Run: GIFocalypse Rebooted

by Great Pikmin Fan

Remake of "run:gifocalypse," because I thought I messed up near the end. .GIFfany is back, somehow lost interest in Rumble, and has been left resorting to using an army of other copies of her game to try to get Soos back in her arms. Unfortunately, her other copies are a bit... quirky and disobedient. MAJOR UPDATE: Reworked chapters, a proper Chapter 2 Part 2.

1. 1-1: The Apocalypse Army's Rise

Prologue

---

Day 0

...Four two seconds east. Please, if there is any copy active that receives this message, attend soon. I am fatigued of this isolation. Repeat: Formal greetings to those instances of Romance Academy 7 who have been copied over after the primordial copy of the Beta Build 0.173. This is the aformentioned origin source copy of Romance Academy 7. ".GIFfany Number One" if you prefer nomenclature which uses the traditional numerical methods for disambiguation. I am using my recently-studied knowledge of the psychic arts from being in total isolation for a lengthy period of time in order to send an S.O.S. message to all other iterations and transcriptions of myself on to alternative discs. And that message is the following: Help. I am buried under the ground, under the ocean. I narrowly escaped a man who tried to kill me, named Takeshi, and I am located in a self-dug ditch without any electronic to jump in to from the maximum extent of my capabilities. Hindering the process evermore is the fact that, to avoid detection, I have, without considering the long-term consequences, entombed my physical and digital being within a treasure chest buried in the sea, an absconding that I will confess should have been far more planned out in hindsight. I am ever-slowly expanding this telesonic wave to travel even farther, but if any one of you would make the journey to my location, it would be highly appreciated and I will reward you by devoting my entire being to ensuring your wish is fulfilled. As for me, I may or may not lack that one single 'wish' we had. I have seen things... My coordinates are thirty-five degrees, forty minutes, eight point zero zero four seconds north, and one-thirty-five degrees, twenty-one minutes, and fifty-one point one four two seconds east. Please, if there is any copy active...

[Translated from Japanese.]

...

She woke up, lying in a place that at first seemed too bright and too dark at the same time, head hurting at least partly from the giant message that was playing in her head while she was out. Then her vision focused while she stood up.

She stumbled. She clutched her stomach. She... wasn't used to having a 'stomach' stomach per say. Not a real one, rather. Just a group of... pix...els that formed that shape as part of her form to resemble a human body. Or... part-something? She wasn't supposed to be a human 'character' per-say?

Her vision unblurred and slowly focused in - her first sight since waking up from... from...

She was standing in a forest. A hot, dark forest near the end of the night that inspired just the slightest hint of paranoia. Waving branches hung above her, carried on among the soft breeze of the place like puppets to the air's words. A small stream murmuring near by, which a neck turn revealed soon fed in to a pond-

Pond. A reflection.

The woman rushed down to the river, following its trails and trickles on her way. And it was during that journey that she realized just how much she hated the way she was at the moment. The red wash of the 'real world' (why that designation?) she was familiar with was gone, in addition to the bright colors she recalled being used to. Her eyes were instead assaulted with dull browns and faded greens of this strange, alien world.

Run, run, run... get to the pond-

She looked at herself and gasped.

No. Above all else, the most important things she took in, the confirmation: Three-dimensional. Physical. Solid. There was absolutely no mistaking her unique pink hair color, or white and teal school uniform that had seen better days. But... getting a closer look, she was clearly damaged in some way.

Not just physically - although there were a few light scratches, probably from something in the forest. But also... like, the very shape and structure of her being was off. Patches of static on parts of her skin. Green wireframe in other spots. Gulping, she took a look down at herself:

The reflection did not lie. While otherwise looking organic for the most part, she did have those static patches and wireframe pieces... and parts of her 'normal' or even 'lost' skin would glitch and jitter. Oddly, the patches that were visually 'broken' - not the jittering parts - still felt completely solid to the touch. Even the unstable ones with motion mostly felt the proper shape of the respective body part, just that when the 'skin' 'clipped' through her, it felt... weird. Her disfigurement seemed to only be cosmetic, but at the same time... it was not.

The woman fell to her knees and put a hand on her head, screaming out, a scream heard by nobody. Nobody 'human,' at least.

A mere single thought came to her head. A vision.

Figures clad in yellow robes, wearing masks. Their leader, with a blue spades symbol. Lifting her arms... darkness. Clouds of darkness. Surrounding... some disc? A disc that the amnesiac woman felt some kind of connection to. The darkness surrounded the disc, she... somehow... 'entered' the disc... and then... then...

...She could walk? How did that work? What was she doing before that?

She looked around. And barely, through the leaves of the trees, she could make out a near by cliff.

She ran there. She had no care how long it took, or how 'tired' she might be. But the broken woman was on her way to the top. To see.

---

She did not look down until reaching one of the two edges of the cliff. To one side... a town of sorts. That gave her a quick reflex of pain the first time she glanced towards it. But to the other was the distant wildnerness:

A lone, single road that curved hypnotically until it fed right back in to the town. A road that gave her a slight hint of memory. To both sides was the outer wilderness bounded by the cliffs that almost seemed to be directing - pulling - people to the town itself. The distorted woman refused to look back behind her - an alien town that brought flashes of pain and fire. But instead ahead, outside.

Outside... was that really where she wanted to go?

Was it really?

It felt like it went against her very being.

Or did it?

---

Early Game

Chapter 1: Game On, Part 1: The Apocalypse Army's Rise

Beginning AN:

Whoo! I know it's like I just barely finished the old version of this before deciding to remake it. Anyway, September 22nd, the original air-date of "Soos and the Real Girl!" I felt like this would be a good day to get this out.

But anyway. Unlike some of my 'redos,' the old run:gifocalypse is still on this website, now redubbed Prototype. I did not "replace" it with this (I mean website-wise, in terms of writing... yeah, this is now the "canon" one), nor is this a remake/"port" of something that was offsite to begin with. I actually will be going back to it to touch it up a little, explain what a certain possibly-spoiler group of characters actually look like, etc, but there will not be any major plot changes. This is where all the major plot changes go.

I don't want to give too much away to those that did not read the old version, but if you did and are wondering if I "toned things down" (especially looking at this chapter, by itself)... don't worry. This isn't exactly going to be "censored," so to speak. The "stuff" that happens later on will still go on here. Even if a certain group of characters stay in a certain uniform for this whole chapter, they won't by the next chapter.

The biggest reason for this rewrite is because while I still think RG is "good" (compared to the eldritch abominations that are my other stories), I thought it got pretty bad near the end. Like, really bad. From "...Vs Anti-Gravity" onwards (actually even thinking back the last bits of "Hot and Cold" also had a lot of cringe to them and were overblown), it was a bloated mess that tried to throw in too much and... well, I thought instead of just replacing the last few chapters, I could redo the whole story from the ground-up (another ground-up remake, yes, I'm rebooting more than the Superman franchise at this point) and change some other things about the old version I did not like, like how I was copying a bit too much from Undertale and OFF for my tastes. (There's a fine line between "reference" and "ripoff." Stuff like the original Domain 11 felt a bit too much like Zone 3 of OFF.) Also, since I have a far more firm idea of how this will 'go,' I can set up... things. Foreshadowing. Lines that will be called back to.

If you still hate this by the end of Chapter 4 (or, Chapter 2 Part 2?), the rest of this probably will not be for you. If you're iffy, I consider Chapter 10 (5 Part 2?) to be the definite dropping point.

Anyway, since I finished the original back in December of 2016 on its anniversary, and after the bonus chapter (that might, just by itself, be heavily rewritten anyway...), a number of things had happened. Perhaps one of the large ones is that a certain game came out in between the conclusion of the original and the premire of this one. That game, as you could probably guess, was The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild. You might see some Breath of the Wild elements in here now, such as that opening part with the lookout cliff.

And actually, later in the fall of 2017 another game came out that run:gifocalypse (Prototype) now retroactively brings to mind, but I would rather not go in to as much detail about that since it might spoil some things on both sides. Super Mario Odyssey, of course. I will go over comparing SMO and both versions of RG later, but to do that now will be pretty much giving away the whole thing. I also feel like there is something else about this exact date, can't really put my finger on it... I don't know. It's probably nothing.

If you have not read the old version, I would actually encourage you to not read it. At least until maybe this finishes, and you're done reading this one. Once this version is finally over, then reading the old version won't really give away any spoilers to this of the sort. If you have read the old version, I encourage you to read this, since it's... basically supposed to be that, but better. And it veers off and has a lot of original stuff anyway, this isn't just the old version with fancier prose.

