The only thing worse than being dragged into the forest by an unknown stranger was being dragged into the forest with a dementedly laughing unknown stranger. The man sounded terribly unhinged, his laughter off-key and grating at all the wrong moments.

This only made Dipper fight harder. He struggled against the stranger's iron grip, shouting into the glove clamped around his mouth. He tried to kick, but he was being dragged along too fast. Finally he opened his mouth and bit the stranger's finger through the gauntlet.

The stranger's laugh abruptly cut off, and Dipper took advantage of that moment to wiggle free. Before he could get away, however, the man grabbed his shoulder.

Dipper turned to get a good look at his attacker; a lean, masked man covered from head to toe in black. One of his legs had a dark metallic sheen to it.

"Get off me! What do you want!?" Dipper recoiled, but the stranger was dragging him closer, and closer, reaching for his other hand. The hand that contained… "You want the time tape?"

The stranger answered by grabbing the device. Dipper doubled down on his own grip, pitting the two in a very unfair game of tug and war. The boy dug his feet into the ground, but it became very apparent the stranger was far stronger than him.

Then, crack. An arc of electricity sparked over the time tape, and it shattered. Dipper and the stranger were thrown backwards.

Dipper sat up, breathing hard, staring first at the broken pieces of the time tape and then to the stranger picking himself up. The boy scrambled backwards, picking himself up and running back into the town.

"Hey, wait! Come back!" The stranger shouted, but Dipper kept going. He needed to get back to the Mystery Shack, back to Stan and Ford and Soos-

Dipper was in the future. He skidded to a halt at the end of the graveyard, a cold rush of fear washing over his body. The boy turned around slowly, looking back at the woods.

"Uh… hello?" Dipper picked up a stick and began inching back to the location. "I'm coming back… don't attack me, whoever you are…"

When he reached the location where the time tape had broken, he found the stranger missing, and all the pieces gone. "Oh, no, no no! This is bad… What are we gonna do now, Mabel?"

A pause. The boy took a breath.

"I mean, what am I gonna do now? I gotta find that stranger," Dipper threw the stick away with a tad more force than was necessary, turning on his heel and heading back to the town. "I could start by looking around this dystopian future where random people attack you, I guess."

The town of Gravity Falls was surprisingly similar to the one in Dipper's present, but with no familiar faces. He looked in Greasy's Diner, where a young woman with a unibrow and buck teeth was serving coffee and pancakes to various patrons. He passed by the fishing lake, where a couple boats out on the water were being supervised by a grey-haired man whose eyes were hidden under a faded baseball cap. The date posted on a cork board was June the 29th, 2042.

It was going to be his birthday soon.

Then Dipper walked past the dumpster, where an old man was screaming about being a Northwest. So far the future didn't look so bad, but that was besides the point. He needed to find the mysterious stranger and fix the time tape so he could save Mabel and go home.

"I guess… there is one more place I could look." Dipper turned and began walking to the edge of the town, in the direction of the Mystery Shack. "I hope Soos is versed in time travel movies."

Would Soos even be there? Would the Mystery Shack even be there? There was only one way to find out.

Eventually Dipper reached the Shack, and to his relief it was still standing. Not just standing, it looked even more packed than it used to be. As he watched a man in a suit, a fez and an unbelievably red superhero cape pushed through the crowd to stand on the porch. Was that…?

"Alright dudes, listen up!" Yes, that was Soos, standing near a large object covered over with red cloth. "Sorry, he can't be here, but –hey, hey, just wait for it – we got this giant cardboard replica of Von! So take your picture with him for ten, no, a hundred dollars! Here it is, dudes!"

Soos whipped off the covering, revealing a rather crudely drawn… creature. It was black, with a thin snakelike body, wings and large claws. A dragon?

Dipper shook himself; he didn't have time to speculate. The boy inched his way around the crowd, hopped onto the podium and tapped Soos' shoulder.

"Who's that- oh, hey Dipper, I thought you left! You look… different." He stroked his chin. "Definitely the pinetree hat."

Dipper clenched his fists. "No, I'm from the past! I really need your help, Soos."

Soos nodded. "Time travel? No worries, dude, I know exactly what to do. Would you say your situation is more like Back to the Future, or the Terminator movies?"

"Is that important?"

"Well, yeah! There's like so many different theories going on with time travel…" Soos noticed the boy's expression. "Should we just go inside and you tell me the whole story?"

"Yeah. That's a good idea."