Many questions were rumbling through Ford's mind. Why did Mabel have a goose call in her pocket? Why did every event this summer have to be so...intimately connected? Why was his brother having a more successful love life than he was?

And why, why oh why did they have to deal with the errant, eccentric president of the United States?

Ford had grown to understand a certain level of nonsense. Whether it was his brother's exploits, his great-niece's incredible ability to string together a plot from any kind of sugar-based hallucination or the fact that a member of the Northwest family had joined the Pines, he was used to stretching the realms of believability. You didn't travel through dimensions without gaining an awareness for these things.

But Quentin Trembley? Quentin Trembley, he couldn't stand. Some people were just too mentally unstable to justify for a man of science and theorem. Quentin Trembley may have been a genius in the eyes of his niece, but to Ford, he was a silly, mutton-chopped charlatan. Even Stanley thought so, and Stanley was such a proud charlatan that he had it printed on his business cards!

And now they were turning to the lanky, trouser-lacking gentleman for advice. Because he was apparently an expert in vengeful beaver spirits.

It didn't help that Quentin Trembley didn't choose to enter quietly. He seemed to be attempting it - but did so while loudly playing his own theme tune on a mouth harp.

A homemade mouth harp.

"We meet again, my fellows!" He grinned, posing with his hands on his hips. "For what have I been beckoned from my goosey kingdom? Is it the Irish?! Have the Irish returned?!"

"No, no, that was a few weeks ago-" Mabel started.

Pascoe looked up at Quentin with his black, hollow eyes. "It's a beaver problem, Pres'."

The gangly old timer in the trenchcoat's eyes darkened. "Tricky little fellows. I've never had a problem being surrounded by beavers, I can tell you-"

Stan found that sentence incredibly amusing. The kids watched him almost creasing over into hysterics while Ford remained straight faced and irritated by his brother's love of innuendo. Quentin didn't quite seem to catch the joke either.

Pascoe cleared his throat and continued earnestly. "Beavernants. Y'know, the boat ones."

"The fiends."

"Been chewing up town like wrong'uns."

"The fiends."

"They've been comin' back every fifty years."

"And you didn't inform me?!"

"Pres'. Peanut brittle."

"The fiends." The eccentric planted his fist into his hand, wrinkling his prodigious nose. Mabel couldn't help but notice that every time his nose twitched, his pince-nez glasses rocked back and forth. It was perhaps suitable for such an… animated figure that every feature of his face seemed capable of its own wildly dramatic movements. "They knew I was impossible to reach. Entirely out of their weird beavery grip."

"The Pres' was a leading beaver herder back in his day." Pascoe nodded. "Taught 'em tricks, got 'em contributing to society - best builders in nature, y'know. But-"

"I always knew they would rise up against me and my authority!" Quentin bellowed, interrupting the cement-skinned pixie as he struck his most dramatic pose, finger extended into the air and legs squared. "So I prepared for them!"

Things went quiet, save for Pascoe chewing. A Manotaur noticed the trouserless man standing perfectly still with his finger in the air - with three young teens and two old men - and swiftly crossed the golden street away from them.

It seemed to go on for an eternity as everybody waited for President Trembley to elucidate.

Dipper blinked as the entire group went quiet. "Uh. How?"

"This is what I were getting at." Pascoe said. "He-"

"My peanut brittle sarcophagus was not just a delightfully scented home for me to witness the far-flung future and outlive the beef tea shortage, young Dipper! No! For it is the ultimate weakness of the beaver!"

Pacifica slapped her forehead. "Peanut brittle is not a beaver's ultimate weakness. Come on ."

"Believe me, my dear, the world was as shocked the day I made my discovery! But after over a hundred years, not a single beaver nibbled upon my sticky, caramelised confections, and to this day, they find me impossibly powerful! Hasten to my beck and call! For they know I have the power to eradicate them!"

Stan held the bridge of his nose. "How. How the hell would that even work?"

"Beavers are nature's ultimate creation of weirdness and rationale in a furry package! A stalemate of the elements! By adding the saltiness of peanuts and the sugar of brittle, you form the ultimate in reflective substances! The eternal stalemate of flavour! It is the secret that your government has kept from you for hundreds of years!"

Mabel was absolutely enraptured. "It's genius! It's utterly genius!"

Dipper and Pacifica looked to eachother, far less enraptured and far more bewildered. They immediately looked towards the only one of them with a PHD in the hopes that he would, at least, be the force of reason.

To their surprise, however, Ford was slightly more receptive to the idea. Which was to say, he could silence his frank and utter disbelief for long enough to give it attention. "Say this is a factual thing - that your… peanut brittle works at controlling them-"

"Which it does!"

"Yes, yes- let's say it does. How does that help us? We'd need an impossible amount of the stuff."

Quentin slapped Ford's back so hard that the scientist's glasses flew off. "You can use my old peanut brittle vats, my dear Stanford! They were purpose-built to develop my miracle of life-sustenance!"

"You gotta be kidding me." Pacifica snapped. "The big gold vats-"

Dipper winced. "We wrecked those, like, last week."

"Then I shall call upon my brethren to repair them!" Quentin shouted, heroically. By now, he was creating quite a scene. The Pines all felt inclined to hide their faces from the increasingly judgemental passing creatures.

"Your-"

Before Stan finished asking his question, Quentin grabbed the goose call and pranced around The Crawlspace erratically honking a merry tune, like a Pied Piper with a relatively monotonous colour palette.

Mabel excitedly joined him, flapping her sweater sleeves for emphasis.

"Dipper, if it wasn't for you, I'd have been so freakin' gone right now-" Pacifica huffed in frustration, rubbing the bridge of her nose between her thumb and forefinger. She at least wrapped her arm around his waist a little tighter to illustrate she was joking.

"Right back atcha." He replied without a single hesitation.

They exchanged concerned glances as the dancing beanpole of a man - and his congresswoman - went upon his merry way, and only grew more concerned when they started hearing the echo of hundreds of wings beating against the air.

Dipper blinked and groaned. "His brethren. Of course."

"Dip…" Pacifica said, "I've gotta be honest-"

"Closer to being gone?"

"Yeah."

"If you stay, you can choose the next movie night."

"Hard bargain."

Quentin beamed with pride as the creatures flooded in like a gigantic, feathery white wave. Bird detritus spattered across The Crawlspace's plaza, like rain from the colossal cloud of down and beak. It was an intimidating, albeit fascinating sight. "Come, my fellows! Mechanical projects beckon! It's brittling time!"