seems like there's a show every night — iv
The trip to the Shack isn't as bad as Dipper feared it would be, mostly because the majority of the route can be travelled through the woods. The worst part is when they swing through the north edge of town, running from building to building and having a few close calls. Many of the town's interiors are stuffed with tourists, making it all the harder to pass by. Dipper doesn't have any answers for them and doesn't have the time to explain anyway, even if he did.
He, Wendy, and Pacifica escape out the back entrance of the middle school gymnasium and bolt back into the cover of the trees. From there it's not far to the Shack; they keep Gopher Road on their left and trudge through the undergrowth, aware that the speed offered by using the road isn't worth the risk.
The patchy lawn leading up to the porch is dotted with the gleaming carcasses of robot-hawks, each deactivated machine sporting several crossbow bolts. One of them is still twitching, three bolts embedded in its chest. Grunkle Stan is getting his crossbow practice in. Too bad there are so many hawks that the destroyed ones here represent a negligible victory.
When they reach the porch, Dipper stops to use his key. He's not accustomed to this door being locked during the day (and Grunkle Stan forgets to lock it at night half the time anyway). The hawks don't seem interested in going indoors, but if Stan was trying to fortify the Shack it makes sense that he'd lock up just to be on the safer side. The broken hawks on the lawn indicate he probably tried to put up a fight before realizing how hopelessly outnumbered he was.
There's no one in the living room when the three of them make it inside, nor is there anyone in the giftshop.
"I bet they went downstairs," Dipper says.
He punches in the code for the vending machine and lets the girls through, making sure the hidden door closes all the way behind him. When the elevator door opens at the bottom, the sound of voices from the lab is reassuring. Through the thick observation window Dipper can see Grunkle Stan gesturing in frustration.
"You got five minutes before I get out there to look for the kids," Stan is saying.
"For the tenth time, I need you here," Ford retorts from somewhere in the shop. "This is already taking too long, and it'll take even longer without your help."
"'Cause you're injured, yeah, yeah. You've been milkin' that all day."
"I can't help having a broken leg, can I?"
"You can't just build yourself a robot leg? What kinda scientist are you?"
"Stanley, lean down here. I'd like to punch you in the mouth."
"We're here!" Dipper says loudly, running into the lab.
Grunkle Stan is sitting on the edge of one of the worktables, arms crossed. Ford is sitting behind him at the same table, an assortment of parts spread out before him, his crutches leaning on the table's edge. He's assembling something, obviously with Stan's help to speed things along. It looks like some manner of antenna.
"Kids!" Stan says, hopping to his feet.
"Excellent timing!" Ford says without looking up from his soldering.
Stan approaches them with a relieved grin that quickly disappears. "Wait, where's Mabel?"
"We don't know," Dipper says with a shake of his head.
"You left her out there?!"
"She's with Brendan. A bunch of our friends are waiting for her to show at the meeting point," Dipper says defensively. "Besides, if she got grabbed by a hawk, coming here is the only way to help her!"
"He's right," Ford says. "The sooner we take care of this, the sooner everyone will be safe."
Stan appears no happier about the situation, but he lets it go. "Fine, just hurry up. At this rate we'll die of old age before the hawks get us."
Ford ignores him. "You arrived just in time," he says to Dipper. "Once the amplifier is complete, you'll have to carry out the next stage without me."
"Do you know what's going on?" Dipper asks.
"See for yourself." Ford indicates the laptop on the workbench behind him.
The screen shows a scrolling readout of Weirdness emissions. A single, almost unwavering line peaks high on the graph, varying only slightly.
Dipper recognizes the frequency immediately. "The hearts!" he exclaims.
"That's what this is about?" Pacifica says. "Fine, just give them back. They're gross anyway."
"If it were that simple, I'd be inclined to do just that," Ford says. "But these automatons don't seem to be searching for the hearts. If they are, then they're taking people who are only tangentially related."
"Soos and Melody were out in the back lot, taking cash for parking. They both got grabbed," Stan says gruffly.
Wendy is horrified. "Not cool, robots. Not cool."
Dipper concurs. He looks over at the hearts; they don't appear to have reacted to the robots' arrival. Whether that's because of the Faraday cage is impossible to tell without taking the hearts out and risking their position being revealed.
"Dipper, you got grabbed, right?" Wendy says.