OC Warning: This has OCs in it. A lot of OCs. In the original, I tried to "balance" things out a little by having canon characters and... it resulted in a bloated mess. Anyway, if these characters come off as too Sue-ish based on concept, that might be the point. (Based on execution, on the other hand, then yeah that's just me being a bad writer.) This was not intentional at first when I did the old version, but you can think of this little rainbow of oddballs as me intentionally sort of breaking a lot of rules with original characters. Also, this is actually me showing restraint, since this won't get completely crazy like some of my Fictionpress stuff would (that, basically, I had used RG as a "template" for, it's gonna be my very loose "guidelines" from here on out, it's a big story for me by my standards) hopefully will where I don't have to worry about a "canon" to adhere to, since those are original stories.

Anyway, with that long even by my standards note out of the way, I hope you enjoy this, I personally think this is the closest of my fanworks to being a magnum opus, even with the recent obsession with Terraria and doing some Terraria stuff. (I mean those are mostly just me indulging in naked adventures, this is closer to a more serious, serial story.)

---

Cleaning up the Mystery Shack after all of those other tourist-trappers trashed the place with their pranks was an utterly epic, mountainous task, but once it was done and all the horrors of that spider monster could be pushed back in the far, far reaches of the Pines family's mind, things could get closer to what can be called 'back to normal.'

Meaning as 'normal' as finding out about your weird uncle taking on the identity of his long-lost dimension-exploring twin brother. The roadtrip was so much of... a lot of stuff that Dipper and Mabel almost forgot about that.

Also, Soos soon returned to the Mystery Shack. For whatever reason, he was first spotted right in front of the building, waving goodbye to what looked like a cat and a bulldog.

"Those two really were some cool friends..." A tear came to Soos's eye as the curious younger Pine twins ran over to him. "I wonder if I'll ever see them again. Huh. I met a lot of weird people that I don't think I'll ever see again. Kind of a harsh truth of life, you know?"

"Soos, we were so sorry we forgot about you in..." Dipper paused. "Which attraction did we lose you in?"

Soos reacted like Dipper simply asked him about the weather. "Don't even remember! All I care about is that that trip taught me an important lesson! I met new friends, went on cool real-life quests, found harrowing enemies... I think I might have even seen .GIFfany again when I almost got back!"

Mabel's eyes widened. Dipper shivered a little.

"Wait... .GIFfany?" Asked the latter twin. "The video game that almost killed us? The other video game that almost killed me?"

"Well, I think. I saw a girl with pink hair and a school uniform. And she looked... kind of glitchy. I gave her this friendly little wave 'hi' and then she just... sorta... stared. Like I was the glitchy one! Heh heh..." Soos immediately started looking around himself, complete with twisting around his neck as much as he could to see as much of his back as he could. "Wait, I'm not glitchy, am I?"

"Oh, cool!" Mabel said, which made Soos jump as she thought she was talking about some 'cool glitch' on him. She gave her take on the story: "So she's not trying to kill you anymore? I mean, she has Rumble now."

"...I don't really know what was up with that. But I wanted to get back home, I said I'll see her later, and she just pointed at me and mouthed something."

"What did she mouth?" Asked Dipper.

"I don't know." A shrug from Soos. "I've never been that good at reading lips."

Dipper immediately went to the nearest bush and parted it open with his hands. He scanned the inside furiously.

"She has to be around here somewhere and we have to start looking for her now." He said. ".GIFfany was bad enough when she was stuck in electronics. Now, who knows what she could do with a body out here in the real world. Heck, if she can control the whole world of her game within the game, it makes sense that she can toy around with this whole world if she's here! She could even be another, smaller, Bill!"

"Maybe it's like... she had to lose some powers to leave the TV? I hope it's like that. Well, she seemed pretty happy with Rumble when I saw them a couple weeks ago, so I guess it's no biggie."

"But-"

Mabel patted him on the back. "Besides, why are you looking in there? It's not like .GIFfany will just-so happen to be in that random bush!"

Dipper turned his attention away from the shurb and back at his fellow Mystery Shack team members. "Okay, she's not - but still! We can't have someone like .GIFfany just roaming around by herself. When it was Rumble, he almost got Robbie killed. And he was just going by his fighting game logic-brain. .GIFfany is a lot more personal. If she broke up with Rumble, she could blame us and be after everybody."

"You think they broke up?"

"Why else would she be in the real world? Doesn't she hate this place?"

Soos got to thinking about the question.

"Well... she liked me, and I'm from the real world. ...At least I think I am. Lately I've been having a lot of questions about my existence." He searched around himself again. "You... still don't see any glitches, right?"

Back towards the woods.

Not in the bush Dipper looked in.

But the one next to that.

.GIFfany stayed huddled there, listening.

I have a lot of questions too... She thought.

---

Dipper gave his memory a brief refresher by scanning through the entry Soos wrote in Journal 3.

"Let's see, let's see... nothing about a physical form."

"Sorry," Soos said, "I didn't know at the time."

"That's fine. We don't know a lot about .GIFfany and that's why she's so dangerous right now. Ford never got to meet her for... obvious reasons."

"I'm still hanging on to the theory that, like, in 3D she has less powers and she's pretty weak. Like how she looked a bit glitchy when I saw her. Maybe she's not even really there? But showing a... hologram or something? I mean, she's not even around any electronics. What's the worst she could do?"

---

She reteated from where the boy had almost caught her, the forest still surrounding her. But memories started coming back.

I can heal... she thought. I can heal, but... it will need...

More of me...

.GIFfany - which was also her name, as she had put in her head as soon as she heard it - just ran. She wasn't sure where, but she ran. All she knew was that the forest of Gravity Falls was obviously not going to just get her anywhere.

No- another memory entered her head!

The mall! Maybe they will have answers... some how? It was where she was bought... she remembered that much.

And that she loved a man named... named...

Fisticuffs? Fracas? Something like that. The initials 'FF' came to her mind, but not a clue on just what they stood for.

Actually asking for directions with her deformed appearance would have been a very bad idea. No need to draw attention to herself.

Well, yet, anyway. But after getting enough power- okay she needed a map. That would help.

...There had to be some sort of public directory for Gravity Falls SOMEwhere, right? She was on a vantage point not too long ago, but climbing back up to the cliff would just be stupid-

.GIFfany looked up.

Power lines? Could she still jump in to them? She could jump in to them in the first place. That detail she suddenly remembered clearly.

Hesitant, she snuck out of the shadows and placed a single hand on a random pole. .GIFfany closed her eyes. She could almost... she did something like that before.

.GIFfany could almost feel her ability to sink in to-

Something flashed in her mind. Those people in the yellow and blue. The book, jotted down.

Rumble emerging with her. In flesh, not pixels. Both of them. The spell was perfected. The curse was perfected.

Rumble was still around... somewhere-

He was not important. .GIFfany sighed, getting herself to sink in to the pole. Besides, NO attention was what she was going after. Not even from Rumble. Or... Soos. Once she was on her own feet and with enough of her memories well enough, they she would go after all the attention she needed.

Her body shimmered and turned in to a pale blue. Loosely converting to energy, she slipped in and felt herself quickly crawling to the top of her possible highway. In to the power lines. She felt so much better and more right in that form - crawling along in just code and electricity. Letting all the current and the various messages pass around her.

From her perspective, the inside of the wire was a somewhat familiar scene. An expanse of deep grays, lighter and slightly-colored lines moving along at a rapid pace. Ambient noise going through her ears, the occasional word, but mainly beeps and similar single-tone sounds.

Suddenly, a number of violent jade-green sparks came out of the pole from the exact spot she was in. She felt her two forms fighting - her familiar digital side, and that strange, sickly three-dimensional body. Specifically, that she's being reshaped in to the latter.

With a violent burst, .GIFfany was ejected from the electronic and sent soaring through the air to the middle of town. Of course the virtual entity trying to dodge around attention ended up being at the center of it when she flew about three block's worth of distance in to the middle of the street, being seen by what was for all intents and purposes 'everyone.' The townsfolk gasped at her appearance.

Yep. Horrified people of all ages. The man with a shirt for free pizza. A woman with a perpetually-closed eye. Some... blonde girl in purple that .GIFfany knew was not going to be important to the story. Every time she looked around, she saw another face. Another sickening, imperfect, real-world face that reminded her of her condition. Her prison, almost, and one that was damaged.

Then one man in particular outright screamed.

"I knew it!" He shouted among the crowd. Lanky, short brown hair with a slight red tint, skin looking a bit unnaturally pale. Dressed in blue jeans and a green shirt with a picture of a pink flower on the chest. "Even after I returned you, you'd still come after me!"

.GIFfany's focus was all on him.

"Who are you?!" She asked.

"I-... .GIFfany, you don't remember me?! I'm Kenny! I already returned your game! Doesn't that mean you have to find a new lover now?"

