The trip through the courthouse's demonic maw was a harrowing one. The sheer instability rocking what was left of the Cankerbill meant that the Pines found themselves catapulted through space and time with horrendous turbulence. Rapid, flickering visions of everything from bizarre cartoon worlds of boiling seas to lands of anthropomorphic frogs.

Screaming in uncontrollable fear - save, of course, for Ford, who had seen just about everything in his thirty years of the nightmare realm - the family travelled through lightyears in mere moments. Tears streaked from their eyes, their cheeks billowing, the hollow woosh of countless dimensions and multiverses (or multiversi, as Ford had later claimed was the correct pronunciation) flooding by them with a swiftness that defied the sheer enormity of where they were, what they were doing, and where they were going.

"Sixer! T-this ain't like last time!"

"No Mabelverse antics here, Stanley." Ford replied, gravely. Mabel whined in disappointment behind him. "This is all unstable. A degenerative symptom of the multiverse. If this keeps up, I fear the multiverse could tear itself apart. "

"Okay, whoa whoa whoa-" Pacifica interrupted, grabbing hold of Dipper's shoulders and dodging out of the way of a screaming duck in a sailor hat. "Nobody said there was a whole destruction-of-the-multiverse thing."

"Pacifica, let me explain. The multiverse isn't meant to be open." The scientist turned to his young protege's partner and furrowed his brow seriously. "We got the first signs of that with my original portal. It's why we've seen rifts open, why we've seen anomalies popping up all over the globe."

The group looked to Ford with wide eyes, shocked into silence - despite the frankly insane speeds and remarkable sights flooding past them. The infinity belt swished behind them like a whip made from multidimensional cowhide.

"The multiverse is unstable." Ford said. "I've been monitoring it from my laboratory this Summer."

"N-not playing Dinkey Ape?" Stan ventured.

"Not playing Dinkey Ape." Ford retorted, with a gentle smugness, almost unperceivable in his otherwise dour expression. "All of this is proof-positive of instability. Cankerblight was already emotionally unstable, I grant you, but his physical instability is far more severe. The interdimensional highway is constantly growing, flattening dimensions in its wake. If we don't contain these rifts, that could include turning ours into space-time-continuum asphalt."

"You're telling me this is all because of some - some centipede that smells like crummy candy?" Mabel chirped up, holding onto Grunkle Stan's arm.

Ford replied sternly. "The Boggles, Cankerblight, the snowglobes, the rift, the tree geese - they're all stemming from the same raw element. That…glowing, blue fuel from the crash site. All in the water, the ground, the air - perhaps there was a similar crash in England."

"Don't get much weirder than Brits." Stan nodded his head, gravely. "I could believe it."

"I can only guess that the fuel transported the craft through dimensions by quite literally forcing them open." The scientist continued. "That common element is now everywhere. Make no mistake, it'd need a creature of almost unbelievable capability to turn back the clock."

"Ya sayin' it's hopeless?"

"I'd say it's as close as it can get, Stanley."

"Got it. We forget the savin' the multiverse thing, we get Suse, we get home, we set up an underground bunker an' we eat brown meat until we starve. I say we eat that pizza guy first. Maybe Tad Strange."

Ford bapped his brother around the back of the head, rolling his eyes. The intangible winds of streaking horror and interdimensional oddity only accelerated as they careened towards invisible boundaries between time and space. It was like travelling through an enormous wormhole - or centipede-hole, perhaps - trying to avoid the final bastions of the tangible before the darkness enraptured them.

At least it didn't stink of liquorice, Pacifica reasoned - though in its place, the thundering winds smelt of ozone and emptiness. It was a smell all-together too clean, sterile and empty to help them take faith in the slightest thing they saw or heard. Every voice echoed, every yell muted by the constant twists and turns of infinite possibilities and infinite universes that surrounded them.

"I only hope," Ford murmured. "That Susan hasn't gone diving off into one of these."

"If I know Suse, she'll have cannonballed into wherever this dimensional-dealio took 'er." Stan replied, shrugging. "She ain't one to go off the beaten path."

"We're gonna see the centre of the multiverse!" Mabel chirped. "I think it's full of little time-eating meatballs!"

"W-why would you think that?" Dipper asked, wrinkling his nose.

Mabel waved away the confusion. "P'shaw, Dipper, you know it makes sense."

"It makes - it makes zero sense."

"Less sense than living-dead lawyer-maniacs and giant walking factories?"

"Yes!"

"P'shawwww! It's all part and parcel, bro-bro." The sweatered sibling replied, doing a short somersault as a multi-headed dolphin screeched past in a suitable level of distress. "It all kinda sounds like some dumb writer just got lost in his story-beats."

"T-this isn't a story, Mabel."

"Sure feels like one. Bwomp-bwomp!"

Their next few moments involved breaking through a flying rock-sheet wall with remarkably little fanfare. Ford dusted the debris from his hair as he studied the rapidly approaching bright light before them.

"It is an interesting question," he pondered. "I've never seen the centre. Dimensions aren't usually laid out in these straight…tunnels."

Stan tried to steady himself after dodging out of a large, flying beast made out of spaghetti and pasta sauce. "You said this was all unstable, but this seems kinda straight an' organised."

"Stability is in nature, Stanley. The simplicity of this route is more like a hairline fracture. Or something being manipulated. Neither of those are particularly reassuring."

"You're sayin'-"

"I'm saying that this can't just happen. Somebody's made this tunnel. Something is directing us."

"Great."

"I hope it's Santy Claus!" Mabel chirped, clapping hands onto her cheeks.

Pacifica wrinkled her nose, by now practically clamped onto Dipper's back. "Dipper, if somebody made this tunnel….do you think it could be-?"

"Honestly, Paz, I've got no clue. This - this has all gone a little outside my remits now." Dipper huffed. His usually exhausted eyes only looked more exhausted with every increasingly overwhelming event of the past couple of days.

While she wasn't too fond of having her speculation interrupted, she was happy to listen to her boyfriend's well-founded concerns. "Tired?"

"Tired and sick of wearing this damned suit." Dipper grumbled. "It still feels like collars are strangling me."

"Better check for interdimensional gremlingoobers." Ford said, with a face that seemed fatally serious when spouting such a ridiculous statement. "They fly through dimensions trying to throttle people. Nobody's sure if they're serial killers or just have a strange fixation on trying to strangle every creature in the multiverse."

"He's just talking about shirt collars, Grunkle Ford." Pacifica retorted.

"Oh."

"Suck it up, kiddo." Stan grinned. "Knowing our family, we've plenty of court dates ahead of us."

Slowly, ahead of them, reality seemed to fall away. The multiverse itself opened up into a large, twirling lightshow that bled in rich colours of pale aqua blue, sumptuous purple and rich red, dashed in streaks of pink and white. A strange smell not-unlike candy floss and ruby-leaf tea filled every member of the family's senses.

"Dear God." Ford murmured. "How horrendously twee."

"Oh my gosh oh my gosh oh my gosh it's a candy dimension! Oh man I shoulda brought my big pockets for this-"

Pacifica and Dipper's faces fell. They exchanged a concerned glance, held hands and gulped. This wasn't a realm of candy at all. It was a realm they both feared - not because it was particularly scary, but more because the creature that dwelled there was particularly tedious.

And rhymey. Really, really rhymey.