Disclaimer: The views and opinions in this story are not intended to be viewed as those of the author. The following is a fan-written fiction. Gravity Falls, Star vs. The Forces of Evil, Kim Possible, and Big Bad Beetleborgs are property of their respective owners, creators, and publishers. Please support the official releases.

TW: This story will contain references to physical and psychological abuse, murder, and torture. Furthermore, several chapters of Volume 8 (and for the next several volumes) are set during a time period of extreme racial prejudice and traditionally sexist views towards both men and women. Reader discretion is advised.

Off the Hook

Riding shotgun in Elise's minivan, Marco basked in his victory this evening. He was an enlightened man, he saw for himself and understood now why his friends all regarded the police with suspicion. In some ways he was disappointed, in others elated, but beside all that he was confident he'd be reluctant to trust another policeman so implicitly like the Safe Kid in him once would.

"I'm proud of you, kid. They really tried to screw you over, but you stuck to the plan and now you get to sleep in your own bed tonight."

"Yeah, I'm really surprised… I also kind of understand now why rich people act out like they do."

"Right?" Elise flashed him a quick smile. "Don't abuse it, or we'll dump you in a deeper hole than the one we put Trip and Van in."

Marco raised his hands in supplication. "Message received! I am ten toes on the ground and dug in; I'm not going to take advantage of you or what you're doing for us."

Elise didn't need to hear that. "Of course you aren't–I was just teasing. You're a good kid, you're all good kids… and that's why I'm here to help you so this isn't as hard as it's going to be."

As hard as it was going to be. After fighting Barla, Marco implicitly got the meaning. These fights were going to be harder, and they were going to need a lot of help to get through them at this rate. Not just his friends, but their families, and people like Elise running interference for them and speaking when they can't.

They were also probably going to need guns. Lots of guns. "I'm not going to lie. The idea of it getting harder worries me. This new one we're fighting was tough. And now they're attacking the town itself? What do we do about that? What if they start attacking at different times, to try to throw us off? Or go after other places?"

Marco tightened his jaw as Elise shot him a glance. "What do we do if there's something worse out there than Vexor and the Magnavores?"

A good question, Elise wondered that, too. "Hope that when you run into it, you'll be ready."

She smiled encouragingly. "We'll make sure you are."

"Has he answered yet?" Brittney demanded as Dudley pulled the G-Wagen into a neighborhood between where the battle took place and their school. Beside her, Sabrina checked her phone and shook her head.

"It was sent but he hasn't read it yet," she lamented as Dudley pulled up to a line of houses that bordered the town's eponymous creek. "Maybe he's busy."

Brittney considered today's battle and nodded. "Yeah, or maybe he got caught up in the fight today, too. Who knows."

"I hope he's okay."

At that, Brittney snorted. "I'm sure he'll be fine." She insisted, even as she decided to check something when she was done here. "He's going to text you soon, don't freak out before then, okay?"

"I'll try." Sabrina was having a micro-freak out every several seconds since they escaped the battle.

"We have arrived, Master Sabrina," Dudley informed.

Sabrina managed a weak smile. "Thank you, Dudley. And thank you for protecting us earlier."

Dudley nodded back to her. "Of course."

As Sabrina climbed out and closed the door and began to walk up the driveway towards the side of her house, Brittney turned to Dudley. "Say, Dudley, what do you suppose are the odds that Drew is one of the Beetleborgs?"

"Extremely high, Master Brittney. I was there the first day that the Pines Twins arrived in Echo Creek, he, his sister, and Master Roland associate with them."

Brittney scowled. "It's good circumstantial evidence, but I won't be satisfied with that. I need you to take me to Star Butterfly's house."

"At once, Master Brittney." As Dudley put the car in drive and pulled away from the curb, he noticed the edges of his vision begin to blur.

Staring at her message to Drew and the sent icon, Sabrina sighed as she reached the side door of her home, that would reach her kitchen. As she went into her pocket for her keys, movement from the corner of her eye made her jump, and she spotted TC in his hoodie step around the corner from her house, from the direction of her backyard.

"… Mr. Darnell?" She asked in confusion.

TC looked just as surprised to see Sabrina. "Oh! You made it out of there all right. I'm glad."

"I-I was about to say the same thing…" Sabrina said. "It's good that you're safe but… what are you doing behind my house?"