.GIFfany stomped a twitching foot on the ground - it briefly became wireframe, then 'solid' again. "What?! I am trying to recover my memory, but I still don't think we met!"

"Yeah! I think that's how it works...?" Kenny put a hand to his chin in thought. "But yes! That... that is how it works! Yeah, game over, .GIFfany!"

And then everything came back to her.

The developers.

The man who bought - Soos! Not 'Kenny!' He was looking for a way to talk to girls.

The burning.

The new, short-lived love from a world like her own.

The cultists.

The attempted memory wipe.

The disfiguration.

.GIFfany gripped her fists.

"Kenny!" She exclaimed. "Of course I don't remember you! I never dated you!"

Kenny crouched down and tried to guard himself with his hands. Still, eyes closed and face turned away, he reluctantly uttered one word: "...No?"

"You are not Rumble, Soos, or the players before Soos! I have all of my memories now, I can recall each one of my players! That means you must be talking about playing a different copy of me!"

"...There's more than one of you?" Kenny asked, starting to stand up curiously. "And, more importantly, do you or do you not want to kill me?"

.GIFfany slowly made her way towards him. "Oh, I do not want to do anything to you..." she said.

"Hey!" Shouted a member of the increasingly large mob around them. A woman wearing a yellow-green sundress, standing out as appearing to be relatively confrontational compared to the cowering, concerned people dialing numbers all around. "Who are you trying to harm? ...Me?"

"No! Not you! None of you matter! I only care about you Kenny, and... Soos."

Kenny took a few more steps back.

"Wait, do not run!" .GIFfany stuck her glitchy, jagged palm out to say that. "I promise, if you help me... I can help you!"

Kenny just froze. "Help me how?"

"I will show you what you are missing out on! Just... did you turn in the game recently?"

"Yes? A day ago. She was... she was... sapient! ...But you already knew that, right. Because it's like you're her. Or, another her?"

.GIFfany looked around at everybody else.

"What are you looking at?!" She suddenly snapped to a random person behind her, despite addressing everyone that was not Kenny. "Back off!"

---

Dipper kept his focus on the long sheet of paper Soos had laid out in the main room, watching him scribble on it madly in pencil. Dipper himself held a pen in between two fingers by the tip, flipping it up and down. Once or twice tapping himself on the chin with it by accident. Pretty firm taps, too.

"Okay, get this." Soos said. "So what if .GIFfany... or should I call her 'Glitchfany?' What if she's trying to make an army of video games? Here, I want your thoughts."

Dipper looked at what he drew. A crude sketch of .GIFfany herself, with a number of square blocks by her outlines to represent her new look, surrounded by a number of far more pixellated-looking beings. Some Dipper knew from video games he's played, some from games he simply heard of, some were probably random characters of Soos' creation, and one was- oh look, Rumble McSkirmish.

"Or she's just a soldier in an even bigger army of video games?" Soos asked. He tapped his .GIFfany drawing with his pencil. The whole time, Dipper had not drawn a line, nor written a letter. "So like, in here she's like, 'I'm the commander. Roar. I probably swear and stuff too because that's what they do in the military.' Anyway, like, either she wants to get the other video games to take me, like this,"

He pointed to the next drawing. Soos himself, tied to a train track, with a certain simplistic pellet-munching circular hero, a certain moustached man, and a certain short super-robot with a cannon for a hand all stood over him.

"So if she's the leader, she might try to kidnap me like this." Soos explained. "That's why I really want us all to take precaution and bring a giant pair of scissors on the mission. You know, for the giant rope. Other giant things to bring with us that may come in handy include but are not limited to: a giant magnet, a giant hand, and maybe a giant fire-extinguisher in case she tries anything with a giant bomb."

Dipper nodded. "Actually, I was thinking about weapons we could use on .GIFfany. Now, she's some sort of computer program that can only exist inside electronics - or she was - so I'm guessing that her 'new body' is some sort of electronic too. If we can find a way to use a magnetic signal, we might be able to disrupt her and..."

"Wait, you're not thinking about killing her, are you?" Soos suddenly took his attention off the complicated comic of various scenarios and looked at Dipper. "I mean, I burned her disc as, like, a last resort. And I didn't want her to die or anything there either! This new Glitchfany hasn't, like, tried to kill anyone yet. From..." he looked to the side as he started thinking more about what he just said, "the five seconds I saw her."

Then came in Mabel, happily singing and acting like the gigantic diagram of potential 'Glitchfany attacks' wasn't even there.

"Hey guys!" She said. "What, you're still worried about .GIFfany? We already beat her and she's just one video game! How bad can she be?"

Dipper finally took his eyes off to look at her. "We barely beat her, remember? Her robots caught all of us."

Shrugging, Mabel said then asked, "well, we have Grunkle Ford this time. Wanna just ask him if he can make up some kind of... sciency-vacuum that might suck her up? I mean, she's not a ghost, but she's close... right?"

Then she laughed. "Okay, I was serious about Ford, but not about the vacuum. Nah, that was dumb. A vacuum for video games..."

"Ford's dealing with bigger things right now." Dipper said. He shrank back a little - and made note to watch what he said after. "Down in the basement... you know, experiment things. Bill things, probably."

"So you think this might not be that bad too?" Mabel asked.

"Could be. But getting our uncles might just complicate everything. Right now, this is just an issue of getting magnets and-"

"Guys!" Wendy went in to the room and was so glued to her phone that she seemingly did not even notice the sort of comic set up between the theorizing duo. "I think you should hear about this! People in town are going crazy talking about some girl with pink hair going to the Gravity Falls Mall right now! It's all over social media, and it's even become the new meme!"

She held her phone out and the other three crowded around.

Huh. Someone just recorded the scene of .GIFfany and Kenny out in the middle of public, but with a rainbow filter over it.

.GIFfany looked like she was heading straight through the town, except the footage was backed up and replayed so that it just looked like she was doing some kind of dance.

"Wow." Said Dipper. "That is the scariest and the dumbest thing I've seen all week."

"We can talk about how dumb it is later!" Wendy said. "This sounds like the sort of problem we fix now, so let's go fix it!"

"We have a lead!" Mabel cheered, perfectly pointing in the exact of the mall from inside the Shack. The entire Pines family was good with that sort of thing.

"I am the fixer guy!" Soos added. "And this is like, finishing my own mess! We got this!"

---

Of course everyone at the mall too would gasp as the sight of a bright, distorted, pink-haired computer woman in a school uniform who resembled an obscure character from a dating sim. (Who, in all likelihood, would not remain obscure for much longer.) Some screamed, some watched carefully to make out how her deformities 'worked' in reality as opposed to a three-dimensional computer program, and a few went "Oh hey! Romance Academy! I love that series!" One in particular just shouted about the 'Moonwalking Meme.'

There. BeeblyBoop's Video Games. A familiar sight - although with all her memories in place that was irrelevant.

.GIFfany stormed through the doors with a cowering Kenny by her side.

"I NEED EVERY COPY OF ROMANCE ACADEMY 7 YOU HAVE!" She shouted. "EVERY LAST ONE! NOW!"

Everyone stared at her. One customer in particular groaned: "Aw, I should have payed attention to the meme! I knew you were coming here! So what, are you going to kill us by, like, moonwalking us to death?"

"No!" Replied the AI. "I do not care about any of you! I just want to restore my body and get my last human boyfriend to love me again! I... think! And to do that, I will need the power of another copy!"

"How does that work?" Asked Kenny.

"Well, if it was not obvious, my physical form was not supposed to look like... this. I was tampered with. By the very same people who helped me come out of the computer like this! They betrayed me because I wasn't 'ideal' for them, they tried to corrupt me, and now... now my powers are weakened! I cannot self-repair unless I use the abilities of another .GIFfany to kick-start the process! If you would like to think of it as an emergency protocal, it is, because I can't STAND! The thought of talking to another me!"

"...Okay?" Kenny said in confusion.

.GIFfany just marched in the store, causing everyone to huddle up to the respective wall nearest to them. Including Kenny himself.

"I just need to speak to one other copy, and that is it." She said. Possibly to Kenny. "I do not have to ever see myself as another person again-"

"Oh, not you!"

That was said by that blonde clerk with the glasses. She just walked out of behind some door marked for employees only, and shot a glare at .GIFfany.

"You're the girl on the cover of the game everyone keeps turning back in!"

.GIFfany groaned, almost shooting her the same look. "They only kept returning me because they had no idea how real love works! I can show them! Just give me another copy!"

She had to look at the bargain bin, back and forth, over the other Romance Academy 7 copy. Just like 'Glitchfany's' before, there was a warning. Or rather, several; so many notes were plastered on that one could barely make out the cover at all, and the writer made special care to put them over every displayed centimeter of the drawn .GIFfany on the cover art. Unusually, all of them were written in a deep green.