Dipper turns away from the hearts, nodding. "Yeah, but it let me go. It scanned me and dropped me into the lake, it was weird…."
"You didn't meet the right parameters," Ford muses as he works. "Without more information, it's impossible to say what those parameters are. But you interacted directly with one of the hearts and were still released. They must be after something else."
"How do we stop them?" Pacifica says, cutting right to the point.
Ford begins to explain. "As the spectrometer clearly shows, there's a signal being broadcast on the same wavelength that the hearts utilize. I believe it's the tether that controls the machines. It's so strong that it's created interference across the spectrum, which explains our inability to communicate."
"Can we decrypt it?" Dipper asks, deeply curious to know who is sending the signal.
"If we had the time, we might be able to work out an algorithm. But people are being taken, and we must stop it. We'll figure out the rest later."
"But where's the signal coming from? Maybe we can stop it at the source," Dipper suggests.
"The source is somewhere far above us, likely past the troposphere. Based on the data, I suspect there's a stable dimensional tear up there somewhere."
"Wait, does that mean…?"
"Yes," Ford says grimly. "Someone has opened a portal from the other side."
"Oh, dang," Wendy says with wide eyes.
"The lack of sheer chaos pouring into our world is a good sign," Ford assures them. "Wherever the portal leads, it's not the Nightmare Realm. Now, by taking the unbroken heart and attaching it to this antenna, we can augment its signal and saturate the frequency. This will override the master transmission and untether the robots. It appears they're using the same operational frequency for their portal in order to amplify the broadcast; it's what I would have done. Scrambling the band will likely destabilize it as well."
"But who are they?" Pacifica asks.
Ford can only shake his head.
Dipper doesn't like any of this, not one bit. "Even if we close this one, there's nothing stopping them from opening another."
"I know," Ford says tightly. "I have some ideas for countermeasures, but for now all we can do is stop these machines before they take their victims somewhere we can't follow. Remember, breaching dimensions is no easy task—maintaining a stable connection requires incredible power and precision. If we collapse the portal, it should at least buy us some time."
Dipper takes a breath, doing his best to shove all his doubts away. Ford is right: They can't do anything right now but stop the robots. "Okay, so where do we broadcast our signal from?"
Ford ratchets a bolt down and leans back from the table. "Separating the hawks from their master signal means getting above the interference of the trees. Stan says the machines are primarily targeting the town and the festival, is that correct?"
"Yeah, they're all over the northeast field and downtown," Wendy confirms.
"The church steeple?" Dipper suggests.
"Possibly, but that would put you directly beneath their concentrated force," Ford says. "The water tower at Circle Park has a slightly higher elevation and stands on the edge of town. I think that will be your best bet."
"Now wait a minute," Stan interjects. "The whole dumb town is in a valley, why go towards the robots at all? The woods are safe enough, I'll just take it over to one of the cliffs."
"And how do you plan to scale those cliffs?" Ford retorts. "In this topography there are practically infinite elevated positions, but time is of the essence and Circle Park isn't far."
"Makes sense to me," Wendy says, cracking her knuckles. "We doing this?"
"Not 'we.' Just you three. With this leg, I'll be nothing but a liability out there. You'll have to go by foot; Stanley says the automatons have been disabling the vehicles on the lot, so ours must be out of commission by now. Use the woods for cover. Dipper can operate the device while you and Pacifica run interference. Get to the tower, get to the top, and hijack that signal."
"Got it. We won't let you down, doc," Wendy says, reaching for the signal booster.
"You stop right there!" Stan barks.
Wendy freezes with her hand outstretched. "Huh?'
"Are you outta your mind?" Stan bellows at Ford. "We talked about this! We're supposed to keep the kids safe, ya knucklehead!"
Ford's tone is level. "I realize that, but the circumstances are out of our control."
"The heck they are, I'm standin' right here! I'll do it," Stan declares.
Stan tries to swipe the antenna from the workbench, but Ford pulls it out of reach. "There are two people in this room that know how to attach electrodes to the heart, and you aren't one of them."
"Alright, so show me."
"I didn't have time to build a switch into this thing, never mind show you how to handle the unbroken heart!" Ford snaps. "Dipper, the signal will broadcast as soon as you have the electrodes in place. The heart itself should be all the power you need."