TC looked back. "I got out of there by running to the creek and hiding under a bridge, luckily none of those Scabs noticed me so I was able to book it. I was actually just climbing over the fence to go back to the street when I noticed you. What are the odds, huh?"

She agreed. "Yeah, one way or another I didn't think we were going to meet again."

"Oof!" TC said with a laugh. "That one hurt."

Sabrina managed a nervous chuckle herself. "Well, again I'm glad you're okay… but I should get inside."

"Oh, of course!" TC said as he lifted his hat up slightly. "But before I leave, I want to ask you something."

Sabrina paused. "… What?"

"I don't normally ask this to specific people, but…" TC's smile grew. "Would you like to be on a shirt?"

"What do you mean you hot-wired Gargantis?!" A disbelieving Jo demanded. "You didn't need to hot-wire it!"

"No," Janna conceded, before she snapped her fingers and pointed at Jo, "But I wanted to."

Jo stopped and weighed on that. "You know what? That's fair, go on, Queen."

They were all gathered in Star's room at the Diaz household, after receiving word from Elise that Marco was already on his way home. Food had been delivered, soft drinks were served, and Star was waiting downstairs excitedly for Marco's return. With the crisis regarding Marco not a crisis at all, the atmosphere was slowly easing its tension.

"However she wanted to do it don't matter. She stood on business," Roland pointed out.

"Big business," Mabel agreed.

Janna hooked an arm around Misao's shoulders and pulled her close, poking her chest with her other hand as she pointed at her. "It's thanks to this guy. As soon as we saw how Big and Bad Barla was, she had me out there."

Misao giggled. "Danke schön."

Drew, opening a soda with his mind, held the can up in salute. "And you drove her off when we needed you to. That's some Super Sentai timing."

"Super Sen-timing," Mabel chimed in.

"I'll remember that one," Drew said.

Jackie was sitting at the end of Star's bed, drizzling some ranch dressing over her slice of pizza. "So, when Marco gets back, we need to talk about how we're gonna fight that Barla chick. She was way too strong."

Jo was in agreement. "Yeah, what's up with that? Everything we hit her with she just shrugged off like she was early-career Brock Lesnar."

"2002 to 2004: The worst period in professional sports entertainment history," Janna lamented.

"The key to defeating her lies in the Big Bad Beetleborgs movie tie-in issues," Drew said.

"108 through 120?" Dipper asked.

Drew nodded. "She was the main villain throughout that entire year of comics, but it was revealed that she was only the herald for the arrival of the movie-only villains."

"And since the movie didn't come out those comics haven't been recirculated and are rare as hell," Roland added to explain their rarity.

"Non-canon, too, until the movie finally does drop," Jo felt she needed to add.

Jackie looked around. "So, we're getting them, right?"

"Ja, of course!" Misao assured her. "Very first thing in the morning we will go to Zoom Comics and I will buy them from Nano, paid in cash."

"And the other rares we're missing," Drew said.

Jackie relaxed. "Sweet. You've read those comics though, right?"

"Obviously I have not," Jo said.

Drew shook his head. "Never got around to it, because, well…"

"I have," Roland said. "And believe it or not… they're actually not very good."

Jo nodded. "Because Marvel was being pushy about them, and the Chairman insisted that each comic have a guest artist and writer to make a big deal about the brand."

"It went poorly, because suddenly Art Fortunes had to work with people he'd never worked with before at best, or outright hated at worst, and it showed on the pages." Roland continued. "The writing was mid, the art was all over the place, and the story was so janky because of problems with the film production that in hindsight they're all a really hard read."

"Speaking of working with Art," Dipper said. "Misao, is there anyone you can connect us with to maybe get a meeting with him?"

Misao brightened. "I have a friend who is working on the new Beetleborgs film. And my would-be host family, too."

Silence reigned in the room, as everyone stared at her.

It was then that Misao realized… that this hadn't come up before. "Ah."

Jo, being Jo, broke the silence. "You know people working on the Beetleborgs film?! Who?!"

Misao shrank some, becoming smaller than she already was. "Um… Cynthia McDougal–"

Jo screamed. "YOU'RE FRIENDS WITH FUCKING REDDLE?!"

"We went to middle school together in Switzerland!" Misao quickly explained.

