Dipper woke with a start as the attic door banged open. "Alright, kids, enough sleeping in!" Stan said, his cooking gloves on and a frying pan in his hand.

Dipper yanked the covers up his body and tried to cover his ears by pulling on his hat. Stan looked at him, surprised, but he didn't seem to have noticed Dipper's odd behavior or appearance.

"What are you doing on the ground, kid? And where's your sister?"

"Uh, bathroom." Dipper said quickly. It wasn't even a lie.

"Well, come on, it's time for breakfast. And where's Ford? I haven't seen him since yesterday."

"He's p-probably down in the basement. And um, I think I'll stay up here. But thanks." He pulled the blankets up even higher.

Stan rolled his eyes. "Come on, Dipper. You can't be feeling that bad." He walked over and tried to pull the blankets off of Dipper, but he was holding strong.

"No, really Grunkle Stan, I-" Stan yanked the covers out of Dipper's hands. Dipper lurched forward, and his hat fell off.

"Hot Belgian waffles!" Stan exclaimed. He stared at Dipper, fully exposed with the bottom half of a deer.

Dipper got up and galloped past Stan, out the door, and into the bathroom, which he locked behind him. "Mabel!" he said, breathing heavily.

"What?" There was a splash as Mabel popped out of the water and some slopped over the side of the tub. "What happened?"

"Stan saw me," Dipper said, cantering over to her.

At that moment, there was a banging at the door. "Kid, what the heck is going on?" Stan's voice shouted from the other side.

Dipper backed up against the wall, and Mabel sank a bit lower into the water. "What do we do?" She asked, sounding nervous. "I mean, he wouldn't really put us on display, would he?" she looked at her tail, then at Dipper.

"I think he might," Dipper said, voice shaking.

Stan hammered on the door a few more times, then stopped abruptly. "What the-?" they heard him say, before he was cut off by a loud growl like the one Dipper had heard last night. They heard the sounds of a scuffle, then Ford's voice:

"Leave it, Stanley, or I swear I'll tear you apart!" Dipper and Mabel looked at each other in shock. They had never heard Ford speak like that.

A moment of silence followed, then Ford said in a softer voice, "Kids, open the door. I need to talk to you."

Dipper approached the door slowly. Mabel stared at him with fear and confusion. Dipper unlocked the door cautiously.

Ford entered the bathroom, and it was immediately clear that the experiments he had been doing on the river water hadn't gone well. The most noticeable change in his appearance was the pair of huge, multicolored, feathery wings sticking out of his back. His hands and feet were lion's paws, and his ears, like Dipper's, were large and fuzzy. As he turned around to close the door behind him, a tufted tail swept out from beneath his coat.

"Woah," Dipper said.

"Sorry about that, children." Ford said. He faced them and lay down, stretching like a cat. He looked at the shocked looks on their faces. He glanced at Mabel questioningly. "You too, Mabel?"

In reply she flicked her tail out of the water. "Yeah," she said in a hollow voice. "It would be cool if I wasn't stuck in here," she said with a weak smile.

Ford sighed. "Let me think for a moment. All three of us came in contact with the water from the Commutatus Fluvius. Dipper changed within an hour into a cervitaur, I changed within ten hours of contact into a sphinx, and Mabel became a mermaid within twelve hours of contact." He rubbed his chin with one paw. "That would suggest that the amount of time needed for the change to take effect is proportional to the amount of water touched. In addition, there does not seem to be a pattern to what types of creatures those affected change into." He pulled out one of his journals and a pen from under his coat and attempted to take notes, but his paws were large and clumsy. He grumbled to himself as he tried to figure out how to hold the pen.

"Grunkle Ford, what are we going to do?" Mabel asked. "I can't live in this bathtub forever!"

"And I don't think I can even go down the stairs!" Dipper said, gesturing to his four legs.

"Calm down, children, we'll figure something out." Ford said, finally succeeding in jotting down a few notes.

At that moment, Stan burst through the bathroom door. "Alright, will someone tell me what the heck is going on here?!" He shouted, pointing one hand at Ford and holding a test tube in the other.

Ford's eyes widened. "Stanley, you didn't interfere with my experiments, did you?"

"So what if I did?" Stan challenged aggressively.

Ford leapt to his feet, his wings spreading out a bit in his agitation. "You idiot, Stanley! Don't you know what you've done?"

"No, I don't! Would someone tell me already?" he looked at Dipper and Mabel, who were both watching the exchange fearfully. "Jeez, kids. What happened to you?" He eyed Dipper's legs and Mabel's tail with a mixture of amusement and apprehension.

"Stanley! Give it back!" Ford said, lunging toward the test tube in Stan's hand.

Stan tried to push him away. "Not until you tell me what's going on!" He held the tube away from Ford, but Ford backed up and pounced on Stan with a growl, knocking him over. The tube flew out of Stan's hand and shattered on the tile floor, splashing both of them with water.

"Oh, great." Ford said in exasperation, getting off of Stan and sitting back on his haunches.

Stan stood up grumpily. "Now will someone please tell me why my family has turned into a freaking LION, FISH, and DEER?" For the first time, they saw some fear in his face.

Ford crossed his arms, but Dipper spoke. "We um, kind of got put under some spell. We really don't know what exactly is happening."

Ford rolled his eyes. "And you'll join us soon enough, Stanley."

"What's that supposed to mean?" Stan said sharply, looking at Ford.

"You touched the water," Ford said, "The kids found a river in the forest that seems to carry the curse. And I had some of the river water in that test tube."

"You were keeping this stuff in the house?" Stan asked, outraged.

Ford glared at him. "I was doing experiments, trying to figure out how to reverse it!

And if you hadn't noticed, I paid a price for that!" He stretched out his colorful wings impressively to make his point.

Stan sat down heavily on the bathroom floor. It was now very crowded in there with the four of them, and Ford flinched when Mabel started stroking his wing with a mesmerized look on her face.

"So now what?" Stan asked, his head in his hands.

"I don't know," Ford sighed. "I really don't know.