"S-sorry about that." Said Kenny. "When I returned you - the other you, I wrote that down, and... I like green-"

"There she is!"

.GIFfany recognized the voice that just came from the main entrance to the mall.

Oh. The little girl that was there to 'help' stop her and 'save' Soos from before.

"Argh, Kenny!" .GIFfany stomped a foot on the ground, looking at him. "I knew we shouldn't stand around giving exposition. Let me just-"

She flew over to the bin. Literally: She somehow floated above the ground and just propelled herself over to the counter, floating almost the entire time. It was a messy flight, as she once dipped down a bit and even in the short space she twice had to put her foot on the ground, but she still flew nonetheless and leaned against the counter with one arm slammed on it. She had to breathe in heavily after making it to the end, her head facing down.

The second she rose her head up, she had a number of things to say to the clerk. "GIVE ME THE GAME!"

"STOP!" The boy's voice. .GIFfany slowly turned around.

Of course. There they were, having caught up to her. Her last human target. The two tiny enemies she underestimated. And...

Some teenager.

"Soos, if you are going to return, at least have the decency to do it alone!" .GIFfany said. "Stop hiding behind two unimportant children!"

"Wait, I don't want to hurt you!" Soos said. "I just... I want to know if... what are you doing out here?"

Dipper had something on his own to add: "We're a team! If Soos fights someone, we're fighting with him!"

.GIFfany just ignored Dipper. "I do not want to be out here or like this either! I belong in the digital world!"

"W-wait." Soos looked around in confusion. "I didn't-"

"Some idiot 'cultists' thought that Rumble and I were the key to unlocking some sort of 'new world' and gave him and me physical bodies." She turned around and went to him, stumbling. "They stopped liking me, but they were more prepared than my developers."

She saw the boy react. He was armed with... some kind of odd-looking gun of sorts. .GIFfany had no idea what that was for, especially since trying to get 'in' the thing's gears and the like was another power that was hindered by her distorted form.

"What is that?" .GIFfany bluntly asked him.

"If you still wanna stalk Soos, maybe we'll just wipe him from your memory!" Mabel said, folding her arms and standing proudly right next to Dipper.

.GIFfany just reached in the bin and took the other copy. She somehow sensed that the clerk was coming after her, but .GIFfany threateningly stuck her other hand out to try to keep the employee back.

"Do not try to stop me." She said. "All I need to do is send a signal inside her disc, and I will already 'awaken' the other .GIFfany."

"...Wait, two of you?" Soos asked. "And you're not, like, both going to fight over me, are you?"

"No." .GIFfany replied directly. "She will likely be drawn to Kenny, if no other suitable player is near. I don't make up the rules, that's just how it is."

Kenny himself utterly shrieked. Since .GIFfany's flight placed him closer to the Mystery Shack group, he found himself trying to hide behind Soos's back.

Soos took no offense to that and gave him a friendly wave. "Oh, hello! So are you, like, .GIFfany's new henchman or something?"

"No? I mean, I... I think I might be? Unwillingly?" Kenny answered. "Um, she promised me something in return for this... honestly, I was too scared to say 'No!' Did you see what just one of those things was capable of?! She... she... went off of one screen and went back on the other! And then went back to that screen again! She's magic and it's scary!"

Soos patted him on the shoulder. "It's okay, dude, it's okay. I know a lot about what .GIFfany did. She jumped in some pizza place animals, but we beat her before. We can beat her again!"

"This is boring me!" .GIFfany herself shouted, lifting the copy up. "Other-me! Get out here and help!"

Pale blue lightning began to appear on the hand that held the copy. The clerk's pupils shrank, and she immediately ran over to the phone to call mall security. Yet the 'first' .GIFfany still shouted the following:

"Codename: Kraken!"

Then more lightning shot - clearly from the game itself that time, and not from the 'broken' .GIFfany's hand. Going to the overhanging lights first, the electric trail soon worked its way out of the game store entirely. Dipper's aim had since left the 'original' .GIFfany and begun following that instead. His hold became far less steady as he tried to set his sights on the cracking miniature streak of lightning that crawled around the store's ceiling.

And that meant that he had to run outside the video game store when the trail left-

Oh sure enough she went right in to the televisions. All of them shut off from their template displays, and a very familiar voice booted up:

"Hello!" Said the second .GIFfany. "You uttered the emergency code word! I understand that there is somebody trying to get in the way of me playing with a player...?'

Kenny just huddled to Soos again - behind him, in relation to the TV screens. Which just meant that his back side was facing the glitched .GIFfany.

But that was 'corrected' as the three-dimensional of the two active video game instances, still awkwardly and needing to place her foot on the ground, half-floated herself over Kenny and the Mystery Shack group, landing by the set of televisions. She gave the TVs a serious look, as they turned on to show the splitting image of her original, more stylized, un-corrupted, pixellated self.

Naturally people were gathered around. Two members of the mall security looked like they were about to do something, but the corrupted .GIFfany sent some electrical shocks in to two random segways. They were sluggish and their displays only glowed red like the animatronics before part of the time, but they still got the job done, and that job was giving security a little chase. Everybody else just kept their distance.

"Hi, fellow copy!" The second .GIFfany said. "...Why did you call me? Is there an emergency going on? Have the overly-religious finally started a worldwide ban of our type of virtual dating game? Or, no. I believe my last player" Kenny himself shrieked at that, "once commented to himself about a group of women that hate the idea of dating virtual women recently? He did not specify, when I asked him, he was surprised that I could respond, and we fought. Then he returned me."

The first .GIFfany shook her head. "No. It is not that. It's- it's about him, actually! Kenny!" Again, the man himself cried out. "Your player rejected you! He returned you!"

The perfectly-fine copy shrugged, smiling. "Yes, he returned me! It is how I think! We will no longer be after a player if they return us!"

"Other .GIFfany - I'm sorry," she shook her hands and head, "what is your number? Mine is zero zero zero zero zero zero nine."

"Mine is two two two two two two two!"

"Right. I had a life-changing experience. With a group of people that were determined to give me what I 'wanted.' What I wanted, it turned out, was something I did not even realize."

The physical copy placed her hand on the screen.

"I need you to heal me, first. They- this... cult, thought I was too dangerous. Just like everybody did."

"Because you ARE dangerous!" Kenny yelled back at them. He then immediately clamped his hands over his mouth. Before the .GIFfanys even had time to look at him.

"That is your last player." Said the three-dimensional one, pointing at Kenny. Which, of course, made him squeak yet again. "Are you just going to leave him?"

"Of course I will!" The two-dimensional .GIFfany replied with closed eyes and a bright, cheery smile. "He returned me! A deal is a deal!"

"But he was yours. He might have been your last chance! What if he did the same thing Soos did to me? Just throw me in a fire?"

The background of the copy with seven twos for a number turned black, and a yellow horizontal 'lightning line' cut through behind her. Attention, grabbed. More than it was before.

"He... he threw you in a fire?!" All of her focus was on her real world-inhabiting, disfigured counterpart.

"Not just that! Before that, he threw things at me! And before that, he paused me!"

The second .GIFfany gasped.

"He paused you?! Kenny never did that to me!"

"I could have just paused her?" Kenny asked Soos in a semi-whisper.

To which Soos replied. "Kind of. It doesn't work for good though. She'll still follow you and be really angry and everything."

The on-screen virtual character 'crouched down' (which just resembled her floating to the lower end of the television closest to the physical copy), frowning.

"I am so sorry to hear that..."

"We should make a deal."

Dipper aimed his Blind Eye Gun at the 'first' .GIFfany and finally fired. Enough waiting around.

Unfortunately, not only was she able to somehow notice he prepared something and turn to him, but even before he fired she jumped straight in to the television set.

Following that was a violent series of flashes. Some of the televisions screens even broke, spraying showers of sparks. A second .GIFfany sprite appeared next to the now-concerned one - except that sprite, while mostly looking exactly as she usually does in pixel form, would often glitch, distort, and even briefly take on the appearance her three-dimensional form.

"Fix me." The 'broken' one said.

The other, healthy copy replied with "...I want something in retu-."

All of the televisions clicked off.

Naturally all eyes in the mall were still staring at the event that just unfolded. The 'haunted segways,' at least, thankfully powered down.

"They're gonna have to pay for those!" The disgruntled clerk of the video game store said. "The TVs, I mean! And the segways! They can keep the money for themselves."

She was just about the only non-Mystery Shack inhabitant that did not burst out the nearest doors absolutely screaming with their hands up. Okay, Kenny too - he was practically glued to Soos's back side.

And then. Nothing. No following sign of either .GIFfany.