Roland shook his head. "Jo, chill. It's not like we could've used this info earlier, we've been busy!"

"Yeah, so much has happened… and is going to keep happening until we deal with the Magnavores for good," Drew said.

The door opened, and Star stepped in. "Guess who's back from doing a bid~!"

Marco walked in. "Hey guys!"

"MARCO!" Mabel, Misao, and Jackie all shouted at once, before Jackie beat them to running up and hugging him.

"Dude, how was it?" She asked.

Mabel and Misao reached him next, joining the embrace. "Yay, you weren't police brutalized!"

Janna then spoke up. "You didn't snitch, did you?"

"I didn't snitch, I didn't talk at all!" Marco snapped back.

"Relax, I knew you wouldn't."

No longer mobbed by the huggiest of girls, Marco went over to Star's bed and sat on it, both Star and Jackie joining him on it as he grabbed a chicken wing from a box. "Anyway, I got some bad news."

"Bad news how?" Dipper asked.

"Well, the Glendale Police Department is part of the police task force thing that swarmed us."

Everyone who was from Los Angeles in the room made faces of disgust.

"Okay, I'll bite," Dipper said, "What's the deal with Glendale?"

"Glendale PD has its own superhero," Jo said. "Or rather, its own supercop, and she's a massive bitch."

"Yeah, she is," Marco said before all but biting through the bone of his chicken wing. "She tried to make me talk by threatening that my Dad would get deported."

Mabel made a face. "That's foul."

"Dude, saying it lightly," Jackie seethed.

Roland dropped her name. "Yeah, she'd say something like that. Freaking Tara Bouger, also known as Major Blast II."

Jo continued on. "If you look up the word Karen in a dictionary you will see her face next to it. She hates superheroes, brown people, and dogs."

"She hates people not being inconvenienced by her in general," Janna said.

Drew sighed. "It's been nice, but if she's got legal permission to act here, next time the Magnavores attack we may end up fighting her, too."

"You mean we'll get to fight her," Jo said. "I don't know about you guys, but if she does pull up? She's getting exactly what she deserves."

"Well, yeah, but it's going to be annoying."

Dipper wasn't too concerned about police interference. "As long as we stay focused on the Magnavores, the police and any pet supercops they have won't be able to do much without it being a bad time for them. We just need to keep our heroism above board."

He looked at Star. "Which means after we're done here, you should get back over to Britta's and clean up the mess."

Star nodded. "I can do that; I wanted to do that! But, you know, the cops."

Drew spoke. "So tomorrow we have to pick up the comics with Barla in them so we might have some understanding of how to defeat her, and we have to prepare for what might be another Magnavore attack as soon as tomorrow… and somebody died at our school under suspicious circumstances that we're not allowed to go near."

Mabel brought up the bright side of it. "Hey, at least we have the rest of the week off."

Janna was about to add another important event from today, when Drew remembered. "Oh yeah, and there's that room in Hillhurst that reacts specifically to Star and Marco, complete with a magic armoire that will only open for them."

The room went quiet as Dipper slowly turned to look at Star and Marco.

"I'm sorry… what?!"

Marco, Star, and Jackie all nodded in unison. "It's true. It's weird."

Janna further confirmed it. "We were all freaking out until the Magnavores gave us something more important to worry about."

"Did you open it?!" Dipper demanded.

Marco shook his head. "We couldn't, we're missing a key."

Dipper had to know. "A key, what kind of key?"

"I don't know," Star said, "It was shaped like an S."

"An S-shaped Key?"

"Yeah, the letter S," Marco said. "We're not sure about what it means."

Roland hummed. "An S-shape, huh… I think Nano might know; we'll ask her tomorrow."

Dipper was now going through the same implications Drew had. "… Wait, what does the house mean to you and Star? Why are Flabber and the Monsters there? Were we supposed to be there?!"

"Oooh, a strange destiny? It wouldn't be the first time!" Mabel said.

Dipper turned to Star. "We need to go back to Hillhurst right now, I need to see this!"

Star reached into her purse and pulled out the Dimensional Scissors. "I wonder if we'll be able to go directly to it."

She snipped open a portal, and sure enough, it led directly to Wolfy's Room. "Oh, hey, it let me in–" Dipper all but bolted through the portal into the room. "Hey! That's our room!"

"And that's weird!" Dipper shouted from the other side of the portal.

