Accessing Global Security Satellite System
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Accessing Grimm Horde Approaching Nowhere Kansas
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Accessing Sectors:
13 – Darklands
8 – Wilds
4 – Nowhere
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Estimated Time to Arrival in Nowhere: 6 days, 15 hours, 39 minutes, 45 seconds.
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Evacuation Protocol For Sectors 8 and 4 In Effect
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Logging Off Global Security
Xxx
"You see this?"
"Yes, I do. Gentlemen, he's on the move."
There was a few moments of hushed whispers before someone else spoke. "So what do we do now?"
"We keep on going. The good doctor's student is finishing Basil's work for us and with that done we'll be able to create and build an army the world has never seen."
"But will they be able to hold him off? Can we even believe that Van Kleiss can take him on? And if he finds out we knew what Kleiss was planning-"
"Gentlemen, we've waited nearly twenty years to finish this. And with the samples Van Kleiss provided us we have the chance. Let them fight while we remain hidden and wait to see what comes out of the ashes."
Xxx
Zak had always been one to leap into anything that looked exciting before thinking things through.
That seemed to be true for right now as the strange creatures surrounded him, Fisk and Komodo.
Just as one creature raised its fist-
A dart flew in and hit its neck.
The creature groaned and stumbled before collapsing on the ground. All around the boy and his brothers, darts flew out and hit the creatures that led to them falling to the ground and entering a blissful slumber.
"Huh?" Zak looked around, seeing all the creatures were now asleep. "What happened?"
"You never learn."
"Gah?!" Zak spun and jumped back, spotting a familiar person standing behind him. "…Huntress Wizard?"
The green skinned woman paid no attention to the name Zak had given her as she knelt down and examined the creatures. "You tried influencing them with your powers but failed."
"Ye-Yeah." Zak nodded, taking a few steps towards her. "I can't explain it. I've always managed to connect with cryptids."
"Maybe because they're not cryptids. These things…They are not part of the natural order." Huntress Wizard narrowed her eyes as she stood up. "You never learn."
"What do you mean by that?" Zak asked but Huntress Wizard seemingly ignored the question as she started walking away. "Hey, where are you going? Wait for us!"
Xxx
"These are bipedal cryptids."
When Doc and Drew came out, following their son they came upon all the so-called cryptids that had been tied up with Huntress Wizard waiting for them.
"This doesn't make sense. Louisiana doesn't have cryptids like this." Doc said, looking them over. "And why would they make a coordinated attack?"
"That's because they are not cryptids." Huntress Wizard said, sounding angry.
Drew put her scanner away as she turned to the green skinned woman. "What do you mean by that?"
"Exactly what I mean." Huntress Wizard narrowed her eyes. "Whatever you are doing here…End it."
Doc looked at Huntress Wizard. "This is important work. These are not connected to why we are here. And why are you here?"
"Following the unnatural songs of nature." Huntress Wizard pointed at the bound cryptids. "These are not natural and your so-called work…It's every bit as bad."
"My mentor and I only used this work for knowledge and to understand. I will not have you question his good name." Doc glared at the woman.
"Knowledge can be used for great harm. And it's not his name I question. It's your belief in what you are doing here." Huntress Wizard said as she turned away. "Stop what you are doing and leave."
She vanished into a tornado of wind and leaves before Doc could say anything else.
"I'd really like to learn that." Zak could only say.
Xxx
"So we're not following her advice?" Zak asked as he followed his parents back into the lab. "Maybe she's got the right idea."
"I can't just abandon this, Zak. Dr. Lancaster and I spent a long time trying to finish this." Doc as he sat back down at the computer. "He was a good man. He'd never misuse our work for something like supposedly creating laboratory monsters."
As if to prove his point, the computer came to life much like the one at the Saturday Lab did with Lancaster appearing on it for a second before changing to static.
Doc sat in front of the computer with a solemn look on his face.
"Doc?" Drew looked at her husband.
"Most of what I know, I learned from that man. If that's…some part of him…I need to finish this." Doc looked at the computer. "Dr. Lancaster? Basil? If your…protoplasmic floating goo is out there, I need to ask you something."
That was when Lancaster appeared on the screen. "Argost…trying to stop. You have to finish, Solomon. Stop Argost. Kur."
