese man, woman and child fought them tooth and nail! They fought them with bricks and broken glass! It was truly a sight to see!
This time, Hastur never gave back their fear...so they kept on fighting the exasperated, overstretched and above all EXHAUSTED U.S. soldiers.
Eventually, Japan was conquered...but not until late into the fifties.
With Japan FINALLY conquered, they could focus their attention fully on the European front.
Things had grinded to a stalemate there. Seeing the Japanese as the bigger threat, America had focused most of their resources on them.
Without the necessary support, D-day was a flop. Forcing the allies to take the LONGER, bloodier path.
They had made little to no gains until FINALLY the Americans were able to focus their efforts fully on them. They quickly dropped a nuke on Berlin.
However it turned out the Japanese had given the Nazi's the secret of the Atom as one final 'screw you' to the Americans. So the Germans were soon responding in kind.
They were forced to abandon their gains in the Soviet union to reinforce the homefront unfortunately.
However, they took another page from the Japanese's book and nuked everything of value before they fled. Leaving the western side of the Soviet union completely unfit for life.
Being deprived of even being able to 'break even', the people turned on the communists, the communists turned on Stalin and his cabinet, his turned on each other...and thus the Soviet Union fell out of the war as it imploded into civil war.
It took nuking the better part of Europe for ANOTHER year...but Germany FINALLY surrendered.
And Hastur more or less lost interest after that as he turned to see how Reed reacted to this.
Annoyingly, Reed saw his hand in the war and this just made him more resolute.
Not because the Japanese getting the nuke, The random bouts of hope, or even the brief Soviet plague weirdly enough...but rather because that he shared his skepticism that the Germans were able to fight as far as Moscow without outside help!
The irony of which was not lost on Hastur...
After that, the Yellow King decided to simply play 'the long game'. It was annoying, but the fact was Reed was mortal, while the eldritch deity was anything BUT. For all his bravado, Reed would eventually grow old and die. Then he would simply take the seal back to Oakmount and get things back on track.
He would of course still send many horrors Reed's way, both to keep him from getting suspicious of his true plan and who knows? Perhaps he'd get lucky...
Sadly, 'luck' seems to have not been in the cards for the lovecraftian entity, for once again it would seem he'd underestimated the human.
It was now clear to him that SOMEHOW Reed had managed to trick him thirty years ago and enter GRAVITY FALLS of all places without him knowing.
It wasn't a long stay, but apparently it was long enough to make contact with SOMEONE smart enough to to not only hide the seal from him but also make a DUMMY seal that fooled even HIM for all these years!
For the first time in his long eternity...Hastur felt the very fear he'd visited on mortals...and he did not care for the experience one bit!
It was obvious now that the real seal had to have been hidden in Gravity Falls all these years while Reed kept his attention elsewhere in a wild goose chase with the FAKE seal...
If someone that clever had been in possession of the seal in GRAVITY FALLS for all these years...
This was BAD...forget losing their chance of ever being free- if Reed's unknown accomplice was smart about this...NO, strike that. Even if he was an IDIOT, and he did something truly foolish with both the seal AND seed...in Gravity Falls of all places -they could DIE...he and his family...would END.
and that was assuming his own family didn't put aside their differences to punish HIM for allowing this to happen in the first place!
For the first time in his long eternity...Hastur felt the very fear he'd visited on mortals...and he did not care for the experience one bit!
But the most agonizing part of all this? He now needed to deal with HIM.
"Well, well, well, well, well. Mr. High and mighty himself! What brings you to my neck of the woods?" Mocks a certain flying, ELDRITCH dorito...
Hastur groaned. The relationship beings like Bill Cipher had with his 'family' was...COMPLICATED to say the least...
A woefully oversimplified 'mortal' comparison of it- or as close as a mortal could come to understand without being driven mad -would be that of the relationship between a obscenely wealthy, blue blood, aristocratic family with a pedigree that had outlasted EMPIRES and continents...and an upstart nouveau riche who had SOMEHOW broken the former's monopoly and become just as wealthy through STEALING from said monopoly.
Put it simply? They HATED each other.
Bill Cipher was a 'young' Eldritch entity- well YOUNG by the Lovecraftian pantheon's HIGH standards at any rate -yet despite this he'd somehow shanghaied away Gravity Falls away from their dominion- one of the few places in this reality their influence couldn't go without consequence -so now not only were the mostly blind to what happened there, they literally couldn't do anything there without Cipher's approval...
"Can the ham Cipher, you know why I'm here!" He snaps angrily, oh by the void he was never going to live this down...
