Chapter 4

Picking Up the Call

"Okay, next time we keep all the good stuff away from the crazy tourists," Anne heard Eda say.

"Marcy, what have you done?" Sasha yelped as the room seemed to warp and twist with blue magic.

The others rushed for cover as stars zipped and washed over the place. Anee flinched, but thankfully none of them hurt. If anything, it was like she was standing in the middle of a ballroom and Marcy had suddenly become the enchanted disco ball. Squaring her shoulders, Anne walked over to her friend and tapped Marcy on the shoulder.

"Marcy, is everything alright? You're kinda freaking everyone out right now and I'd rather not have to fight off a bunch of witches who I am sure are lovely people and don't want to any trouble!" she said, adding emphasis to that last part.

Luz reached a hand out from under a nearby table, and checked to see if anything bad would happen. Once she was sure that nothing was immediately dangerous, she got up and pulled Amity to her feet.

"Did anyone copy down what she was doing?" she asked. "If it was a bad potion or spell, it shouldn't be 'working' this well."

"Is it working, though?" Willow questioned warily.

Anne shook Marcy. "Come on, Mar-Mar."

Mary turned around, her eyes bule orbs with stars spinning in them. They came together, like a shattered pupil, swimming as undulating pool as Marcy looked around and squealed with excitement.

"Anne! Sasha! It worked! Andrias' spell worked! I can See everything! Like the nature of Headmaster Eda's curse! It is the spiritual remains of an ancient owl creature that no longer exists on the Boiling Isles! The Archivists don't just seek to preserve life from other worlds, but they weaponize beings they find particularly dangerous so they can protect themselves!

"I guess pseudo deity does have a lot to fear because they are after all just pseudo! Hee hee, that's such a fun word. Pseudo…

"Oh! I can See too that Hunter is a clone who was used by this Belos guy. Philip Wittebane to be precise! He was a witch hunter who came to the Boiling Isles with his older brother Caleb, who is the person Hunter is a clone of. Discovering that and being mercilessly used and manipulated by Emperor Belos really did a number of him," Marcy said, sounding utterly fascinated, troubled, and excited all at the same time.

"Poor guy," she added, before ambling back to look at all the ingredients in the storage room.

"Huh, so that's the nature of my curse," Eda said.

"You're believing her?" Gus asked, frightened and upset.

"Eda shrugged. "Eh, it makes good sense to me."

"But how does she know about the Archivists?" Luz wondered.

"That spell! No, no, no, I mean the potion! It really does tell her the truth," Hunter said breathlessly. "Just one glance and she could tell I was a clone of Caleb… I didn't think anyone outside of our group knew anything about that!"

"Hey, we just got here," Sasha said, holding up her hands and carefully following Marcy. The other girl began oohing and gushing over all the possibilities that could be had with the resources at the college. "Marcy tends to get a little independent and crazy at times, but this is a first for us, too."

Anne watched her Marcy with some trepidation. This isn't right. First, she gets knocked out when Sasha is right; Marcy should be able to hold her tea! Even magical ones! And then she says that she had a vision with Andrias and mixes a potion using ingredients that I don't think that old newt would even know about. I mean, his people did go and conquer other worlds, but I the newts would have used far more magic if they could have incorporated this place into the empire…

But to see the truth? What does he even want her to see? I have a bad feeling about this.

Setting her jaw, Anne interrupted Marcy in the middle of explaining how she could create an elixir of eternal flatulence. Curiously, Gus and Luz were taking notes despite their obvious discomfort.

"Marcy!" she shouted, snapping her fingers beside Marcy's ear. Her friend jumped.

"Anne?"

"Yes, it's me-"

"Wow! Did you know that you're marked by a cosmic being to-?"

"Yes, to replace a god after they retire," Anne overrode impatiently. "Marcy, we need you to focus! If this potion-spell-thingy is supposed to help you discern the truth, then can you tell us why in Frog's name did Andrias want you to make it? Because this is getting kinda freaky."

Marcy paused and tapped her chin. She looked around before skipping over a corner. She tapped the wall and proclaimed, "In about thirty seconds, we will be getting a call from someone. It's crazy, because I can See all this stuff and my brain is racing to make sense of it all, but I feel a dozen steps behind… It's like I'm missing something. I'm trying real hard to focus on what is important. Sorry girls!

"But Andrias wants us to be able to speak with these other people and he hopes that we will believe them and him. I guess the world is danger or something cliché like that. Nothing that we can't collectively handle! I mean, we've save two worlds and potentially the whole universe, and these lovely folk saved the Boiling Isles from annihilation! So, whatever Andrias is up to, it must be for something of paramount importance!

"Wow! I always knew that lovable lunk had a good streak in him."