This time, Wendy snatches the antenna up and backs out of Stan's reach. "Sorry, Mr. Pines, but this is a fate-of-the-town kind of thing."
"Dipper, before you go—" Ford reaches into a desk drawer and tosses something to Dipper.
It's one of the magnet guns, the ones they used to descend into Crash Site Omega. It's a suitable weapon—if the magnetic pulse can disable an alien prison drone, it can probably disable an alien hawk drone.
Dipper tucks the magnet gun into his vest and starts for the door. "Come on, we don't have much time!"
"Fine!" Stan barks. "But you ain't going anywhere without— hey! Wait up! The town isn't that impor— ahg my knees—"
The three kids rush back to the elevator with Stan struggling to keep up.
Mabel is trying hard not to feel betrayed.
This is mostly because it's not really the time to be sorting out deep feelings. The robo-hawks are circling constantly overhead, and her cardboard shield isn't getting any less flimsy. The possibility looms that the hawks are capable of learning and will figure out her admittedly simple trick at some point. Or maybe they already have, and just have other priorities right now. It's a little deflating to think that the hawks don't care about her cardboard, rather than it being a neat idea.
It's not great being without Brendan. The excitement has leached out and left the terror behind. She's accustomed to being part of a dynamic duo (or trio) and while she feels capable enough to take on a solo mission, it's not much fun. She's trying not to think about Brendan's choice; and when she can't help it, she's trying—really, really trying hard—not to blame him for it. It's his parents, his family. Yeah, they're wrong, and Brendan could have helped save the day, but his dad seems pretty serious and how long has she even known Brendan, if she thinks about it? How can she expect him to choose her over the people he's loved his whole life?
Because the choice was really just to disobey, not lose them forever. Because the town needs saving and saving it saves the Cagers, too. Because he promised.
But, mostly… because she wanted him to.
She's distracted and moving too fast. A hawk comes in for a closer look and she goes flat on the matted grass as its shadow flits over her. She can't think about this stuff right now. She's gotta keep her head in the game.
She's provided the perfect distraction from her inner turmoil when someone shouts, "MABEL!"
The voice is unmistakably Grenda's. Mabel slowly rotates in place, trying to determine where her friend is without lifting the cardboard.
"Here, Mabel!" Candy calls out. A small hand waves over the top of an overturned table in a face painting booth.
Mabel hurries into the booth and vaults over the table, landing between Candy and Grenda. They are both a little disheveled but otherwise look none the worse for wear.
"Nice shield!" Grenda exclaims. "I can't believe that actually works!"
"You are a cardboard warrior," Candy proclaims.
"You just have to move kind of slow," Mabel says, deciding that sharing her earlier doubts isn't going to help anything. "Have you seen anybody else?"
"We've been trying to get to the rendezvous," Candy tells her, "but it's not easy. These people are in the way!"
"They keep trying to make us stay. It's like, move, idiots! We've got a town to save!" Grenda complains.
Mabel looks at her piece of cardboard and knows it's not going to cut it for the three of them. "We need something bigger to hide under."
"Okay," Grenda says. She stands up, flips the table over, and lifts it above her head. "Come on!"
The plastic table is a much sturdier aegis than the cardboard, which makes Mabel feel marginally better. It might withstand a peck or two. More importantly, it works just as well in avoiding the hawks' attention, and maybe even a little better. The table has a lip and metal legs folded up inside, making it unnecessary to expose their fingers to grip it.
The meeting point is clear on the other side of the festival, and they can't move very fast. Mabel hopes there's still someone there left to meet. Considering the emergency at hand, she won't blame them if they've already gone to the Shack to find Ford. Just in the time since she joined Candy and Grenda, she's seen a few more people be taken. The hawks need to be stopped, and Ford's the only one who can do it (or possibly McGucket, but his manor is far past the edge of town.)
Her heart lifts with relief when they finally reach the meeting spot and she sees a downed robot. Someone's here, and they're fighting back. The door of a tour RV pops open and Tambry leans out, waving at them.
"Over here!" she yells. "Hurry, they'll see you!'
The girls prop the table up against the side of the RV and rush inside. Mabel is disappointed that Dipper, Pacifica, and Wendy aren't there, but at least everyone else seems okay.
"Have you seen—" she begins.