The computer went dead after that.
Doc looked at his son. "Zak, I'm half an hour away from something I've waited thirty years to see. Think you boys can build a strong enough barricade upstairs to buy us thirty minutes?"
"Oh, absolutely." Zak answered with a smile.
He went upstairs, followed by Fisk and Komodo.
"Maybe but I'd like to run some tests on them all the same." Drew said, once they were gone. "Don't mind finishing this alone?"
"I'd actually like to." Doc said, not looking away from the screen. "This…Means a lot to me."
Xxx
Komodo started moving furniture around to cover the doors and windows while Zak was thinking of something instead of helping.
Something Fisk noticed and pointed out.
"What?" Zak snapped out and looked at Fisk. "Sorry, I was just…Think about it, Fisk. What has that EVP thing really said? 'Honey Island', 'Finish it'? He only mentioned Argost and Kur after Dad did."
Fisk gasped and mumbled.
"I think Huntress Wizard was right and there's something else going on here. Come on, we got to talk to Mom and Dad about it-"
CRASH!
Zak was cut off as something was thrown through the window and into the room, releasing a mist of gas that caused Zak and his brothers to black out.
Xxx
"This is it. I saw this island when M'gann contacted me."
Artemis followed Connor's gaze to the small island. "We'll need a boat and we don't exactly carry modern cash here."
Superboy didn't bother to listen as he picked up Artemis and jumped up, easily able to cross the distance between the island and the mainland.
"Right or we do that." Artemis sighed.
Xxx
Huntress Wizard watched with narrowed eyes as strange men carried Zak, Fisk and Komodo out of the house and followed them but stopped when there was a sudden tremor that made everyone stop before they started moving.
Huntress Wizard looked in the direction of the tremor, her senses telling her it was not a natural but shrugged it off as she followed after the boys and their kidnappers.
Xxx
Zak woke to the sound of Komodo's hissing and opened his eyes to find himself inside some sort of machine.
It was a cylinder tank with pipes connected to it in the center of a circular pit. Him along with Fisk and Komodo were bound in the machine, their hands tied in front with their legs tied together.
Zak groaned as he looked up, seeing men in lab coats looking down from above. "I knew it! All right, which one of you is Lancaster? Come on. I know you faked the ghost to bring my dad here."
"I assure you, son, Dr. Lancaster is long departed." A man with grey hair answered while walking down towards them. "But, thankfully for us, he left behind hours and hours of video. With a little creative editing, the man can say almost anything."
To illustrate his point, one of the scientists brought up an image of Lancaster and typed in words for it to repeat. "Don't…Believe…In…Ghosts…Boy."
"Well, there are some real ghosts out there which a friend of ours was more than kind to provide an example of. Oh, but I thought you had it all figured out, son." The man said, sitting down to look Zak in the eye. "My colleagues and I are what remains of the Honey Island Project." He walked over to a board, showing the outline of a cryptid with its DNA coded. "Well, us and the cryptids you met, the ones we built from the DNA up."
"What?!" Zak shouted. "That's not true! My dad wouldn't-"
"Oh, calm yourself son. Your daddy never knew about the ugly side of our work, the cryptid super soldier the World Council hired Lancaster to make. An army of super cryptids to battle against the Grimm and of other threats that you probably don't know about. It would have been unlike anything the world had ever seen if the good doctor hadn't decided to remember he had a soul." The man replied, slowly and with a smile. "When we lost Lancaster, they shut us down. We thought it was all over and then a kind gentleman came forward, promising to keep funding us to see what we could offer him. Of course, we all knew he was using us as a side dish for what he was really planning but we played along and we got some goodies out of it. A dozen samples of creatures that we can use to create even more powerful super soldiers to fight for…well, for anyone we tell them to fight for."
The man gestured as a green skinned woman, not Huntress Wizard, was wheeled in inside a cylindrical containment unit.
"Courtesy of our friend, Van Kleiss who is no doubt getting worked up now because of the Grimm army heading to Nowhere. Good news, while he and our client duke it out we'll finish our army and after taking them, we'll sell to the highest bidder." The man said with a pleased smile.
"Van Kleiss?" Zak asked, confused by what the man was talking about. "What are you talking about?"
