The sunset had been late that evening - but by the time the kids had ascended to watch the battle, it was dark - the town drowning in layer after layer of thick, milky fog. A foaming, bubbling, broiling sort of cloud that wrapped around every building, every street light, every pole and structure. The tension was electric. It tingled, and the entire town seemed scarily quiet. Unnaturally quiet.
The church bells began their regular tolling. A regal, echoing, deep-toned clang that bounced and echoed from the cliff faces, distorting into a tone that seemed to slow and drone the more that the old brass bells rang.
10PM.
The family decided it best to get to high ground and prepare themselves for what could be a particularly savage onslaught of the town's two most numerous fauna. They opted to become the last-ditch preservation of Northwest Manor, and stood encircling its front with baseball bats and brass knuckles at the ready.
Of course, McGucket noticed. The shutters clattered as he popped his head through one of the arched windows of the uppermost bedroom. "Howdy Pines, whut's goin' on?"
"Beavers." Dipper said.
"Beavers and geese." Ford clarified.
"Ya'll want me to get the slug spray?"
"How would that help?"
"I 'unno." the old coot blinked. "Y'all want a cuppa joe?"
"Does it have bacon fat in it?"
"Yer darn tootin'!"
"Get back indoors, Fiddleford."
The hillbilly cackled in his typically unhinged, overly enthusiastic manner as he followed the scientist's instructions and slammed the window onto his beard. Before promptly opening it again and slipping it back inside.
It was on the 10th ring that the first glowing, red eyes began to shine from the high street, burning and searing through the pale vapour that slowly rolled over the land. One pair, then two - then three. Slowly joined one by one, in the lead of a black, writhing mass of fur, whiskers and beavertail.
They marched in formation. A formation of bitey aggression. With cutlasses. All led by that group of creatures with the terrible, glowing eyes. Their steps seemed unusually slow and meticulous - conserved and planned. Rehearsed.
As their dark mass of shadowy rodents lined the streets, slowly emerging through those thick, white tendrils of terrible, foreboding smog, the opposing forces began to appear from the forest, lining up like an enormous chessboard. The grand dichotomy of Gravity Falls was clear to see - clear to view.
Civilisation - the side of those vengeful spirits, wronged by society, wronged by their phony masters, out for revenge and their precious, precious escape...
And the town's very nature; the innate, natural weirdness of Gravity Falls, there to guard things as they were - bedecked in feathers, under the command of the town's true master; the benevolent, if eccentric Trembley.
The morality of the entire battle - of those inky black creatures versus the pale white feather-down resistance - was fittingly grey. Dipper couldn't help but wonder if they were really on the right side. A nuisance, to be sure, but were these things truly evil? It was hard to blame the Beavernants for their fury.
But there was no reasoning with them. No way to properly communicate against the creatures and their goals. It wasn't so simple as saying that repairing a boat wouldn't fix things, or trying to tell them that the Northwest's wrath was dead and buried.
These creatures were vicious, crazed ones, dark beings of hate and anger, casting vengeance onto the sleepy little township that had created them - and caused the loss of their human lives, in one form or another. This was an invasive army. An army of mentally deficient, single-minded, single-case beings that wanted one thing and would level the entire town if that's what they needed to do to get their wood.
So instead, there was a winged wall assembling to defend the town's most iconic castle. Lined up in a grand, beaky battalion.
The geese entered a pointed formation and glared at the invaders furiously, preening their feathers to ensure that the inevitable carnage was starting correctly. If their plumage was to be torn, then by God, they'd look good going in.
Besides, Quentin had promised some fine Dutch Crunch bread in exchange for their loyalty. That was the goose equivalent of a household's annual income for one battle. What self-respecting goose could resist such a thing? Warrior geese, they may be, but they were not above being tiger-bread mercenaries. This was a worthy reward. A fine one.
The two opposing sides came webbed-toe-to-slightly furrier webbed-toe, and glared.
It was time.
Pacifica gripped Dipper's waist. Dipper held her hip... quickly moved his hand to her waist when he realised.
Mabel sat atop the garden's fourth decorative gazebo so she could get a better look, and the Grunkles sat with cans of Pitt, sitting in deckchairs.
"Do you think this is appropriate for the kids?"
"I mean, they teach world wars in school, right? It's culture."