Robbie cuts her off. "Yeah, they were here. They went to find your uncle. The nerdy one, I mean."
Mabel nods eagerly. "Good, we can still catch up!"
Thompson is looking out the window. "That table isn't big enough for all of us," he says.
"Then we're making a run for it," Robbie says. "Come on, guys, we can handle it."
"Heck yeah!" Nate says, socking Lee in the shoulder.
"Let's do it!" Lee says, hitting him back.
Mabel, Candy, and Grenda lead the charge. The girls leap out of the bus and the teens pile out right behind them, makeshift weapons at the ready.
They look up just in time to see about twenty hawks diving down to meet them.
"We can'thandle it! I was very wrong!" Robbie yells.
Everyone tries to flee back into the RV, but it's too late. The teens barely make it inside, Tambry diving through the door just as a hawk hits the dirt and skids, raking its wing down the side of the vehicle, shredding the paintjob. Two more land right next to it, cutting the girls off from safety.
The three girls back away as the hawks approach. Even more land nearby, beginning to form a circle. They're trapped.
"Looks like this is it, girls," Mabel says grimly.
"I want you both to know that you are my friends forever, even if we are digested!" Candy declares.
"Ditto!" Grenda says.
Just as the hawks begin to close, the bus explodes with noise as the teens start yelling. The windows open and the teens throw everything they can get their hands on: dishes, silverware, CDs and DVDs, even a pillow or two. None of it does any damage, but the hawks turn towards them anyway, assessing the sudden threat.
"RUN!" Robbie shouts from one of the windows as he hurls a toaster.
He doesn't need to tell the girls twice. They take off towards the tree line, shoes pounding down the grass. Safety seems like it's just within reach. Mabel pushes herself as hard as she can, her heart hammering against her ribs.
It's not enough. There are too many hawks, and the teens' distraction can only work for so long. In a flash of blue, a hawk comes careening across the ground, digging a furrow as it goes. It slides between Mabel and the other girls; Mabel goes sprawling, losing sight of Candy and Grenda behind the hawk.
She rolls and gets her knees back under her. She can't see. Is there dirt in her eyes? No—her headband has come off. She pushes her hair back just in time to see another hawk closing in on her, waddling awkwardly across the field on its talons.
She's cut off again. She has no choice but to run away from where she last saw Candy and Grenda, hoping that they kept moving and made it to the forest. The safety of the trees is on her right but looks so far away now, and she can't veer that way without getting closer to the robot. There are other trees just ahead, but they're sparse. Still, they're better than nothing.
She reaches the first one and spins around the trunk, taking cover. To her chagrin, the hawk is still following her! She realizes that the trees are too far apart, and the grass between them is neatly mowed. She's in someone's backyard. These trees would have hidden her from above but offer no protection on the ground. Having turned around to face the hawk, the real woods are now on her left, a distant, dark wall of foliage marking the end of the yard and the start of the forest proper. There's a house to her right, but she's deep in the large backyard, and the stretch of ground leading to the house is mown grass with no cover at all; even if she reaches the house, there's no guarantee she can get into it. The underbrush is her only hope.
She darts from tree to tree, trying to confound the hawk with obstacles. It's a much clumsier machine on the ground than it is in the air; despite this, it's still capable of maneuvering around a few widely spaced tree trunks. Mabel isn't creating the distance she needs. She can hear it right behind her, its joints whirring.
The toe of her shoe catches the earth, and she stumbles. She quickly regains her balance, but it doesn't matter. The hawk is too close.
One of its talons comes down and traps her legs; she falls, her chin making painful contact with the dirt. She struggles, trying to roll over onto her back. The robot's claws have sunk into the soil, and she can't. She's neatly pinned to the ground, and all she can do is look back over her shoulder as the hawk's other talons reach for her, its chest popping open.
Eyes blazing, Mabel shakes a fist and screams her last defiance: "I'LL THROW UP IN YOU, JUST YOU WATCH!"
The talons begin to close—and then, they're gone.
A grey blur comes out of nowhere and hits the hawk's head like a bullet. The machine staggers to the side, neck flexing, its metal head bouncing off a nearby tree with a hollow ring. A second later, Mabel is free when the hawk pulls its claws up and backpedals to regain its balance. She jumps to her feet, stunned by this sudden reversal. What on earth…?
