The growing crisis took hold quickly. The unlikely entourage touched down on the courthouse roof, clambered off of the rope ladder and were immediately met by faces of pure terror, as the brick hulk lumbered down the steep hillside and towards them - ringed by a circle of particularly eyerate (harhar) eyebats that were seeking revenge for their demolished home. Behind it, the sky seemed to increasingly darken and throb, until it had turned an inky, deep purple against the framework of the ethereal blue glow below it.
It was an increasingly tense scene. Priscilla sat with her head hunched, her eyes wild and her makeup streaked. Preston's brow was furrowed like a particularly deeply sculpted field as he glared at the Pines with nothing short of pure, unadulterated hatred.
Tyler ran to Manly Dan and clung onto his arm. Dan was simply too tired and furious to acknowledge the diminutive little man, marching along with shoulders back and his kids either side of him.
Blubs and Durland gave quiet, respectful nods.
Quentin Trembley ran with joy towards an errant woodpecker, only to realise it wasn't his third wife and awkwardly shooed it away before anybody asked too many questions.
Every one of the unlikely group of Oregonites looked scared, sodden, exhausted and panicked. It really was like everything was over. There was no longer a sense of optimism or plucky fight. In the face of a rapidly approaching, sentient factory, things had gained an early, terrified silence.
Dry, thundering footsteps of the teetering stone structure became soft and sticky as the black mass spread across the town, writhing and wrapping around everything that stood before it. Slowly, buildings twisted and ground in their footprints, until they - too - rose from the earth's cosy embrace.
With a shuddering groan and a hiss, Yumberjacks ripped itself free of the Drive-Thru's confines, leaving behind an empty shell and a minimum wage worker peeling potatoes, having been denied the day off despite the whole catastrophic-flood situation. Soundtracked by shattering glass and crumbling columns, the teetering structure began to grind in thunderous, lumbering steps as it began to explore its new territory.
Its novelty outsized axe fell to the floor, missing the minimum wage worker by mere inches. Thankfully, he was too busy listening to godawful scene music to notice.
One by one, the town's structures followed. With every building, the townspeople yelped in horror. What was once waterlogged was now waddling down broken roads with a fierce candour, every lumbering step breaking the ground beneath.
Greasy's Diner, creaking in a painful sound of splitting bark and groaning grain, slowly began to writhe and wriggle - breaking free of its joists on the ancient railroad flatcar and, with little interest in preserving its interior, beginning to locomote itself across the floor in a crawling motion like that of a caterpillar.
Perhaps testament to the power of unicorn hair, the Mystery Shack seemed immune to the rise of the town's inner anarchy. There, impervious to the sudden bubbling weirdness that seemed so dedicated to destruction, it sat comfortably - nestled in its forest glade with only the soundtrack of a woodpecker for company.
Elsewhere, every building the tunnels ran under was affected. Every structure to be touched by those terrible caverns was filled with teeming, furious life. The town itself was bending, creaking, ripping apart, becoming a gigantic chessboard loaded with looming creatures of mortar, pine and brick. Signs collapsed from their housings as the buildings they were mounted upon rose from the Earth.
"Oh my god, my Diner!" Susan sobbed. She had to be supported by Stan before she fell to the floor - out of a mix of exhaustion and her innate clumsiness.
"Yumberjacks! Where am I gonna get my Junior Yum-Yum Baby-Time Kiddo Meal now?!"
"They've got like six branches less than two miles away, Soos." Stan snapped.
"Yeah, but they've got like, the perfect level of age on the equipment, Mr. Pines. Every chain is different. You can taste every month they've gone without clearing the old grease. It's a delicacy, dawg!"
"How the hell are you so calm, Soos?! Look! They're freakin' walking towards us!" Pacifica snapped. "They're all possessed! Possessed by things that want to kill us!"
"Oh yeah. Guess that is sorta gnarly."
"Must be over… 3,000 tons of enemy." Ford grimaced, rubbing his chin. "Maybe more."
"Not helping, Sixer."
"Mathematics are my coping mechanism, Stanley!"
"Mine's not gettin' eatin by a goddamned-"
Stanley didn't get to finish his sentence.