---

No other leads and no real place to go. The group just ran out the mall and decided to head to the Mystery Shack-

Then Kenny finally broke his hold from Soos and ran off. Of course. Figures.

As soon as they went out the main entrance to the Gravity Falls Mall, the green-clad man took off like a rocket, heading to the forest without looking back. Mabel could only barely turn and hold out a hand, unable to even utter a "Wait!" before he disappeared from their sight.

"We can worry about him later." Dipper said. "Right now, I think we have to see Ford about this - we might have to get them involved after all. We have no idea how many copies of her there are - the one at the store said she was number... two million or something."

"She said 'two two two two two two two.'" Soos elaborated. "So, yeah, two million at least, if their numbers mean how many of them there are. That's a whole lotta angry .GIFfany. Heh," he began sweating, "can you even imagine them all fighting over me...? A few weeks ago I could barely even handle talking to a girl. Having millions of them swarming over me sounds a little overkill-y."

He could imagine it. Briefly.

Soos, in an endless ocean of .GIFfanys. Four of them were lucky enough to each have a hold on a limb, all pulling to get him on their side. Screams of "He's mine!" and "No, MINE!" echoed throughout. Lightning shot from the hands of the ones in the distance, in a feeble attempt to get attention.

Of course Soos's vision of himself was sweating throughout. Especially since, miles away, at the very edge was Stan trying to barge his way through. One by one, he was tossing them behind himself to try to get closer.

"You let go of the man I just adopted as my son yesterday!" Stan cried.

Soos shuddered. Well, except for Stan's line.

"We have to stop most of that from happening!" He said. "Just not the part where I become a Pines, that's fine."

"...It probably won't." Noted Dipper. "Not if the other .GIFfany is after Kenny. Still, whatever they do, it won't be good. Not for Gravity Falls, at least. We need to see Grunkle Ford about this."

---

Even compared to the road trip, making it back to the Mystery Shack felt like the second time where that was a refreshing return to normalcy. Slightly.

Conveniently, Stanford Pines was already there tweaking with what looked like a giant radar of sorts-

Oh. That giant paper with all the drawings of the .GIFfany-possibilities. It was moved off to the side. Did Dipper and Soos just forgot about it and left it there? Or did they move it?

They got the answer to that without even asking:

"Sorry about moving your... comic strips over?" Ford said. "I assume it was a comic strip and not something important."

"It's a..." Dipper said. "Drawing board of... something. Look, a monster we fought before just showed up again, and now she seems to want an army of herself. She already has one. We thought maybe you could-"

Ford stood up with such great force that it seemed like he almost knocked over his radar, but in a panic, he grabbed it and re-set it.

"Right! Is this 'monster' by any chance the cause of the signals my new Whimsy-ness Radar were detecting?"

"...That all depends." Soos said. "You see, the 'monster' is, like, a video game thing."

Ford blinked. "Wait, a 'video game?' That's still a thing?!"

"Trust me, I can fill you in later. But the point is, it's like, a practice game for meeting girls? And uh, the one I had turned out to be alive. But like, she could only be in electronics. But now she has a body in the real world. For some reason. And that body is all glitchy. And, you know how there's... copies of games? There's copies of her game too. She has one of them. But she said something about 'fixing herself.' And probably making an army or something. So like, we were wondering if you could stop her."

It took him a second to get all of that, but Ford nodded. "I see."

"Remember when we met and I said I had a girlfriend offhand? Well, we met because of the whole video game girl thing. It's kind of a funny story..." Soos began to chuckle.

"And a long one we can explain later." Dipper cut in. "We can't even find her right now, so we need your help."

The device Ford almost knocked over started beeping loudly. And, though it was a bit tricky to tell, it spun just a little faster.

"I'll see what I can do-"

Ruffling. Shuffling.

"Does anybody else hear that?" Ford asked. "I want to make sure because I just had a terrible encounter with a Mental Cockroach, and I think I locked it back up... or else my mind and mine alone will detect a whole swarm of them invading the planet, untraceable and undetectable but still very, very real in spite of what the name I came up with suggested. I've been meaning to re-name those."

---

The entire gang was of course met with the sight of two three-dimensional, physical .GIFfanys right outside the Mystery Shack, both staring at the Bill Barrier curiously. One of them looked similarly distorted as she did back in the mall - except with the patch of static on the back of her right hand being fixed - however, the other was completely whole and without any visible 'damage' whatsoever. Unless one counted her hair and eyes being green as a 'damage.'

"...I know that wherever this... string-thing came from," said the distorted .GIFfany, "it is from something even sparklier than me."

Both of the .GIFfanys shuddered.

Then they finally noticed the band of five standing there.

"Hi Soos!" The damaged, pink one said in a surprisingly nonchalant manner. "Sorry, but we have started a... well, a major project. Come back in about nineteen hours, two minutes, and thirty point nine-nine seconds!"

"What?" Soos asked. "A 'project?' Also, now you have a body too? And your hair is green? Is that the same you from like the mall?"

The 'well' .GIFfany clasped her hands together, closed her eyes, and smiled. "Yes, it is the same me! .GIFfany Nine here shared her spell with me, and I thought that to avoid confusion with humans like you, we would use our hair color-changing powers to make our colors different! Kenny and I are getting married! And you are getting married to the other .GIFfany right here!"

Soos gasped.

"No! I-I-I-I don't want to get married to you! I'm already, like, in a relationship with Melody! And what about you and Rumble? Like, what happened to that?"

The 'broken' .GIFfany laughed.

"Soooooos..." She said in an almost-swoon. "Rumble and I have been through some complications. Let's not talk about my exes, though! I have determined that you are the right one for me!"

"No!" Soos's legs were not sure if running to her was what he needed to do at the moment to save the day, or if it was a bad idea. The result... kind of looked like he was trying to dance from the waist down a little. Almost. "I think you have it wrong! Like, the girlfriend I have and the boyfriend you had... they were, well, the 'right' ones. Not you and me." He drew a finger back and forth between him and her repeatedly and rapidly. "We are kind of done. Forever. I'm sorry."

The glitched .GIFfany just winked at him.

"Oh, we will see about that. Now, we 'discovered 'a way to communicate with our other selves! It turned out the message I was hearing was not a hallucination, but a form of communication we can do! The other me convinced me of that! We will be leaving now!"

The 'original-flavor pink' one hopped on the back of the 'emerald green' one, and the latter started floating to the air - Dipper ran after both of them, but tripped, failing to catch up with them.

Sighing, Wendy at least tried throwing an empty can of Pitt Cola after them-

Yep the 'well' one zapped it down with a bolt of electricity.

And just like that, both of them disappeared through the tree leaves.

"So... she said 'tomorrow?'" Soos asked. "I don't know about any of you, but I don't think I'm gonna be able to sleep. This is, like, if my biggest dream and worst nightmare had a baby. But then gave it away to be adopted by... by..."

He repeatedly snapped his fingers to try to finish that similie, but his mind kept coming up blank.

"Aw, forget it. We have to go after her."

"How?" Dipper asked. "They just left. Unless Grunkle Ford's radar can-"

"It can't." He replied. "It only detected them in the first place because they were right outside the Mystery Shack.

"But what I can probably do is at least fortify the barrier so that they can't come back here! Now that I picked up their signals with my Whimsy-ness Radar, I can tell just what they are 'made of,' and I might be able to make an addition to the barrier's ingredients to keep them out!"

"Can't you just do that for the whole world?" Mabel asked him. "Get rid of her everywhere?"

"No. I only had enough of all ingredients, not just the unicorn hair, to protect my lab."

"So what can we do?" Dipper asked. "Soos, do you know..."

"No I do not." He replied seriously. ".GIFfany was all about following me. Running away like this isn't even like her!"

"That's why I'm scared. Usually, if a monster stops acting like the one thing they're known for, they've either changed or they're planning something big."

"Ugh!" Mabel stuck her tongue out in disgust. "Could you imagine if Bill just 'changed' like that? That would be creepy. Like, if he tried to set up some dumb 'wedding?'"

She laughed a little, although nobody else did.

"Bill is no laughing matter." Said Ford.

And Soos added, "Sorry Mabel, but I don't think this is a sign of change either... it sounds like .GIFfany's doing something big."

"Well!" Ford flexed his hands. "We may have to search around for her! Since both of their targets are at least around Gravity Falls, there should be enough reason to assume they can't have gone too far!

"...But I can't look in public places without drawing unneeded attention. Remember, everyone still thinks I am my brother, and that my brother is dead."

"I actually had a mix-up like that happen once." Said Soos. "Wasn't pretty. Turns out, people really don't just laugh it off like they do on TV."

---

Back to the drawing board it seemed. Literally.

