For Dipper, a helicopter was not a particularly pleasant place to be. Let alone one filled with Government agents and bodyguards. He was, after all, not particularly great at reading the room. Or helicopter cabin.
"So uh…guess you guys know about the weirdness here, huh?"
The bodyguards didn't say a word, merely staring straight ahead, as if the inquisitive kid didn't even exist.
"You know, I've always wanted to work for the CIA or something. Bet you've got aliens and stuff, right?"
They continued to ignore him.
"I've uh - I've seen aliens, y'know? I bet that-"
One of them took off their aviator shades and glared. State secrets were obviously not something the Government was willing to discuss, even when they were appearing decidedly non-secrety at the moment.
Dipper decided not to push the issue any further. Pacifica briefly had to let go of his hand as it was getting a little bit too clammy.
"This is worse than the time I was impeached in a literal peach." Quentin murmured.
Fiddleford's eyes widened and he promptly whispered to Ford - who promptly whispered to Stan - who promptly burst out with "Son of a-"
"Now see here, ol-timey feller, we're gonna have to have a little chat when all this is fixed up!" McGucket said, firmly.
Quentin's eyes widened - he opened his mouth to protest, but quickly went silent again, nodding with furrowed brows and a certain sense of submission. "Very well. I suppose it is overdue."
Stan's brows lowered in fury. "I'll freakin' say so. I didn't know I was working with a - yeuch -"
Ford jabbed him in the ribs. "It doesn't change anything. Except for maybe everything."
Susan let out a sigh as she peered out of the window, a tear coming to her eye. "The town…"
"Well shucks, this t'ain't nuthin'! Ah'll invent a gizmomajig ta lift us right outta the hole, an' everyone knows plantlife don't like vinegar, so I'll commandeer th'country's vinegar supply an'-"
"Sir. You know we can't do that."
"Ah'm yer technical feller an' you won't even let me have mah technical schemes?!"
"You know vinegar is a key component in the…ahm… oningclay ikolainay eslatay ogrammepray."
"You know, I can speak pig latin." Dipper snorted.
"Impossible. It's a secret service language. Highly classified."
"I didn't even know pigs could speak latin." Mabel whispered reverently - before loudly proclaiming 'Bwomp' and rocking her head side-to-side, clearly amused by her own inappropriate timing.
"Sh." Ford whispered, as the helicopter - thundering away like a rapid heartbeat - circled a wide berth against the twister that seemed to swirl away underground like water down a drain. It was a dark, grey, swirling, thunderous mass that corkscrewed and flashed with lightning.
"We'll need to go out to come in." The pilot said. "I don't want to do any sudden turns with these crazy wind patterns."
Candy leaned over to Grenda and whispered furtively. "Pilot man is kind of cute."
"OH MY GOSH, CANDY, I'M ALREADY TAKEN!" Grenda bellowed in response, bursting into cacophonic laughter that newly blew out Stan's hearing aid.
Another building crumbled below them as the helicopter continued its sombre flight, smoke still pouring from the fires.
The helicopter swerved outwards, circling around the town - giving, by virtue, its passengers a horrific panoramic view of the increasingly dark, twisted visage of Gravity Falls before them.
Across the state of Oregon - indeed, visible across the horizon, people were hit by indescribably friendly sunshine - as every drop of rain, vapour and static disappeared into the town's bowels. Gravity Falls, meanwhile, just seemed to grow darker and darker. The sky seemed to meld between shades of furious purples, blacks and greys, lit up by a constant flow of lightning that seemed to drain into the town's centre like glowing streaks of hair down a plughole.
The townsfolk remained perched upon the courthouse, watching in awe as what could only be described as pure chaos erupted around them. Wind blew from the drains, forcing gnomes and the occasional Plaidypus to fly from the town's underbelly and scatter like enormous, hairy hail.
Ford stared, his brow furrowed and mouth agape. "By God. It's like the town is just being…filled with wind."
"I've had that issue." Stan replied, rubbing his nose. "Just gotta take a tablet and wait for it to pass."