"Yeah, buried deep, deep down," Sasha muttered. "And how long are those eyes going to be a thing?"

"A little less than half an hour. The potion burns its way through your system really- Wup! Here comes in the call!"

Anne cocked an eyebrow as a portal of fog and stars was ripped into the wall.

"I seriously hope I don't have to renovate after all this," Eda said, exasperated.

"Ooo! This is incredible! This portal breaks all the rules of space and time by connecting us without any complications to a completely different universe from our own, but with characters similar to our own," Marcy began saying before she let out a high-pitched squeal. "It's Eda's long lost ex-husband! Oh my Frog! He must be so in love with her that he-!"

"Ex-husband?" Eda choked. "You can't seriously mean?"

"Is this thing even on?" a gruff voice asked, one that sounded like it needed gallons of tea with lemon to keep going.

"Of course it's working, Stanely," a far more sophisticated and not so gruff voice replied. "We aren't dying in a wave of time freezing all at once, killing our cells over and over again for all eternity contained within a second."

"You could try telling that to my lower back!"

Anne felt her jaw drop. This was all actually happening.

What has Marcy gotten us into?

The cloud became something akin to a swirling version of a foggy looking glass. Anne was able to look into a spacious room full of strange, dusty equipment. It was lit with dim, flickering lights that had been jimmy rigged all over the place. She could distinctly make out two older gentlemen, twins. Once was dressed like a poor pirate and the other was clearly a mad scientist. One guy was like a mole-man baby, wearing a tuxedo and a fake eyepatch. There was another set of twins, one girl and one boy. Well, it was more accurate to call them a man and woman. They had to be older than her. The woman was dressed in a skirt and a sparkling sweater with thick, bushy hair pulled back with a headband.

Her twin had a faded baseball cap with a pine tree on it. He wore clothing that said he went out a bunch of cool adventures and had the scars to prove it, but there was a geeky side to him that said he would fit in well at a university. He was holding hand with a cool woman dressed as a lumberjack and armed to the hilt with axes.

These were the people Andrias wanted them to meet?

"Look! It's Collector!" Luz cried out.

Anne followed where her new friend's finger was pointing and saw a cherub-like child dressed in starry pajamas flying around the room. He had crazy tattoo of a sun and moon painted across his young face. He beamed with excitement and a tinge of pride.

"And there's Luz, and Eda, and Amity, and Hunter, and the whole gang! Well, not exactly my friends, but if they're anything like the ones I know, these are some of the best and bravest people you could ask for! They're at the front of my hero contact list. Hey! Where's King?"

"Wait, you're not our Collector?" Amity asked, confused.

"King is on his way," Luz assured the kid. "We sent out a message for him to get over here because we've met some new people."

"Excellent! The whole gang is almost there! Hi there Anne! Hi there Sasha! Hi there Mar-Mar!"

"It's. Just. Too Much!" Marcy wailed. "Soooo much cuteness! So much backstory! So many connections between each other that we never even knew about! And so much that is going on that eclipses all of that! I can't comprehend it all!"

"Well, it looks like the Tscheapwhetzar's notes were all spot on," the younger guy twin said, checking a notebook.

"You know our names, but who are you?" Anne asked. "And why are you trying to reach out to us?"

The younger man gestured to himself and said, "I'm Dipper Pines. And this is Wendy Corduroy."

"They somehow broke all expectations and became a couple! And it was this Cheat-whzzit's inference that did it," Marcy whispered excitedly.

"That's my sister Mabel."

"Hiiii everyone! Wait, are we sure that we're coming through loud and clear?" She ran and slapped the machine.

"Don't!" the crazy scientist yelped.

"Yeah, she acts like that a lot," Dipper said.

"I get that. And yes, you're coming through just fine," Anne told him.

"This is Soos," Dipper continued. "The current curator of the Mystery Shack."

"Sup dawgs?"

As Anne was wondering where she had seen that getup, plus she could now swear that she heard that one grating voice from somewhere before, Marcy whispered excitedly, "He's the world's most perfect man."

As if on cue, one of the flickering lights blazed to life and shone like a spotlight on Soos.

"And these are my great uncles, Stan and Ford Pines." The poor pirate and crazy scientist respectively.

Marcy shook Anne and Sasha, blurting, "Stan is Eda's ex! Oh my gosh! Could this be a renewed flame?"

Anne and Sasha glanced back at Eda who was trying to hide herself behind a bewildered Luz. The two girls shared a glance before Sasha said, "I don't think that's going to happen…"

"We were told that we needed to get in touch with you all and direct you to find the versions of us in your timeline and get all the gangs together. Collector's people the Archivists are coming to Earth. They intend to either take over the planet or wipe it out," Dipper explained. "It's going to be a pretty big battle, and even if you win, there's a really nasty guy named William Cryptic who is going to use it as a distraction to try and destroy every universe and timeline."