The Courthouse, too, began to judder. To the screams, yells, and perturbed bellows of the townsfolk, the already damaged building began a painful motion, grinding out of the earth and onto its own exaggerated redwood limbs. It twisted and bent unnaturally, roof tiles flying south and windows cracking under the stress of its sudden unbelievable movements. Light fittings crashed, legal casefiles plummeted to Earth, and a thousand courtroom-catering-sandwiches scattered to the depths.
"THE LAW IS GETTING REVENGE!" Manly Dan yelled, grabbing Gus and perching him on his shoulder.
People began desperately climbing down the roofing's fire escape, jumping to the sodden floor as a black, gaping maw began to manifest in the holed roof - the broken joists and cracked tiles forming a bizarre, cavernous mouth that seemed endless and free of any perceivable light.
A bottomless pit - except one that sputtered and growled.
The courthouse swayed limply as it tried to get its footing, having already been weakened and dizzied by the impact of Manly Dan falling through its backbone. Before long, the group was reduced to merely the Pines, Corduroys, Quentin Trembley, Tyler Cutebiker, Soos, Melody and - of course - the restrained Northwests.
"Darnit, this courthouse is still being paid off!" Tyler yelped, holding onto Dan's arm for stability. And because he loved to hold onto Dan's arm. "The warranty doesn't cover giant bottomless mouths in rooves!"
"I-it's even worse than I thought!" Ford yelled.
"My friend, this all seems rather part and parcel!" Trembley protested.
Preston interrupted them with a bark. "Y-you fools! What on Earth have you done?!"
Pacifica yelped, holding onto Dipper as the roof undulated with unnatural breath. "D-Dad, what's going on?!"
"Hardly surprising you'd not listen to me, daughter." The Northwest patriarch replied with a sneer. "Cankerblight is a walking, talking-"
Ford blinked as he recollected their discussion only a few weeks ago. "-Dimensional rift."
"Typical of somebody with your upbringing to interrupt your superiors." Preston muttered, though nobody acknowledged him.
Dipper was putting two-and-two together with his usual quick-fire pace. "So every single building-"
"Is now an immensely unstable rift." Ford continued.
Pacifica's eyes widened, her pupils like pindots. "So this thing's mouth-"
"-Could lead to freakin' anywhere?!" Stan barked.
"Yes. Could lead to freaking anywhere." Ford huffed. He experimentally threw a roof tile into it. It never returned.
Susan held onto Stanley's arm tightly, staring at the gaping black hole that had swirled into existence before them, crackling with tension and a fierce blue electricity that seemed desperate to overwhelm their every sense. Soos held onto Stanley's other arm, but was quickly thrown off and retreated back to Melody.
"Get my daughter away from there!" Priscilla hissed.
Preston squirmed and tried to free himself for the eighteenth time of the increasingly traumatic evening. "Pines, you have no idea what you're dealing with!"
Ford turned round and furrowed his brow. "I literally do."
"If you did, you'd have not let it happen in the first damned place!" Preston yelled, apparently blind to the complete hypocrisy of his statement.
"I said get my daughter away from there!" Priscilla barked, getting increasingly frantic.
"Everything is fine! Everyone knows you're safe as long as you're a minimum of two feet away from a dimensional rift." Ford retorted, as if literally anyone would have reason to know that, save for him.
"I won't take no for an answer!" Priscilla added. To her increasing frustration, she thrashed harder, her voice trembling as she desperately tried to break free of her binds. The fact that the Pines were allowing her daughter to stand so close to Cankerblight's interdimensional ministrations was enough to put her on the brink of a pure rage.
"Darling, calm down-"
"I'll calm down when they listen to me!" Priscilla hissed.
Then, Priscilla Northwest - increasingly maddened by circumstances partially of her own creation - did the unthinkable. Her stiletto, $800 of sumptuous leather - was thrown off in a fury towards the group, kicked with every intention of hitting Stanley Pines square on his unshaven chin.
Instead, she hit the beleaguered Susan Wentworth, who stumbled, slid on a roof tile - and fell with a fearful howl into the black, endless mass - quickly disappearing from view.
"SUSE!" Stan yelled at the top of his lungs, fully prepared to dive in before his brother grabbed him.