"No, you need to know about, son. Just a mere colleague who was kind enough to send us a few gifts from a project of his own." The apparent leader of the rogue scientists answered. "And in the nick of time too. What with that Grimm army approaching Nowhere."
"Nowhere? Grimm army?" Zak repeated. "Can you try making sense here?"
The man chuckled. "Well, looks like someone has been living under a rock for the last week. I'd have thought you Secret Scientists were up to date on all the world's troubles. But no matter, you won't need to know anything in a few more minutes."
Xxx
Dipper changed the sign on the Mystery Shack to 'Closed' and then followed into the elevator. Curiously it didn't stop at the basement where the gateway was but on a second floor between the top floor and the basement.
"Welcome to my private study, a place where I keep my most ancient and secret knowledge. Even your uncle Stan doesn't know about this place." Ford said as they got out of the elevator.
Dipper looked around in awe but stopped to investigate a rectangular object covered by a sheet.
"Dipper, come along! If we can't Bill-proof the Shack, we're going to have to do the next best thing." Ford called out, holding up a helmet with wires on it. "We're gonna have to Bill-proof our minds."
Dipper gasped.
Xxx
"It's nice to finally be out on a mission, just us gals!"
Mabel, Candy, Grenda, Zoe, Frida and Wendy were in the woods, all the girls following Mabel to where the unicorns supposedly resided..
"Forget the gal talk! I'm here to meet, touch, and/or become a unicorn!" Grenda declared.
"I hear if you lick a unicorn's neck, it tastes like your favorite flavor in the world!" Candy said enthusiastically.
"Candy, I will make sure you lick that unicorn's neck, because I care about my friends." Mabel promised with resolve in her voice.
"Honestly, I stopped believing in unicorns when I was like, five years old. I'm just coming along to keep you kids from walking into a bear trap." Wendy said as she cut some tree branches away with her axe.
"And we're here to make sure you don't die until you've helped Grandpa move his things into the mayor's mansion." Zoe spoke up. "I mean, leaving me and Frida to do the heavy lifting. Not cool, Mabes."
"Stop!" Mabel exclaimed as they came upon a shimmering flora. "This is the magic part of the forest." She opened the journal Ford gave her. "Let's see, the gnome tavern is over there, the fairy nail salon is over there, but it says that to summon the unicorn, one must bellow this ancient chant droned only by the deepest-voiced druids of old."
Grenda took the journal. "On it! Oy-oyoy-oyoyoyoy..."
"I bet you ten techno nothing happens." Wendy crossed her arms.
"I'll take that bet." Mabel said confidently.
"Count us in." Frida said, gesturing to herself and Zoe.
Surprisingly, something happened.
Mabel and Wendy gasped as a fortress rose out of the ground. It was covered in multi-colored flowers with sparkling lights resembling fairies flying around it.
It looked like something out of a fairy tale.
The girls entered as the doors opened with Mabel gushing. "The paintings airbrushed on the sides of vans were true!"
A neigh sound was heard and the girls spotted an actual live unicorn while a faun plays a pan flute nearby. It looked every bit like what was described in the fairy tales with blue tinted fur, a horn glowing pink and red and a multi-colored mane. Her eyes were big and black and had long eyelashes. Her hooves were pink and had white tufts of hair coming right above the hoof and she had three sparkles on the rear.
Her tail had hair only at the tip and it matched her mane.
"Mother of mothers!" Granda gasped.
"Queen of dreams!" Candy exclaimed.
"No way." Wendy muttered.
Mabel reached her hand up towards Wendy and made a grabbing motion. "Eh, eh."
Wendy sighed and gave a her a ten-techno bill.
"So I guess we shouldn't be surprised. We know like ten magical, walking and talking skeletons." Frida whispered to Zoe who nodded.
The unicorn reared her head. "Hark! Visitors to my realm of enchantment!"
Both Mabel and Candy gasped, and while Grenda was doing the same thing a butterfly flies straight into her mouth, causing her to gag.
"Oh my gosh, oh my gosh! What's your name?" Mabel squealed.
"I am Celestabellebethabelle, last of my kind. Come in, come in. Just, take off your shoes. I have a whole thing about shoes." The unicorn said.