As Star, Jackie, and Marco followed in after the others, Drew got up to follow when he felt his phone slip from his pocket. Stopping, he picked it up as the screen came on and showed a message from an unknown number. "… Huh…?"

Opening his screen and going to his messages, he stopped when he began to read it. "Wait, this is from…"

He trailed off, as the edges of his vision started to blur, like tears were starting to form in his eyes.

In her driveway, beside her house, Sabrina was surprised at TC's offer. "M-me? You want to put my face on a t-shirt? I… but my face is so… normal…"

TC laughed. "Nonsense! I think you'd look great!"

She wasn't sure. "But… doesn't' that go against your theme? The whole point of your artistic vision?"

TC shrugged his shoulders. "Well, you see…"

A car at the end of the driveway honked its horn, startling both of them. Recovering from her fright, Sabrina looked at and recognized the car before its driver opened the door. "Wait…"

Heather stepped out of her Audi. "Oh, hey Sabrina!"

Sabrina was confused. "Uh… hey, Heather… what's up?"

"I was on my home from work, when I saw you and just remembered I forgot to tell you some things about Drew, and…!" She stopped when she noticed TC. "Oh, I'm sorry, who's this?"

Sabrina brightened, mainly since they were going to talk about that boy she liked. "Oh, he's…!"

TC raised a hand, laughing. "Actually, hold on a sec." He reached into his pocket and pulled out his phone. "Oh shoot… my agent is blowing up my phone like crazy, worried about me. So I gotta bounce."

He gave Sabrina a smile. "Take care of yourself, I'll see you whenever, but who knows…"

He nodded and tipped his hat to Heather. "Nice meeting you."

With that he headed down the driveway and began walking down the street, bowing his head low and pulling his hoodie down over his baseball cap. Watching him go, Sabrina looked disappointed. "Oh, just my luck."

Heather turned to her. "Who was that?"

"TC Darnell, the artist," Sabrina revealed.

Heather tilted her head. "… Who?"

Sabrina paused, and then got a bit awkward as she realized. "… I guess he's someone who'd only hang out in Brittney's circles, I only know about him from her, myself."

She pulled out the t-shirt he made. "He gave me a t-shirt he made just today."

Heather's eyes grew wide when she saw the shirt. "… Oh! I know who you're talking about, now! He's that t-shirt artist, who does the weird faces!" She turned and looked back the way TC was walking away in. "Wow… and he just gave one to you?"

Sabrina nodded. "He gave Brittney one, too. I was so surprised."

Heather glanced back at her car. "Say, you wanna go hang out? I know Britta's is off the table, but there was some stuff I wanted to tell you about Drew since you're going to be asking him out."

Sabrina looked at her house. "Well, I just got home, but…" She wanted to know more about Drew. "… Actually, would you like to stay over for a bit?!"

Heather nodded. "More than anything, let's go inside."

While Sabrina and Heather headed inside the house, Drew gave a surprised start as he recognized the message and his face colored. "Uh… wow."

Janna suddenly leaned over his shoulder. "What's up, Sad Kid?" She read the screen, and her eyebrows rose. "So… Sabrina wants another taste, huh?"

Turning to her, and extremely aware of her nearness, Drew was unsure of her intent. "Well, is… uh… that a problem?" He asked.

Janna looked at the phone, and then him, smiling. "No, if she wants to hang out, you should hang out. She's cute, you're cute, be cute."

Patting him on the shoulder, Janna leaned close and whispered. "But be gentle, Sad Kid, you might be too much for her~"

"H-hey!" Drew snapped as Janna swept off–snapping her fingers and pointing at him like they were guns–and headed for the portal. "Look, are you into me or not?!"

Janna stopped at the portal and looked back at him. Jo, Roland, Mabel, and Misao all looked at the two of them.

Finding herself on the spot, Janna nevertheless remained entirely cool. "Well… isn't that obvious?" She stepped into the portal. "Don't let that discourage, you though, I'm generous."

With that she headed through to check out the hilarity in Wolfy's room.

Everyone still in Star's room turned to look back at Drew. Jo was surprised that it just happened, Roland was proud and happy for his boy, while Mabel and Misao were both watching all their ships sail with excitement.

Drew… just didn't know how to respond to this.

"… Huh."

Whew, that was close.