It's a wolf. No, scratch that—it's a huge wolf! An enormous timber wolf in black and grey, snarling as it bites at the robo-hawk's cranium! The hawk shakes its head, trying to dislodge the wolf to no avail. Mabel can hear metal crumple as the wolf's jaws exert inexorable strength on the hawk's skull, its lightweight structure crushed in the face of sheer bestial force. There's a metallic shriek as something gives way, and the hawk simply collapses where it stands, whatever circuitry that passes for its brain crunched to bits.
The wolf drops to the ground. The edges of its body shimmer, and for a moment it seems almost insubstantial. The wavering shifts and reforms, and then Brendan is standing there before her, panting, triumphant—
—and completely naked.
"Whoa gosh," Mabel says, slapping a hand over her eyes.
"Huh? Oh, god! Oh no no no—" Brendan must be moving away from her; she can hear his footsteps recede, along with his panicked babbling. "I— I didn't think, I just— I saw the hawk and I saw you and I just—"
There's some rustling going on and she risks a peek; Brendan is hidden behind a nearby tree, frantically pulling his clothes on. Embarrassed as he is, he did catch a slight break in that he landed behind the fallen hawk in his moment of victory and its body partially concealed him, granting him at least a sliver of dignity.
Despite the excruciating awkwardness still hanging in the air, Mabel must ask: "Since when do you turn into a wolf in the summer? You said that was a one-time winter thing!"
Brendan's strained reply comes from behind the tree. "That's when I can't help it. I can turn into a wolf whenever I want to, I just… don't want to."
Mabel's pretty sure that if she could turn into a wolf, she'd be doing it all the time, but this is a bad moment to press the issue. "Well, you just saved me from being a fun-sized snack, so thank you."
Brendan shuffles around the tree trunk, his clothes disheveled and his face burning scarlet. "I wanted to go with you, before," he mumbles, not meeting her eyes. "I'm sorry. It took until we were almost to the Conclave for me to realize that I couldn't let you down, no matter what my stupid dad says. I should have run with you when I had the chance."
Every unkind thought she had before melts away and she immediately forgives him with her whole heart. "It's okay, Brendan. He's your dad. That's important, you know?"
"I know," he sighs. "But so are you."
Mabel is positive this would be the perfect moment for a movie-worthy kiss. Too bad there's huge robo-hawks all around and their heart-to-heart is likely to be interrupted by an attack. Which is actually a relief in a really weird, uncomfortable way, because it saves her from being able to think about how much of him she just saw and how much she— ohhhhh, that's a hawk. And it's brought a robo-friend or two.
"Run now, talk later!" Mabel blurts, closing the distance and grabbing Brendan's hand.
They book it for the trees at the back of the yard, a pack of hawks not too far behind them.
Circle Park is probably no more than a half-hour walk from the Shack, along Gopher Road and then down the main drag through town. But they don't have a half-hour, or free use of the roads, so they're running through the woods. And running is a difficult thing to do in a forest, as Dipper's scratched limbs can attest.
They're sacrificing stealth in favor of speed, partly because the trees are too dense here for the hawks to land, but mostly because Grunkle Stan is blundering through the brush with all the quiet grace of a manotaur. His constant demands that they slow down for him grow ever more annoying and if Dipper didn't think they might need the strength of numbers when they arrive at the park, he'd be tempted to leave Stan in the dust.
"Yo, there's a deer path over here," Wendy says, ducking beneath a low-hanging tree limb. "It's too narrow for the robots."
This eases their progress for a while, but all too soon they are back to dodging bushes and tramping through ferns, fallen logs a constant obstacle. Gravity Falls has been logged for well over a century at this point, and yet aside from the occasional lumber roads and pathways, it's as if it never happened. The valley has somehow maintained its density, the old growth standing in defiance of modern development. (Dipper can't remember the last time he saw a section of forest which was stripped of its largest trees… He's never considered this before, and now he wonders how that can possibly be. He squirrels the thought away for later.)
They are now moving parallel to Gopher Road, approaching the northwest edge of town. The hawks here are numerous, as they are all over downtown; Dipper can see concentric circles of them above the supermarket. There are several abandoned cars on the road, their tires shredded. Dipper hasn't witnessed it personally, but the hawks must be programmed to target vehicles, even if they can't necessarily get at the occupants. He wonders if the hawks are watching the entrances to the valley, preventing escape. Are they smart enough to identify major roadways like that? He has no proof that they aren't remotely piloted, but they act like autonomous machines, predictable and limited.