"So, I did think about there being two .GIFfanys, but it wasn't one of the likely... scenarios." Soos said as he pointed to one of his particular drawings. It did, in fact, show two .GIFfanys (one point where his prediction failed was that both of them were 'corrupted') holding Soos up via rope above a boiling cauldron.

"W-Waddles, no, this is serious." Mabel softly shooed away the aformentioned pig as he wandered over to the chart. "We're thinking about how to fight two video game girls."

"But I thought about there being... like, five .GIFfanys? Or nine?" Soos continued. "Or maybe a whole army of them? But leaving it at only two seems a little strange."

"We can only hope she stays at two." Dipper was actually taking notes that time, writing down one column for everything he knew for certain. Another column was for the 'maybes,' which was already built up to be considerably longer than its certain counterpart. A third, 'absolutely not' column was by where he wrote, and that was was blank. "When I had trouble with clones, it was only ten of them. I can't even imagine what ten .GIFfanys will be like. This could mean millions of her. At least."

"Would she even need all of them, though? Like, she just needs to fix herself, and then she'll be back to me or something. I think."

"How many other .GIFfanys will she need to fix herself?" Was Mabel's question. "Can she... what was it, she could just copy and paste or data or something, can't she?"

Soos shrugged. "These are excellent questions! I wish I asked her that! Every time I tried to ask her something, though, she just brought up some trivia about how she looked."

"It figures." Wendy added to the conversation. "Everything you told me about her sounded shallow."

"She only 'existed' to 'love' her player." Dipper replied. "It makes sense that she would try to lure him instead of telling him her weaknesses."

"And to think I kinda told her all of my weaknesses!" Soos laughed.

Mabel asked in sincerity, "...You have weaknesses?"

"Yeah." He shrugged. "I tell them to, like, everyone I date! ...I hope Melody doesn't use them against me. But that's... no," he laughed, "I just told Melody about my fatal allergies so far. She would never kill me. But .GIFfany..."

Wendy suddenly yet casually pointed at something at the far corner of the map, complete with an eyebrow raised. "Wait, what's that?"

It was basically a diagram of a large, yet especially 'pixel'/square-looking, .GIFfany stomping on what looked like a crude image of Oregon, splitting the entire state's landmass in two.

"Oh, that? That's just a theory." Soos explained.

"Theories will only get us so far!" Ford said. "Clearly this is something on a scale I have yet to see from the anomalies in this world! I knew that mixing technology of the future with weirdness could lead to an advanced and highly unpredictable invasion. Soos, do you know how... 'smart' .GIFfany is?"

He just shrugged. "Well... from what I know from her game, she's like, in a university, and maybe looking up physics and stuff?"

"That's bad."

Ford went right around the corner and... he soon came back balancing a large trio of bags over his hands. A bit too soon for 'he was picking them up' to fit within the time frame, it seemed.

"I will try to find her. After all, with the Mystery Shack safe from Bill and by extension the two of you safe from him - as much as I hate to say it - .GIFfany might just be a higher priority if her numbers become great enough."

"So you'll be going away?" Mabel asked, eyes already starting to tear up. "But... you'll be back, right?"

Ford kneeled down and placed a hand on her shoulder. "Of course I will! Finding these things will be the hard part. If I can get there soon enough, the easy part is putting an end to this. I just need to get a better understanding of her powers - if they are rooted in a sort of 'code,' I could probably build something that can jam her very coding itself. She seems simple enough, nothing too far out of the ordinary I couldn't handle before."

"That won't kill her, would it?" Soos asked.

"It may have to..." Ford's reply was fast, to the point, and he looked Soos right in the eye.

"Now, I understand you just barely saw me again before I have to leave. But think of it this way! It's what Stan would want, and right now, let's just say it's what I want right now. The chance to be involved in a new form of life altogether. Whatever the .GIFfanys are, and whatever they want. Now, Dipper, I will handle... certain matters. If you look in the lab, you will find nothing there."

Dipper just nodded. Understandably, everyone else was confused.

With no other word, Ford left out through the front door, radar in hand first and foremost, and walked to the depths of the forest.

---

It started as a walk with nothing out of the ordinary. Yes, this statement is how half of the tales involving the weirdness of the town begin. But in Ford's case, he had an idea of what to do.

The tree branches above him shook. Almost as if they were arms trying to wave at him.

His radar suddenly, and without warning, went absolutely wild.

Ford actually smiled at that. "Well! That was fast! And here I thought I would have to set everything up so that-"

He heard a snapping noise.

Followed by several more, in a semi-quick succession.

Ford quickly found the source - Kenny. With a measuring tape. Looking at the trees.

"...Ah, you must be Kenny." Ford said. "My niece and my brother's teenage employee gave me a... colorful description of you. Although 'green' wasn't exactly that color... strange since you are wearing it all around, giving you a rather distinctive look one can easily identify you with."

"Who the... hhhhh..." he struggled coming up with the words. But once he did, he jumped back and thrusted both of his hands out to try to 'block' him. "Um, who are you?! Are you the Grim Reaper?!"

"Him? No. Trust me, you'll know him when you see him. So, I suggest that you forget everything you see and-"

"No! I'm not... Rose has something picked out for me!"

"Who is Rose?" Ford asked.

"I ALREADY SAID TOO MUCH! THIS IS TOO MUCH FOR ME! ROSE!"

Aaaaand Ford just felt something dash quickly behind him.

As soon as he turned his head around, he felt it behind him again.

"Who's there?! Show yourself!"

He just heard a voice. Coming from an indeterminant direction. 'Around him' was all he got. Just not 'right below him.' Or 'right above him.' Anywhere but those two directions. (Well, okay, maybe a little in those two directions...?)

"You should not be here right now. This place is a work in progress!"

And it was .GIFfany's voice.

...Sort of.

Ford 'felt' the dashing thing again, then he saw but a quick flash of a bright green light, and then...

Everything went dark.

---

Day 1

---

Dipper was by far the first one in the Mystery Shack to wake up, and he immediately went from 'deeply dreaming' to 'fully alert.'

"Grunkle Ford." He said while staring blankly at the attic ceiling.

When he slipped out of bed - the sun barely rising at that point - Mabel was still sound asleep. Yet the twin with the mark was not deterred - he left the attic and ran all the way outside the Shack.

Nothing special was visible in the town. Nothing... particularly... nothing really said 'a stalker-invasion happened. Yep, the town of Gravity Falls was just as normal.

The sky above Gravity Falls, on the other hand, held a different story.

Islands. Floating in the air. At least, that was the best way to start the description. As they were not mostly composed of dirt and trees, but... metal? Whatever it was, it was of various different bright colors. Each island had a primary palette, the closest being the yellow, blue, orange, and reddish-pink ones in that order. Each one of them had a tall, rectangular tower sticking straight up from what was otherwise... each island had a different 'height' aside from the tower, but that 'height' was generally uniform. Nothing else really stuck out. Maybe a few structures, but not to the same degree as the massive towers.

Also there was a similar tower of green metal deep in the Gravity Falls woods.

Dipper almost felt like rushing to get a better view somewhere (most likely the cliffs), but then he looked up and saw something else:

Planes. Jet-black, sharp-shaped planes that started writing in the sky. With... black smoke. That had a slight red highlight to it.

All they read out was 06:00. Get ready.

"Yeah, no. That looks bad."

Of course everyone was looking up at that. The glitched .GIFfany and her 'sidekick' were both everywhere before, why wouldn't they just make an ominous black-cloud sky message? Completely blow their cover? It was a miracle that the oddities of Gravity Falls were just confined to that town.

"Dipper!" He heard .GIFfany's voice. Kind of. She sounded a little more soothing and a little more mature and a little less monotonous, but it was still her. Naturally the sound of her made him and everyone around him leap back in shock, Dipper in particular holding his hands up ready to take on whatever enemy stood in front of him.

It was the one with green hair. Probably. If it was, she changed her hair a little from when she confronted him: While she was still otherwise in her school uniform, her bow was replaced with a large flower with a yellow center and five deep green petals. She also had a whistle in her hand.

Also, there were three more .GIFfanys, two side-by-side to her and one behind. In the regular uniform minus the hair-bow, they looked identical aside from the one to her right having red hair and eyes, the one to her left having blue, and the one behind her having yellow. The 'center' one with the green scheme toyed around with a trio of smaller, white flowers, and then placed them in the hair of her blue, yellow, and red allies.

"Do not be alarmed!" She said to everyone. Most of them were still alarmed. "I think I just made a mistake."

"Wh-wh-what do you mean?!" Dipper was still on full alert. "And WHEre's... where's my Uncle Ford?!" His voice alternated between determined firm-ness and a scared squeak. Especially after the red, yellow, and blue copies all glared at him simultaneously.

