Authors note: Yay! New chapter guys! *applause*. In all seriousness guys, there's some more explaining here and you'll get to find out why the Slegs are even here in the first place. It's a lot of build up to what I have in store so patience is key guys. Other than that, I hope you enjoy the new chapter.
P.S.- this chapter was a little shorter than I wanted it to be, but that's because the ideas I had for it will be used in the next chapter, so expect action to wait a little longer.
Chapter 3: This World of Ours
O-O-O
After a few minutes of pretending what they saw earlier never happened for the sake of the CSF, the twins finally arrived at the town square, where they usually part ways for work and meet up when it was time for a break, at the statue of the fake founder of the town, Nathaniel Northwest.
At least where the statue used to be, since the Slegs took it down years ago and replaced it with a tall speaker tower, the main source of daily announcements for the town that repeated in a loop, along with several wires running down from the tower, attached to the tower and main speakers, the wires hanging over the ground across the telephone poles and wires, each wire connected to the smaller speakers posted across the town.
Speaking of the tower, the twins could hear another announcement, much louder this time due to how close they were.
"THE TIME IS NOW SEVEN FIFTY A.M. ALL CITIZENS ARE REQUIRED TO REPORT TO THEIR POSTS IMMEDIATELY OR FACE SEVERE PENELTYS. THANK YOU."
The twin's ears would be ringing by now, but after years of hearing the same messages over and over again, they got used to it.
"Well, got to go to work now." Dipper sighed. "See you at two?"
"When do I not?" Mabel then pulled in her brother, giving him a tight hug. "Just be careful out there, Dip. You know how it's like out there." Mabel said as she put her hands on Dipper's shoulders.
Dipper pulled down her hands gently. "You don't need to worry about me, I'm the one that should worry about you." Said Dipper softly.
Mabel smirked. "I still have that one millimeter, which means the big sister always worries about her little bro." Dipper just smiled and shook his head at the fact that Mabel still used that on him.
The twins then changed to expressionless faces when they saw a CSF officer walk up to them, who heard the commotion from afar.
"Is there a problem here?" Asked the officer demandingly, intimidating the twins with his vocoder voice.
"No. No problem, officer." Replied Dipper politely.
"Good. Now move." Ordered the officer.
The twins complied with the officer's orders despite his attitude, and they gave each other a quick glance as a way of saying goodbye and walked off to where they needed to be, Mabel heading towards the church while Dipper headed off to another gate checkpoint that was connected to some building and the old Gravity Falls police HQ, which oddly enough acted as the CSF's police HQ as well.
O-O-O
As Mabel walked inside the church, she couldn't help but feel saddened at the mess she was. The church was one of the least maintained buildings in the town, the wooden floors would not only creak but break easily if you stepped the wrong way, all the benches were gone and have been replaced with old mattresses, each looked like they had been dug out of the trash, many were filled with the sick and dying human residents, and to top it all off, every single window of the church was shattered, most of the glass still on the ground, and there was not a single cross or any form of religion to be seen in the church itself.
That sad sight was due to the orders of Sleg government, one of the first actions they took was declaring state atheism throughout the planet, removing every form of religion that existed, from stealing religious artifacts to even burning down almost all the churches and cathedrals on the planet, and any form of religion that was practiced is considered one of the most offensive crimes to commit, anyone even showing the smallest form of worship to what the Sleg government deemed "False lies spread by false prophets", would be punished with the most severe penalties that could be given, most likely being sent to the rumored reeducation camps that Mabel heard about.
Even though Mabel was never the religious type, she still showed respect to those who follow religion and considering the life she lives now, she wouldn't mind praying. But the church was no longer a place of worship, rather it was a watered down version of a hospital, run only by Mabel and two other people who looked after their patients, though right now she was the only one in church, along with two Guanian guards that kept watch and the dozens of people lying on the mattress.
"This is going to be a LONG day." Thought Mabel as she began tending to the patients as best as she could.
It wasn't going to be easy due to many factors, not just because the church was understaffed, but the most obvious being that Mabel isn't exactly an expert at the medical field, she had some experience with mending minor wounds when she was young, but the people coming in had such severe blunt trauma, bruised black and blue all over, internal bleeding, and even broken bones thanks to police brutality by CSF, that Mabel really had no clue how to properly fix, there was also the fact that the church lacked medical supplies, each year these supplies declined in number when provided, Mabel requested that the church should have more supplies last month, but was denied and given a swift hit to the gut with a baton by CSF officers for "insolence".
There shouldn't even be this many people in the church or even Gravity Falls in general. In recent years, there have been several transfers of citizens arriving at Gravity Falls, due to reasons unknown to the human residents, and have been cramping up the town, while new citizens came in, old ones were moved out, and over the past ten years, almost everyone she knew had been moved to other towns or cities, and since all these new citizens came here not knowing how everything works in different towns, it was causing CSF officers to "catch up on their beating quota" to quote a joke Dipper once said.