He has so many questions. He just hopes there are answers once they stop this.
Decision time. The woods directly adjacent to the west side of town are intermittent and dotted with houses. They can swing further west and avoid civilization completely, which will take quite a bit more time. Or they can risk exposure to the sky by cutting through lawns.
"I say we risk it," Wendy says as the four of them huddle in the brush. Ahead, the dense forest gives way to a gravel road, and past that is someone's side yard and garage.
"I don't know… If we lose the heart, we don't get a second shot at this," Dipper points out.
"The other heart won't work at all?" Wendy asks.
"That heart is broken," Pacifica says.
Dipper nods. "Yeah, it's cracked. I guess it might still work, but I don't really want to try it."
"Okay, well, they don't want the heart anyway," Wendy reasons. "So if we get attacked, then Dipper can run for it while we distract them. Three of us are a juicier target."
Pacifica isn't super happy to be served up as a distraction. "If I get taken, you better hurry up and stop them," she tells Dipper.
"Now wait just a stinkin' minute," Stan interposes, having finally caught his breath. "Nobody is getting taken, you hear me?"
Dipper's patience has long since been sapped by his extended grounding from dangers real and imagined, and he has no time for this. "Are you serious right now? We've got a mission to complete, and if you don't like it, then you can stay—"
"Nobody is getting taken," Stan snarls.
His anger is so sudden and fierce that Dipper's mouth snaps shut and he takes an unconscious step backwards, cowed. In an instant, the power dynamic reasserts itself; despite the circumstances, Dipper finds himself just a kid again, helpless in the face of parental censure.
As quickly his anger came, Stan reigns it in. "…'Cause I got a plan," he says more calmly. "Stay here."
With that, Stan pushes through the brush and crosses the road.
It's Pacifica who asks what they're all thinking. "Are we actually staying here?"
"We could make a break for it," Wendy observes.
Despite everything, Dipper can't help but extend his grunkle the benefit of the doubt. Stan has come through before, after all. "Let's at least see what he's up to," Dipper tells them.
Stan goes around the garage and shortly after he disappears the constant humming of the distant hawks is briefly overridden by the sharp shattering of glass and wood. A few moments later, the garage door begins clanking open and a beat-up sedan backs down the driveway, its muffler loudly declaring its need to be replaced. It swings off the driveway and cuts directly across the yard, leaving ruts in the grass. The rickety picket fence surrounding the lawn is sacrificed a moment later when the sedan drives right through it, sending pieces of wood scraping across the gravel.
The car pulls up just short of the woods and Stan rolls the window down. "Get in!" he commands.
The three kids pile into the car, Wendy taking shotgun as Pacifica and Dipper jump into the backseat.
Wendy snaps her seatbelt on, looking impressed. "Dude, did you hotwire this?"
"I don't have to answer that," Stan says, and slams the car into gear.
"They'll definitely attack the car," Dipper warns as they veer onto Gopher Road.
"I'm countin' on it."
Stan is thundering down the shoulder of the road, avoiding the disabled cars scattered down its length, and Circle Park is coming up fast. Dipper looks out the rear window, and even from his limited angle of vision he can tell that hawks are closing in. Stan suddenly slams on the brakes and pulls the wheel into a hard right, sending Pacifica crashing into Dipper's side. The car comes to a jolting stop right at the entrance to the park, the clocktower just ahead.
Dipper doesn't need to ask what the plan is. Pacifica throws open her door and leaps out; Dipper is right on her heels and hits the ground running. As Wendy comes up beside him, Dipper can hear the sedan ripping apart the turf as it accelerates, and then comes the long, tire-tearing squeal as Stan peels out on the asphalt, the sedan's engine roaring with all its meagre strength. Stan won't get far—especially not in that piece of junk—but it might not matter. Not if they hurry.
Dipper takes a quick look back as he runs; there's at least five hawks zooming after Stan, and no doubt more on the way as the noisy vehicle draws them from a wide area. As distractions go, it's a good one.
The water tower isn't far, still looking a bit worse for wear after the McSkirmish incident. What's important is that the ladder is intact.