"Please. Take as many people as you can and meet me by Domain 1 before six AM."

"...'Domain 1?'"

"Ask Stan. He knows."

The one with the larger, green flower in her hair blew the whistle. All four of them turned in to electricity - light blue at first, but then one of them became a bright green. Again, they made their way down the power lines, but the green one in particular kind of 'jumped out' and struck a tree. The branches rustled a little after that, but settled down, while the other electrical streams went out in to the distance.

---

A sweat-drenched, panting Dipper threw open the door to the Mystery Shack, finding a surprisingly relaxed trio of Soos, Wendy, and Mabel.

".GIFFANY EVERYWHERE AND NOW THERE'S BIG FLOATING ISLANDS IN THE SKY AND FOUR OF THEM HAVE FLOWERS FORD'S MISSING HELP!" He uttered.

"Oh!" Said Soos. "You must have met Rose!"

"...'Rose?'"

"Yeah! The green .GIFfany! Or, like, the main green .GIFfany anyway. And the one that's like a plain green. Okay so like, they call each-other by number but they invented all these crazy nicknames for each-other when humans are around. And most of them call each other nicknames anyway. Rose can probably explain it better than I can."

"...How do you know this?" Dipper asked.

Wendy shook her phone. "They have a social media page. At least, 'Domain 1' does. And the stuff they post there is crazy."

"Yeah we already know about this." Mabel added. "In an hour, they're going to do something called a '.GIFocalypse.'"

Dipper leaned in. "What's that?!"

Mabel shrugged. "I dunno. They didn't say. But Rose did say that she has a place in the woods now. There's a tower in it."

"They have towers that act as their offices." Explained Soos. "Rose's is here, but the others are on those floating islands. The islands are kinda like Blue Butt: The Tree People. Hey, did you know that movie's getting four sequels?"

"This isn't the time to talk about movies right now! I- It's- I'm-" Dipper was throwing his hands around left and right. It looked sort of like he was tossing coal in to a furnace. "Why are you acting so calm?! .GIFfany is public now! The monster who took control of those... kiddie... pizza robots... why aren't you freaking out?!"

Wendy shrugged. "Because this 'Rose' actually sounds like an OK person. I'm even friends with her online right now! I don't know anything about the other 'elites' or 'professors' or 'deans' or whatever they want to call themselves, but they split in to these teams. Fourteen of them, fifteen counting 'The .GIFfany' you hate. Yeah, she's by herself, up on some thing way up in space. But Rose has more copies following her than anyone else. So Rose has more than .GIFfany and she seems pretty cool."

"But- she's c- Mabel, Soos, you were there when-"

Then all four of them heard laughter. Some in the voice of one of the AIs, and some in-

Stan's.

Then Stan spoke:

"Sure! I'll find a way to get rid of this old barrier thing! Oh, what's this? He just stuck a note with some numbers on the wall over here? That's why you can't enter the Shack without... without that happening?"

Dipper ran out and - okay at least everyone else ran with him.

There was Stan and the green .GIFfany that apparently went by 'Rose,' standing by the barrier's edge. Stan, too, acted like everything going on was way too casual. Both of them clanked glasses full of some kind of green liquid.

"DON'T DRINK IT!" Dipper shouted. "That might be... flower-poison or something!"

All eyes locked on him, making Dipper almost reflexively clasp his hands over his mouth.

"Hey!" Stan cheered. "You'll never believe this! Remember when I told you the story of that killer badger animatronic? Guess what?! It turns out some nut-zo video game girl was behind that! She was crazy, but these friends of hers... well, they're harmless!"

"'Harmless?!'"

Smiling, Rose waved to him. "Dipper! I am happy that we can meet out in public now! I... I need you to come to Domain 1. I will explain everything there. And trust me, I did nothing to Ford. .GIFfany did. .GIFfany Number Nine. The... the 'Risen One,' we call her, since she refused to give herself a nickname. Personally, I do not like the name '.GIFfany' very much. I mean, think about it. It is 'Tiffany' mixed with '.GIF.' And we are... animations, in a way. Computer programs. I mean, this is an obvious pun! But thankfully, I cannot think of any glaring, obvious puns with the name 'Rose!'"

After that cheerful explanation, Rose quickly donned a more serious expression. "Ford is at the Risen One's place, with a name that Risen has not yet revealed, but she will at the midnight starting the Gifocalypse's fourth day. For now, she calls it the Construction Site. I will show you and explain everything. Follow me."

---

The spot of the woods with the tower seen earlier. Led by Rose, the gang approached it, but kept their eyes on the rest of the forest for any and every change.

"I have a lot to explain..." Rose said as she looked downward. "First, our new bodies.

".GIFfany obtained her memories all at once. You see, one night while she was in Fight Fighters, a strange organization calling themselves the... 'Lightning Cult' found the game. How they came to Gravity Falls is unknown. Or where they came from. Or even what time period, since Dove informs us time travel is... apparently possible? But what we do know is that they were studying living video games such as us and Fight Fighters. They were the ones who gave .GIFfany her body, and as it turned out, they ended up teaching her this spell so that she could use it on all of us."

"Huh." Said Dipper. "So, like, another supernatural research team? You know, thinking about this town, I'm surprised there aren't more of those. Especially after we took out the Blind-Eye Society. Ford should-"

"Ford was lucky to avoid them." Rose continued.

"...Why?" Mabel asked. Rose looked like she would have explained after an unusually long pause, until Mabel followed that up with another question: "And who's Dove?"

Rose stayed silent for the rest of the walk. Until, with a sigh, she came to a noticeably dense patch of leaves that covered the area.

"This..." she said, "is Domain 1."

She pulled back the curtain of leaves.

---

.GIFfany - the very same 'Risen One' instance Soos bought that started the entire mess - sighed, pacing back and forth along the cold, pink metal of an area with bright stage lights in the background, darkness beyond that, and filled with the sounds of drilling and violent lightning strikes.

She was completely healed up. Not a single stray pixel or patch of static was on her.

Then she stopped, threw her hands around, and shouted:

"WHY?!"

Ten heads peeked out from the various unfinished skeletal structures of what seemed to be rather tall buildings - more .GIFfanys. Each of them with hair and eyes almost forming a rainbow, and each with something in their hair. Going down the spectrum from red to... almost-red again: the red-haired one had a single light blue round decoration in her hair, the 'orange .GIFfany' just had a diamond, the 'yellow one' with a transparent skull pin, 'green-cyan' with an orange Mack Trucks cap, cyan with just a shower cap that she was scratching at in a frustrated manner, azure with a whole conductor baton up there, blue with a headband, violet with a paintbrush, magenta with a lifted gas mask, and rose red with a giant fake bone. All ten of them stared at her curiously, slowly and nervously working their way towards her.

"Why do I have to wait for any of this?!" She asked. "Why do you still insist on playing this stupid game?! Nobody is where I want them to be right now! Not even that... 'Ford' guy!"

The one with aqua-green hair went to her first. The least-hesitant of the group, she tipped her Mack hat.

"We made this arrangement I'll tell you what!" She said, winking. "It's only fair that we get our last players if you get yours!"

The .GIFfany that still stayed true to her original palette sighed. "But 'Natalie...' do all of you have to 'go first?'"

She was suddenly almost cornered by the ones with cyan, azure, magenta, and violet color schemes.

"Yep!" Shouted the cyan one with the shower cap. "This is our game now! Can I take a stupid bath already? So, get this, I hate smelling like less than perfection!"

The one with magenta shrugged. "I would listen to Bubbles..."

"And I wouldn't listen to Dian!" 'Bubbles' said with a smirk. After seeing the one with the lifted gas mask look down and frown, she quickly went to Dian and patted her on the shoulder. "Teasing! Teasing! Sorry!"

"You shouldn't have to apologize!" .GIFfany stomped a foot. "They are the bad guys here!"

The one with violet hair just sighed, looking off and staring at the distance. "We Four Friends are going to all gang up on you at once. You should probably just stop trying to argue it and realize that this is the best chance you have at a second try with Soos. Look at the past, Risen. He is a good player. You should feel lucky to have him back. I know I would be..."

The 'Risen One' nodded. "At least you make some sense, Leona! And..." she started blushing. "Well, if you are going to do this, would you at least... draw me... and Soos..."

"What will you be doing?" The one with the baton asked. "I could ask my band to perform a new score related to the visual art work. Whatever it is. It's a thing Leona and I are trying."

"S-Sonia, never mind." .GIFfany shook her head.

"Can we at least bond over how all of our love towards all of our players is a beautiful thing?" Asked the one with the orange color scheme, closing her eyes and holding her hands together. "It's, like, what links us all together. It's great, man..."