"Wait? Seriously?" Sasha deadpanned. "I know there's a lot of evil guys out there, but who is that stupid to destroy everything?"

"Yeah, it'll get them killed as well," Willow interjected.

Dipper shook his head, but Ford was the one who answered. "This man has a crazy vision. He wants to claim the powers of the former leader of the Nightmare Realm and use them to break out of this entire existence and seek a higher plane. He has a bone to pick with the ones who created our golds and multiverse."

Marcy bobbed her head in agreement. "That's true! William was just an idea for what might have happened to Wendy's mother, but because of interference from the Cheap-whaz-"

"Tscheapwhetzar," Ford corrected.

"Bless you," Gus said.

"Yeah! Him! Because he messed around with your timeline, he caused a ripple effect that gave greater awareness to this man who was searching for Bill Cipher. One story mixed with another until he became a self-aware entity that now has had a 100% real effect on every single one of us, even if we have no clue who he is!" Marcy exclaimed, her eyes sparkling with potion-induced magic.

"This is all too much to take in," Amity said, massaging her temples. "Collector, is there any way you can try to make this easier to understand?"

Anne watched the floating cherub kid on the other side of the portal rub his chin, squinting, and making a show of thinking hard. He laughed and performed a loop de loop before saying, "It's multiverse madness! Simply put, a big bad guy is coming out of one universe to destroy all the others, so he can clear the way to ascend even higher and kill more people!"

He paused, made a curious expression and added, "It's not exactly something to be really excited about…"

"Maybe not, but it's fascin-," Marcy started, but Anne overrode her.

"So, we've got a new enemy and everything that is right now happening is because someone is pulling the strings to get us to crash into each other."

"Now that was succinct," Ford said appreciatively.

"I like to keep things sweet and simple." Anne cracked her knuckles. "Okay, I'm not exactly sure what is all going on, but I can take a hint. The multiverse needs some heroes. And here we are, with a bunch of witches and random, cool people with a portal, an old enemy king who is speaking to one of my best friends, and a guy with a weird name that I'm not even going to try to say!

"What could go wrong?"

"Lots of things," Dipper deadpanned. "Lots of things can go wrong."

"Yeah, like bringing videogame characters to life to solve your problems, making deals with a dream demon, cheating in miniature golf with a bunch of little golf-ball people," Mabel began listing off. "Making a monster that scares you with your own worst nightmares one of the featured attractions at your tourist trap."

"Hey! That was all because you made that bet with Grunkle Stan!" Dipper fired back.

"I still hate the word… Plee- Pweas- Pleeease…" Stan struggled.

"Do you need an antacid?" Ford asked.

I have no idea what is going on here, but these people have gone through their own wild adventures, Anne acknowledged. She didn't need a truth potion to see that! Everyone here has a story and experience that could be valuable in helping us team up. I'm just having some trouble with Andrias speaking to Marcy through a dream. I know he helped us against the Core at the very end, and I'll bet that he turned over a new leaf and tried to be good…

But it's still a lot. Forced is the right word. And why all of us? There should be other heroes out there! And though I'm all for helping other people, we girls don't have our powers anymore! I destroyed the gems that gave us our abilities, so why would some mutliversal being me, Sasha, and Marcy?

"Everything okay there, Anne?" Sasha asked. She noticed her friend's hesitation.

Anne shot her an encouraging smile and answered, "It's a lot to take in, but I trust what Marcy is saying. These guys trust the Collector over there, who seems to trust these people. And nothing is setting off my radar. I just wonder why we would be selected, or if it's all a big coincidence."

Marcy beamed and threw out her arms, saying, "We can regain our powers! I've Seen what the Tscheapwhetzar's plan is. And it makes sense with everything they're saying. We need to get in touch with the Pines family in our timeline. In our universe. These Pines will hunt down William Cryptic and put a stop to his antics while we all work together to fight the Archivists, because those guys need to be stopped!

"But at the same time, the younger versions of ourselves must work together to attract the ripple effect of all our actions and William Cryptic's schemes into one place and cancel that out so order can be returned to all of time, to all our universes and dimensions, and to preserve the sanctity of all our stories!"

"Yeah, that about covers it," Stan harrumphed.

"You know, maybe I need that potion she's got," Eda said.

"Yes, and we only have a short amount of time before my potion wears off, so let's get to work getting the gang together!" Marcy proclaimed excitedly.

A thought struck Anne. "Marcy, if you can see the truth of anything, then perhaps you can help us out. How do we get back to Amphibia?"