Dipper and Pacifica soon woke up hanging from the rafters like flies caught in a web. A really, really gross web that felt melting rubber. They grunted furiously as they tried to break free, only to realise they weren't alone. Across the chapel's width, each of their allies hung in much the same way - danging in cocoons that ceased only inches away from their mouths and noses.
The young couple were tied together. It didn't help that they were both still in the outfits they had worn for court, and were beginning to get pretty overheated, even in the cold, subterranean nightmare of the Northwests' hubris.
Pacifica looked down and immediately felt dizzy. She wasn't sure if it was sudden vertigo or the effects of that bump on the head. She found herself laying her head on Dipper's shoulder, burying herself close to his collar.
This did not help Dipper's overheating situation.
The height of the chapel's upper echelons was impressive. The drop below them was enormous - though none of the kids were particularly good judges of height, it made the portal chamber under the shack seem positively tiny.
The beams were colossal, dotted as they were by immense load-bearing cables and thick, heavy joists.
The height of the chapel was insane. If they so much as fell, it would almost certainly spell a broken neck. It was the only place the towering infernal seemed capable of standing up straight - and it didn't even have legs to stand up with. Ford mused that probably irritated the Bill Cipher side of the thing's brain even more than the fact his legs had been cut off. A chapel was dedicated to him and he couldn't even fill it. Sheer fire for that monster's ego.
"Whadda we do, Poindexter?!" Stan yelled.
"I don't know! I don't know!" Ford barked back, squirming wildly. "We couldn't reason with them when they aren't this… this tarry freak! How would you reason with it?!"
Stan barked back. "I'm not a freakin' psychiatrist!"
"Guys, just freakin' - do something!" Wendy snapped. "You think this is how I want to spend my Friday?! McGucket's gonna go insane if he sees what happened to that train!"
"Wendy, Dad, Kevin, I'm scared!" Gus sniffed.
Wendy paused and stared at her usually fearless younger brother, momentarily in disbelief at how dire it all seemed. "I- I'm scared too, buddy!"
Kevin groaned. "Is this really it?"
"I guess - I guess we're gonna see mom sooner than we thought…" Gus sniffled again. A single tear trailed down his cheek.
Dan's eye twitched. The burly lumberjack could take many things. He had seen many things. He had punched many things. He had lost many things. But nobody - no, absolutely nobody - got to upset his kids. Especially his youngest boy.
He began biting into the tendrils. Ripping at them. Flailing, kicking and stretching in them. Dan Corduroy was a man possessed by sheer anger. He roared and bellowed and shouted and screamed at the top of his hefty lungs, and, with every ounce of his remarkable strength, managed to start ripping the moist, black bindings like electrical tape.
The creature responded promptly, yelling in fury at the lumberjack and lashing out towards him with its writhing, fennel-scented limbs. But it was no good. Dan was like a man possessed. Nobody, absolutely nobody, made his boy cry.
He finally ripped free from his constraints and grabbed hold of the rafter he dangled from, giving the creature such an incredible case stinkeye that it seemed capable of curdling milk. The beast stared up him, and shot a tendril with some impressive ferocity. The whip-like limb of the creature lashed into the 150-year-old pine, leaving a deep gash in the lumber. It was proof of how angry the beast seemed at being defied - that was probably enough to sever a head in a single whip.
Dan dodged with an impressive level of agility for somebody of such hulking size - no doubt a component of his frankly insane level of survivalist discipline - and was more than capable of ripping up each of his kid's cocoons and, still fuelled by what could only be described as raw parental rage.
Pacifica stared, highly impressed by the family unit's motions. The moment Dan had them free, Kevin, Gus and Wendy were like a finely tuned machine, dotting and darting across the broad beam with nary a concern, pulling up their misfit allies with fierce tact. If the Pines were a dysfunctional but loving family unit, she wasn't sure what she'd call the chaotic but immensely functional scene that unfolded ahead of her.
She wasn't sure if anybody in their right mind would want a training-obsessed family at the hands of a 400lb-muscle-bound-prepper-lumberjack. But it was yet another sign of just what her family never managed to achieve.
A system that worked and protected people seemed way more… constructive than a family that had built itself off of destroying other people. Even destroying their own family members if they got in the way. It felt strangely wholesome to see a bunch of kids with ridiculous military-grade survival training.
Wendy hefted the two of them up with a grin. "Damn, you two are heavy!"
"H-hey! What's that supposed to mean!" Pacifica snapped.
The redhead laughed as she pulled them up on top of the rafter and waited for her dad to get to work. "You guys alright?"
"Wendy, that was amazing!" Dipper said.
"I know, dude. Just wait for pops to open you up, huh? He's the one who can tear open a tree with his bare hands. Or was it a bear with his tree hands? …Look, just wait for him, 'kay?" And with that, the redhead bounded away to free Stan and Ford.
The silence was deafening between them as the Corduroys continued dodging whip cracks and lashes with impeccable form. Dipper and Pacifica looked at eachother awkwardly, unable to part. For maybe the first time that Summer, they really wanted to.
They were scared, they were relieved, they were sweaty, they were panicked, they were tense, and they were riding on the biggest adrenaline hit they'd felt since the last time they confronted a runaway train and/or a giant monster. Which, being honest, even in Gravity Falls probably shouldn't have been as common an occurrence as it had proven that Summer.
Dipper took a deep breath and tried to relax. "Well…at least we're not gonna get eaten, right?"
Pacifica sighed as she wriggled uncomfortably. "She could've at least sat us up."
"I'd have thought you guys would LOVE laying together!" Mabel chirped, as if being kidnapped by a gigantic centipedal abomination was just a standard day for her. Some things never changed.