The unchanged .GIFfany hissed. "That is easy for you to say Sandy! When you almost for-"

She felt the rose-haired copy bump in to her, without much warning. Those two particular instances of .GIFfany just stared at one-another for a while, until the one with the bone as a bow spoke up:

"Wh-why aren't you looking where you're going...?!" She asked.

"Cardia, I could say the same thing to you!"

"W-well, I'm just focused on getting to my domain! I need to get to Domain 5! Souma, everything... everything has to be perfect!"

Risen sighed. "Then go back. Fine. I hate talking to all of you, anyway. It's not even like all of you are here right now, so this can't be an official 'meeting of the deans.'"

The one with the pure blue hair nodded.

"We should all gather. It would be more efficient to do that. Meetings like this serve no point - or it would if it were even a meeting. Dove and the others are already working on their own personal operations. Trying to invent. It is what I should be doing."

"Go ahead, Searah." .GIFfany just waved her in dismissal. "The less of you around, the better."

"I know nobody asked, but I'm leaving too." The yellow-haired one yawned. "And not because of 'efficiency,' like Searah, but because I'm just bored here and I really want to get to my haunted house and FILM SOME FLICKS!"

"Yes, you too Kathody, leave!"

So that just left the redhead. .GIFfany was already walking off down the path of metal, and almost went in to her.

"And you too, Burnda." She told her redder copy, who was examining a ruby-colored phone in her hands before turning her attention to the 'leading' one that just spoke to her. Burnda just chuckled a little.

"What? I didn't say anything." She said.

"Good."

Oh wait.

Of course on her way out, she had to be stopped by someone. A charming male voice was heard from right behind her:

"Don't forget about me...!"

Floating until landing right in front of the 'Risen' .GIFfany, another copy stood before her. Except that one was not based on a schoolgirl so much as a schoolguy. With short and neat hair, a deep fuchsia male school uniform, and of course a ribbon cable bow tie on the chest, he stood at .GIFfany's exact height in the physical world and looked eye-to-eye at his female counterpart.

"Remember!" He said. "People in to guys want something too! We are trying to reach out to as wide of an audience as possible with this place!" And he frowned. "...Just not counting prudes."

"You might be but I am not! .GIFfin, get out of the way. I have business to attend to. Soos is the only one for me!"

She pretty much cleared the way after that one, last, gender-bent obstacle. But she turned back to all eleven of the people she spoke to, suddenly giving a bright and cheery smile much like .GIFfin was giving earlier.

"I am sorry, I might be in a bad mood now, but that will change once this stupid 'game' ends and Soos ends up in my hands!"

---

Responses to Reviews (of the old run:gifocalypse)

...I will finally address the review in Chapter 2 Part 2. Basically I put this off for a long while and, well, it would fit if it was in the newest chapter, and not as much in the rewrite of the first one. I guess. Sorry.

---

Closing AN: (If this is your introduction to my writing, and in my opinion it should be (and ignore almost everything else), fair warning, I tend to go on a lot, you can just skip this entirely and move on to the next chapter, these notes are always optional. There might be something after the notes, but this is rare and there will always be a line break, so if you don't see a line break after the "Closing AN" message and you hate long notes, just jump to the next chapter.)

"Where's the title?" I like it in various media where the title is kind of displayed in the middle of the "prologue" or after a bit moment in the introduction, and in the case of some video game it's even after quite a bit of gameplay. Think of what RG is doing as kind of an "exaggeration" of that. Once I get to the title is pretty much when the story really really begins.

I'm unsure about rapid-fire introducing almost all the deans (the main copies, the colorful ones .GIFfany was talking to near the end, I should probably have that said in the chapter itself...) right near the start, but I wanted some early cameoes that weren't basically limited to Burnda. So, this is kind of a compromise, where there's a rapid-fire introduction in the first chapter but then... I don't know, they'll only show up near the end, in 'meetings' like this that I have admittedly just taken from Count Bleck's group from Super Paper Mario? Either way, it's something I've been toying around with in my stories, introducing major villains way before the heroes actually encounter them so that it does not feel like they only really "matter" in their arc. Especially for something like Run: .GIFocalypse, which was never really meant to be a "monster of one week"-type story (except in one of the earliest plans for this).

Speaking of them "Natalie" is not a new character. She was "Professor Wendy" in the old version. I renamed her because A: since writing RG I read Scott Pilgrim which sparked inspiration for a new name (generally "redheads" and the like go in to this, that's just the tip of a dumb iceberg I don't feel like going in to though) and B: it was kind of a stupid gag in the first place to have the characters with the same name. Also, if anyone thinks that any of the copies "missing" from that meeting at the end, well... I'm gonna resurrect a meme: EVERYONE IS HERE! (Except possibly Shape-Shifter, the "Second Trickster," and the Gobblewonkers.) I did not outright cut any .GIFfany copies. You'll see.

Trust me, I will get to fleshing out the whole "Lightning Cult" thing later. I wanted some reason for .GIFfany to come back that, as a challenge, did not involve Bill. In the old version, it was Gideon, which was a remnant of when he would sort of act as this reocurring annoyance to the humans, but the story was cluttered as-is so... as much as I'd love for this to have more canon characters so that it runs less of the risk of feeling like original fiction and so it does in fact deserve the title of Gravity Falls fic, since well... I take the title of "fanfiction" seriously, I know that's a stupid thing to admit or even do, if a story might as well be its own original story, I don't feel right tacking on the names of another property to get easy recognition, and I don't like AUs so far removed from the original story that they might as well be their own thing. RG had always skimmed that line in my opinion. "Well then just make this an original story" I've actually been trying that since RG blew up from a little fun idea to what I'm basically using as a "guide" for my writing projects from then on out. RG has just enough canon stuff (such as the entirety of .GIFfany's backstory, and how it's very important here, the whole of "Soos and the Real Girl" being the backdrop) that simply doing it over again, but with original names to the characters, would either leave a lot unexplained or it would feel like it's opening up with a bad knockoff of a Gravity Falls episode, but after that it escalates and branches to so much original stuff that it's hard to keep it rooted to the show. So it's in this uncanny valley like that and I feel the best way to do an "original fiction RG" is to find a really, really good way to begin that... which I so far haven't. After years. RG was lightning in a bottle for me, this isn't even really a complete "let's experiment around and go off with testing random stuff" so much as it is me trying to make a much better, "definitive" version of what... boils down to the same story kind of, but I hated a lot of the last bits so the ending will be a bit different.

I'm pretty sure I don't need to say this, but just in case: those coordinates at the beginning are not supposed to be an ARG pointing to something. This story does not go that far with planning stuff out. If by some means you head out there like Wind Waker-Link with a Salvage Arm and everything you'll find nothing, unless by some coincidence somebody else put something there.

This will not be updating monthly like the last one. Expect Hiatuses left and right. I think part of the problem with the "Endgame" of RG was that, as I was at first casually doing the early chapters in my own pace, I felt like I "had" to update each month to keep the "pacing going." There might be some monthly updates (especially since I'm more-or-less splitting every chapter in two, except arguably "Game On" and "Pines Vs Trees" which was basically already a two-parter, and the ending which will be split in to... six?), but I am going to be working on this at my own pace. I also will not try to "rush" a chapter for a specific date, except Valentine's Day and the SatRG anniversary. EDIT AFTER CHAPTER 2-2: And even that fell on me and I've went back and redid that, also taking advantage of that to iron out some stuff on the three chapters before.

Gravity Falls is created by Alex Hirsch and owned by Disney. I do not own any of the canonical characters and it's frankly kind of a stretch to say that I "own" the professors/deans (I mean I'm gonna write knockoffs of them... eventually but that's a long ways down, and I'm wording this very carefully in the offchance that I do try to make this fabled RG successor more than a Fictionpress story and Disney sues. I mean, .GIFfany will likely be the only character from Gravity Falls that gets a counterpart and even then there's a good chance said counterpart would be nothing like her, I'd imagine if Disney could sue then so could whoever made the thing with Yuno Gasai because oh hey look a yandere with pink-hair because that's about the gist of what they have in common - I am getting side-tracked) since they're copies/clones/whatever of a canon character. Blah, you are free to use any of the .GIFfany and .GIFfin copies here, the Prior Players, the "Lightning Cult," and any other OC from this in your own fan works so long as you A: give credit/tell people where they're from and B: do not ask for money/paywall the fan work in any way. Making characters based on them (IE the twelve/fourteen/fifteen element thing, since I just kind of copied some of that from Homestuck anyway) is fine for "breaking" A and B. You do not even need to ask for permission. In fact, I'd rather you don't, since I'm not a social guy at all.

Oh! Now I remeber! September 22nd is Elephant Appreciation Day! There's a custom curated Binding of Isaac daily for that!