"You mean your big screw up? Dang man, I never thought anything could top the Hindenberg. But you just-
"Look, what will it take for you to let me get what is mine! Just name your price! The sooner I get what's mine, the sooner we can go back to pretending neither exists." He interrupts irritably.
"Whoa, just like that huh? No foreplay? Just 'wham, bam, thank you mam'?" The smug triangle mocks, "I tell you,I feel sorry for whatever mate-
"CIPHER I'M IN NO MOOD!" His bellow is so great, the very walls of reality actually CRACK...
"Okay, okay! Geeze, keep your tentacle's on." Huffed Bill in a very put upon manner. He pauses to drink a margarita through his eye.
Hastur struggled to regain his compsure, "Look, the sooner you give me permission to act-
"Ah, but do I WANT to do that?" Teased Bill. "After all having the Seed AND Seal within my reach? within MY domain?...it opens up some...INTERESTING opportunities." Said Bill smugly...
Hastur glared, "Don't do this Bill, you KNOW who I represent-
"And if HE was here, I'd be shitting bricks." Conceded Bill in resignation before going straight back to haughty. "But he's NOT here isn't he? And you know what that tells me? That a certain someone in yellow has been keeping secrets." He mocked.
Hastur stiffened, it was true. His family knew NOTHING about the Seal being taken from Oakmont...and if he had his way, that's how it would STAY. Thankfully his family's apathy toward all things in the mortal realm actually benefited him for once.
Hastur was quick to stiffen his resolve though, "Fine, your right...HE knows nothing...for now. But let's be clear if you plan to use it for yourself...hang the consequences! I'll summon my whole family here if I have to!"
At least then they'd be forced to kill him quick and painlessly to focus on Bill...
They'd crush him of course...but not without GREAT consequences...There was a reason why they stayed away from this accursed valley after all...
For obvious reasons he'd only do that as a last resort...but he'd do it! Dawm him to the void and back, but he'd do it! Better he go up in flames then for this one-eyed piece of shit be allowed to WIN!
Bill sighs but nods, "A stalemate then...You can't get your toy without my sayso and I can't play with it while you have your finger on the button..."
He drums his fingers for a moment, "Only one way to settle this...a WAGER." He says that last part wickedly.
Hastur groans, he knew this could only end poorly- win or lose -but the blasted dorito was right...there was really no other way...
"The stakes?"
"If I lose, you gain your precious Seed and Seal. But if I WIN, you not only are not allowed to alert your family- in any shape or form -of my plans and gain your toys for myself but you must also give me your blessing to play with them."
Hastur growled, even if by some miracle Bill got his hands on the Seed and Seal by his own devices in his domain, the ONE saving grace is that they are not of his realm but of HIS, so that would give his family SOME advantage should things go sour...but if someone like himself gave Bill his blessing to use them? They wouldn't even have that?
But if he won...deals done by eldritch beings could allow them to- briefly -break their limitations and even alter the physical realm...even more so when the deal was between TWO eldritch beings! So he could gain the power of both seal and seed! There'd be no need to return to Oakmont! He could just release his family then and there by HIMSELF!
Hastur let out a resigned sigh, "What would be the game?"
Bill just smirks, he then brings up the image of the two elder mortals STILL duking it out at the Mystery Shack "Well, your boy toy is still fighting Stan-
"No! I'm taking no more chances with Reed! He still thinks he's evaded my sight and I want to keep it that way until I'm ready to strike!" The King in Yellow silently cursed the mortal, once more regretting not letting him sink with the rest of his crew back in WW1...
Bill shrugs, "Whatever..." He pulls out a remote and flips through various images.
"Boring. Bland. Pedestrian. Werewolves v.s. Zombies for the hundredth time. Yawn. Snooze fest. Robbie family being creepy, not even going to go there. Seen it. Hate it. Hello, what have we here?"
They look in just in time to see Dipper- tired of waiting for their Grunkle to get here with the money for food -tries to win a free breakfast at the manliness tester...only to lose immediately and have everyone laugh and mock his 'masculinity'(or lack thereof), causing to flee the diner in shame...
Bill chuckles, "So...Pine tree wants to be a man, dose he? Have a little 'rite of passage'? Well...maybe we should lend a hand?" He says tapping his 'nose' in a knowing way toward Hastur.
"...I'm already regretting this..." Moaned the Yellow King...
...III...
TO BE CONTINUED?
AN: Want me to continue this? I'm willing to take Bribes! Go to my P,a,t,r,e,o,n account!
Love me, flame me, review me