"Take the bag!" Wendy calls out as she runs beside him. In midstride, she hands him the duffel bag containing the heart and the signal booster.
Her timing couldn't be more fortuitous—less than a second later, a hawk comes careening out of nowhere and plows into the ground, skidding across the grassy park and kicking up a fountain of dirt clods. It slides directly towards Dipper and Wendy, forcing them to separate.
"Just go, don't stop!" Wendy yells. She doubles back and kicks the hawk in its angular rear as it tries to regain its footing, gaining its full attention. Back on its feet, it begins to chase her as she leads it away from the tower.
Dipper has already been caught once, and if he's scanned again, he might just be released again. However, there's a good chance he'll lose the heart in the process (and, oh man, if it touches the ground…). Despite his earlier run in, the hawks don't appear to be ignoring him, so he's not sure if there's a whitelist.
It's only a few more yards to the ladder. The shadows of hawks are flitting by with worrying frequency. He glances towards town and sees about a dozen of them peeling off to veer towards Gopher Road. Most of them head in the direction of Grunkle Stan, but a few of them do not. The ladder is almost within reach when the first of these hawks lands just to Dipper's right.
"Over here, idiot!" Pacifica shouts at the metal bird. Lacking any other missiles, she hurls a small handful of loose change at the hawk. The coins rattle against its carapace and its eyeless head turns in her direction.
Dipper begins to climb. He's almost to the top when something blots out the sun—he looks up just in time to watch as the wing of a hawk cuts through the flimsy ladder. He wraps both his arms around the wooden rungs as the ladder shakes violently, bits of shredded wood raining down on his head. His right foot slips off its hold and he pulls himself tightly to the shaking structure—this instinctive action saves him.
With the top of the ladder shorn from its anchors, its body is now freestanding on its legs. By moving himself as close to the ladder as possible, Dipper has shifted his center of gravity forward, ensuring the ladder falls against the side of the tower instead of away from it. The ladder now rests precariously in the X made by the tower's crossbeams, lodged beneath its circular viewing platform. He's looking up at the bottom of the platform—there's no way to reach the top anymore.
But he must get higher. He must.
As he stands on the ladder, he looks back over his shoulder and watches a hawk make a dive towards Pacifica. She avoids it by ducking beneath the low branches of a nearby pine tree; the hawk aborts and swoops to its right, going around the tree. As it begins to gain altitude again, it passes a few feet below where Dipper stands.
He pushes himself off the ladder, turns, and falls onto the hawk's back.
Maybe I shouldn't have done this, he thinks just before his palms contact the hawk's angled metal.
It's nearly a very short trip, as he comes within a foot of sliding right off the hawk's back before he manages to get the magnet gun out and clamps it down. For the second time in his life, he's stuck to the back of a robot. This time, however, his goal is very different. He wants to be caught, but he needs it to happen on his terms.
The hawk quickly gains altitude, which is good; the next thing it does is much less helpful. It turns out that the hawks are smarter than the prison drones, because the hawk begins to spin. Dipper had not expected the hawk to react this way and quickly recognizes the predicament this puts him in. Time to abort: He triggers the magnet pulse to disable the hawk.
The gun fizzles with a feeble crackle of energy, failing to fire.
"No! Not now!" Dipper frantically works the activator, trying to get the gun to reset.
Too late. The hawk completes its first spin and the second comes much faster, followed by a brutally quick third. The force of it stretches Dipper to his standing height, both of his hands straining to hold on to the magnet gun. It's no use: His hands are simply no match for the strength of the spin. With a shout, he's torn from the magnet gun and tumbles through the air, earth and sky blurring together as he flips. The wind roars in his ears. His vision slowly goes black at the edges as unconsciousness comes to claim him.
Then, metal gently enfolds him. He feels pressure on his back as the hawk catches him, slowing his descent and reversing it, raising both of them back towards the sky. The blood rushes from his head and he blinks, finding himself in the hawk's talons as it pulls him closer to its chest, the scanner emerging. It flits over Dipper's body and, again, the robot elects not to place him within its chest. It changes course. He's bought himself precious time.
He squirms in the hawk's grip until he's able to bring the duffel bag around to his front. He's got just enough room between talons to get one arm over them while the other stays beneath, allowing him to work through the gaps in the claws. He keeps the heart and the apparatus within the duffel bag, afraid the wind shear will rip them away if they're exposed to it. It's tricky work and he can't see what he's doing very well. He attaches the electrodes mostly by feel, extremely glad that he's done this before.