Mabel wondered if her brother was alright today, even if he just left a few minutes ago, she still worried about him, she knew how aggressive the CSF were with their policing methods, but she quickly put those thoughts aside when two women came in through the front door, one of them Asian wearing glasses and a green stripped sweater, and the other looked quite large for a women and wore a pink shirt, it was her friends Candy and Grenda.
Mabel was thankful that they were not transferred, but since they were separated in different residential sectors, they never spoke as much to each other like they used to, and when they usually met it was always here, too busy to talk due to offering aid to all the patients, sometimes they hanged out with Dipper when break came, but they usually went back home to check up on their families, who lived in worse residential areas of the town, specifically in the buildings that were repurposed as tenements due to all the new transfers, and CSF tended to crackdown in those tenements more than in household neighborhoods, so Mabel understood their concerns.
"Oh thank goodness you're here." Said Mabel relieved when her friends/coworkers arrived. "I need all the help I can get today."
"We'll do all we can, Mabel." Said Candy, knowing full well that without more medical supplies, some of these people may never even get back up again.
"We're just glad to be here." Said Grenda encouragingly.
Mabel smiled at them before looking over to all the patients she and her friends had to take care of today as Mabel thought to herself again.
"Definitely going to be a LONG day."
O-O-O
After passing through the checkpoints, Dipper managed to reach his destination, an old warehouse once abandoned by the residents of Gravity Falls, now repurposed by the Slegs to act as storage for whatever supplies they brought, Dipper's task is usually to haul supplies to wherever they needed to be, whether he used forklifts or his bare hands, but he usually used his bare hands not because wanted to, but because he was forced to despite the inefficiency, but the Slegs weren't worried about inefficiency.
They had conquered the entire planet in three days and almost wiped out humanity, not before deciding to enslave whatever was left of the human populace, inefficiency was the last thing on their mind and were more focused on enforcing their police state on humanity rather than get supplies stocked up faster, and terrorizing the populace just to make their boring days a little more interesting is what they rather do because well, it was all that was left to do, sure, there were rumors of human resistance rebelling against the government, but even then the Slegs still had nothing better to do on this planet aside from harvesting whatever resources were left and asserting their dominance over other creatures they deemed inferior rather than complete genocide, everyone wondered why the Slegs even bothered to stay even after all these years.
But while Dipper was walking inside the warehouse, he couldn't help but look at something around the warehouse, something that always grabbed his attention when Mabel wasn't around, something that stuck out in the entire town, something that reminded Dipper of the cruelty, greed, authority, and power the Slegs had, something that made anger, sadness, and fear boil inside him, something that reminded him of horrible memories, this very same thing was the main reason that only Dipper and Mabel, and at one point Stan, knew why the Slegs still stayed.
The portal.
Even though Dipper and Mabel didn't know that much about the portal, mostly since Stan kept it hidden from them until the Slegs came, they found out just enough to know that it was something that could change EVERTHING. Not just the fact that if you used it you'd end up in a different dimension, but with such a device, the understanding of the universe will change completely, the knowledge that could be gained from the portal could be unlimited, the twins were mad at their Grunkle at first, but then the Slegs came and changed everything on earth.
The Slegs just expected to conquer another back water planet to expand their intergalactic empire, Earth was originally supposed to be another outpost for their empire. But when they came to Gravity Falls during the end of their conquest, their plans changed when they discovered the portal hidden under the Mystery Shack.
It wasn't hard for the Slegs to figure out how the portal operated and functioned, thanks to the brutal interrogations on Stan that Dipper never wanted to look back to, but the problem for the Slegs was that this portal's maximum potential hadn't been reached, that it was only made as a gateway for other dimensions, but they saw how powerful it could really be, that it could be improved upon in the right hands, in the hands of the greatest scientists on the Sleg Empire, the portal could be so much more, the possibilities of its are endless, and it is well known that knowledge is power, and with that power, the Sleg Empire could fulfill their greatest desire.
Ascension.
So they tore down the Shack, leaving no trace of its existence and replaced it with what Dipper was seeing now. Instead of the old Shack, the Slegs built the tallest tower that had ever been seen, the Black Citadel, no building made by humans could surpass its height, appearing to reach the clouds themselves, the base of the tower had its own set of walls, the tower was surrounded inside a Sleg military base that was positioned around the tower, with walls surrounding the base itself, the tower being at the center, the tower's function not only served as the main research center of the planet due to the portal, but also the most heavily guarded with constant patrols, soldiers, vehicles, and aircraft alike, guarding the tower perimeter nonstop, making the Black Citadel the most heavily guarded area on Earth.
All Dipper could see was pain and misery from the Black Citadel and just went to work as soon as he heard the announcement for the day.
"THE TIME IS NOW EIGHT A.M. ALL CITIZENS WILL BEGIN WORK IMMEDIATELY. ANY CITIZEN THAT FAILS TO ARRIVE ON TIME WILL FACE SEVERE PENELTIES. THANK YOU.
O-O-O
Disclaimer: I do not own Gravity Falls, but I do own the Slegs.