Ford furrowed his brow and glared at his brother - only for a jolt to hit the aircraft and rock it from left to right.
"Whoa there-" The pilot piped up in a perfectly perturbed patter. "This is uh - this is like no crosswinds I've seen, and this is the forth anomalous funnel cloud this year!"
Eager to maintain a wide berth, the group circled around the Dinkies factory, still in the process of renovation, and were greeted by the sight none of them were particularly eager for. The chimney - once the site of America's largest asbestos-burning oven (retro times were wild!) was now oozing something far more sinister. Albeit hopefully less carcinogenic.
Fuelled and spread by the otherworldly winds, the remains of the terrifying, shellac-legged creature - melted and de-stablised by a thousand gallons of drained water - had pumped through the town like blood through veins. Every tunnel, every ounce of cement and every foundation had been fed the essence of the slane creature like a capillary.
Black slime. Gunge, if you will - watered down by inch upon inch of groundwater and rain, stinking so strongly of fennel that you'd swear that a truck full of anise had exploded. It boiled over like the radiator of the Northwest Speeder, blistered like the skin of Nathaniel swamped by the lake - and hissed like Curzon Cankerblight's cigar.
It spread out from Eyeball Hill, simmering, humming, gurgling and popping like inky, black, magma. Forced out by the air that bellowed and churned underneath the town, it stirred and roamed and bubbled and blistered, volcanic eruptions that turned into a thick, streaking pyroclastic flow.
Trees began to glow, the valley's extent hue only brightening and growing more ethereal and viscous. It climbed up trees, it clambered up structures, it burnt into the brickwork of the building - and seeped into every window. Horrifyingly, much as they had seen happen in the past, the structure began to flex and bend, groan and rumble - and shift.
Pacifica and Dipper stared at it incredulously, before exchanging a glance into each other's eyes.
"Y-you guys remember when the uh - Northwest Manor kinda went all funky?" Pacifica asked.
Stan looked up from what had been a very detailed inspection of the back of his knuckles. "What, when Cankerblight spread through the damned thing faster than hives? Yeah."
"Well uh." Dipper turned back to them. "The Dinkies Factory is walking."
"WHAT?!" Fiddleford yelped, breaking out of his otherwise care-free hillbilly-cum-hippy stupor and slamming his face against the glass.
What he saw was a shambling silhouette of demonic proportions - rocking on unsteady limbs like a deer that had only just learned how to walk - except, y'know, far less pleasant and whimsical.
The Dinkies factory had managed to uproot itself from its foundations, and gained a set of legs through its deep lengths of reinforced concrete. The coiled metal and mortar skeleton now stepped and shambled across Eyeball Hill, each thundering step breaking the glass and elderly machinery within, floorboards dropping to the floor with each groaning, heaving step, with every piece of exposed rebar cable flowing out like wild tendrils.
Bricks fell - great big keystones embedding themselves into the ground, spitting out decades of mortar and dust with each meaty thunk into the hard summer earth of the countryside below. A length of rail line dragged behind it - freshly laid stuff ripped from the ballast like a bandaid.
Eyebats flew from the depths of the factory's secret ex-government bunkers, while age-old cables ripped through the earth like piano wire through a mobster's neck. (An observation suggested by Kevin after the fact.)
"M-mah laboratory?! It's gone-done-Baba-Yaga'd!"
Trailing behind a line of wreckage, groaning and creaking with every step, it made its way towards the town - followed by that terrible, seemingly infinite trail of thick, bubbling black sludge. It resembled nothing short of a flood of molasses - a terrible, liquorice-scented flood of pitch-black treacle that continued its way unabated, soaking every inch of the Gravity Falls countryside.
"D-damn. Jeff, ya gotta trail it!"
"My name isn't Jeff."
The pilot, all the same, did as he was told - the crew becoming so fixated on the idea of chasing down that rogue factory that they almost forgot about the bubbling mass that had birthed it. Trailing behind them, the pyroclastic flow of bizarrity followed - entrenching everything in its wake, and threatening to take every piece of their little chunk of Oregon with it.