"Perhaps it'd be a good idea to keep them out of trouble, Stanley. All I'm saying-"
"Ford, trust me, I've tried to keep 'em out of trouble. It didn't work then, it won't work now."
"You know, there's every chance we won't win this."
"Eh," Stan shrugged. "Somethin' always happens. We just gotta be smart."
"Let's not be unrealistic." Ford grinned, wryly.
Stan beamed and punched him in the arm. "Jerk."
The streets erupted into pure warfare, one side fighting towards the manor's steep approaching road, while the other desperately attempted to push them back towards the lake's smooth, glassy waters - back to Scuttlebutt island. The two sides met with hideous, loud, unpleasant carnage. The illusions of it being civilised were quickly eradicated - as with most warfare - the moment that the first bite, slap, scratch or flap was dealt out.
It quickly became impossible to work out who was winning, or, indeed, if any side was reaching their goal. More and more of both soldiers simply flooded in relentlessly on top of their comrades, the black and white chaos down below becoming an impossible contusion of chaos, feathers and fur.
Screams, hisses, airborne down - it was no dignified march, it was a brutal, vicious, disorganised horror of Oregon wildlife.
Before long, the superior biting power and flat, slap-happy tails of the beavers began to dominate. Ford blinked and sat up as exactly what he feared was beginning to take place. Slowly, painfully, with flying tufts of feather and the odd bit of avian bloodshed, the geese were forced back, beaten towards the Northwest hill. To his horror, even the natural savagery of the birds was being flattened by the overwhelming lust for revenge from the possessed pirates.
The beavers were winning. They were winning and they were approaching the gates and walls of the old Northwest estate.
"Stanley, get ready. This looks like trouble."
Stan rolled his eyes, stood up and cracked his knuckles. "Freakin' H, huh? Never a minute's rest."
"No rest for the wicked." Ford smiled. "Let's just do what we can."
Pacifica clung to Dipper firmly. "Th-they'll never get through that wall, or those gates. They kept the town out for long enough, what chance have beavers got?!"
Dipper winced. "These don't just want to party, Paz. And I don't think they really care about self preservation…"
"Y-you think they'll just let eachother get trampled?!"
Pacifica's answer came in the sounds of roars, screeches and the stampede of flat-tailed furry coconut creatures with bucked teeth, a cacophony of rodent-war-cries and the scrambling of claws upon the manor's fortifications.
The geese continued attempting to battle furiously, as valiantly as a bird could be expected to do (and, to be fair, birds are pretty skittish.)
When a goose is outmatched for sheer savagery, you know you're facing a pretty damned brutal enemy.
Slowly, they began to crawl over, overflowing like a wave of shadowy hatred with bucked teeth. Glowing red eyes pierced through the fog as they stared at their latest obstacle with those ruby, fiery oculars. All at once - all in one moment - every single one of the leading revenant troupe pierced the Pines family and fixed on them.
"D-Dipper…?" Pacifica whimpered, clutching onto him harder.
He held her tighter around the waist, holding her head against him. "I- I'm thinking, I uh-"
Mabel, still perched on the gazebo, was frantically taking photographs with her polaroid camera. "This is gonna knock 'em dead on Hipstergram! #JustBeaverThings!"
"Mabel, get down from there already!" Dipper snapped. "Don't you see how serious this is?!"
"Duh, of course I do, but an opportunity is an opportunity! Besides…" she beamed, shooting her grappling hook directly into a beaver's bonce. "High ground is always good."
She yelped in horror as the Gazebo leaned - and began to collapse. She instantly grappled to the wall of the mansion house and joined her family, backing against the towering, gothic building's facade - their free ground shrinking more and more.
Those dark, vengeful beasts closed in as if they were the living dead.
And they had dealt with the living dead.
"We need to board up the windows and doors or somethin', Sixer!" Stan barked. "We can't let 'em work out all of the wood's inside the manor!"
The beavers paused and spun their heads. Not quite 360 degrees, but a little bit more than a beaver should probably be able to spin their head, you know? In any sense, it freaked the kids the hell out - not because the beavers were looking at them. No, they were looking through them.
Grunkle Stan had just given the little fiends a target.
Ford would have slapped his forehead if he wasn't busy trying to work out the best course of action - and rapidly, constantly running out of time. The family could only cower back and try to hold their own as the creatures continued their terrible, continuous, unrelenting advance.