The sensation of the wind buffeting him is the worst distraction, even more so than the occasional weightlessness when turbulence occurs. He's trying to perform a relatively simple wiring task, but he's doing it on his back in the sky. It's like he's parasailing sideways and upside down. He'd probably be exhilarated (and petrified) if there weren't so much riding on this; his concentration on the heart is near-absolute.
He has the last electrode in his fingers, holding it above its spot. He hesitates. He's not sure what's going to happen when he fires the heart. If the hawk drops out of the sky, then he's going to drop with it. He has to time this just right.
His back is towards the ground, making it difficult to tell where the hawk is taking him. He soon realizes that they aren't headed to the lake, but in the opposite direction, towards the east. Given that they started in Circle Park, he must be somewhere south of the Magical Forest and north of McGucket Manor. This places him above the woods that run, dense and trackless, all the way to the eastern cliffs.
He finds this worrying. There is another body of water in the eastern valley, below a waterfall; it's a small lake that feeds the east branch of the river, rushing westward to meet the other branch north of town, where they combine and flow out between the valley's ruptured cliffs. He feels like if they were headed there, they'd be higher up; the cliffs are still a good distance away.
Then, beneath him, the sun sparkles on water—an unmistakable sight even at his height and velocity. The hawk tilts downwards. This is it.
Dipper grits his teeth and places the last electrode.
The heart bucks in his hands and Dipper's hair stands on end as an energy pulse crackles over him with a sound not unlike the makeshift EMP Ford deployed at the outdoor store. The effect is immediate—the hawk's flight turns into a dead glide, its engines silent. Its nose slowly tilts downward, and it slips just over the tops of the trees and falls into a clearing as its trajectory steepens. The water is worryingly close; Dipper hopes he can free himself from the hawk's hold while it sinks.
Then, its talons open limply.
"Not agaaaaaaiiiiiinnnnn—" Dipper squawks as he plummets.
He hits the water back first, hard enough to knock the air from his lungs. It feels like a giant has just slapped him across the back. He feels the duffel bag slip away in the water and makes a futile blind grab for it before abandoning it in the frantic climb to oxygen. He breaks the surface and gasps, his skin stinging, his lungs desperate for air, water flooding his eyes and mouth as he spits and chokes.
He treads water until he can breathe regularly again, shutting his eyes against the wetness and the sun glare. It takes a good minute before he can open them again.
He's near the middle of a round pond, quite large in circumference. He's not certain, but it looks like it might be a big sinkhole that has filled with water—it has that kind of near-perfect circularity. He hopes that the heart stayed in the duffel bag on its way down and hasn't created a maze beneath the water. Of course, if that had happened, he could expect to be pulled down as all the water poured into the newly created spaces, so it's probably still protected. He makes a few half-hearted attempts to dive for the heart, but the water seems very deep, and he's winded and tired.
When he pulls himself out onto the mossy ledge of the sinkhole, he finds his phone is inoperable (to be fair, it was probably already dead from his first dip of the day). He has none of his adventuring equipment and thus no way to take coordinates or even write something down. He'll have to head west and keep in mind the general direction of his flight to revisit the sinkhole later. He's never seen it before now; the valley still hides endless secrets.
He crawls over to the side of a tree and nestles himself in its roots, resting his head against its rough bark as the shadows of the boughs play over his closed eyelids. He stays there, listening to the wind in the branches, until his legs feel steady again.
On the walk back, he looks up at the clear, blue sky, and doesn't see a single hawk.
Author's Note
In the past two months, I've moved twice; first to a temporary residence while I cleaned and repaired my permanent residence, and then into the permanent residence. It seems my entire existence lately has been nothing but boxes and furniture. My attempts to continue writing have been sporadic and largely unfruitful, as I found it hard to concentrate or find inspiration when exhausted and in unfamiliar settings. I know these excuses offer no solace to those eagerly awaiting another chapter, caught in the agony of a cliffhanger (I've been there). I hope this chapter, which is longer than typical, entertains and provides some closure. I want to have the next one out sooner, of course, but my life is still up in the air in many ways, and I know better than to make promises.