The girls except for Wendy took off their shoes.
"Ah, ah! I'm talking to everyone!"
Wendy grudgingly took off her shoes.
"Celestabellebethabelle, we have journeyed far and wide-" Mabel began.
"About an hour!" Grenda cut in.
"On a mission to protect our family with your magical hair!" Mabel finished.
Candy was suddenly standing next to Celestabellebethabelle. "This is your chance, Candy. Lick the neck. Lick it..."
She tried to lick it but failed as Celestabellebethabelle stood her neck straight up. "Very well. To receive a lock of my enchanted hair, step forth, girl of pure perfect heart."
"Presenting: bum buh da bum bum ba bum bum!" Mabel said dramatically and knelt down. "Mabel!"
"What? You? A unicorn can see deep inside your heart, child." Celestabellebethabelle pointed at Mabel with her horn and her chest glowed with a heart.
"Ugh!" Mabel covered her chest.
"And you have done wrong. WRONG I say!" Celestabellebethabelle declared.
Mabel frowned. "I guess I do make fun of Dipper a lot. And I did just shatter a window with a crossbow."
"Your bad deeds make me cry." The unicorn's eyes welled up, and a tear landed on a flower, killing it.
"NOOO!" Mabel cried in shocked horror.
"Come back when you're PURE OF HEART. NEEEIIGGGHH! Exit is that way. Shoes, shoes, take your shoes. This isn't some... some... shoe store." Celestabellebethabelle turned her nose up at the group.
The humans left and the gate closed.
"Hey, Mabel, don't let her get to you." Grenda said as she and Candy put their hands on their friend's shoulder in an attempt to comfort her.
"Yeah, I wouldn't trust a horse that wears makeup." Wendy scoffed at the unicorn's attitude.
"She's obviously a fake." Frida scowled. "Just pretending to be oh-so-noble. I say we cut off her mane and take the hair and then shave off the rest for laughs."
"No argument from me. I got a razor." Zoe grinned, holding an old-style single bladed razor. "We'll make it slow."
"No, girls, she's right. I used to be one of the sweetest people I knew, but recently I've been slacking in the whole goodness department. Well, today we're gonna fix it. From this moment forth I'm gonna do so many good deeds, I'll have the purest heart in Gravity Falls!" Mabel pumped fist in the air and accidentally punched a bird out of the air which opened Wendy's, Candy's, and Grenda's mouth as a form of minor shock for Mabel accidently punching that bird. "That... that bird is fine."
"Someone's coming to the dark side." Frida whispered to Zoe, both of them smiling at their cousin.
Xxx
"So what is Bill, exactly?"
"No one knows for sure. Accounts differ of his true motivations and origins." While Ford was talking, Dipper picked up 'The Cipher File' and started reading it. "I know he's older than our galaxy and far more twisted. Without a physical form, he can only project himself into our thoughts through the mindscape. That's why he wants this." Ford held up the interdimensional rift. "I dismantled the portal, but with this tear, Bill still has a way into our reality. To get his hands on this rift, he would trick or possess anyone."
"So how do we keep Bill out of our minds?" Dipper asked.
"Well, there's a number of ways. I personally had a metal plate installed in my head." Ford answered.
Dipper chuckled. "Heheh. Good one."
Ford knocked the side of his head, making a metallic sound.
Feeling awkward now, Dipper coughed and cleared his throat.
"But this machine is safer. It will scan your mind, bioelectrically encrypting your thoughts so that Bill can't read them." Ford turned the machine on and several screens flashed to life. "Now say hello to your thoughts."
"Oh, man, I can't believe I'm with the author. Is my fly down?"
"DISCO GIRL! COMING THROUGH!"
"Wendy. Wendy. Wendy. Wendy."
"You might wanna... ignore that last one. By the way, you never told us what your history with Bill was." Dipper said awkwardly before changing the subject.
"Dipper, do you trust me?" Ford asked.
"Well, yeah, but-"
"Then you'll trust that that's not important. Now, focus. It's time to strengthen your mind."
Xxx
"Mr. Vincent?"
Double D perked up at the sound of his name and looked at the doctor. "Yes?"
"I'm sorry to say but…your parent's passed away some time last night."