"Oh my god! Oh my god! Oh my god!" Pacifica stuttered. "Nonononononono-"
Dipper held her hand tightly. "We'll go in after her."
"We - we gotta!" Stan said. "That dame's the only one to have an interest in me since the literal man-eating spider!"
"Infinity Belt's at the ready." Ford agreed, preparing his belt's interdimensional twine. He was so matter-of-fact and firm with it that the concept of an Infinity Belt seemed as mundane as a normal old person thing, like collecting stamps or painting a scale model of a spaceship from a 70's sci-fi series.
"Now- now see here, I'm not so sure that-" Tyler began.
"WE CAN'T HAVE THE TOWN WITHOUT SUSAN!" Dan interrupted.
Tyler blinked. "W-well shucks. I suppose you're right."
Dan nodded, fiercely. Wendy, Gus and Kevin did much the same.
Mabel, already getting herself steeled up with a flask of fresh, cold Mabel Juice, looked between the two families with no shortage of regret. She knew there was an innate threat - deep down, maybe. She didn't really spent much time thinking about risk.
All the same, she looked at her boyfriend and spoke clearly - determinedly. She half expected him to protest, to demand her to stay. "I can't just…stay here, Kevin. I'm sorry, I-"
"I get it. Family first." Kevin smiled - though his pupils were like pindots and a trickle of sweat travelled down his brow. "I'll see you soon?"
Mabel sniffled and ran to him, giving the gappy-toothed teenager a tight hug and a kiss on the cheek. Her first non-toxic, non-puppet obsessed, non-wanted-in-six-counties-for-murder, non-vampire boyfriend. "If I spot anything super freaky, I'll bring it back for you."
"Just don't get eaten."
"It's gonna be tough. I always look good enough to eat." Mabel snorted with a flamboyant flap of the hand.
The arrangement had been wordlessly agreed by the other townsfolk. There simply wasn't anybody more capable of taking the reins on this. Fiddleford had considered, but the last time he'd seen between two dimensions, he'd eaten a funny looking fungus he'd found underneath a Studebaker's soggy seats in the junkyard.
Wordlessly - methodically - Ford pulled out multiple strings from his belt and began looping his family together.
"...When did that thing become multi-modu- multi-mu- get more strings?" Stan asked, wrinkling his nose as his brother hooked it up to his wallet (easily the most secure thing on the Grunkle's person.)
"Ahm. Modifications made when I got a family." Ford said quietly. "Took a lot of damned time to find more interdimensional twine, I can tell you."
Stan chuckled and slapped his back. "Ya big softie."
It was clear that, by this point, Ford had become markedly more grim and serious. He looped everybody together with a sincerity that contrasted darkly against the sheer insanity of the situation. He had spent quite a blissful period being away from the interdimensional highway - hell, he'd only gotten used to the information highway with Dipper's help, and he'd been scammed by a Nigerian Prince for the trouble.
If he knew one thing better than anybody else on the planet, it's that this was dangerous. Unstable and untrustworthy. Once upon a time, he'd have labelled that with the townspeople - but now…
"Soos." Ford said, pulling out a length of the line. "I need you to look after this."
"Whoa, dude, you actually trust me with that?"
"I'll be honest. I think you're a bumbler who's basically built to be insurance bait. But I also know you'd never let anything happen to Stan or the kids. So yes, I trust you with it." He smiled as he handed the line to Soos. "...You're also very heavy, and Dan is right there to grab it if anything goes wrong.
"Oh dude, I'll totally take it." Soos beamed. "Thanks, Ford!"
Ford. Not Stan 2. It was progress, at least.
The Pines all exchanged glances - then, peering into the gaping maw ahead of them, made their decision. Lazy Susan wasn't going to be the next casualty to the town's madness. Not least because there was a strong chance Pacifica was going to be living with her over winter.
Stan and Ford exchanged a knowing glance as Pacifica rolled up her sleeves and prepared herself for what would doubtless be a terrifying dive into the world between worlds. Prepared like a monster hunter. Prepared like somebody who'd be capable of taking on the world, just like Dipper and Mabel.
Right. Somehow laid-back living didn't really seem like Pacifica's vibe anymore.
Together, they all took a step back - then dived in.